Foucault News

News and resources on French thinker Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Aaron Schuster, The Debt Drive: Philosophical Anthropology and Political Economy (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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7 February 2020

Aaron Schuster, The Debt Drive: Philosophical Anthropology and Political Economy

“Fantasies of Capital: Alienation, Enjoyment, Psychoanalysis”
— A Jnanapravaha Mumbai Conference.

Abstract: The philosophical conception of the human being as a being whose existence precedes its essence, defined by its radical openness and fundamentally historical character was, for the twentieth century, part and parcel of an emancipatory project aimed against all kinds of naturalisms and identitarian politics. Neoliberalism can be defined, from the perspective of philosophical anthropology, as a perverse exploitation of the “indetermination” of the human being, whose plasticity, capacity for reinvention, and underlying precarity are now marshalled in the service of the market. Paradoxically, the very openness meant to combat reification has itself become a vector for reification. Not only does neoliberalism exploit this openness or ontological precarity, it also mobilizes a powerful apparatus for interpreting the subject’s “lack of being” and giving it a specific form: namely, debt.

In this talk, I will explore the workings of this contemporary form of ideological interpellation, and also show how it fails or breaks down, thus producing a new field of political contestation.

Archive: The Shadows of Atheology: Epidemics, Power and Life after Foucault (2009)

Clare O'Farrell

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6 February 2020

Thacker, Eugene. “The Shadows of Atheology: Epidemics, Power and Life after Foucault.” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 6 (November 2009): 134–52. doi:10.1177/0263276409347698.

Abstract
This essay examines a hidden link in biopolitical thinking after Foucault — the relation between biology and theology. The result is a turn away from the dichotomy of life/death and towards a life-after-life, an afterlife that is vitalist, networked and immanent. The model for this, however, is not in postmodernity but in the pre-modernity of medicine, plague and demonology.

Daniel Zamora et Jean-Yves Pranchère, Foucault et le néolibéralisme (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

6 February 2020

Daniel Zamora et Jean-Yves Pranchère, Foucault et le néolibéralisme : (1/2), Ballast, 24 janvier 2020

Entretien inédit pour le site de Ballast

En 2014, le socio­logue Daniel Zamora était déjà venu nous par­ler de Michel Foucault suite à la paru­tion son livre col­lec­tif Critiquer Foucault. Aux côtés de Mitchell Dean, pro­fes­seur de socio­lo­gie et de théo­rie poli­tique, il se sai­sit à nou­veau du phi­lo­sophe dans un ouvrage inti­tu­lé Le Dernier des hommes et la révo­lu­tion — Foucault après Mai 68. Jean-Yves Pranchère, coau­teur de l’essai Le Procès des droits de l’homme, est quant à lui pro­fes­seur de théo­rie poli­tique à l’Université libre de Bruxelles. Nous les retrou­vons tous deux dans la capi­tale belge. Le « der­nier Foucault » est celui qui, dans les années 1970, se sai­sit du néo­li­bé­ra­lisme comme caté­go­rie de pen­sée ; c’est aus­si celui qui se voit le plus expo­sé à la cri­tique contem­po­raine, accu­sé d’a­voir fait plus que le sai­sir : ravi­tailler théo­ri­que­ment le déclin du socia­lisme his­to­rique. Questionner Foucault sans rac­cour­cis ni effets de manche polé­miques n’est pas chose des plus aisées : ce débat en deux volets s’y efforce.

[…]
Daniel Zamora : Mon tra­vail n’a jamais été moti­vé par une quel­conque ani­mo­si­té envers Foucault et son œuvre. Mes recherches sur l’histoire de la ques­tion sociale ont même été par­tiel­le­ment ins­pi­rées par sa démarche intel­lec­tuelle. Mon coau­teur, Mitchell Dean, a quant à lui dédié une par­tie sub­stan­tielle de sa car­rière à Foucault. Et c’est pré­ci­sé­ment cet inté­rêt qui a moti­vé l’écriture de notre livre afin, non seule­ment, de repla­cer la der­nière décen­nie du phi­lo­sophe dans son contexte, mais éga­le­ment de mieux éva­luer son apport intel­lec­tuel pour notre pré­sent.

[…]

Le dernier homme et la fin de la révolution. Foucault après Mai 68 (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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6 February 2020

Daniel Zamora et Mitchel Dean, Le dernier homme et la fin de la révolution. Foucault après Mai 68, Lux, 2019.

Will be published in English by Verso in 2020

La dernière décennie de Michel Foucault a coïncidé avec l’agonie des espoirs de transformation sociale qui avaient marqué l’après-guerre. Face à cette «fin de la révolution», le philosophe a tenté de réinventer la manière dont nous pensons la politique et la résistance, ce que sa génération n’avait, jugeait-il, pas réussi à faire.

C’est dans cette perspective qu’il s’est intéressé au néolibéralisme en tant qu’outil permettant de repenser les fondements conceptuels de la gauche et d’imaginer une gouvernementalité plus tolérante aux expérimentations sociales, ouvrant un espace aux pratiques minoritaires et à une plus grande autonomie du sujet vis-à-vis de lui-même. Le moyen, en somme, de réaliser le projet énoncé à la fin de sa vie, celui de n’être «pas tellement gouverné». Et c’est ainsi que, dans sa quête d’une «gouvernementalité de gauche», Foucault a anticipé et contribué, en quelque sorte, au façonnement de la situation politique contemporaine.

1. L’ARTIFICIER DU NÉOLIBÉRALISME
17
Foucault et les arts libéraux du gouvernement
25
Foucault dans son présent
29
Néolibéralisme
33
L’intellectuel
38
2. À LA RECHERCHE D’UNE GOUVERNEMENTALITÉ DE GAUCHE
45
Contre l’«horizon indépassable»
48
Néolibéralisme, par-delà gauche et droite
57
Vers une «nouvelle culture politique»
68
3. CONTRE LE SOUVERAIN, EXPÉRIMENTER PLUTÔT QU’INTERPRÉTER
75
Contre la souveraineté de l’auteur
79
Naissance et mort du sujet moderne
87
4. PROLIFÉRER CONTRE LE POUVOIR, LA RÉVOLUTION DÉCAPITÉE
103
Le sujet comme champ de bataille
107
La résistance comme désassujettissement
115
Proliférer contre le pouvoir
119
Néolibéralisme, une gouvernementalité du pluralisme
123
Un «usage intelligent» du néolibéralisme
135
5. NÉOLIBÉRALISME SAUVAGE ET POUVOIR LITURGIQUE
143
Les années 1970: la descente
149
Vers une «gouvernementalité de gauche»
158
Une guerre civile confessionnelle

Michel Foucault, Binswanger et l’analyse existentielle, edited by Elisabetta Basso – EHESS/Gallimard/Seuil, April 2020

Clare O'Farrell

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5 February 2020

stuartelden's avatarProgressive Geographies

Michel Foucault, Binswanger et l’analyse existentielle, edited by Elisabetta Basso – EHESS/Gallimard/Seuil, forthcoming April 2020. Nothing on the publisher sites yet, but it is listed in online bookstores. More details when available.

This is a substantial text by Foucault which seems to have begun as a course at Lille, but is developed into a more polished manuscript, which may have been intended as a thesis. Foucault published a long introduction to Binswanger’s ‘Dream and Existence’ in 1954, but this manuscript is distinct from that work. This edition is part of a new  series of publications from Foucault’s archive before the Collège de France. It is the second to be published, after the two courses on sexuality that appeared in late 2018. I discuss this text in The Early Foucault, and it will be good to have an edited version of this manuscript available before I complete that book.

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Toby Svoboda, Foucault on Correspondence as a Technique of the Self (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 February 2020

Toby Svoboda, Foucault on Correspondence as a Technique of the Self, Le foucaldien 6, no. 1 (2020): 1–19.
https://doi.org/10.16995/lefou.69 [Note: In 2022, Le foucaldien relaunched as Genealogy+Critique.]

Open access

Abstract
This paper begins with a discussion of Foucault’s examination of Seneca’s epistles in his late essay, “Self Writing.” I argue that Foucault offers an accurate and interesting account of the practices Seneca employs in his epistles pursuant to his art of living. This paper then considers Foucault’s interpretation of Seneca’s art of living as an aesthetics of existence. I argue that this interpretation is unsatisfactory, instead suggesting that Seneca’s art of living is a plausible response to the problem of suffering. I close by arguing that such a conception of Seneca’s art of living makes it relevant for present-day human beings, who, like Seneca, are subject to the problem of suffering.

Keywords: aesthetics of existence, care of the self, philosophy, seneca, writing

Stephen L. Roberts, Big Data, Algorithmic Governmentality and the Regulation of Pandemic Risk (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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4 February 2020

Stephen L. Roberts (2019). Big Data, Algorithmic Governmentality and the Regulation of Pandemic Risk. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 10(1), 94-115.
https://doi.org/10.1017/err.2019.6

Abstract
This article investigates the rise of algorithmic disease surveillance systems as novel technologies of risk analysis utilised to regulate pandemic outbreaks in an era of big data. Critically, the article demonstrates how intensified efforts towards harnessing big data and the application of algorithmic processing techniques to enhance the real-time surveillance and regulation infectious disease outbreaks significantly transform practices of global infectious disease surveillance; observed through the advent of novel risk rationalities which underpin the deployment of intensifying algorithmic practices to increasingly colonise and patrol emergent topographies of data in order to identify and govern the emergence of exceptional pathogenic risks. Conceptually, this article asserts further how the rise of these novel risk regulating technologies within a context of big data transforms the government and forecasting of epidemics and pandemics: illustrated by the rise of emergent algorithmic governmentalties of risk within contemporary contexts of big data, disease surveillance and the regulation of pandemic.

Archive: Is it Going to be Real?” Narrative and Media on a Pandemic (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 February 2020

Davis, Mark. “”Is it Going to be Real?” Narrative and Media on a Pandemic.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online], 18.1 (2017): n. pag. Web. 2 Feb. 2020

DOI: 10.17169/fqs-18.1.2768

Open access

Abstract:
In this article, I examine the narrative-media nexus as it relates to pandemics. Communications feature in global public health efforts to address the emergence of a pandemic, an event typically marked by the proliferation of news stories. Pandemics are also a perennial subject of film, television, literature and online games and pandemic narratives travel across and blend the genres of science fiction, alien invasion and zombie horror. Underlining this genre-blending, public health communication on pandemics has appropriated the figure of the zombie to encourage interest in preparation for pandemic threats. Drawing on examples from public communications and popular culture in dialogue with interviews and focus groups conducted with health professionals and members of the general public, I advance an account of the transmediated knowledge and meanings of pandemic narrative. I examine how pandemics become objects of knowledge in narrative, the ways in which narrative is appropriated to communicate a pandemic’s temporal and affective qualities, and how, in the circumstances of an actual outbreak, publics are invited to consider themselves as the ideal, “alert, but not alarmed” subjects of the pandemic storyworld.

[…]
Michel FOUCAULT made the point that end of plague festivals celebrate the abandonment of restriction and having survived the ordeal of the threat to life (1982). The dancing, music, inebriation and gaiety of the festival are diametrically opposed to the dutiful demeanor expected of citizens to ensure the eventual defeat of plague.
[…]

Key words: pandemics; media analysis; narrative analysis; interviews; focus groups; Scotland; Australia

Lifestylisation of the Social: The Government of Diabetes Care in Denmark (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 February 2020

Knudsen, Sine Grønborg, and Peter Triantafillou. “Lifestylisation of the Social: The Government of Diabetes Care in Denmark.” Health, (January 2020). doi:10.1177/1363459319899454.

Abstract:
Since the 1970s, the public authorities of many OECD countries have emphasised the need for preventing lifestyle diseases and promoting the vigour of their populations. Based on the Foucauldian analytics of dispositive, we critically address some of the normative implications of the preventive interventions in the area of type 2 diabetes care. Through an analysis of public health documents from 1981 to 2016, it is shown that the government of lifestyle was extended and institutionalised by a reform of the Danish public sector in 2007. Following the reform, rationalities of public health policies sought to prevent unhealthy lifestyles not only through individual behaviour but also through the social surroundings of citizens. In contrast to the claim that we are seeing a retraction of state responsibility and interventions in the area of public health, it is suggested that we are witnessing an expansion in state ambitions expressed through a lifestyle dispositive. These ambitions are less about transferring the responsibility to the individual and more about governing and mobilising the social relations and environments of type 2 diabetes patients and citizens in general to make the everyday choice of a healthy lifestyle easier.

Eric Schliesser, Foucault on the Idea of Europe (and Adam Smith, Hume & Kant) (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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2 February 2020

Eric Schliesser, Foucault on the Idea of Europe (and Adam Smith, Hume & Kant), Digressions and Impressions, blog, 4 December 2019

[Editor Update 9 March 2026. Link above is to the page archived on the Wayback Machine]

[…]

Foucault correctly discern the significance of Kant’s Perpetual Peace to Ordoliberal thought. (He mentions Kant’s essay on the following page, and he begins to develops his idea about the Ordos in the subsequent lecture on 31 January.) While it is not surprising Addison is ignored, it is a bit surprising that Hume goes unmentioned because his essays on “The Balance of Trade” and “The Jealousy of Trade” are key steps in the positions described by Foucault. In particular, “The Balance of Trade” explicitly adopts a European stance (and contrasts Europe with China, in particular).*

One way to put Foucault’s point in Schmittian terms he does not use is that once the non-zero-sum logic of mutual gains of trade is accepted as state policy, enemies can be transformed into possible mere rivals. Rivals can be genuine competitors in one sense, but since they are playing the same game also partners of a certain sort. And this transformation entails the possibility of permanent self-limitation in foreign affairs, even a route toward confederation (or “ever closer union”). I use the language of possibility because subsequent history suggests the temptation of continental-wide conquest does not disappear altogether.

[…]

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