Foucault News

Adorno, Foucault and the Critique of the West by Deborah Cook, forthcoming with Verso, October 2018

Adorno, Foucault, and the Critique of the West argues that critical theory continues to offer valuable resources for critique and contestation during this turbulent period in our history. To assess these resources, it examines the work of two of the twentieth century’s more prominent social theorists: Theodor W. Adorno and Michel Foucault. Although Adorno was situated squarely in the Marxist tradition that Foucault would occasionally challenge, Cook demonstrates that their critiques of our current predicament are complementary in important respects. Among other things, they converge in their focus on the historical conditions—economic in Adorno and political in Foucault—that gave rise to the racist and authoritarian tendencies that continue to blight the West. But this book will also show that as Adorno and Foucault plumb the economic and political forces that have shaped our identities…

Also with Verso, the long overdue translation of Thomas Lemke, A Critique of Political Reason: Foucault’s Analysis of Modern Governmentality– forthcoming in January 2019.

Lemke offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of Michel Foucault’s work on power and government from 1970 until his death in 1984. He convincingly argues, using material that has only partly been translated into English, that Foucault’s concern with ethics and forms of subjectivation is always already integrated into his political concerns and his analytics of power. The book also shows how the concept of government was taken up in different lines of research in France before it gave rise to “governmentality studies” in the anglophone world. A Critique of Political Reason provides a clear and well-structured exposition that is theoretically challenging but also accessible for a wider audience. Thus, the book can be read both as an original examination of Foucault’s concept of…

I gave a talk about Foucault’s Les aveux de la chair on May 9th at the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought, Goldsmiths University. Full details here.

The talk was based on my review essay on the book, published on the Theory, Culture & Societywebsite. If you’ve read that review, then there is little in the talk beyond it, but since a couple of people asked, an audio recording of the talk is available here.

In February 2018 the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality was finally published. Les Aveux de la chair [Confessions of the Flesh] was edited by Frédéric Gros, and appeared in the same Gallimard series as volumes 1, 2 and 3. The book treats the early Christian Church Fathers of the 2^nd-5^th century. This talk will discuss the book in relation to Foucault’s other work, showing how it sits…

I’m a lecturer in Psychology and I’ve used Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) in my own research on masculinity and health. On 2nd May 2018 I led a FDA workshop for staff and PhD students at St.Mary’s University. A video of the workshop is below, and might be of use to qualitative researchers considering using or teaching discourses analysis.

Building on Michel Foucault’s work on power, discourse, knowledge and language, FDA offers critical analyses of a range of multi-media texts, practices and social interactions.

In the workshop, participants explored the key principles of social constructionism and Foucault’s work which underpin this method. Workshop participants then worked in small groups to analyse a contemporary pop video by ‘Plan B’. The workshop concluded with a discussion of how the method could be integrated into the workshop participants’ ongoing research.

Workshop Resources:

A Theoretical and Hands-on Introduction to Foucauldian Discourse Analysis –…