Foucault News

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

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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Biopolitics and coronavirus: compilation (English, Portuguese and Spanish) (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 April 2020

Biopolitics and coronavirus: compilation (English, Portuguese and Spanish), Sexuality Policy Watch, 15 Apr 2020

A list of recent references

A Deleuzian Undercurrent to Foucault’s “What is an Author?” (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 April 2020

A Deleuzian Undercurrent to Foucault’s “What is an Author?” (part 1)
By Gordon Hull, New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science, 27 February 2020

Toward the end of “What is an Author,” Foucault distinguishes between the “founder” and “initiator [instaurateur]” of a discourse. Galileo is the paradigmatic example of the former, and Marx of the latter. This is a puzzling distinction, to say the least. Let’s begin with the terminology: Although “founder [fondateur]” is common enough, as far as I know, Foucault doesn’t use “instaurateur” anywhere else. At least, a computer search of the text of Les Mots et Les Choses, Archéologie du Savoir and the pre-1975 Dits et Écrits didn’t turn up anything. Other things being equal, those seem like the most likely places to find it (if I’m missing uses of the term, I’d love to learn about them!). In particular, Order is a likely bet, because in the French seminar version (the one in D&E – see my initial thoughts here and Stuart Elden’s discussion of the textual history here) of “Author,” Foucault frames the text as partly responding to some leftover business from Order, where he admits that he both refuses to organize texts by authors, but also uses authorial names. The nominal “instauration” occurs a few times in these texts in a way that something more substantial than a blog post would need to investigate, but as far as I can tell, the term of art in “Author” – “instauration discursive,” naming somebody rather than an event – is specific to that lecture. So something is going on here!

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Heterotopic sites of knowledge production: Notes on an architectural analysis of lecture halls (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 April 2020

Farzaneh Haghighi, Heterotopic sites of knowledge production: Notes on an architectural analysis of lecture halls, Cultural Dynamics, February 14, 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0921374020907111

Abstract
This article is concerned with the spatial analysis of lecture theaters in higher education institutions and it draws upon two concepts developed by Michel Foucault during the 1970s—heterotopia and the will to know. By examining the heterotopic potentials of lecture theaters where knowledge is rendered visible and articulable, the article argues that the notion of heterotopia is more relevant than panopticon for spatial analysis of these spaces. Heterotopias are defined as counter-sites inhabited by the abnormal, and as such include two dimensions. First there is an exclusion of the abnormal that is aimed at the fabrication of specific subjectivities, students and a more productive workforce. Second, as counter-spaces, heterotopias maintain a hopeful aspect that is providing an opportunity for unsettling the social norms. To support this exploration, the article uses higher education as a transitional environment for the production of an employable workforce and specifically focuses on auditoriums in universities. Contemporary lecture halls originating from the early modern anatomy halls are introduced as a strong spatial context for exploring the spatialization of knowledge and the construction of selves as subjects who desire to know.

Keywords heterotopia, higher education, learning environments, lecture halls, will to know