Foucault News

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

[Editor:] Back in 2019 I posted a piece that noted that Foucault ranked number 1 on the H-Index with the caveat that there was a separate ranking for the high energy physicists with hyper-authored papers. I thought I might revisit this and see what the current ranking news on this was.

All the usual warnings about the validity of H-index scores apply here of course. Gaming of this system has increased considerably since the advent of readily available Large Language Models such as Chat GPT and the Retraction Watch blog is instructive in terms of inflationary practices around publication and citation.

This 2020 report notes: “At the very top of the list is philosopher Michel Foucault, who has an h-index of 296 and was cited 1,026,230 times.”
This 2024 book review of Chomsky’s work further adds: “Not many academics do better than Chomsky citation-wise. But there are a few… Philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1,361,000 = 2.72 Chomskys)”.

Foucault’s current h-index indicates the pinnacle of his H-index citation fame was in fact in 2019 when I posted the original report of his ranking and has been declining since.

There are a number of complex reasons for this, which would certainly bear more detailed analysis. One reason is the acceptance and normalisation of some of Foucault’s ideas and concepts dispensing with the need for the obligatory citation. Examples include “biopolitics”, “genealogy” understood as historical method, and particular uses of the notion of “discourse”. The increasing power and uptake of right wing ideologies is of course another factor. But one might also mention the general passing of time and other shifts in the social, political and cultural landscape. As someone who started studying Foucault’s work while he was still alive, watching him gradually become a historical figure has been an interesting trajectory.

Antti Saari & Jan Varpanen, Critical ambiguities – ambiguities of critique: Technologies of the self in entrepreneurial activism, Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization, 2024

Open access

Keywords
critical theories, social movements, power, entrepreneurial activism, Foucault, subjectivity Theory U, Ambiguity

Extract from introduction

In Foucauldian organization studies, a shift of emphasis has taken place from the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (Ricoeur, 2008) – uncovering modes of subjugation behind the smokescreen of individual freedom – towards the task of discovering potentials of agency, change and resistance (Raffnsøe et al., 2022; Randall and Munro, 2010; McKinlay and Taylor, 2014; Paulsson, 2011). Such positive registers of subjectivity have been sought by drawing on Foucault’s work on care of the self (souci de soi). This work sees ethics as practical work of self on the self in relation to aims, techniques, and substance to be worked on and a way of attending to one’s self as a certain kind of subject (Foucault, 1997a). A key theoretical effort in this line of inquiry has been the attempt to transcend the rigid opposition between conduct and counter-conduct – that is, conducts either sustaining or challenging the status quo (Brewis, 2019; Michaeli, 2017; Munro, 2014; Raffnsøe et al., 2019).

Edizione Efesto

Archeologia del presente è una nuova collana che prova a contaminare pensiero e racconto, cronaca e archivio, giornalismo filosofico e urgenze politiche per elaborare una presa di posizione sulla realtà attuale. Questo campo di ricerca interpella i dispositivi di sapere-potere nel tempo della fine. Pensare questo tempo significa comprendere ciò che resta – forme di vita, esperienze, relazioni – quando i dispositivi di potere sono inoperosi per troppo funzionamento.

Fare l’archivio del presente significa, come indicava Michel Foucault, cercarne la provenienza per scoprire gioiose possibilità di liberazione. Non rinunciare a tale ricerca è il compito assegnato a questa generazione che è testimone del consumo di ogni aspetto della vita.

In questo tempo del disastro l’autore che cerca, analizza, “crea”, si riduce a essere consumatore della sua stessa scrittura. L’editoria si é convertita in una banalissima questione di capitale e indipendente è quella casa editrice che “vorrebbe” ma “non può”. L’editore illuminato oggi é colui che riconosce la vendibilità di uno scritto, autori e autrici non sono più scopritori di un sapere volto alla costruzione del comune, ma possessori di risorse economiche per finanziare le pubblicazioni. I restanti sono quelli che non possono. Di fronte alle rovine dell’editoria abbiamo deciso di prendere posizione per riaprire il possibile, per reinventare l’esistenza.

Paolo Vernaglione Berardi, Lo scriba e la farfalla. Appunti sul tempo della fine, Edizione Efesto, 2024

Sinossi

Non vedo più la farfalla e temo il peggio. Non sento più il suo battito d’ali a New Delhi e qui il tifone ha devastato le baracche e l’acqua ha sommerso le strade, affogato la memoria… Quindi un panorama dell’umanità alla fine si è disteso davanti agli occhi ciechi dello scienziato dello sviluppo liberale. Quindi multimiliardari insani hanno indicato vie possibili di fuga dal pianeta devastato… Un’archeologia del presente deve raccontare cosa accade

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Par-delà le principe de répression. Dix leçons sur l’abolitionnisme pénal, Flammarion, 2025

« Tout interroger, tout bousculer, tout refonder, et produire, à partir de là, quelque chose comme une désorientation générale de nos sens, une transformation des affects que nous sommes souvent conduits à éprouver lorsque nous sommes victimes ou témoins d’une agression, d’une scène de violence ou d’une injustice : tel serait le projet que j’aimerais accomplir ici.

Comme une entreprise de destruction de nos repères culturels et de construction d’une nouvelle morale, qui se situerait au-delà du principe de répression – qui serait débarrassée, enfin, de l’emprise que les notions de crime, de responsabilité, de plainte et de punition exercent sur notre appréhension des actions humaines et de leur régulation.

En un sens, je conçois ce livre comme une sorte d’expérimentation radicale, qui testerait la capacité de la réflexion d’être plus forte que les impulsions premières et les impensés sociaux. Sommes-nous capables d’être affectés par un raisonnement au point de remanier complètement nos manières de percevoir et donc aussi de nous comporter individuellement et politiquement ? Et si non, à quoi sert la philosophie ? »

Urošević, Milan. 2024. “Therapy culture and the production of subjectivity in neoliberalism.” Philosophy and Society

https://doi.org/10.2298/FID240220005U

ABSTRACT
This article explores the relationship between neoliberalism and the phenomena of “therapy culture”. We define therapy culture as a consequence of the spread of ideas, discourses, and practices from psychology and psychotherapy into various realms of society. Previous studies, drawing from cultural sociology, Marxism, and governmentality theory, have failed to adequately address how therapy culture integrates subjectivity with the institutions of the neoliberal mode of regulation. We begin with a historical overview of therapy culture’s evolution through the twentieth century and its role in neoliberal economic reforms. Our analysis then delves into conceptualizing the neoliberal mode of regulation, emphasizing the role it gives to subjectivity. Finally, we propose a theoretical framework integrating Foucault’s “technologies of the self” and Lacan’s concept of “fantasy” to conceptualize the relationship between neoliberalism and therapy culture. By relying on this framework, we will conclude that therapy culture serves as a governmental technology through which neoliberalism integrates subjectivity into the process of capital accumulation.

KEYWORDS
subjectivity, therapy culture, neoliberalism, apparatus, Foucault, Lacan, fantasy, technologies of the self

Bufkin, S. The hunger strike as a biopolitical technology: re-reading the 1981 Irish republican prison protest (2024) Cultural Studies.

DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2024.2405584

Abstract

This article uses the case of the 1981 Irish republican prison protest to show that indefinite hunger strikes can force Euromodern states to the negotiating table by undercutting their commitment to good government. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower and political reason, I argue that these acts of willed self-starvation exert pressure on state officials by exploiting a tension between the modern state’s juridical claim to sovereignty and its biopolitical investment in fostering life. In the case of the famed IRA hunger strike on the H-Blocks, the archive shows that the Thatcher government experienced more pressure to reach a negotiated settlement than the prime minister or her top advisers publicly acknowledged. Such pressure, however, stemmed not from a moral or humanitarian investment in saving the individual hunger strikers’ lives, but instead from officials’ biopolitical concern that the protest was undermining British attempts to restore ‘life as usual’ in the conflicted region. Ultimately, Thatcher was willing to let ten of the Irish republican strikers die rather than grant them any concessions that might indicate they were political prisoners. The article closes by showing how an indefinite hunger strike’s efficacy is often foreclosed in securitized and postcolonial contexts like that of Northern Ireland, where the protesters can be framed as a ‘biopolitical remainder’ that is allowed to die so that the broader society might thrive. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
biopolitics; Foucault; Hunger strike; Northern Ireland; protest; Troubles

Daniel Whistler and Mark Sinclair, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2024

-A rich and authoritative guide to French philosophy since 1800
-No other book gives such broad coverage of modern French philosophy
-Discusses the ideas in their historical context
-Written by an international team of specialists in French philosophy and its history

French philosophy is an internationally celebrated national philosophical tradition, and this Oxford Handbook offers a comprehensive approach to its history since 1800. The Handbook features essays written by renowned international specialists, illuminating key movements and positions, themes and thinkers in nineteenth-, twentieth- and even twenty-first-century French philosophy. The volume takes into account developments in recent historical scholarship by broadening the notion of Modern French Philosophy in two ways.

Whereas recent approaches in the field have often ignored early nineteenth-century developments, this volume offers comprehensive treatment of French thought of this period in order to grasp better later developments. Moreover, the volume extends the canon at the other end of the period of Modern French Philosophy by including work on philosophers who have come to prominence only in the last ten or twenty years. The volume takes ‘French philosophy’ in a broad sense to include all philosophy carried out in France over the last 200 years, and it illuminates the institutional and cultural background of this national philosophical tradition in such a way as to provide a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of its unity and of its more famous moments in the twentieth century.

Miotto, M. & Daflon, Alessandra (eds.) (2024). Corpo, vida e biopolítica: encontros extensionistas em torno de Michel Foucault. Cachoeirinha: Editora Fi.

Open access

O livro que o leitor tem em mãos é resultado do I e II Encontro de Estudos sobre Michel Foucault, eventos nacionais ocorridos em 2020-2021 e organizados pelo projeto de extensão da UFF – IHS – RPS intitulado “Introdução ao pensamento de Michel Foucault – Grupo de Estudos Jaguar do Fucô”, coordenado por Alessandra Daflon e Marcio Miotto. Os temas dos dois eventos foram “História da Sexualidade e Biopolítica” e “Corpo e Vida em Foucault”. Os capítulos aqui reunidos desdobram as temáticas do “corpo”, da “vida” e da “biopolítica” em assuntos que percorrem a epistemologia das ciências da vida, a arqueologia foucaultiana das ciências empíricas, a crítica de Foucault à psicanálise, a questão da loucura e da psiquiatria em torno da mulher e das questões de gênero, os dispositivos de segurança e biopolíticos envolvendo a noção de população, as relações entre subjetividade e verdade, o problema do governo de si e dos outros e as novas publicações atribuídas a Foucault desde a recente publicação de As Confissões da Carne. As contribuições – de Gustavo Caponi (UFSC), José Ternes (UFG), Pedro Cattapan (UFF), Sandra Caponi (UFSC), Regiane Collares (UFCA), Fabio Gesueli (UNICAMP) e Malcom Rodrigues (UEFS/UFBA) contribuem com diversas discussões em torno de Foucault. Elas fomentaram verdadeiros diálogos extensionistas a partir dos estudantes de graduação da UFF. O livro é dedicado a Roberto Machado e Heliana Conde, entusiastas do evento e do grupo de extensão.

Capítulos:

Gustavo A. Caponi – Da vida como causa à vida como efeito: do vitalismo de Xavier Bichat ao determinismo experimental de Claude Bernard

José Ternes – Conhecimento e vida

Pedro Cattapan – As críticas foucaultianas da hipótese repressiva e do tema da lei na psicanálise

Sandra Caponi – Gênero e psiquiatria: os estigmas das loucuras femininas

Regiane Lorenzetti Collares – Vidas desejantes e vidas indesejáveis em Foucault

Fábio Gonzaga Gesueli – Agostinho e o diabo do corpo: uma leitura da libidinização do sexo em As Confissões da Carne

Malcom Guimarães Rodrigues – Foucault, a genealogia da vontade e o problema da liberdade

Zeytin, E.
Constructivist heterotopia or taylorist dystopia? Layers of cinematic space in Chaplin’s “modern times”(2024) Architecture in Cinema, Editors: Nevnihal Erdoğan, Hikmet Temel Akarsu , Bentham Books, pp. 120-128.

Abstract
In a metaphorical reading, the industrialized modern city of Modern Times is a gigantic factory designed to produce the modern man. It tries to regulate the movements of the body, actions, and mind through modernist spatial layouts of institutions such as factories, hospitals, and prisons. In this respect, the film can be seen as a criticism of modern architecture and feedback for architects about the consequences of the modernist approach. On the other hand, it would not be right to look for the spatial approaches of the modern age only in the cinematic space of the film. The film studio where the film was produced is also the product of modernism. In Chaplin’s silent cinema; the film set is not only background for the actions of the actors, but also a part and catalyst of their creative and spontaneous performance. Therefore, ironically, the criticism of the mechanizing effect of modern architecture on the body was produced through the constructivist modern stages of the silent film studios. This study examines these two different aspects of modern architecture: the modernist disciplinary approach and the constructivist avant-garde approach, through the cinematic space and production space of the film Modern Times. By using Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary society and heterotopia, and based on Chaplin’s memoirs as a witness of the modern era, the study aims to analyze different layers of modern architecture. © 2024 Bentham Science Publishers. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Adaptive space; Biopolitics; Cinematic space; Constructivist architecture; Disciplinary society; Fordism; Foucault; Heterotopia; Industrial architecture; Industrial architecture; Industrialized city; Mechanization of the body; Modern city; Modernist architecture; Panopticon; Set design; Silent movie; Studio; Taylorism; Theatrical space

Forlenza, R., Thomassen, B.
Christian democracy as political spirituality: transcendence as transformation—Italian politics, 1942–1953 (2024) Politics and Religion

DOI: 10.1017/S1755048324000063

Abstract
This article deals with the transformation of Catholic politics in Italy between 1942 and 1945 and the emergence of Christian Democracy as the dominant political party in the postwar years. It analyzes how Catholic politicians turned from reactionary critics of democracy to its champion. The article foregrounds a dimension that has not been given sufficient attention in scholarly works on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy, namely the religious content of thought. In the experiences of politicians and thinkers living through Fascism and war, transcendence and spirituality emerged as new markers of certainty that came to re-direct and ground democracy. Our conceptual argument is that Christian Democracy can be understood as a distinct form of “political spirituality,” pace Foucault. The article further shows how this political spirituality became “applied” in a series of ways in the immediate postwar period. © The Author(s), 2024.

Author Keywords

Christian Democracy; democratic transition; political spirituality; religious politics; war experiences