Foucault News

Pierre Nora (1931-2025)

Clare O'Farrell

4 June 2025

Pierre Nora, académicien et historien de l’âme française, est mort
Par Jacques de Saint Victor, Le Figaro, 4 juin 2025

L’historien, auteur des « Lieux de mémoire », vient de disparaître à l’âge de 93 ans. Il fut à la fois un grand éditeur et un intellectuel soucieux de comprendre la France et son évolution, marquée par le triomphe du « mémoriel », qu’il déplorait.

Il était une des plus grandes figures de la vie intellectuelle françaises de ces cinquante dernières années. L’historien et académicien français Pierre Nora, qui vient de décéder ce lundi 2 juin 2025 à l’âge de 93 ans, était surtout connu pour être le maître d’œuvre des Lieux de mémoire. Cette très vaste entreprise éditoriale, commencée au début des années 1980 et portant sur l’esprit de la France, avait contribué à réveiller les débats sur la question mémorielle, son rôle face à l’histoire, ce qui n’empêchait nullement Pierre Nora d’avoir été un historien de grand talent et un intellectuel très influent, éditeur des sciences humaines chez Gallimard.

[…]

L’historien polémiquera aussi avec d’autres « monstres sacrés », comme Pierre Bourdieu et certains tenants de la French Theory, même s’il était l’ami de Michel Foucault, dont il fera un portrait ironique et touchant, le qualifiant d’« esprit brillant, acrobatique et paradoxal (…). Il prétendait faire la philosophie de la vérité et son travail aboutissait à ne pas dire le vrai. Il est celui qui a anticipé le régime de post-vérité. »

Voir aussi – Paywall
L’historien Pierre Nora est mort
Par Antoine Flandrin, Le Monde, 3 juin 2025

English version
Pierre Nora, historian who shaped intellectual life in France, dies at 93

Mort de l’historien Pierre Nora, agitateur majeur des sciences humaines
Par Arnaud Gonzague. Le Nouvel Obs, 2 juin 2025

Variyan, G., McKnight, L., & Charles, C. The subterranean masculinities of elite private boys’ schools (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 June 2025

Variyan, G., McKnight, L., & Charles, C. (2025). The subterranean masculinities of elite private boys’ schools. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 57(2), 194–211.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2024.2447534

ABSTRACT
The #metoo movement has led to countless revelations of sexual misconduct across the globe. Schools have not been immune from such allegations and elite private boys’ schools in particular have featured prominently. In this paper, we explore the recollections of alumni from elite private schools in Australia and analyse the ways in which they were socialised by everyday schooling practices and forms of schoolboy homosociality. This paper approaches these socialities through Foucault’s notion of heterotopias and advances understandings of how profane schoolboy cultures have persisted despite societal changes in the gender order. We contend that elite private boys’ school practices energise modes of peer-relating that are more dangerous than they appear on the surface, because profane incidents can be hidden by myth-making that accompanies the taboo, but also by the ability of subterranean practice to make those admitted to these social niches as well as bystanders complicit in its construction.

KEYWORDS:
Metoo elite schools masculinity heterotopia Foucault

CFP: Reassessing Power: Foucault’s Legacy in Historical and Contemporary Research (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

31 May 2025

Call for Papers
Reassessing Power: Foucault’s Legacy in Historical and Contemporary Research
This panel is a part of
5th Congress of Young Science
Gdansk, Poland, July 17-19, 2025

Moderator: Alessandro di Ludovico, PhD, University of Rome La Sapienza
Scientific supervisor: Alessandro di Ludovico, PhD, University of Rome La Sapienza; Museo di Scultura Antica Giovanni Barracco

Over the past two decades, Michel Foucault’s work has continued to inspire and challenge scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines. His analyzes of *raison d’État*, governmentality, and biopolitics remain particularly relevant for scholars of modern history, political theory, and cultural studies. Far from being confined to one academic field, Foucault’s conceptual tools offer a flexible and dynamic framework for interrogating the evolution of state power, the organization of knowledge, and the mechanisms of social control.

Michel Foucault has proven to be an invaluable hermeneutical toolkit for recent socio-political developments. The Covid pandemic and biopolitics, the persistence of neoliberalism and its effects on life. The most recent research done on Foucault as an instigator of economic theology (Stimilli 2015) or recent works on the linkage between Foucault and the Reformation (Lindholm and Di Carlo 2024), Foucault and Tacitus (Di Carlo 2024, Ferraro 2024) and Foucault and the US Supreme Court (Di Carlo 2024b) prove the importance and the significance of Foucault.

This panel invites contributions that engage with Foucault’s theoretical legacy, whether by applying his concepts to new historical contexts, reflecting on his methodological approach, or reassessing his ideas in light of contemporary geopolitical transformations. We are especially interested in papers that explore how Foucault’s reflections on state power and the art of government can inform current debates on global governance, authoritarianism, and political resistance.

In addition, the panel seeks to highlight the impact of Foucault’s thought on subjects as diverse as linguistics, law, and film studies. We welcome interdisciplinary proposals that either extend Foucault’s methodologies to new domains or critically engage with his intellectual legacy to shape future academic research.

Scholars working in history, philosophy, political science, sociology, linguistics, and related fields are encouraged to submit proposals. The panel aims to foster a rich dialogue on the contemporary significance of Foucault’s work and its ongoing potential for scholarly advancement.

Papers may be submitted from April 1 (after the list of panels is made available) until June 18 2025 or until all available places are filled.

The Young Science Congress is a cyclical international and multidisciplinary scientific conference held at the University of Gdańsk. In 2024, Gdańsk University of Technology and the Medical University of Gdańsk joined the organization of the 4th Young Science Congress.

As part of the project, in dozens of panels, young scientists can present the results of their research, discuss their theses, establish contacts and develop scientifically. The topics of presentations within the conference are not limited – presentations from the exact sciences, experimental sciences, humanities, social sciences and others are planned.

Ryan, M. We’re only human after all: a critique of human-centred AI (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 May 2025

Ryan, M. We’re only human after all: a critique of human-centred AI. AI & Society 40, 1303–1319 (2025).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-01976-2

Abstract
The use of a ‘human-centred’ artificial intelligence approach (HCAI) has substantially increased over the past few years in academic texts (1600 +); institutions (27 Universities have HCAI labs, such as Stanford, Sydney, Berkeley, and Chicago); in tech companies (e.g., Microsoft, IBM, and Google); in politics (e.g., G7, G20, UN, EU, and EC); and major institutional bodies (e.g., World Bank, World Economic Forum, UNESCO, and OECD). Intuitively, it sounds very appealing: placing human concerns at the centre of AI development and use. However, this paper will use insights from the works of Michel Foucault (mostly The Order of Things) to argue that the HCAI approach is deeply problematic in its assumptions. In particular, this paper will criticise four main assumptions commonly found within HCAI: human–AI hybridisation is desirable and unproblematic; humans are not currently at the centre of the AI universe; we should use humans as a way to guide AI development; AI is the next step in a continuous path of human progress; and increasing human control over AI will reduce harmful bias. This paper will contribute to the field of philosophy of technology by using Foucault’s analysis to examine assumptions found in HCAI [it provides a Foucauldian conceptual analysis of a current approach (human-centredness) that aims to influence the design and development of a transformative technology (AI)], it will contribute to AI ethics debates by offering a critique of human-centredness in AI (by choosing Foucault, it provides a bridge between older ideas with contemporary issues), and it will also contribute to Foucault studies (by using his work to engage in contemporary debates, such as AI).

William Max Nelson, Enlightenment Biopolitics. A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

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26 May 2025

William Max Nelson, Enlightenment Biopolitics. A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens, University of Chicago Press, 2024

A wide-ranging history tracing the birth of biopolitics in Enlightenment thought and its aftermath.

In Enlightenment Biopolitics, historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals.

In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and “organize” the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality, rights and race, and the supposed “improvement of the human species” and practices of dehumanization.

Birtles, M. World-class education for the few: Analysing Japan’s designated national university corporation system policy discourse (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

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23 May 2025

Birtles, M. (2024). World-class education for the few: Analysing Japan’s designated national university corporation system policy discourse. Policy Futures in Education, 23(3), 582-603.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103241287276 (Original work published 2025)

Abstract
This study explores the production, dissemination, and reception of the discourse of educational excellence and internationalisation in Japan’s Designated National University Corporation System. The study frames the policy initiative within the longstanding goals of the Japanese government and demonstrates how the work of Michel Foucault helps uncover the policy’s inherent power dynamics and ideological conflicts. The investigation operationalises Foucault’s theories with a framework to investigate the policy discourse, illuminating the central concern as global competitiveness and an imposition of rigorous criteria for designation. The analysis uncovers a coercive isomorphism, with universities replicating the government’s discourse. Furthermore, the focus on global competitiveness and rankings in the policy comes at the expense of facilitating other forms of internationalisation. More comprehensive reforms are recommended to foster authentic global engagement and inclusivity across a broader base of higher education institutions, rather than focussing on an increasingly thinner strata and the pursuit of global prestige.

Andrew, M. Neoliberalism and the Crisis in Higher Education (2024).

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 May 2025

Andrew, M. (2024). Neoliberalism and the Crisis in Higher Education. In: Rudolph, J., Crawford, J., Sam, CY., Tan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Crisis Leadership in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54509-2_3

Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how higher and vocational education have long faced and continue to face a more insidious crisis than COVID: coping with the fallout from neoliberal capitalist ideology and its hand-maiden, the political and corporate logic of new public management (NPM). The disruption of the pandemic, together with digital ruptures, contribute to a feeling of perma-crisis experienced by workers in the university akin to long COVID. Drawing on vast literature and voices from lived experience expressed as autoethnography, the chapter examines how crises experienced as consequences of capitalist, corporate neoliberalism have transmuted into a real and present crisis of neoliberalism, which is itself the disease.

Using pathology as a metaphor for the spread of disease, the study draws on scholarship to understand the schizophrenia of higher education and the ways it audits multiple users to death, sometimes literally, via vested and unsustainable corporate models of performativity. It also examines the types of living dead within what commentators have dubbed ‘the zombie university’ and suggests that a zombie form of Foucault’s homo oeconomicus is constructed as its most desirable citizen. Although it is increasingly clear that neoliberal logic is returning cockroach-like as the undead in COVID’s wake, the paper concludes with a hopeful view of educators protecting their identities and well-being via resistance to regimes of performativity, through collective activism and by applying such strategies as slow scholarship. Managerialists learned little from the reflectivity that COVID could have afforded, but both genuine crisis leaders and authentic educators may yet see hope in fighting for sustainable education with transforming learners at its heart.

Renea Frey, The Theory, History, and Practice of Parrhesia. The Rhetoric of Resistance (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

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17 May 2025

Renea Frey, The Theory, History, and Practice of Parrhesia. The Rhetoric of Resistance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

About this book
This book examines the theory, history, and practice of parrhesia—the act of speaking truth to power, when doing so is risky for the rhetor—and argues for a networked rhetorical approach to parrhesia that has not been considered previously by any other theorist. The goal of this book is to offer a reader-friendly explanation of this networked rhetorical approach to parrhesia, provide a genealogical account of the origins of parrhesia in the Classical age, and to show how parrhesia manifests today. This book is meant to give readers a functional manual for understanding, recognizing, analyzing, articulating, and using parrhesia.

Markoff, B. Beyond the discipline gap: the role of spectacular state violence in the discipline and punishment of Black and Indigenous children in US public schools. (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 May 2025

Markoff, B. (2024). Beyond the discipline gap: the role of spectacular state violence in the discipline and punishment of Black and Indigenous children in US public schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 46(2), 132–143.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2378304

ABSTRACT
Education research frequently measures and calls for an end to racial disparities in rates of US school discipline practices such as office referrals, suspension, and expulsion. This paper asks what a more expansive understanding of discipline can demonstrate about how schools discipline different students differently. Tracing the history of corporal punishment from Native boarding schools, through Ingraham v. Wright, to violent school policing and arrests today, the author finds that, because Black and Indigenous children can never be ‘normalized’ within white supremacist US schooling, the shift in disciplinary tactics that Foucault described never took place for these students and in fact, the functioning of normalizing school discipline for all depends on extraordinary, spectacular violence against the most marginalized. Rather than focusing on the discipline gap, education research must attend to the violence inherent in US schooling and seek to abolish it.

KEYWORDS:
School discipline, school-to-prison pipeline, abolition, Foucault

Fung, Carmen K. M. Homophobic media or lesbian memories? Hong Kong queer women’ online debate over The First Girl I Loved (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 May 2025

Fung, C. K. M. (2025). Homophobic media or lesbian memories? Hong Kong queer women’ online debate over The First Girl I Loved. Continuum, 39(2), 363–375.

https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2025.2462102

ABSTRACT
Hong Kong cinema is known for producing bittersweet teenage lesbian stories, in which young lovers inevitably grow up to be married women leading heteronormative lives. The latest film to follow this tradition divided queer women upon its release. Some denounced The First Girl I Loved (2021) for perpetuating a dangerous and anachronistic stereotype, while others celebrated the film as a positive, faithful portrayal of lesbian memories. This paper challenges the view that LGBTQ+ films must be unilaterally transgressive or hegemonic, rather, I position this binary evaluation as part of queer audience’s own interpretive repertoire. By examining how viewers use terms such as ‘outdated’ and ‘authentic’ to describe the film, this study demonstrates that queer women are in fact debating the directors’ sexual-gender identities (what Foucault calls ‘the author function’) and the temporality of lesbian representations. Images of queer trauma can be read as homophobic to some while resonating with others, and by situating this tension within Hong Kong’s historical and political context, I argue that both readings are crucial strategies that Hong Kong women use to contest mainstream sexology and that the film helps them memorialize their lost gay youth online.

KEYWORDS:

Hong Kong, cinemapositive and negative representation, lesbian representation, queer girlhood, queer audience, author function, temporality, sexology, digital grief, online memorials