Foucault News

Çalışkan, G., McGregor, A.J. ‘You can change the world. We’re just here to help’: activist consultancy firms as forms of neoliberal governmentality (2019) Globalizations, Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2018.1562510

Abstract
Using Foucault’s theory of governmentality, we trace the development of activist consultancy firms (ACFs), providing an in-depth description of two ACFs: Boutique Activist Consultancy and the Solutions Institute. We explore how these ACFs enact neoliberal governmentality. The ACFs’ ambivalent engagement with professionalization is the most notable finding of our research. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
activist consultancy firms; critical discourse analysis; governmentality; Neoliberalization of activism; professionalization of activism; social activism

Klein, S. “A Sealed Rectilinear Planet”: The Skyscraper as Vertical Heterotopia in J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise and Ben Wheatley’s Screen Adaptation (2019) Space and Culture, Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1177/1206331218822950

Abstract
This article addresses the role of vertical detachment in J. G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise (1975/2006) and its recent screen adaptation by Ben Wheatley (2015) through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (1967/1984). In particular, it elucidates the specific pressures and possibilities of high-rise living by drawing on Foucault’s distinction between heterotopias of compensation and illusion as well as by assessing their roles in the residents’ gradual slide into tribal anarchy, as charted by the novel and the film. Throughout, my findings are embedded in the context of modern architecture and urban planning, most notably high-rise housing, in postwar Britain and its reflection in other influential cultural productions of the time. Finally, the idea of heterotopia is championed as central to Ballard’s continual engagement with a ‘dark logic’ inherent in modern architecture and technology. The article thus contributes to ongoing debates on verticality and height as factors in past and current urbanistic schemes and their social and psychological impact as reflected in professional discourses as well as in literary-artistic engagements (see “vertical turn” in Graham & Hewitt, 2013). © The Author(s) 2019.

Author Keywords
Ben Wheatley; Great Britain; heterotopia; High-Rise; high-rise housing; J. G. Ballard; Michel Foucault

Papastephanou, M. Of(f) Course: Michel Foucault, the Mobile Philosopher and his Dreamworlds (2019) Critical Horizons, Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2019.1563994

Abstract
Foucault extolled the Iranian revolution and, anticipating the havoc that his public intervention in favour of the revolution would create, he wrote: “I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong”. Examining Foucault’s (so unlikely) valorisation of certainty and the partisan affectivity it bestows upon knowledge and truth, I read his unusual engagement with the Iranian revolution against the grain. A major tendency is to approach Foucault’s Iranian writings as aberration; against this tendency, I read them as an effect of Foucault’s specific epistemic and utopian optics. Through a critical reading of neglected aspects of Foucault’s comments on Iran, I argue that much nuance is missing when damning critiques fail to see why and how Foucault’s interest in an active rather than folklore non-European political identity unveils deeper tensions of his own worldview and outlook on international politics and interrogates mainstream appraisals of Foucault’s political philosophy. © 2019, © Critical Horizons Pty Ltd 2019.

Author Keywords
history; Iranian revolution; knowledge; modernisation; parrhesia; utopia

Jenkins, B. A guaranteed basic income and the aesthetics of existence
(2019) Journal of Cultural Economy, 12 (1), pp. 21-35.

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1504227

Abstract
The recent implementation of various guaranteed basic income (GBI) trials presents an opportunity to consider how such policies should be evaluated. If past experience is any guide, they will be judged primarily on the basis of quantitative factors such as cost and labour market impact. While these considerations remain relevant, some of the most transformative aspects of a GBI will happen at the ‘aesthetic’ level of affect, sensibilities, and attitudes. Using an ethico-aesthetic approach drawing on the work of Foucault, Guattari, Deleuze, and Lazzarato, I examine the dynamic, interactive impact a GBI could have on conceptions of work, welfare and gender. I argue that a GBI can be a key component of a new aesthetic of existence based on a critical ethics of self care. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Basic income; Deleuze; Foucault; gender; labour; welfare

Dale, E. Anopticism: Invisible Populations and the Power of Not Seeing
(2019) International Journal of Historical Archaeology, . Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1007/s10761-018-0493-y

Abstract
Utilizing Foucault’s theory of panopticism, social scientists have consistently studied the ways past populations were made visible and how this served as a form of power. Understudied, however, are the ways invisibility can be imposed or adopted. This paper models new discussions of power relationships I have named anopticism. Anopticism is concerned with the power exercised in making populations invisible, both as a form of domination and as form of resistance. By examining two Chinese communities in Nevada and California, I explore the ways strategies and tactics, discipline and agency, and power over and power to intertwine to effectively and purposefully hide individuals, groups, and their behaviors. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Author Keywords
Chinese diaspora; Nineteenth-century; Panopticism; Power; Western United States

Kantola, A., Seeck, H., Mannevuo, M. Affect in governmentality: Top executives managing the affective milieu of market liberalisation
(2019) Organization, . Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1177/1350508418821002

Abstract
This article explores the role of affect in governmentality and develops the concept of the ‘affective milieu’ to better understand liberal forms of managerial control in market environments. Taking Foucault’s writings on consent, security and technologies of self as a vantage point, we suggest that the regimes of governmentality are both rational and affective milieus and propose that the Spinozan–Deleuzian affect theory provides an entry point for exploring how regimes of governmentality operate as affective milieus. The Spinozan–Deleuzian affect theory helps in understanding affective complexities and attempts to create affective alliances in governmentality. Elucidating this point, we explore how top executives at globally operating paper and metal companies entered a new affective milieu when going through market liberalisation. The affective milieu oscillates between the dangers and promises of the market. Using the notion of priming, we analyse how the top executives use the affective threats and promises of the opening markets and how they attempted to develop managerial techniques to incite and orient employees in the new milieu. © The Author(s) 2019.

Author Keywords
Affect; affective milieu; Deleuze; executives; Finland; Foucault; governmentality; management; priming; Spinoza

Huang, G., Xue, D., Wang, Y., Governmentality and Spatial Strategies: Towards Formalization of Street Vendors in Guangzhou, China
(2019) International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, . Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12730

Abstract
A new policy approach that seeks to formalize street vendors by immobilizing them in designated places has been taken as an alternative to exclusion in Guangzhou, China. This article develops an analytical framework for understanding this spatial formalization by drawing upon Foucault’s concept of governmentality. Formalization can be understood as a form of spatial governmentality that seeks to guide the behaviour of informal economic individuals towards officially desired norms by creating bounded spaces. While the formalization programme reflects a moral form of political rationality that directs modern governments towards principles of social justice, it is fundamentally founded on a dispositional spatial rationality that imagines the dependence of social control on the ordering of space. However, this spatial rationality entails a tension between the goal of formalization and its practical effects, resulting in a failure to respect vital attributes of street vending and vendors’ counter-responses to it. The article concludes by questioning the government’s formalization approach, given its ignorance of the reality of informality, and opens up the question of what might be good formalization. © 2019 Urban Research Publications Limited

Author Keywords
formalization; good formalization; governmentality; Guangzhou, China; informality; street vendors