Foucault on Puppet Theaters, Flaubert and the Modern Imagination 1 March 2020
Michel Foucault and Salvador Dalí visit an exhibition in the “Museum of Imagination” displaying various versions of the “Temptation of Saint Anthony”…
Foucault on Puppet Theaters, Flaubert and the Modern Imagination 1 March 2020
Michel Foucault and Salvador Dalí visit an exhibition in the “Museum of Imagination” displaying various versions of the “Temptation of Saint Anthony”…
Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it
Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Technology Review
June 3, 2020
After years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video, it’s clear that evidentiary images on their own don’t bring about change. What’s missing is power.
The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers was captured on video, not once but half a dozen times.
[…]
Much of what we think about surveillance comes from the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault examined the ideas of the English reformer Jeremy Bentham, who proposed a prison—the panopticon or Inspection-House—in which every cell was observable from a central watchtower. The possibility that someone might be watching, Bentham believed, would be enough to prevent bad behavior by prisoners. Foucault observed that this knowledge of being watched forces us to police ourselves; our act of disciplining ourselves as if we were always under observation, more than the threat of corporal punishment, is the primary mechanism of “political technology” and power in modern society.
[…]
It turns out that images matter, but so does power. Bentham’s panopticon works because the warden of the prison has the power to punish you if he witnesses your misbehavior. But Bentham’s other hope for the panopticon—that the behavior of the warden would be transparent and evaluated by all who saw him—has never come to pass. Over 10 years, from 2005 to 2014, only 48 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for use of lethal force, though more than 1,000 people a year are killed by police in the United States.
[…]
Chow, D., Bracci, E.
Neoliberalism, accounting, and the transformation of subjectivities in social work: A study on the implementation of personal budgets
(2020) Financial Accountability and Management, 36 (2), pp. 151-170.
DOI: 10.1111/faam.12231
Abstract
This study examines, through the case of Personal Budgets in England, the role of accounting in transforming the subjectivities of social workers through a Foucauldian lens. The findings show how accounting can reshape the subjectivities of social workers serving as intermediaries responsible for the frontline implementation of neoliberal reforms. It does so through an empirical demonstration on how accounting harnesses an individual’s autonomy and responsibility to nurture “productive” relationships between citizens and the state. Furthermore, the findings also highlight the vulnerability of social workers’ subjectivities from the installation of an accounting infrastructure with multiple capabilities. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how neoliberal policies transform subjectivities in social work and adds to the literature on accounting’s biopolitical role in the reconstitution of such subjectivities. It also addresses the relative neglect of studies examining the role of accounting in neoliberal transformations of social work that, despite its significance for an ageing society and its attendant consequences for public finances, receives far less attention than healthcare reforms. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Author Keywords
accounting; Foucault; neoliberal; social work; subjectivity
Jordan Jochim, Aristotle, Tyranny, and the Small-Souled Subject (2020) Political Theory, 48 (2), pp. 169-191.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719851802
Abstract
Political theorists converge in identifying modern techniques of domination as habit-formative and psychologically invasive, in contrast to earlier, more blatantly coercive forms of repression. Putting Aristotle on tyranny in conversation with Michel Foucault on subject formation, this article argues for continuity across the pre- and postmodern divide. Through a close reading of the “three heads of tyranny” in Politics 5.11 (1314a13-29)—those being the tyrant’s efforts to form subjects who (1) have small thoughts (2) are distrustful of one another, and (3) are incapable of action—I argue that central to Aristotle’s account of tyrannical domination is how tyrants cultivate the ethical vice of “small-souledness” (Nicomachean Ethics 1123b7), thus producing subjects with humbled desires for a proportionate distribution of political power. This article deepens our appreciation of the social and psychological registers of Aristotle’s theorization of domination and gives reasons for continuing to take Aristotle’s insights into tyranny seriously today. © The Author(s) 2019.
Author Keywords
Aristotle; desire; domination; Foucault; justice; tyranny
Laughlin, C.
Transcendental meditation’s tipping point: the allure of celebrity on the American spiritual marketplace
(2020) Popular Communication, 18 (2), pp. 108-120.
DOI: 10.1080/15405702.2019.1634810
Abstract
Since 2005, the film director David Lynch has been the most visible and vocal proponent for the spread of Transcendental Meditation (TM), a practice brought to the United States by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1950s. This paper analyzes the public-facing operations: website, books, and celebrity benefit concerts, through which the David Lynch Foundation interacts with its American audience and charts two moves that the David Lynch Foundation has made in order to market TM. First, I assert that they have positioned TM as a technique rather than a spiritual practice and I understand this through Foucault’s theory of techné. Second, I argue that they have leveraged the auracular quality of celebrity as a modality through which to brand TM for the spiritual consumer. Ultimately, I made claims on how these moves represent a shift in how American spiritual seekers are understood and marketed to in popular culture. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Author Keywords
branding; celebrity; marketing; religion; spirituality; Transcendental meditation
Meneses, K.C.
L’Arche, a Radical Reversal: Fearless Dialogue between Foucault and Vanier with the New Testament
(2020) Journal of Disability and Religion, 24 (2), pp. 151-173.
DOI: 10.1080/23312521.2020.1718571
Abstract
Today many of us are unaware and perhaps even deny the fact that our ideas, decisions, and choices are driven by fear whether obvious or subtle. In his seminal book, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in an Age of Reason, Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness wherein he illuminates how fear of the other has come to shape society’s moral compass toward persons adjudged as lamentable, engendering certain social constructs that have given shape to what he called the mutation of confinement. In other words, Foucault highlights the historical and cultural turning points that gave rise to the societal belief that necessitates the establishment of confinement. To “cage” people who are different from the composite identity position held by those unmarked by stigmatized identifiers—those who fall outside the “norm”—is perceived as a meaningful exercise toward the greater good and security of society. Juxtaposed with society’s “civilized” attitude toward persons regarded as lamentable and thus worthy of confinement is Jean Vanier’s understanding of the value and dignity of each person—a radical conviction that gave rise to L’Arche, a revolutionary attempt to dismantle the walls of fear within, between, and among us.
In what follows, Jean Vanier’s understanding of fear will be comparatively analyzed in relation to the dominant societal notion of fear in order to draw attention to the practical ways in which these ideas have consequences in L’Arche and society as a whole. Underlying this attempt is the contention that Vanier’s notion of fear entails a radical reversal of the “civilized norm” of confinement. This article proceeds in three parts and will offer a theological reflection which could serve as a catalyst for a world that remains enveloped with fear of the other, particularly those deemed different and deviant. © 2020, © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Author Keywords
Deafness; disability; new testament; social inclusion; vulnerability
Bürger, J., Laguna-Tapia, A.
Individual homogenization in large-scale systems: on the politics of computer and social architectures
(2020) Palgrave Communications, 6 (1), art. no. 47.
DOI: 10.1057/s41599-020-0425-4
Open access
Abstract
One determining characteristic of contemporary sociopolitical systems is their power over increasingly large and diverse populations. This raises questions about power relations between heterogeneous individuals and increasingly dominant and homogenizing system objectives. This article crosses epistemic boundaries by integrating computer engineering and a historicalphilosophical approach making the general organization of individuals within large-scale systems and corresponding individual homogenization intelligible. From a versatile archeological-genealogical perspective, an analysis of computer and social architectures is conducted that reinterprets Foucault’s disciplines and political anatomy to establish the notion of politics for a purely technical system. This permits an understanding of system organization as modern technology with application to technical and social systems alike. Connecting to Heidegger’s notions of the enframing (Gestell) and a more primal truth (anfänglicheren Wahrheit), the recognition of politics in differently developing systems then challenges the immutability of contemporary organization. Following this critique of modernity and within the conceptualization of system organization, Derrida’s democracy to come (à venir) is then reformulated more abstractly as organizations to come. Through the integration of the discussed concepts, the framework of Large-Scale Systems Composed of Homogeneous Individuals (LSSCHI) is proposed, problematizing the relationships between individuals, structure, activity, and power within large-scale systems. The LSSCHI framework highlights the conflict of homogenizing system-level objectives and individual heterogeneity, and outlines power relations and mechanisms of control shared across different social and technical systems. © 2020, The Author(s).
Anton Oleinik, The politics behind how governments control coronavirus data
The Conversation (Canada), June 5, 2020
COVID-19 has affected almost every country around the globe. The World Health Organization has confirmed cases in 216 countries and territories, a total that represents more than 85 per cent of 251 entities recognized by the United Nations. Yet each government has responded differently to the coronavirus pandemic — including how data on the disease have been shared with each country’s citizens.
The selectiveness with which governments release information about the number of confirmed cases and the deaths caused by the coronavirus suggest techniques of “bio-power” may be at play.
French philosopher Michel Foucault invented the concept of bio-power in his lectures at the Collège de France in 1977-78. He defined bio-power as a “set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power.”
‘I Drove this Exact Truck’ How the War on Terror Came Back to Haunt America
Iain Overton
Byline Times, 4 June 2020
Iain Overton reports on how US counter-terrorism equipment is being deployed at home with an inevitable rise in militarisation, mortality and force over-reach
n Wednesday 4 February 1976, the French academic Michel Foucault addressed his students at the Collège de France in the Latin Quarter on Paris’s South Bank. The title of his lecture was provocative: ‘Society must be defended’.
In his talk, the social theorist turned his focus onto the thorny issue of colonialism. He explained how colonies were often the testing ground for a series of legal, political or social experiments, and the results of these experiments often rebounded, over time, back to the colonisers. He called it the ‘boomerang effect’ and outlined how the systems and application of power were “brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.”
In essence, violence had a habit of eventually contaminating the very countries that exported it.
It is an observation that could easily be made when witnessing the lines of police officers in the United States at the moment. We see, nightly, lines of black-booted and heavily shoulder-padded white men facing down black protestors. They arrive in armoured vehicles, they often wear camouflage, don bullet-proof vests, strap on gas masks and carry M4 rifles. The term ‘warrior cops’ is all too apt, if it wasn’t so heroic.
Such images point to an uncomfortable truth that, in an age of healthcare shortages, you never see An American riot policeman without adequate protective equipment.
Ojala, A.-L.
Being an athlete and being a young person: Technologies of the self in managing an athletic career in youth ice hockey in Finland
(2020) International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 55 (3), pp. 310-326.
Abstract
Engaging in youth sports is a major investment, and it requires choosing and balancing between an athlete’s life and other practices and ways of life important to adolescents. In this Foucauldian year-long ethnographic study on Finnish 18–20-year-old elite male ice hockey players I consider an athletic career as a moral question and examine what aspects of their behaviour are affected when these players submit to the external and internal control they encounter when advancing themselves and their careers, and how they problematize the codes that govern their actions. The players expressed six modes of subjection altogether that were important to cultivation of the self: exercising, nutrition, rest, motivation, player role and emotions. The processes of cultivation were strongly guided by coaches and well internalized by the players. However, the hockey players were also young people with interests and choices quite different from a disciplined athletic life, and the coaches also helped in the construction of these spheres. I propose in this study that these spheres may be important in managing the training load and the career pressure that athletes necessarily face during the ‘investment years’ (15+) in sport. © The Author(s) 2018.
Author Keywords
athletic career; discipline; Foucault; ice hockey; youth sports
Index Keywords
adolescent, adult, article, career, case report, clinical article, Finland, hockey player, human, human experiment, ice hockey, investment, male, morality, motivation, nutrition, rest, young adult, youth sport
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