Foucault News

Foucault quote: A definition of philosophy

Clare O'Farrell

24 February 2019

Philosophy is that which calls into question domination at every level and in every form in which it exists, whether political, economic, sexual, institutional, or what have you. To a certain extent, this critical function of philosophy derives from the Socratic injunction “Take care of yourself,” in other words, “Make freedom your foundation, through the mastery of yourself”.

Michel Foucault. 2000. “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom.” In Ethics. Essential Works of Michel Foucault, edited by P. Rabinow. Vol. 2. 281-302. London: Penguin.

Foucault Reading group, Brisbane Australia (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 February 2019

Editor: I will be running a reading group in Brisbane, Australia. All details can be found on the reading group website.

Dates
1, 15, 29 March; 12, 26 April; 10, 24 May

Time: 1 – 2.30pm fortnightly on Fridays

Venue: E block Room E351, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
Map of the campus.

Readings

1 March
Michel Foucault and Farès Sassine, There can’t be societies without uprisings, In Foucault and the making of subjects. Eds. Laura Cremonesi, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini, Martina Tazzioli, London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, pp. 25-51

15 March
Michel de Certeau, Walking in the City, In Michel de, Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 2011.

Program for remainder of semester

We will systematically be reading through Michel Foucault, Wrong-doing, Truth-telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice, Eds. Fabienne Brion, Bernard E. Harcourt, Trans. Stephen W. Sawyer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

29 March
Inaugural lecture and first lecture

12 April
Second lecture and third lecture

26 April
Fourth lecture and fifth lecture

10 May
Sixth lecture

24 May
Interview with André Berten

Radical educations in subjectivity: the convergence of psychotherapy, mysticism and Foucault’s ‘politics of ourselves’ (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

22 February 2019

Keck, C.S. Radical educations in subjectivity: the convergence of psychotherapy, mysticism and Foucault’s ‘politics of ourselves’
(2019) Ethics and Education, 14 (1), pp. 102-115.

DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2018.1554789

Abstract
Foucault’s invitation to the subject is to become free of themselves by learning to think differently. Such a project has as its goal the mastery of the self, and can be understood as a Foucaultian ‘politics of ourselves’. Foucault’s ethical turn is an invitation for subjectivity to undertake its own radical education. Whilst this invitation has characteristics unique to Foucault’s philosophical discipline, I argue that it sheds light upon a diversity of practices of subjectivity from the psychotherapeutic and mystic traditions. By seeing these currently available technologies of self in the Foucaultian lens we are given the opportunity to appreciate their work on subjectivity as necessarily political and social, a radical education not limited to the realm of individualistic aspiration and narcissistic temptations. The paper concludes by drawing attention to some implications for education, and for a teacher education that embraces the ‘radical reflexivity’ of some psycho-spiritual practices.

Author Keywords
Foucault; politics of ourselves; psychotherapeutic and mystic practices; radical education; subjectivity; teacher education

State Mass Spying as Illegalism (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 February 2019

Leman-Langlois, S. State Mass Spying as Illegalism
(2018) Critical Criminology, 26 (4), pp. 545-561.

DOI: 10.1007/s10612-018-9421-z

Abstract
Periodic revelations about the workings of data interception, analysis and collection in Canada have each time prompted successive administrations to amend laws and regulations in order to calm public opinion. This has been referred to as “accountability through scandal” and has, for the most part, produced cosmetic changes rather than significant reform. Most of the practices and the ethos of the organizations have remained the same, setting the stage for the next scandal. This paper reviews the last scandal to befall the Canadian Security Establishment, caused by the Snowden revelations, and the subsequent political response. Approached with part of Foucault’s toolbox it becomes clear that the business of the state and state security requires a particular form of “management of illegalisms,” or differential treatment of rule-breaking, at the higher echelons of state power.

The Order of Things: Photography from the Walther Collection (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

20 February 2019

Anton Lee (2018) Review: The Order of Things: Photography from the Walther Collection, History of Photography, 42:3, 306-308.

DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2018.1531600

Review of the exhibition catalog The Order of Things: Photography from the Walther Collection, edited by Brian Wallis (Göttingen: Steidl, 2015)

[,,,]
The paucity of serious attention to The Order of Things is curious, given the book’s value as an independent source of reference for photography scholars and practitioners apart from the concomitant exhibition. It is equally regrettable that the publication has largely been overlooked by the readers of Michel Foucault, despite the fact that the book was named after the French thinker’s influential study originally published as Les Mots et les Choses (1966). Foucault’s preface to his book is reprinted in the catalogue, alongside other new and old essays, including Walter Benjamin’s ‘A Little History of Photography’ (1931), Allan Sekula’s ‘The Body and the Archive’ (1986), George Baker’s ‘August Sander, Degeneration, and the Decay of the Portrait’ (1996), and Geoffrey Batchen’s ‘Ordering Things’ (2015). The book’s importance has been growing ever since it was first published in 2015, in accordance with the reputation of the Walther Collection as one of the world’s most significant collections of historical and contemporary photographs, especially those made in Africa and China. Not only does The Order of Things shed light on the genesis of the collection by providing an interview with Walther, but the book’s theme also attests to the collector’s proclivity for acquiring an entire set or batch of photographs that may or may not have been conceived as a series.

[…]

Book description
Throughout the modern era, photography has been enlisted to classify the world and its people. Driven by a belief in the scientific objectivity of photographic evidence, the systems utilized to classify photographs have shaped modern visual culture. Accompanying the exhibition The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, this book investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, vernacular imagery, architectural surveys and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. Setting early modernist photographers Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander in dialogue with contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Avedon, Zanele Muholi, Stephen Shore and Zhang Huan, The Order of Things illustrates how typological methods in photography have developed globally.

CFP: Rencontres Doctorales du Centre Michel Foucault (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

4 comments

19 February 2019

Call for papers
Rencontres Doctorales du Centre Michel Foucault

11-13 septembre 2019
IMEC – Caen

L’Association pour le Centre Michel Foucault propose pour la 8ème année une école doctorale visant à réunir les doctorants travaillant sur, avec et autour de la pensée de Michel Foucault. L’objectif est comme les années précédentes de mettre en relation, le plus agréablement possible et de manière assez informelle, les jeunes chercheurs afin de constituer un réseau de travail national et international, et de leur donner l’occasion de présenter leurs travaux.

Cette rencontre aura lieu du 11 au 13 septembre 2019 à l’Abbaye d’Ardenne à Caen (avec un départ de Paris le mercredi 11 septembre en milieu de journée et un retour le vendredi 13 septembre en fin de journée).

Les frais de séjour sur place et les billets de train à partir de Paris (Paris-Caen-Paris) seront offerts aux intervenants par l’Association pour le Centre Michel Foucault.

Pour que les échanges puissent être les plus féconds possibles – et compte tenu des capacités d’accueil de l’Abbaye – nous limitons le nombre de participants, ce qui impliquera nécessairement un choix de notre part. Les doctorants ayant participé les années passées aux rencontres pourront décider d’y assister, mais la priorité sera donnée aux nouveaux intervenants et aux doctorants en 2ème et 3ème année de thèse.

Les propositions d’intervention (2500 signes max.), portant soit sur une question particulière du travail de thèse, soit sur un problème méthodologique précis, devront nous être envoyées, avec un CV (indiquant obligatoirement l’année et le titre de la thèse, le nom du directeur, de l’université et de l’École doctorale de rattachement) avant le 30 avril 2019. En fonction des demandes, nous établirons et diffuserons un programme le 15 mai 2019.

Contact : journeescmf@gmail.com

Ces rencontres doctorales sont ouvertes à tous les étudiant.e.s sans distinction de nationalité, mais la langue de travail sera le français (avec possibilité éventuelle d’intervenir en anglais).

N’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour toute question.

Très cordialement,
L’Association pour le Centre Michel Foucault

Janaka Siyambalapitiya, Xu Zhangand Xiaobing Liu, Is governmentality the missing link for greening the economic growth? (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 February 2019

Janaka Siyambalapitiya, Xu Zhangand Xiaobing Liu, Is governmentality the missing link for greening the economic growth?
(2018) Sustainability (Switzerland), 10 (11), art. no. 4204.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114204

Abstract
The new concept of “green growth” appears to be an economic growth model, which balances environment sustainability and fostering of economic growth. Yet, much of the green growth research has failed to address the real extent of interconnections and complexity of the relationship between governance and economic, social, and environmental structures. Furthermore, current green growth research tends to focus on the country level, such as the Millennium Development Goals and sustainable development indices, which risks ignoring the additional impacts on micro industrial economies. The lack of connection between green growth and good governance-known as environmental governance-is a crucial gap in practical adoption. Therefore, this study uses Foucault’s governmentality lens to view green growth as a technique of government, seeking an environmentally focused eco-governmentality. We examine the transformation, differential definitions, and critical dimensions of green growth in relation to particular case studies taken from China and South Korea and frame them for future sustainable studies. The findings of this study highlight the significant role of interdisciplinary research, as well both bottom-up and top-down initiatives, on enabling the transition to green growth. The proposed research framework and implementation strategy also identifies new avenues for future research and practices in the field of sustainable development, making it one of the study’s key contributions to the literature. © 2018 by the authors.

Author Keywords
Circular economy; Economic growth model; Environmental management; Environmental sustainability; Governmentality; Green growth; Sustainable management

Index Keywords
economic growth, environmental economics, environmental management, government, green economy, growth modeling, interdisciplinary approach, Millenium Development Goal, sustainability, sustainable development; China, South Korea

Nothing Will Be the Same Again After the Stade de France Attack: Reflections of Association Football Fans on Terrorism, Security and Surveillance (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 February 2019

Cleland, J., Cashmore, E. Nothing Will Be the Same Again After the Stade de France Attack: Reflections of Association Football Fans on Terrorism, Security and Surveillance
(2018) Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 42 (6), pp. 454-469.

DOI: 10.1177/0193723518797028

Abstract
Following the attempted terrorist attack at the friendly match between France and Germany at the Stade de France on November 13, 2015, this article draws on the response of 1,500 association football fans to the threat of terrorism in the world’s most popular sport. Its primary focus was to ask fans to reflect on their own experiences of security and surveillance and what extent the attempted attack on the Stade de France will have on the management of football crowds. Drawing on the themes of surveillance devised by Michel Foucault, the results outline how some fans accept additional measures of security and surveillance as a means of protecting their safety but others resist this as overly excessive and intrusive and argue it negatively affects their match-day experience. The article concludes by reflecting on the management of football crowds given the response by fans and the changes already taking place since November 2015. © The Author(s) 2018.

Author Keywords
football; Foucault; security; surveillance; terrorism

Jean-François Bert, « La magie – le fait social total », une leçon inédite des années 1950 » (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

16 February 2019

Jean-François Bert, « Michel Foucault défenseur de l’ethnologie. « La magie – le fait social total », une leçon inédite des années 1950 », Zilsel, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, pp. 281-303.
https://doi.org/10.3917/zil.002.0281

Les milliers de pages de notes manuscrites de Michel Foucault, conservées à la Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), donnent à voir un auteur bien différent de la caricature que certains spécialistes de l’histoire des sciences humaines et de la philosophie ont dessinée après sa mort. Ces simplifications alternent entre la référence appuyée à sa critique des sciences humaines, dans le sillage de Les mots et les choses (1966), et l’exagération de son rejet de toute démarche de type sociologique, en particulier celle héritière du « vieux réalisme durkheimien », qui n’aurait eu pour effet que de substantialiser les notions de peuple, de souverain et, d’abord, de société. Au début des années 1950, ses lectures attentives de Marcel Mauss et de Claude Lévi-Strauss, de Maurice Leenhardt et d’Abram Kardiner, de Margaret Mead et de Ruth Benedict ou encore de Robert Hertz, d’Émile Durkheim et de Pierre Métais, indiquent tout au contraire que, dès ses années de formation, et alors qu’il était étudiant à l’École normale supérieure, Foucault a voulu créer un rapport de proximité avec des approches de type anthropologique et, plus généralement, émanant des sciences sociales. Au-delà de ces quelques noms d’auteurs, devenus pour certains des « classiques », ses fiches de lecture manifestent également son intérêt pour ce qu’il nomme alors des « formations culturelles », qu’il s’agisse du rêve et de l’imaginaire, de la mort et du langage, de la conscience de soi ou de la folie. Autant de thèmes qui seront bientôt centraux dans sa réflexion…

Michel Foucault, [auteur] « La magie – le fait social total » (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 February 2019

Foucault, Michel. « La magie – le fait social total », Zilsel, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, pp. 305-326.

DOI 10.3917/zil.002.0305

– Rapport à la société
– Rapport à la technique qu’elle imite.
– Rapport à la société
D’un côté opposition à la société
– Ségrégation du magicien dans la société, ce qui n’arrive pas au prêtre.
– Le magicien est considéré comme favorable ou défavorable à la société, alors que le prêtre l’est toujours.
La magie, dans une société, apparaît toujours comme virtualité menaçante [pour ?] l’ordre de cette société.
D’un autre, nécessité d’un lien social
– L’intention, le pouvoir magique ne peuvent se déployer que sur la trame d’une croyance magique.
Ex. du magicien cité par Boas qui n’éprouvait plus la virtualité de sa puissance magique parce qu’on ne le croyait plus.
Lévi-Strauss : ce n’est pas parce qu’il réussit qu’on le croit.
– L’acte magique lui-même, la réalisation de cette virtualité n’est possible que par le contexte social de croyances et d’affirmation magique, qui se fait le porteur de l’intention magicienne.
« Derrière le magicien et son bâton, il y a l’anxiété du village en quête de sources ».
Ex. des morts étudié par Mauss, par Cannon.
Mauss cite le cas d’un jeune chef à qui on prédit la mort, et qui meurt au bout de deux jours.
Interprétation de Cannon. Le lien social.
– Rapport à la technique
La magie semble faire corps avec la technique.
Le rite magique que rien ne distingue dans l’esprit du primitif de la précaution technique ; précaution et propitiation semblent se recouvrir et leur unité s’épanouit dans un univers de croyance, qui charge chaque opération technique de tout le poids des valeurs magiques ; à chaque geste technique répond un rite magique avec lequel il communique par le mythe…