Foucault News

Why read Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh today? (in French)(2019)

Clare O'Farrell

2 December 2019

Guillaume Le Blanc, Why read Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh today? (french version), Critique 13/13, Seminars at Columbia, Nov 30 2019

Que pouvons-nous trouver dans un texte sur la sexualité chrétienne qui aurait dû paraître en 1982 voire en 1984 et qui finalement ne le sera qu’en 2018 ? Étrange situation puisque nous lisons ce livre aujourd’hui alors qu’il a été écrit il y a plus de 35 ans et qu’il a même été rédigé avant les tomes 2 et 3 de l’Histoire de la sexualité. Que signifie se rendre le contemporain de ce livre résolument décalé ? Décalé parce qu’il étudie un matériau historique enfoui, un ensemble de textes sur la chair chrétienne entre le 2^èmeet le 5^èmesiècle. Décalé également parce que les lecteurs que nous sommes n’y ont accès qu’en 2018 alors que le tapuscrit a été rendu chez Gallimard en 1982 et que Foucault corrigeait les épreuves au moment de sa mort en 1984. Tous ces éléments de contexte ont leur importance car la réception de ce livre aujourd’hui est indissociable de l’état de la question sexuelle auquel je ferai retour dans une deuxième grande partie de mon intervention.

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Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman (eds), Foucault’s theatres (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 December 2019

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

Alessandro Baccarin e Paolo Vernaglione Berardi (dir), Quaderni di archeologia filosofica (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 November 2019

Archeologia filosofica è il nome di questa nuova collana, diretta da Alessandro Baccarin e Paolo Vernaglione Berardi, [Laboratorio archeologia filosofica] e dedicata a temi, autori e problemi di solito relegati in una zona difficilmente accessibile del pensiero. Scopriamo invece che il “senso comune” dei discorsi e dei “valori” è intessuto di saperi esclusi dalla “cultura” occidentale. La prima scoperta di queste stratificazioni si deve a Michel Foucault che ha inaugurato un metodo basato sull’indagine delle “formazioni discorsive”.

Contemporaneamente il grande filosofo Enzo Melandri farà dell’archeologia del pensiero occidentale il campo di una storia dei problemi. Oggi Giorgio Agamben, che ha coniato l’archeologia filosofica”, riprende questo metodo in vista di una “scienza senza nome” che è ricerca genealogica dei dispositivi di sapere-potere e confronto tra storia e archivio. Si apre così una inattuale possibilità di ricerca e di sperimentazione che potrebbe indicare la via per destituire la “cattura” della vita.

Quaderni di archeologia filosofica
volume primo
Nietzsche e la modernità; Michel Foucault, gli antichi e la “cura di se”; l’arte della guerra; L’erotica antica; Michel De Certeau, la mistica e la storia; Giorgio Agamben e l’uso dei corpi; il dispositivo psichiatrico; il neoliberismo e i paradigmi del potere. Questo volume raccoglie la prima serie dei Quaderni realizzati dal Laboratorio di archeologia filosofica (www.archeologiafilosofica.it) in tre anni di ricerche e riapre il dibattito filosofico, costretto finora nello spazio angusto di una disciplina di cui da tempo si percepisce la “crisi”. Accessibile ad un vasto pubblico di lettori, il testo testimonia una delle realtà più vive nell’esercizio del pensiero.

“Se è vero che l’archeologia è la sola via di accesso al presente, il Laboratorio di archeologia filosofica è forse oggi in Italia per eccellenza il luogo in cui il pensiero si misura coi problemi più urgenti del nostro tempo. Ai seminari e agli incontri finora promossi si è aggiunta la pubblicazione di una collana il cui programma sembra sviluppare editorialmente i temi più vivi delle attività del laboratorio.”
Giorgio Agamben

Self-possessed and Self-governed: Transcendent Spirituality in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

30 November 2019

Knauft, B.M. Self-possessed and Self-governed: Transcendent Spirituality in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism
(2019) Ethnos, 84 (4), pp. 557-587.

DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2017.1313289

Abstract
Among Tibetan Buddhist tantric practitioners, including in the U.S., visualisation and incorporation of mandala deities imparts a parallel world against which conventional reality is considered impermanent and afflicted. Tantric adepts aspire through meditation, visualisation, and mind-training to dissolve normal selfhood and simultaneously embrace both ‘conventional’ and ‘ultimate’ reality. Ethics of compassion encourage efficient reengagement with conventional world dynamics rather than escaping them: the transcendental ‘non-self’ is perceived to inform effective and compassionate waking consciousness. Transformation of subjective ontology in tantric self-possession resonates with Foucault’s late exploration of ethical self-relationship in alternative technologies of subjectivation and with Luhrmann’s notion of transcendent spiritual absorption through skilled learning and internalisation. Incorporating recent developments in American Tibetan Buddhism, this paper draws upon information derived from a range of scholarly visits to rural and urban areas of the Himalayas, teachings by and practices with contemporary Tibetan lamas, including in the U.S., and historical and philosophical Buddhist literature and commentaries. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
ontology; selfhood; spirit possession; spirituality; tantra; Tibetan Buddhism

Ralph Tafon, Fred Saunders and Michael Gilek, Re-reading marine spatial planning through Foucault, Haugaard and others: an analysis of domination, empowerment and freedom (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 November 2019

Ralph Tafon, Fred Saunders and Michael Gilek, Re-reading marine spatial planning through Foucault, Haugaard and others: an analysis of domination, empowerment and freedom
(2019) Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 21 (6), pp. 754-768.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1673155

Open access

Abstract
Marine spatial planning (MSP) has emerged as a radical approach to achieving sustainable development objectives at sea. While critics challenge its avowed radicalness, often through highlighting dominative processes, more insidious mechanisms of restricted agency remain under-elaborated, as are the productive power and potential of planning. This paper offers a more robust and balanced reading of MSP/power. First, drawing on Haugaard, we read MSP as providing actors with dispositional power to act in concert, thus entailing a move from the risks of ‘resource rush’ to structuring, which facilitates predictability and promotes agency. However, MSP’ing may also restrict agency when (1) powerful actors misuse opportunities for concerted action to pursue sectoral goals; (2) planning fantasies and the planner’s cognitive limitation sustain dominative power-relations; and (3) in setting the boundaries of MSP, bias is mobilized in favor of vested interests. We thus deploy Foucault’s notion of freedom, to analyze the relationship between ‘steering’ and resistance subjectivities, and his concept of parrhesias to consider to what extent, an ethico-political planner may contribute towards more equitable processes and outcomes. We conclude that besides the planner, the state as the ultimate authority in MSP must intervene substantively to minimize differentials in the distribution of actors’ social resources. © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
agency; domination; empowerment; Foucault and Haugaard; Marine spatial planning

The Early Foucault Update 28 – second half of the manuscript, Swiss archives and asylums

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 November 2019

Progressive Geographies

Term 1 is when I do most of my teaching, but I’ve been doing a little bit of work on my The Early Foucault manuscript most days. I’ve mainly been reworking the organisation of the second half of the text. Chapter 6 discusses the writing of History of Madness, mainly in Uppsala; Chapter 7 the time in Warsaw and Hamburg, with the work on the Kant translation and introduction; Chapter 8 the defence of the theses, publishing the History of Madness and its initial reception. The concluding chapter discusses the revision of Maladie mentale et personnalité into Maladie mentale et psychologie in 1962, and the abridgment of History of Madness in 1964 for the 10/18 series. It also points towards themes that Foucault would work on in the 1960s, which will be the topic of my planned fourth book in this series.

Foucault’s thesis defence is interesting. The…

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Theoretical puppets: A is for Archaeology (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 November 2019

Theoretical puppets: A is for Archaeology (2019), Nov 24, 2019

Michel Foucault from A to Z. Foucault talks about his identity as a “surface guy”, while being confronted with his indebtedness to Wittgenstein and Abel Rey.

Philippe Artières, Le dossier sauvage/ The Wild File (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

25 November 2019

Philippe Artières, Le dossier sauvage, Verticales, Octobre 2019

« Enquêter sur des archives qui auraient été rassemblées par Michel Foucault. Déplier chacune de ses pièces pour suivre la trace d’individus qui se sont retirés du monde au XIXe et au XXe siècle. Redécouvrir, en marge du dossier, que dans une forêt des Vosges, il est un autre ermite qui a marqué mon enfance.
Lors du dépouillement de cette généalogie sauvage, il arrivera que je me perde, mais n’est-ce pas le propre du chercheur que de s’aventurer en un territoire où plus il avance plus ce qu’il croyait savoir se dérobe sous ses pas. » [Ph.A.]

*******

From the outset Philippe Artières stages himself receiving a file entitled «Wild Lives» which seems to have been gathered by Michel Foucault. This unpublished collection contains bundles of documents on individuals who withdrew from the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the photocopies and handwritten-notes by the philosopher, three folders contain more abundant material: press clips and a report from the Royal Academy of Medicine of 1865 regarding Laurent, aka the «Var Savage» who at the time was the subject of a media and scientific frenzy; also notes, manifestos and testimonies (partially translated from English) on an American mathematician, aka TJK, who fled to the Montana forests in the early 1970s; and finally, the portrait of a hermit dressed in a cassock at the end of the 19th century who, isolated in the Forez mountains, was murdered there by Ravachol.
What was Foucault looking for by bringing together these three figures from different eras and with different aspirations? For those who have been exploring Foucauldian sources for a long time, these case-studies are both familiar and surprising. They remind the author of Jean, a man who lived in the woods and had an important impact on his young years. While in college, Philippe Artières devoted a short text to this marginal man from the Vosges; and although not part of the original corpus of the file, it naturally finds its place. As the story unfolds, one begins to wonder how real this posthumous file is.
A documentary investigation, an introspective narrative and a fictional maze, one reads The Wild File as if an adventure novel in a country of archives.

Political ecologies of biopower: diversity, debates, and new frontiers of inquiry (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 November 2019

Connor J Cavanagh, Political ecologies of biopower: diversity, debates, and new frontiers of inquiry, Journal of Political Ecology, Vol 25, No 1 (2018)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2458/v25i1.23047

Open access

Abstract
This article reviews recent literature on the political ecologies of conservation and environmental change mitigation, highlighting the biopolitical stakes of many writings in this field. Although a large and apparently growing number of political ecologists engage the concept of biopower directly – in its Foucauldian, Agambenian, and various other formulations – recent writings across the humanities and social sciences by scholars utilizing an explicitly biopolitical lens provide us with an array of concepts and research questions that may further enrich writings within political ecology. Seeking to extend dialogue between scholars of biopolitics, of political ecology, and of both, then, this article surveys both new and shifting contours of the various ways in which contemporary political ecologies increasingly compel us to bring the very lives of various human and nonhuman populations, as Foucault once put it, “into the realm of explicit calculations.” In doing so, ‘new frontiers’ of biopolitical inquiry are examined related to: i) species, varieties, or ‘multiple modes’ of governmentality and biopower; ii) critical (ecosystem) infrastructure, risk, and ‘reflexive’ biopolitics; iii) environmental history, colonialism, and the genealogies of biopower, and iv) the proliferation of related neologisms, such as ontopower and geontopower.

PhD course: Discourse Studies and Method: Using Discourse- Theoretical Analysis and Discursive-Material Analysis (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 November 2019

PhD course
Discourse Studies and Method: Using Discourse-Theoretical Analysis and Discursive-Material Analysis

Editor: Update 24 February 2026. Link above to the archived page on the Wayback Machine

About the course

Course title: Discourse Studies and Method: Using Discourse-Theoretical Analysis and Discursive-Material Analysis

Course coordinator and leader: Professor Nico Carpentier

Course credits: 5 credits

Course timing: The course will be organised on 10 February – 14 February 2020

Course location: Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Course background and purpose

The course aims to discuss two methods in the field of discourse
studies: Discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) and Discursive-material analysis (DMA). Both are grounded in so-called high theory, with discourse theory as its main starting point, but with elements of actor network theory and new materialism. This course will start with an introduction to these theoretical models, but will then move on to their analytical deployment in communication and media studies research.
Special attention will be spent on the creation of a theory-grounded analytical model to guide the research. Apart from attending lectures, participants will be expected to participate in both theoretical and research-driven workshops.

Learning outcomes

On completion of this course successful students will be able to:

have a deeper understanding of the field of discourse studies, and in particular of its discourse-theoretical component
have a deeper understanding of the theoretical relationship between the discursive and the material
know how to translate discourse-theoretical models into analytical practice, through the use of the notion of the sensitizing concept (applied to discourse theory, and to discourse-theoretical rereading of other theories)
be able to set up an analytical model for a discourse-theoretical analysis and a discursive-material analysis

Teaching and evaluation

The one-week course will be organised in 10 teaching slots, combining lectures and workshops. These workshops are partially theoretical (presenting an article or chapter), and partially research-driven (presenting an analytical model).
A certificate (with a grade “Pass”) is given after 1) attendance of minimally 8 meetings, 2) a working group theoretical presentation, 3) an individual case study presentation.

Available participant slots and costs

A total number of 20 participant slots are available. The participation fee is 50 Euro, and only covers course attendance. Participants are required to pay themselves for their travel and accommodation costs, and all other expenses.

Registration

The registration for Discourse Studies and Method PhD course opens on 1 November 2019, and closes when the maximum number of participants has been reached.

To register for this course, Filip Šourek (at sxufil@gmail.com) has to be emailed the following three documents:
• A motivation letter
• A brief description/abstract of the ongoing (PhD) research (including
the current stage of the research)
• A CV (including information about your university affiliation and your
contact information)

Payment

The fee for course participation is 50 Euro. Selected participants will be informed about the payment procedure. The deadline for fee payment is 1 February 2020.

Contact information

• Registration: Filip Šourek at sxufil@gmail.com
• Course content: Nico Carpentier at nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz

Course readings

Main reading:

Carpentier, Nico (2017) The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Secondary readings:

Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. New York, London: Routledge.
Dolphijn, Rick, van der Tuin, Iris (2012) New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open humanities press.
Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007) Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London and New York: Routledge.
Howarth, David (2000) Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Howarth, David (2012) “Hegemony, political subjectivity, and radical democracy”, in Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds.) Laclau: A critical reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256-276.
Howarth, David, Stavrakakis, Yannis (2000) “Introducing discourse theory and political analysis”, in David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.) Discourse theory and political analysis. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, pp. 1-23.
Laclau, Ernesto, Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mouffe, Chantal (2005) On the Political. London: Routledge.
Philips, Louise, Jørgensen, Marianne W. (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988) “Can the subaltern speak?”, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.
Torfing, Jacob (1999) New Theories of Discourse. Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek. Oxford: Blackwell.