Foucault News

Caraus, T. The horizon of another world: Foucault’s Cynics and the birth of radical cosmopolitics
(2021) Philosophy and Social Criticism

DOI: 10.1177/0191453720987867

Abstract
The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world (kosmopolitês)’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in the care for the self that leads to the care for the others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up. © The Author(s) 2021.

Author Keywords
cosmopolitanism; Cynics; Foucault; parrhēsia; radical cosmopolitics

Fiorani, Matteo. “Rationality, irrationality and irrationalism in the anti-institutional debate in psychiatry around the second half of the 1970s in italy.” European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 16, br. 2 (2020): 101-121.
DOI: 10.31820/ejap.16.2.5
Open access

Abstract
The movements and protests of 1968 worldwide criticized the traditional idea of normality. From the 1970s onwards, psychiatry and antipsychiatry became an ideological battleground centered on the boundaries between normality and madness. In this scenario, characterized by a deep cultural and political transformation within the Left, the traditional concept of rationality and its very connection with irrationality was called into question. As a consequence, the very ideal of reason was questioned. This paper will explore the debate on rationality, irrationality and irrationalism within the so-called anti-institutional psychiatry and its reception in the Italian New Left during the second half of the 1970s.

Keywords
Antipsychiatry; psychiatric reforms; New Left; Italy

Golder, Ben, How to do things with Foucault (legally) (February 2, 2021). SSRN

Abstract
In this essay I discuss the legal theorist, Peter Fitzpatrick’s, reading of philosopher, Michel Foucault. My intent is to show how and why Foucault was important to Fitzpatrick and what this reveals about the latter’s practices of reading. I characterise this particular reading in three ways. First, against the disciplinary tendency to assume that Foucault is more useful to lawyers for how he approaches law (as method), Fitzpatrick takes seriously what Foucault has to say about law as a conceptual matter. Fitzpatrick hence reads Foucault as a legal thinker. Secondly, Fitzpatrick does not restrict himself to the conventional archive of Foucauldian texts that legal scholars routinely consult, but reads more widely and creatively in his search for law. Thirdly, Fitzpatrick reads Foucault open-endedly and generously rather than instrumentally or dismissively – textual ambivalence and contradiction is always in his hands a source of creative possibility and insight. This leads into some concluding reflections about Fitzpatrick’s practice of critically re-reading thinkers – all thinkers, not simply Foucault.

Keywords:
Peter Fitzpatrick, Michel Foucault, legal theory, reading practices

Torres Apablaza, Iván. “Ethopolitical modulation of existence: an archeology of the political and ethical life in Michel Foucault” Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy Vol 10, No 18 (2021): 199-223
Open access

RESUMEN
El artículo tiene por propósito fundamentar la presencia de una reconceptualización de lo político en el pensamiento de Michel Foucault, teniendo por clave de lectura la ethopolítica como propuesta conceptual. Se reconoce allí un concepto completamente enfrentado al modo en que la gubernamentalidad moderna, así como la tradición de pensamiento político, han entendido el sentido de la política en Occidente. Siguiendo este propósito, se plantea y desarrolla la hipótesis según la cual, el gesto analítico que persiste en el pensamiento de Michel Foucault es el de un concepto de lo político que afirma la vida en su radical exuberancia y desfundamentación. En dicha afirmación, se reconocen las signaturas de una estructura conceptual triangular, conformada por el pliegue entre vida, ética y poder. Luego de exponer el problema y despejar algunas dificultades metodológicas para su abordaje, se examinan en detalle las investigaciones que comprenden la arqueología de la vida ética en el filósofo francés. Se argumenta que la textualidad misma de la ethopolítica se formula como politicidad antes que como una política determinada, es decir, que se presenta como una política de la vida, puesto que la implica como modulación singular de la existencia. El artículo concluye con un umbral escritural compuesto de cinco tesis que intentan ampliar y proyectar hacia un programa de investigación, los rendimientos filosófico-políticos del análisis desarrollado.

PALABRAS CLAVE
Política; ética; poder; vida; biopolítica; ethopolítica.

ABSTRACT
The article aims to base the presence of a reconceptualization of the political in Michel Foucault’s thought, taking as the reading key ethopolitics as a conceptual proposal. There, we can find a concept completely opposed to the way in which both modern governmentality and the tradition of political thought have understood the meaning of politics in the West. Following this purpose, the hypothesis is proposed and developed, according to which the analytical gesture that persists in Michel Foucault’s thought is a concept of the political that affirms life in its radical exuberance and unfoundedness. In this statement, we recognize the signatures of a triangular conceptual structure made up of the fold between life, ethics and power. After exposing the problem and clearing some methodological difficulties for its approach, we examine in detail the investigations that comprise the archeology of ethical life in the French philosopher. It is argued that the very textuality of ethopolitics is formulated as politicity rather than as a specific policy, that is, it is presented as a politics of life, since it is implied as a singular modulation of existence. The article concludes with a scriptural threshold composed of five theses that attempt to expand and project the philosophical-political returns of the analysis developed towards a research program.

KEY WORDS
Politics; Ethics; Power; Life; Biopolitics; Ethopolitics.

Ramírez-García, V. The Administration of Desire: Governmentality and Sexual Politics in Mexico’s Demographic Shift of the 1970s. Sexuality Research and Social Policy volume 17, pp. 741–752 (2020).
DOI:10.1007/s13178-020-00430-4
Open access

Abstract
Introduction
In 1974 Mexico adopted a new Population Act which marked a turning point in its policies of migration, fertility and education; this new legislation embraced population as a set of collective regularities ruled by intelligible laws which the state was impelled to administer.
Methods
Cabinet research in historical archives of 292 documents from the National Population Council in Mexico, published during the first decade of its formulation and implementation (1974-1984).
Results
Mexican demographic shift of the 1970s shows the emergence of a new rationality of power and knowledge through the consolidation of governmentality as a complex network of practices and discourses, mostly in the fields of education and health.
Conclusions
There was an effort to reshape the subjectivity of individuals through the incitement and stimulation of a new political rationality, that of governmentality, embracing responsibility vis-à-vis the ‘sexual reproduction function’, a function which was attached to the reproduction of social structures like marriage and family.
Policy Implications
I argue that this particular case can contribute to the study of similar political and epistemic tendencies in other contexts, especially on the analysis of the intersection between family planning and sex education policies.