Foucault News

News and resources on French thinker Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Alison Wrench, Framing citizenship: from assumptions to possibilities in health and physical education (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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20 June 2019

Alison Wrench, Framing citizenship: from assumptions to possibilities in health and physical education (2019) Sport, Education and Society, 24 (5), pp. 455-467.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2017.1403314

Abstract
Within the Australian context physical education (PE) and more recently health and physical education (HPE) have long been ascribed utilitarian value for producing healthy citizens. Whilst this has not been a linear progression over time, traces from the past do inform current assumptions about this utilitarian role. Of consequence are historical contingencies and responses to societal problems around health-related conduct and capabilities of the nations’ citizens. In this paper a genealogical approach is adopted to explore discourses and power relations that have framed the contribution of PE and HPE in shaping students for healthy citizenship. Disciplinary technologies associated with military-style physical training, civilising technologies of game play and responsibilising governmental technologies of contemporary policies will be explored. I conclude in arguing that if HPE is to prepare all students for equitable, inclusive citizenship what is required is the adoption of curricula and pedagogies that counteract hegemonic notions of individual responsibility for healthy citizenship. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
citizenship; Foucault; genealogy; Health and physical education

Index Keywords
adoption, citizenship, genealogy, human, human experiment, pedagogics, physical education, responsibility, student, training

Imagining Online Sexual Health Outreach: A Critical Investigation into AIDS Service Organizations Workers’ Notions of ‘Gay Community’ (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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19 June 2019

Davies, A.W.J., Souleymanov, R., Brennan, D.J.
Imagining Online Sexual Health Outreach: A Critical Investigation into AIDS Service Organizations Workers’ Notions of ‘Gay Community’
(2019) Social Work in Public Health, 34 (4), pp. 353-369.

DOI: 10.1080/19371918.2019.1606755

Abstract
This paper examines how online outreach workers within AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) discursively imagine notions of “gay community” and the tensions between inequities in varying conceptions of “community” that operate in providers’ and managers’ sexual health online outreach. Through a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) of interview data from a community-based research project examining sexual health outreach among gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) men, we provide an analysis that problematizes notions of a unitary “gay community” while illustrating how certain privileged subjects are deemed ideal for inclusion and representation within both online and ASO communities. Moreover, we interrogate how online medical health regimes constitute the ideal neoliberal gay male subject who self-responsibilizes and individualizes his sexual health while erasing inequities relating to social location and intersecting identities. Our analysis highlights how homonormative politics infiltrates GBQ sexual health programming and the ways in which understandings of the “self” and gay subjectivities are constituted through biopolitical apparatuses and online sexual health surveillance. We argue that it is necessary to move online sexual health outreach beyond specifically focusing on the needs of white GBQ men by bringing a greater awareness to the continual exclusions which operate within GBQ “communities”. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Author Keywords
AIDS Service Organizations; Foucault; gay men; HIV/AIDS; poststructuralism; sexual health outreach

Expulsions: The Construction of a Hostile Environment in Calais (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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18 June 2019

Aris Escarcena, J.P.
Expulsions: The Construction of a Hostile Environment in Calais
(2019) European Journal of Migration and Law, 21 (2), pp. 215-237.

DOI: 10.1163/15718166-12340048

Abstract
After the dismantling of “the great Jungle” of Calais, migrants have returned to settle in the territory of the region. In this article I analyse how different instances of the government have developed policies to expel them from the region. We will focus on how security and humanitarian techniques have been used to create an area (a hostile environment) where the physical and social life of migrants in transit is not sustainable. In particular, it will analyse the closing of service areas to freight trucks, the prohibition of food distribution to migrants in Calais, and the use of physical and symbolic violence against volunteers and migrants. The article is based on an analysis of forms of government through the concept of Milieu (Foucault, 2009) and proposes the concept of Hostile Environment as the materialization of the “Politics of Exhaustion” (De Vries & Guild, 2018). Copyright © 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Author Keywords
border zones; Calais; hostile environment; humanitarian; politics of exhaustion; securitarian

Ítala Nepomuceno, Hugo Affonso, James Angus Fraser, Maurício Torres, Counter-conducts and the green grab: Forest peoples’ resistance to industrial resource extraction in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, Brazilian Amazonia (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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17 June 2019

Ítala Nepomuceno, Hugo Affonso, James Angus Fraser, Maurício Torres, Counter-conducts and the green grab: Forest peoples’ resistance to industrial resource extraction in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, Brazilian Amazonia (2019) Global Environmental Change, 56, pp. 124-133.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.04.004

Abstract
This paper contributes to the theory of environmentality – the ‘conduct of conduct’ with regard to the environment – by incorporating Foucault’s notion of counter-conducts to elucidate the political subjectivities emergent from the performance of dissent in relation to different forms of power – sovereign, disciplinary and biopower – through which a spatialized rational-technical governmentality of ‘green’ mining and logging is enacted in Saracá-Taquera National Forest (FLONA), Brazilian Amazonia. We analyse the counter-conductive subjectivities emergent from forest peoples’ political articulation through identity categories riberinhos and quilombolas (enshrined in the 1988 Constitution and subsequent laws), claiming of rights to delimit areas of traditional use and ancestral territories, along with direct action, critical discourse and reassertion of agroecological knowledge against industrial resource extraction. To capture the dynamic relation of the conduct of conduct to counter-conducts we draw on a late Foucauldian model of a self, wherein his earlier focus on how the Panopticon shapes self-discipline is complemented by a turn to care for and ethics of the self – practices of freedom through which subjects have the potential to transcend self-discipline. We use this lens to illuminate two case-studies, one focusing on mining, the other on timber, exploring how in this protected area – which permits the ‘sustainable’ industrial extraction of natural resources – the state, companies and an NGO try to shape forest peoples as ‘green’ subjects. Counter-conducts provide the theory of environmentality with a broader perspective on resistance foregrounding the production of political subjectivities in dissent whilst breaking with the resistance-domination binary. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
Biopolitics; Environmentality; Foucault; Governmentality; Rights

Afectividad y subjetividad femenina: análisis de la gordura como código moral (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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14 June 2019

María Alejandra Energici, Afectividad y subjetividad femenina: análisis de la gordura como código moral, Límite. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Filosofía y Psicología, Volumen 13, Nº 43, 2018, pp. 17-28

Open access on Academia.edu

Affectivity and female subjectivity: an analysis of fatness as a moral code

RESUMEN
El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar que en la regla sobre el grosor del cuerpo se establece una relación para el sí mismo, donde se articula una forma de subjetivación femenina que se basa principalmente en una prescripción afectiva. Para ello se presentan los resultados de un estudio que buscó describir y comprender el modo en que se construye socialmente la gordura. Se trabajó con un diseño cualitativo, se realizaron seis grupos de discusión mixtos de jóvenes y adultos de la ciudad de Santiago de Chile. En los resultados se muestra que la gordura se construye como un problema de orden afectivo que representa una trasgresión de la norma de “Quien se quiere, cuida de sí”. En este sentido, la gordura se explica afectivamente. La vergüenza es central para mostrar el carácter vinculante, y por tanto, subjetivante que tiene esta norma sobre el tamaño del cuerpo. Estas reglas se focalizan en las mujeres, para ella se prescriben ciertos matices. Uno de ellos es que deben amarse a sí mismas para constituirse como objeto de amor de otro. En las conclusiones se reflexiona sobre las implicancias que tiene este estudio para indagar en los procesos de subjetivación femenina desde una perspectiva foucaultiana.

Palabras Clave: Subjetivación femenina, cuerpo, sujeto, gordura, afectividad.

ABSTRACT
The objective of this work is to show that the rule that establishes that bodies should be thin, installs a rule for the self. A form of feminine subjectification is articulated in this rule, based on an affective prescription. To show this, we present the results of a study that sought to describe and understand the way in which fat is socially constructed. We worked with a qualitative design, with six mixed discussion groups of young people and adults from the city of Santiago de Chile. In the results it is shown that fatness is constructed as an affective problem that represents a transgression of the norm of “Who loves, takes care of itself”. In this sense, fatness is explained affectively. Shame is central to show the binding nature, and therefore subjectifying, that this rule of body size has. These rules are focused on women, for which certain nuances are prescribed. One of them is that they must love themselves to be an object of love for another. The conclusions reflect on the implications of this study to investigate the processes of female subjectivation from a Foucauldian perspective.

Key Words: Feminine subjectification, body, subject, fatness, affectivity.

What is ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’? The ‘Auguste D’ Case Re-opened (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

13 June 2019

Keohane, K., Grace, V. What is ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’? The ‘Auguste D’ Case Re-opened, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry Volume 43, Issue 2, 15 June 2019, Pages 336-359

DOI: 10.1007/s11013-019-09622-z

Abstract
What is Alzheimer’s: an organic, neuropathological psychiatric disease, caused by plaques and tangles in aging brains or/and an existential condition affecting the minds of aging persons experiencing disconnection from meaning-bearing networks of social relations? Reviewing current research and revisiting Alzheimer’s original case of ‘Auguste D’ this paper offers an historical–sociological genealogy that raises fundamental questions of causality, and even of the ontological status of Alzheimer’s and the dementia reputed to it as a disease entity. Drawing on Kuhn’s notion of ‘science as usual’ and Foucault’s notion of the discursive formation of ‘regimes of truth’, our analysis seeks to understand how a sole medical focus on either bio-markers of neurological disease or genetic association was accomplished in the absence of sufficient and robust evidence. To counter the exclusion of psychosocial considerations, this paper offers two original hypotheses on the iconic case of ‘Auguste D’, taking into account the social milieu in which she lived and the specific circumstances of her life. It goes on to suggest the way in which the contemporary socio-cultural context may have dementiagenic tendencies. This research supports Gaines and Whitehouse’s argument that research into the phenomenon and symptoms of Alzheimer’s should focus on extracorporal and psychosocial factors.

Foucault Studies. Number 26, June 2019

Clare O'Farrell

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12 June 2019

fs-26Foucault Studies
Number 26, June 2019

Table of Contents

Editorial

Editorial
Sverre Raffnsøe
PDF
i-iv

Articles

Altering absence: From race to empire in readings of Foucault
Claire Cosquer
PDF
1-20
Governing Goods, Bodies and Minds: The Biopolitics of Spain during the Francoism (1939-1959)
Salvador Cayuela
PDF
21-41
How Parrhesia Works through Art The Elusive Role of the Imagination in Truth-Telling
Marrigje Paijmans
PDF
42-63
“Each Punishment Should Be a Fable”: Punitive Analytics, The Punitive-City Diagram, and Punishment as Technology of Power in Foucault’s Works of the 1970s and 1980s
Mario Bruzzone
PDF
64-90

Translations

On Nietzsche
Philipp Kender
PDF
91-95

Reviews

Robert Harvey, Sharing Common Ground. A Space for Ethics
Sverre Raffnsøe
PDF
93-101
The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon
Ben Golder
PDF
102-105
Foucault at the Movies
Kyler Chittick
PDF
106-110
A Foucauldian Interpretation of Modern Law. From Sovereignty to Normalisation and Beyond
Gerrardo del Cerro Santamaría
PDF
111-114
Genealogies of terrorism, revolution, state violence, empire
Déborah Brosteaux
PDF
115-118
The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject
Alex Underwood
PDF
119-123
Active Intolerance, Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition
Simone Webb
PDF
124-127
Ironic Life
Simone Webb

Theoretical puppets: D is for Discourse (Michel Foucault) (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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10 June 2019

Michel Foucault from A to Z.
Eventually, Foucault speaks about his problems in defining the term “discourse”.

Introduction to Foucault by Then & Now (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

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8 June 2019

Then & Now
Published on May 30, 2019

In this introduction to Foucault I look at the poststructuralist philosopher’s influences and context (Nietzsche, Levi-Strauss & Sartre, among others), and summarise his position through his three most influential works, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. Foucault’s thought takes two approaches that are loosely related – the archaeological and the genealogical. The most important concept is that power and knowledge are intimately linked.

For Foucault, different time periods – what he calls epistemes – have different underlying assumptions, codes, and rules, mostly unconscious or at least structural, about how to think about things in the world.

Foucault analyses the way we’re discipline by power in the same way. In her introduction to Discipline and Punish, Lisa Downing puts like this: Foucault analyses the ‘means by which the body is made to conform to the utilitarian ends of social regimes thanks to the operations of disciplinary power.’

Finally, the central question outlined in vol. 1 is that of the ‘repressive hypothesis’. The narrative dominant in the 70s argued that where Westerners were once sexually oppressed, we have become slowly more liberated, more liberal. Is it really that simple? Like the rest of his work, Foucault questions this progressive, teleological narrative.

To conclude I take a quick look at Foucault’s thoughts on the multidirectional character of power.

Then & Now is fan funded. See youtube link for donation details.

The Enlightenment as determinant of accounting change: The case of royal estate bookkeeping during the reign of Catherine II (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

7 June 2019

Sidorova, M., Nazarov, D., Vakhrushina, M.
The Enlightenment as determinant of accounting change: The case of royal estate bookkeeping during the reign of Catherine II
(2019) Accounting History, 24 (2), pp. 185-211.

DOI: 10.1177/1032373218814269

Abstract
Foucault studied the change in the governmental practices of European countries under the influence of Enlightenment. The transition from intuitive actions of power to the rational ways of governing developed the need for experts as a group of people with professional knowledge. Our article focuses on experts as the key element of this concept. The article argues that the symmetry between governmental needs and the experts’ qualifications is the crucial factor in the application of new accounting techniques. We investigate an attempt to introduce an accounting innovation in the royal estate during the reign of Russian Empress Catherine II. The failure of this innovation can be attributed to the lack of skilled experts in public sector accounting. The authors came to this conclusion through analysis of the archival sources, including the account books of the Moscow Palace Office, which has not been widely academically discussed from that point of view before. © The Author(s) 2018.

Author Keywords
accounting expertise; accounting history in Russia; Catherine II; Enlightenment; royal estate bookkeeping

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