Foucault News

Sibylle Erle & Helen Hendry, Monsters: interdisciplinary explorations in monstrosity (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

30 April 2020

Sibylle Erle & Helen Hendry, Monsters: interdisciplinary explorations in monstrosity(2020) Palgrave Communications, 6 (1), art. no. 53
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0428-1

Open access
Abstract
There is a continued fascination with all things monster. This is partly due to the popular reception of Mary Shelley’s Monster, termed a ‘new species’ by its overreaching but admiringly determined maker Victor Frankenstein in the eponymous novel first published in 1818. The enduring impact of Shelley’s novel, which spans a plethora of subjects and genres in imagery and themes, raises questions of origin and identity, death, birth and family relationships, as well as the contradictory qualities of the monster. Monsters serve as metaphors for anxieties of aberration and innovation (Punter and Byron, 2004). Stephen Asma (2009) notes that monsters represent evil or moral transgression and each epoch, to speak with Michel Foucault (Abnormal: lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–75, 2003, p. 66), evidences a ‘particular type of monster’. Academic debates tend to explore how social and cultural threats come to be embodied in the figure of a monster and their actions literalise our deepest fears (Gilmore, 2009; Scott, 2007).

Monsters in contemporary culture, however, have become more humane than ever before. Monsters are strong, resilient, creative and sly creatures. Through their playful and invigorating energy they can be seen to disrupt and unsettle. They still cater to the appetite for horror, but they also encourage us to feel empathy. The encounter with a monster can enable us to stop, wonder and change our attitudes towards technology, our body and each other. This commentary article considers the use of the concepts of ‘monsters’ or ‘monstrosity’ in literature, contemporary research, culture and teaching contexts at the intersection of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. © 2020, The Author(s).

Coronavirus articles on the Disorder of Things blog (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 April 2020

Editor: An ongoing series of articles and blog posts by scholars working at Australian, British and Norwegian universities is being posted on The Disorder of Things blog. The first article was posted 24 March 2020

An Essay on Pandemic Borders: From ‘Immunitary Dispositif’ to Affirmative Ethics

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 April 2020

The Disorder Of Things

An eighth entry in our coronacrisis series, from Umut Ozguc. Umut is postdoctoral research fellow in International Ethics at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia. She is a critical IR scholar working on critical security and border studies, settler colonialism, spatial theory, resistance and posthumanism. Currently, she is working on a research project on the ecological impacts of border walls. Her current research aims to challenge the overly anthropocentric focus of the contemporary debates over borders and mobility.

Those applying for temporary or permanent residency in Australia know well that you can only be granted a visa if you meet the health requirements set by the Australian Government. That is to mean, you should not pose a threat to the public health of the nation. The Department of Home Affairs website states that it says, if you have any health condition…

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Švantner, M. Two basic analyses of the historiography of semiotics: M. Foucault’s comparative semiology and J.N. Deely’s semiotic realism (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 April 2020

Švantner, M.
Two basic analyses of the historiography of semiotics: M. Foucault’s comparative semiology and J.N. Deely’s semiotic realism
(2020) Semiotica, 2020 (233), pp. 159-177.

DOI: 10.1515/sem-2017-0108

Abstract
In this study I compare the work of two scholars who are important for contemporary research into the history of semiotics. The main goal of the study is to describe specific rhetorical/figurative forms and structures of persuasion between two epistemological positions that determine various possibilities in the historiography of semiotics. The main question is this: how do we understand two important metatheoretical forms of descriptions in the historiography of semiotics or the history of sign relations?

The first perspective is semiology and its corollary, “structuralism,” as presented in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things. This perspective prefers to consider history as a set of ruptures (i). The second position explores the possibility of the historical development of semiotic consciousness as presented in the works of John N. Deely (ii). The main aim of this study lies in the exploration of these two different epistemological bases – divergent bases for developing specific understandings of interconnections that hold between between semiotics, semiosis and historical processes. A goal of this paper is to demonstrate the limits and advantages of these two paradigmatic positions. The positions in question are “meta-theoretical” in the following senses such that: (i) the historical episteme is taken to be an a priori determinant of all sign-operations in a given era and is also the semiologic grid through which Foucault approaches every mode of scientific knowledge (from “science” to “economy” and beyond); (ii) the quasi-Hegelian development of semiotic consciousness based on a conception of the sign considered as a triadic ontological relation. The latter is Deely’s guiding meta-principle, through which the history of semiotics can be articulated, examined and evaluated. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020.

Author Keywords
Deely; Foucault; historical a priori; historiography of semiotics; Peirce; semiology

Historicizing Foucault: Stuart Elden on Tracing Foucault’s Ideas from Discipline and Punish to the History of Sexuality

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

29 April 2020

Progressive Geographies

Elden-9 Historicizing Foucault: Stuart Elden on Tracing Foucault’s Ideas from Discipline and Punish to the History of Sexuality – part 1 of a longer interview at the Journal of History of Ideas blog, conducted earlier this month. My thanks to Anne Schult and Jonas Knatz for the invitation to do this and some interesting questions.

Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Theory and Geography at University of Warwick. His publication series on Foucault includesFoucault’s Last Decade (Polity, 2016),Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity, 2017), The Early Foucault (Polity, forthcoming), and The Archaeology of Foucault (Polity, forthcoming). Beyond Foucault, he most recently authoredShakespearean Territories (University of Chicago Press, 2018) andCanguilhem (Polity, 2019). He runs a blog at www.progressivegeographies.com.
Jonas Knatz is a PhD Student in New York University’s History Department. He works on 20th century European intellectual history.
Anne Schult a PhD Candidate in New York University’s…

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Jocelyn Lachance, Parental surveillance of teens in the digital era: the “ritual of confession” to the “ritual of repentance” (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 April 2020

Jocelyn Lachance, Parental surveillance of teens in the digital era: the “ritual of confession” to the “ritual of repentance” (2020) International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25 (1), pp. 355-363.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1651351

Open access

Abstract
The use of ICTs by teens are sometimes a source of fear for parents. Yet the same ICTs can be a tool and comfort to parents who need to know where their children are, with whom and what they are doing when they are far away from their gaze. This following article explores this tension, and especially how teenagers see the surveillance of their parents in the digital era. It is based on 35 interviews conducted amongst French teenagers aged 14 to 18 from October 2017 to April 2018. It reveals how the use of ICTs to monitor teens participates in the emergence of a new form of control, drawing questions not only in the realm of the family yet also in wider society.

Author Keywords
Foucault; ICT; parents; surveillance; Teen

Index Keywords
adolescent, adult, article, child, comfort, drawing, fear, female, gaze, human, human experiment, interview, male, ritual, tension

François Delaporte, Disease and Civilization. The Cholera in Paris, 1832 (1986)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

26 April 2020

François Delaporte, Disease and Civilization. The Cholera in Paris, 1832, Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Foreword by Paul Rabinow, 1986, MIT Press

Summary
Disease and Civilization explores the scientific and political ramifications of the great cholera epidemic of 1832, showing how its course and its conceptualization were affected by the social power relations of the time. The epidemic which claimed the lives of 18,000 people in Paris alone, was a watershed in the history of medicine: In France, it shook the complacency of a medical establishment that thought it had the means to prevent any onslaught and led to a revolution in the concept of public health.

Marlon Salomon, Obituary, François Delaporte (1941 – 2019)

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

26 April 2020

Marlon Salomon, Obituary, François Delaporte (1941 – 2019)
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science (6) 2019: 115-123
https://doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.11

Open access

On the 28th of May, the French philosopher and historian of sciences, François Delaporte died in Amiens at the age of 78. He was an emeritus professor at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne (UPJV). His death is an irreparable loss to the philosophy and historiography of the sciences.
[…]

From 1966, Delaporte began to regularly attend Canguilhem’s courses, and soon after in May of 1968, he began his master’s studies under his professor’s guidance. Two years later, he presented his master’s dissertation, on issues surrounding the notion of vegetality in the eighteenth century.

Delaporte then started to work on a doctoral thesis (troisième cycle). Georges Canguilhem, however, could no longer advise him, since he would retire in 1971, so Canguilhem asked Michel Foucault, who used to attend the Institute and was elected at the end of 1969 to be the chair of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. Canguilhem had not only been Foucault’s teacher, but had also advised his doctoral thesis on the history of madness in the Classical Age. At the time, Foucault was interested in the theme of sexuality, and Delaporte’s research project proposal on the history on the concepts of vegetal sexuality pleased him – if I am not mistaken, this was the only thesis Foucault ever advised.

Early in 1976, Delaporte defended his thesis entitled Les questions de la végétalité au XVIIIe siècle. There was a noticeable shift concerning the original project. Instead of a history of the notion of plant sexuality, it became a study of “the historicity of a knowledge whose object is the very nature of the vegetable” and an analysis of “the practices” through which the objects of knowledge “are elaborated according to precise rules” (Delaporte 1979, 205).

[…]
In 1979, Delaporte published Le second règne de la nature. The title of the book was suggested by Foucault himself.

After defending his doctoral thesis in the “troisième cycle”, Delaporte participated in Michel Foucault’s seminars at the Collège de France from 1977 to 1979. At that moment, he decided to write a thesis of doctorate of state [doctorat d’etat]. He wanted to move away from the history of biology, and spend some time researching something related to the history of medicine. Foucault advised him and suggested at least three possibilities of research that included a study which became the subject of his analysis, the cholera epidemic of 1832 in Paris (Salomon 2012, 248-262). Foucault again agreed to advise him. Delaporte resumed, to a certain extent, the study of Naissance de la clinique at the place where Foucault had left it.

[…]
At the beginning of 1984, the first version of his doctorat d’etat thesis was ready. The doctorate of state was, however, finished in France that year, so this work moved away from its original proposal. Foucault, who died in June of that year, still had the opportunity to read it. In 1986, it would be published in English under the title, Disease and civilization: The cholera in Paris, in 1832, with a preface by Paul Rabinow.
[…]

With thanks to Colin Gordon for this link

Agustin Colombo, Michel Foucault e a obediência da carne (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 April 2020

Colombo, Agustin. (2020). Michel Foucault e a obediência da carne Cristã. Revista de Filosofia Aurora, 32(55).
doi: 10.7213/1980-5934.32.055.AO03
Michel Foucault and the obedience of the Christian flesh

Open access

Resumo
Este artigo investiga a dimensão política do que Michel Foucault chama a “experiência da Carne”, baseando-se na obra maior póstuma do filósofo francês História da sexualidade 4, As confissões da carne (Les Aveux de la chair). Para isso, o artigo se concentra na pesquisa de Foucault sobre o relato cristão da obediência. Em particular, o artigo analisa a íntima interação conceitual entre obediência e vontade na investigação de Foucault sobre João Cassiano e Santo Agostinho. A primeira parte do artigo aborda o principal diagnóstico de Foucault sobre o relato da obediência de Cassiano. Segundo este relato, na vida monástica, a obediência perfeita requer que os indivíduos renunciem à sua própria vontade. A segunda parte do artigo tem seu foco na análise de Foucault da teoria da libido de Santo Agostinho. Para Agostinho, a condição de obediência, em particular a obediência às regras sexuais, depende do bom uso que os indivíduos fazem da sua própria vontade. As conclusões do artigo destacam o papel crucial da interação entre obediência e vontade, de modo a possibilitar compreender a forma de governamentalidade construída pela experiência cristã da carne.

Palavras-chave : Michel Foucault. As confissões da carne. Carne. Obediencia. Vontade.

Abstract
This article investigates the political dimension of what Michel Foucault calls the “experience of the Flesh” based on French philosopher’s posthumous major work History of Sexuality volume 4, The Confessions of the Flesh (Les Aveux de la chair). In order to do so, the chapter focuses on Foucault’s research on the Christian account of obedience. In particular, the article analyzes the intimate conceptual interplay between obedience and will in Foucault’s investigation on John Cassian and Saint Augustine. The first part of the article addresses Foucault’s main diagnosis of Cassian’s account of obedience, according to which, in monastic life, perfect obedience requires that individuals renounce to their own will. The second part of the article focuses on Foucault’s analysis of Saint Augustine’s theory of libido, which shows that the condition of obedience, in particular the obedience to the sexual rules, relies on the good use that individuals make of their own will. The conclusions of the article highlight the crucial role of the interplay between obedience and will to understand the form of governmentality built up by the Christian experience of the Flesh.

Keywords: Michel Foucault. The Confessions of the Flesh. Flesh. Obedience. Will.

Marta Faustino, Gianfranco Ferraro (eds.), The Late Foucault: Ethical and Political Questions – Bloomsbury, December 2020

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

21 April 2020

Progressive Geographies

9781350134355 Marta Faustino, Gianfranco Ferraro (eds.), The Late Foucault: Ethical and Political Questions– Bloomsbury, December 2020

Michel Foucault is one of the most important and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century and one of the leading figures in contemporary Western intellectual life and debate. The recent publication of his last lecture courses at the Collège de France (1981-1984), together with the short texts, essays, and interviews from the same period, have sparked new interest in his work, allowing for a new understanding of his philosophical trajectory and challenging several interpretations produced over the last few decades.
In this later phase of his thinking, Foucault deepens and expands the course of his preceding works on the genealogy of subjectivity, while at the same time adding a significant ethical and political dimension to it. His focus on the ancient ethics of care of the self and technologies of self-constitution during this period…

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