Foucault News

A Time for Critique, Edited by Didier Fassin and Bernard E. Harcourt
Columbia University Press, 2019

In a world of political upheaval, rising inequality, catastrophic climate change, and widespread doubt of even the most authoritative sources of information, is there a place for critique? This book calls for a systematic reappraisal of critical thinking—its assumptions, its practices, its genealogy, its predicament—following the principle that critique can only start with self-critique.

In A Time for Critique, Didier Fassin, Bernard E. Harcourt, and a group of eminent political theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary and legal scholars reflect on the multiplying contexts and forms of critical discourse and on the social actors and social movements engaged in them. How can one maintain sufficient distance from the eventful present without doing it an injustice? How can one address contemporary issues without repudiating the intellectual legacies of the past? How can one avoid the disconnection between theory and action? How can critique be both public and collective? These provocative questions are addressed by revisiting the works of Foucault and Arendt, Said and Césaire, Benjamin and Du Bois, but they are also given substance through on-the-ground case studies that treat subaltern criticism in Palestine, emancipatory mobilizations in Syria, the antitorture campaigns of Sri Lankan activists, and the abolitionism of the African American critical resistance and undercommons movements in the United States. Examining lucidly the present challenges of critique, A Time for Critique shows how its theoretical reassessment and its emerging forms can illuminate the imaginative modalities to rejuvenate critical praxis.

Contents
Introduction, by Didier Fassin and Bernard E. Harcourt

Part I: Critique as Practice
1. How Is Critique?, by Didier Fassin
2. Critique as a Political Practice of Freedom, by Linda M. G. Zerilli
3. Critique Without a Politics of Hope?, by Ayşe Parla
4. The Usefulness of Uncertain Critique, by Peter Redfield
5. Human Rights Consciousness and Critique, by Karen Engle
6. Critique as Subduction, by Massimiliano Tomba
7. What’s Left of the Real?, by Vanja Hamzić

Part II: Critique in Practice
8. Subaltern Critique and the History of Palestine, by Lori Allen
9. Critical Theory in a Minor Key to Take Stock of the Syrian Revolution, by Fadi A. Bardawil
10. Pragmatic Critique of Torture in Sri Lanka, by Nick Cheesman
11. Dispossession, Reimagined from the 1690s, by David Kazanjian
12. Crisis, Critique, and Abolition, by Andrew Dilts
13. Law, Critique, and the Undercommons, by Allegra M. McLeod
14. Critical Praxis for the Twenty- First Century, by Bernard E. Harcourt

Didier Fassin is the James Wolfensohn Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. The author of several books, including most recently Life: A Critical User’s Manual, he was the first social scientist to receive the Nomis Distinguished Scholar Award.

Bernard E. Harcourt is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University and a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Founding director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought at Columbia University, he is the author of several books, including most recently The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens.

VValérie Larroche, The Dispositif: A Concept for Information and Communication Sciences, Wiley, 2019

DESCRIPTION
The notion of the dispositif (dispositive) is particularly relevant for understanding phenomena where one can observe the reproducibility of distributed technical activities, operational or discursive, between human and non-human actors.

This book reviews the concept of the dispositive through various disciplinary perspectives, analyzing in turn its technical, organizational and discursive dimensions. The relations of power and visibility enrich these discussions.

Regarding information and communication sciences, three main uses of this concept are presented, on the one hand to illustrate the heuristic scope of issues integrating the dispositive and, on the other hand, to demonstrate its unifying aspect in this disciplinary field. The first use concerns the complexity of media content production; the second relates to activity traces using the concept of the “secondary information dispositive”; finally, the third involves the use of the dispositive in contexts of digital participation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Valérie Larroche is a senior lecturer at the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques (Enssib) in France. As a researcher at Elico she studies professional digital recognition technologies, innovation organization and open data.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part 1. Epistemological Foundations
1. Techne-Poiesis and the Dispositive.
2. The Dispositive, Organization and Collective Action.
3. Discursive Productions and the Dispositive.

Part 2. The Dispositive and ICS
4. Complexity of Media Productions.
5. Data, Activity Traces and the Dispositive.
6. Digital Participation and Work.

Foucault’s theatres
Edited by Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman, Manchester University Press, 2020

DESCRIPTION
The volume contributes to a new articulation of theatre and performance studies via Foucault’s critical thought. With cutting edge studies by established and emerging writers in areas such as dramaturgy, film, music, cultural history and journalism, the volume aims to be accessible for both experienced researchers and advanced students encountering Foucault’s work for the first time. The introduction sets out a thorough and informative assessment of Foucault’s relevance to theatre and performance studies and to our present cultural moment – it rereads his profound engagement with questions of truth, power and politics, in light of previously unknown writings and lectures set in relation to current political and cultural concerns. Unique to this volume is the discovery of a ‘theatrical’ Foucault – the profound affinity of his thinking with questions of performativity. This discovery makes accessible the ‘performance turn’ to readers of Foucault, while opening up ways of reading Foucault’s oeuvre ‘theatrically’.

Contents
Introduction: theatre, performance, Foucault – Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman
1 Foucault’s philosophical theatres – Mark D. Jordan
2 The dramas of knowledge: Foucault’s genealogical theatre of truth – Aline Wiame
3 Foucault live! ‘A Voice That Still Eludes the Tomb of the Text.’ – Magnolia Pauker
4 Foucault, Oedipus, Négritude – Kélina Gotman
5 Foucault’s critical dramaturgies – Mark Robson
6 Heterotopia and the mapping of unreal spaces on stage – Joanne Tompkins
7 Foucault and Shakespeare: the theatre of madness – Stuart Elden
8 Philosophical phantasms: ‘the Platonic differential’ and ‘Zarathustra’s laughter’ – Mischa Twitchin
9 Cage and Foucault: musical timekeeping and the security state – Steve Potter
10 Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: reassessed – Tracey Nicholls
11 Sightlines: Foucault and Naturalist theatre – Dan Rebellato
12 Theatre of poverty: popular illegalism on the nineteenth century stage – Tony Fisher
13 The philosophical scene: Foucault interviewed by Moriaki Watanabe – translated by Robert Bononno
14 After words, afterwards: teaching Foucault – Ann Pellegrini