Foucault News

The double articulation of sovereign bordering: Spaces of exception, sovereign vulnerability, and Agamben’s Schmitt/Foucault synthesis (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 November 2019

Murphy, Michael P. A. 2019. The double articulation of sovereign bordering: Spaces of exception, sovereign vulnerability, and Agamben’s Schmitt/Foucault synthesis. Journal of Borderlands Studies Online First: 1-17.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1683053

Abstract
With the rise of authoritarian populism and critical border studies, as well as the continued presence of the Minutemen and borderlands studies, it is safe to say that sovereign borders are receiving increasing attention from a diverse set of actors within and beyond academia. One strain of research, building on the work of Giorgio Agamben, has examined the border as a space of exception. However, Agamben’s conceptual development of biopolitical sovereignty has come under fire, as critics assert his uneasy synthesis of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault is disproven by the agency of migrants proving themselves capable of resisting sovereign control at the border. This article responds to Agamben’s critics by rebalancing the Schmittian and Foucauldian sources of Agamben’s work. While much of the conceptual development of the border-as-exception has focused on the experience of the border-crosser as a capillary manifestation of control, I argue that the exception is as important for the sovereign as for the object of sovereign power. Every decision on the exception is also a process of defining who the sovereign is, and if we understand the border is a space of exception, then we also must recognize the vulnerability that this produces for the sovereign.

Ville Björck, Kristina Johansson, Problematising the theory–practice terminology: a discourse analysis of students’ statements on Work-integrated Learning (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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31 October 2019

Ville Björck, Kristina Johansson, Problematising the theory–practice terminology: a discourse analysis of students’ statements on Work-integrated Learning (2019) Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43 (10), pp. 1363-1375.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2018.1483016

Open access

Abstract
This study uses a Foucault-inspired discourse analysis to examine two ideas about learning which reinforce the terminology whereby theory means campus-based training and practice means work placements. The purpose is to problematise this theory–practice terminology and provide scope for a non-dualistic alternative. The ideas examined are the idea of theory vs. practice as the point of departure for learning and the idea of theory and practice as harmonious points of departure for learning. These ideas were voiced by interviewed students who discussed the usual design of Work-integrated Learning (WIL) whereby students go to university to learn ‘theory’ and into working life to learn ‘practice’. The analysis shows how the ideas are formed by different ranking orders between theory and practice which are mutually exclusive, while also working together to reinforce the theory–practice terminology. The discussion on how a non-dualistic terminology can emerge highlights how the usual WIL design forms a dualistic setting where the theory–practice terminology thrives and how designing WIL at a third place between university and working life can provide scope for the terminology we seek. © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Foucault-inspired discourse analysis; ranking orders; Theory–practice terminology; third place; work-integrated learning

Power and Changing Riverscapes: The Socioecological Fix and Newspaper Discourse Concerning the Rhône River (France) Since 1945 (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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30 October 2019

Comby, E., Le Lay, Y.-F., Piégay, H.
Power and Changing Riverscapes: The Socioecological Fix and Newspaper Discourse Concerning the Rhône River (France) Since 1945
(2019) Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (6), pp. 1671-1690.

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2019.1580134

Abstract
Riverscapes are constructs that mix natural components with political, socioeconomic, and technical strategies. This article shows how the riverscapes of the Rhône in France have changed under the influence of different power relations. We use newspapers to highlight the potential of news outlets as a data source with which to apply Foucault’s critical and genealogical methods and to develop a political ecology of socioecological fixes. Media coverage is proxied by a content analysis and textual data analysis of 1,079 articles published in Le Monde from 1945 to 2013. We study variations of newspaper discourse to create five chronological narratives: (1) the reconstruction of France and the creation of new landscapes, (2) the promotion of national development through navigation, (3) the quest for energy independence through dams and nuclear power plants, (4) the abandonment of major projects, and (5) the definition of pollution and flooding as national problems at the same time as the rediscovery of landscapes as local amenities. River landscapes are related to national political objectives, even though schemes for the Rhône seem to be ever less geared to national ambitions. In specific contexts, bottom-up advocacy coalitions occasionally prove powerful enough to influence socioecological trajectories: Their power seems to be on the rise as the national project wanes. They are often opposed to new socioecological fixes. Although political drivers are instrumental in shaping the Rhône, economic dynamics are crucial. Energy production seems to be a good indicator for monitoring socioecological fixes along major rivers because it involves fixed capital. Key Words: construction of riverscape, discourse, political ecology, socioecological fix, temporal patterns. © 2019, © 2019 by American Association of Geographers.

“Almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang”: Nora Lang, Literary Labour, and the Fairy Books (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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28 October 2019

Day, A.
“Almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang”: Nora Lang, Literary Labour, and the Fairy Books
(2019) Women’s Writing, 26 (4), pp. 400-420.

DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2017.1371938

Abstract
This essay uses documentary evidence to reveal Leonora Blanche “Nora” Lang’s elision from the history of children’s literature: Lang was actually responsible for the popular Fairy Book series (1889–1913) for which her husband Andrew Lang is now so well known. Accordingly, the essay examines the extraordinary commercial cachet of what Michel Foucault would call Andrew Lang’s “author function.” It considers the connections between the marginalization of Nora Lang’s editorial, translational, and creative labour in favour of her husband’s anthropological reputation and the academic tradition inaugurated by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1812) that frames “authentic” female storytelling voices with (and thereby subordinates these to) the learned commentary of male editors.

Intensive mothering in hard times: Foucauldian ethical self-formation and cruel optimism (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 October 2019

Cappellini, B., Harman, V., Marilli, A., Parsons, E.
Intensive mothering in hard times: Foucauldian ethical self-formation and cruel optimism
(2019) Journal of Consumer Culture, 19 (4), pp. 469-492.

DOI: 10.1177/1469540519872067

Abstract
Discourses of intensive mothering now seem to dominate European and American parenting cultures. This is a problem for those mothers who do not currently possess the resources to match up. In a study of Italian and British mothers who are experiencing low or reduced incomes, we observe the ways in which they internalize intensive mothering discourses through a process of ethical self-formation. This mode of self-formation involves detailed self-surveillance and self-discipline and abnegation of their own needs in place of other individual family members, and the family as a whole. We find a series of contradictory emotional effects which generate both pride and self-worth but also stress and anxiety. We advance the theory that mothers operate within an optimistic affective regime to make sense of these contradictory effects and retain a sense of agency and control over their lives and those of their families. However, drawing on Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, we argue that such affective regimes may be very pernicious in their effects, only serving to hold mothers in a relation that is ultimately impassable and often unfulfilling. © The Author(s) 2019.

Author Keywords
affective regimes; Berlant; cruel optimism; ethical self-formation; Foucault; Intensive mothering

The production of subjectivity in neoliberal culture industries: the case of coworking spaces (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 October 2019

Bandinelli, C. (2019). The production of subjectivity in neoliberal culture industries: the case of coworking spaces. International Journal of Cultural Studies. DOI: 10.1177/1367877919878449

Abstract
This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces’ sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux in which to explore the organisation and significance of work. Drawing on the life history of a creative worker and member of a leading coworking space, I unveil the ethical labour that is required to access coworking’s sociality. Using a Foucauldian framework, I conceptualise this process as a process of subjectivation and concentrate on its ambivalent character, signalling the inherent intertwinement of self-commodification and self-improvement. This article contributes to the scholarly debates on the organisation and significance of work in two key ways. First, it expands our understanding of how the production of subjectivity is experienced at the level of the self. Second, it argues that coworking spaces function as apparatuses for the production of subjectivities in neoliberal culture industries.

Keywords coworking spaces, ethnography, neoliberalism, self-branding, subjectivity

CFP: The sexual politics of freedom. (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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25 October 2019

Call for papers

The Sexual Politics of Freedom
May 22nd & 23rd 2020
Irish Centre for Human Rights,
National University of Ireland, Galway

Keynote speakers: Prof Ratna Kapur (QMUL) and Prof Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY)

At stake in framing the theme of this conference in terms of ‘the sexual politics of freedom’ as opposed to ‘the politics of sexual freedom’ is to draw our attention to the ways in which the politics of freedom has always been implicated in sexual politics (Bhattacharyya 2008, Butler 2016, Kapur 2018). Such a sexual politics is rooted in the histories of colonialism, secularism, and progress and attuned to a temporality and geography of European “civilization” and liberalism (Mohanty 1988, Spivak 1993). Such a political logic has onto-epistemologically placed limits upon our capacities to imagine a politics of freedom. The hegemonic account of liberal feminism which pervades discourse on human rights, justice and equality, both within and outside the academy, has meant that much of our scholarship and theorising has taken place in the shadow of, and in response to this liberal rendering of feminist politics. Such a fact has meant, we have engaged in a logic of self-sabotage, preventing us from thinking critically about and articulating, on our own terms, new forms of feminist struggle for freedom (Phillips 2019).

With this conference, we hope to explore and begin to address this problematique, refusing the questions posed of women who do not conform to the liberal ideal of “female” freedom, as to why they would “subject” themselves to a life within a so-called “patriarchal order.” Such an experience is one many of us who research and write about the lives of women living in the non- European ‘World’ encounter on a regular basis in explaining and analysing why freedom for these women need not align with gender- and identity-neutral onto-political presuppositions of liberal subjectivity and the hegemonic paradigm of human rights discourse (Alcoff 2006). At stake, still, is the problem of subalterneity, and the location of such women in the place of “disappearance,” which Spivak (1988) describes as ‘the violent aporia between subject and object status.’

Taking our lead from the work of Saba Mahmood and Lila Abu-Lughod, we raise the question of the sexual politics of freedom from a non-Kantian conception of ethics as Idea (Colebrook 1998), exploring rather, the ethical lives and practices of women struggling for freedom. Such an approach, inspired by Mahmood (2005/12) and Foucault (1988, 1989) opens up a space for us to understand more clearly how practices – ethical, religious, social, and political – are concerned not simply with the regulation of life, but the constitution of an embodied form of agency and subjectivity which is particular to its own contexts and conceptions of freedom.

What can a feminist politics of freedom that centres and begins with the experiences, lives and struggles of women look like (Narayan & Harding 2000)? What would our thinking and research become if the work of post-colonial feminists and the experiences (cf. Alcoff and Potter 1993) of non-European women were not an afterthought (Bhambra 2014), a footnote, a feature of the Undercommons (Moten and Harney 2013), a final lecture to be rushed through before exam preparation? At stake in short, is an invitation to scholars and activists motivated by any of the concerns and provocations raised here, to assemble, accompany one another, think together, and engage in critique concerning the sexual politics of freedom.

The Irish Centre for Human Rights, at the National University of Ireland – Galway, invites potential participants from across the disciplinary spectrum to submit papers of 20 minutes duration.

Topics and themes which presenters may like to explore in their papers include, but are not limited to the following:

· Frames of recognition and apprehension
· Feminist Epistemologies
· Epistemic injustice
· The myth of “neutral objectivity”
· Re-thinking the basis of feminist solidarity
· Ethics, gender and embodiment
· Feminism in and outside of the “teaching machine”
· Challenges for contemporary human rights practice
· The politics of sexual time
· Feminist practice beyond Eurocentrism
· Sec(x)ularism and Islamophobia
· Theorising subject formation
· Refusing subjecthood
· Differential allocations of grievability
· Feminist conceptions of freedom
· Feminist solidarity
· Sex, gender and rights

Please submit abstracts (approx. 250 words) to sexualpolitics.freedom@gmail.com by the 21st of February 2020. The abstracts should be submitted as a world/pdf attachment, and contain the authors name, institutional affiliation, and a summary of the proposed paper.
For further information or queries contact conference organiser Hasret Çetinkaya h.cetinkaya1@nuigalway.ie

Mini curso sobre Michel Foucault (2019)

24 October 2019

Michel Foucault: “Cosa importa chi parla?” (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

24 October 2019

Francesco Bellusci, Michel Foucault: “Cosa importa chi parla?” Doppiozero, 15 Ottobre 2019

Doppiozero is a cultural magazine, with editions in Italian and English , and a publishing house, online since February 14, 2011.

More than 900 writers, critics, journalists, researchers, scholars of different disciplines collaborate in doppiozero, in an ecosystem that brings together renowned intellectuals, young authors and established scholars.

Dopo un periodo di distaccamento all’Università di Tunisi durato due anni, dal 1° ottobre 1966 alla fine di settembre 1968, Michel Foucault rientra a Parigi, con l’incarico di insediare il dipartimento di filosofia al Centro universitario sperimentale di Vincennes. Agli inizi dell’anno successivo, si ripropone di fronte al parterre intellettuale francese, presso la Société française di philosophie, con una breve e singolare conferenza, intitolata: “Che cos’è un autore?” (oggi in: M. Foucault, Scritti letterari, Feltrinelli 2004, pp. 1-21). Sulle prime, l’esposizione di Foucault appare una professione di ortodossia strutturalista che intona il mantra dell’irrilevanza dell’autore, già inaugurato dalla “nouvelle critique” di Roland Barthes, che prescindeva dalle referenze biografiche e psicologiche dell’autore a favore dell’analisi delle strutture interne del testo e del gioco della loro articolazione interna, e su cui confessa di avere ancora meno remore di quante ne mostrasse in Le parole e le cose di due anni prima, dove l’archeologo del sapere s’immergeva nello scavo del sottosuolo epistemico per rintracciare le “regole” di formazione di concetti e teorie, dentro grandi unità discorsive o campi disciplinari, rispetto alle quali la menzione di autori e persino delle opere appariva ancora la concessione a un vezzo inutile e fuorviante (un tema sensibile per Foucault, visto che implica l’esigenza di mettere in discussione lo statuto stesso della sua parola e la sua posizione rispetto al suo lavoro teorico, come dimostra la prima parte di una “Introduzione” all’Archeologia del sapere, scritta nel 1966 e poi abbandonata, che qui sotto pubblichiamo per la prima volta). Ma, non si tratta adesso di ribadire di nuovo che il discorso precede l’autore, quasi in controcanto al motto (“l’esistenza precede l’essenza”) di quegli esistenzialisti che, con il loro “soggetto” sovrano, sono stati già scalzati sul piano dell’egemonia culturale e travolti dallo Sturm und Drang strutturalista.

[…]

Archive: Howard’s Way (1988)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 October 2019

Richard Bernstein, Howard’s Way, The New York Times Magazine, Sept 25, 1988

Editor: An interesting article on Richard Howard, the translator of the first book of Foucault’s to appear in English: Madness and Civilization.

THE INSPIRATION CAME EARLY, AS Richard Howard, translator of more than 150 books from French into English, once told Charles de Gaulle. Howard was working on de Gaulle’s memoires, and the President of the French Republic had invited him to the Elysee Palace on the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore for lunch.

”And where, young man, did you learn French?” the Great Man inquired.

”In a car, mon general, between Cleveland, Ohio, and Miami, Florida, when I was 5 years old,” Howard replied. Howard, on that childhood trip, was in the company of a Viennese cousin who, to help pass the time on the long journey, decided to teach him some French.

[…]
Since then, Richard Howard has passed a number of literary milestones. There have been long stays in France and meetings with Cocteau, Genet, Barthes, Foucault, Mauriac, Beckett and other members of the literary avant-garde, many of whose works he has put into English, gaining along the way general recognition as among the most skillful practitioners of a craft often considered best performed when it is least noticed.

[…]