Foucault News

Nainani, D. The spatio-legality of corporate sovereignty in AppleTV+‘s Severance (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

18 February 2025

Nainani, D.
The spatio-legality of corporate sovereignty in AppleTV+‘s Severance
(2025) Science Fiction as Legal Imaginary. Edited By Alex Green, Mitchell Travis, Kieran Tranter, Routledge, pp. 293-314.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003412274-17

Abstract
In the Apple TV+ drama Severance, both the corporate and the human body are reimagined in terms of its legal personhood and identity. Using a critical legal geography approach, this chapter studies both Lumon Industries (the corporation depicted in the show) and the real-life ‘everything store’ of Amazon to explore how corporate sovereignty is spatio-legally imagined and portrayed in fiction and in reality. It does so by ‘reading’ the show alongside numerous legal challenges initiated by Amazon warehouse workers against Michel Foucault’s work on power and Hans Lindahl’s theory on the legal ordering of space. The chapter therefore traces the spatio-legal aspects of how power is exercised by both fictional (Lumon Industries) and real (Amazon) modern corporate sovereigns in three ways: (1) how they render employee bodies as disposable while tethering them to the corporate bodily assemblage; (2) how they use corporate goods as objects to regulate employee behaviour; and (3) how they use corporate property to govern the spatial practices of employees. It then looks at how the formation of a corporate code that enables these forms of power is made possible through the creation of a corporate legal order, and how Lumon imagines a world where such an order cannot be challenged.

materiali foucaultiani, gennaio-dicembre 2022 (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 February 2025

materiali foucaultiani
volume XI, numero 21-22 (gennaio-dicembre 2022) Published January 2025

SOMMARIO
L’impulsion Nietzsche.
sous la direction de Michèle Cohen-Halimi et Orazio Irrera

Introduction. « L’impulsion Nietzsche » chez Michel Foucault (pp. 5-10)
Michèle Cohen-Halimi et Orazio Irrera

Repenser l’espace, pluraliser le temps. La pensée de Nietzsche entre Foucault et l’École des Annales (pp. 11-46)
Gabriel Pochapski

Aux sources d’une mésentente. Michel Foucault entre la « méthode Nietzsche » et les géographies françaises (pp. 47-73)
Alessandro Falconieri

La généalogie et les animaux. Une lecture croisée des pensées de Nietzsche et Foucault (pp. 75-109)
Josué Imanol Lopez Barrios

« Übung, Übung, Übung ! ». Ἄσκησις et idéaux ascétiques chez Nietzsche : réponse à une critique de Foucault (pp. 111-144)
Gennaro Boccolino

Les ruses de l’intelligence et le partage philosophie-rhétorique chez Foucault et Nietzsche (pp. 145-198)
Camila Ginés

Un nietzschianesimo senza riserve. La volontà di potenza nel dispositivo del potere pastorale (pp. 199-224)
Roberto Nigro

Saggi

Variations foucaldiennes sur le thème du travail, entre assujettissement et subjectivation (pp. 227-244)
Tiziana Faitini

Foucault et le projet d’une « Histoire de l’amitié ». Enjeux, problèmes, ruines (pp. 245-265)
Lorenzo Petrachi

Vies queer. De la théâtralité cynique à la théâtralité queer (pp. 267-284)
Antoine Alario

Gabriel Pochapski, Repenser l’espace, pluraliser le temps. La pensée de Nietzsche entre Foucault et l’École des Annales – 2022 (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 February 2025

Gabriel Pochapski, Repenser l’espace, pluraliser le temps.
La pensée de Nietzsche entre Foucault et l’École des Annales
materiali foucaultiani, a. XI, n. 21-22, gennaio-dicembre 2022, pp. 11-46. Issue released in January 2025.

Abstract
Rethinking space, pluralizing time. Nietzsche’s Thought Between Foucault and the École des Annales This article aims to examine the uses of Nietzsche’s thought by Foucault and the École des Annales, exploring the effects of the former’s philosophy on how the latter rethought history spatially. On the one hand, it seeks to analyze the reception of Nietzschean ideas within the works of Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, and Fernand Braudel, insofar as these authors inaugurated a new approach to space in French historiography. On the other hand, the article aims to contextualize the relationships established by Foucault with Les Annales, referencing his reading notes from the 1950s deposited at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) and his texts from the 1970s, which propose a history of spaces as a history of powers. Nietzsche’s philosophy will thus be employed as a framework for reflecting on the spatio-temporal perspectives developed by these thinkers.

Keywords:
École des Annales, Historiography, Historical time, Nietzsche, Space

Résumé
Repenser l’espace, pluraliser le temps. La pensée de Nietzsche entre Foucault et l’École des Annales Cet article s’intéresse aux usages de la pensée de Nietzsche par Foucault et par l’École des Annales, en examinant les effets de la philosophie nietzschéenne sur les façons dont Foucault a repensé spatialement l’histoire. D’une part, il s’agit de discuter la réception des idées nietzschéennes au sein des travaux de Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre et Fernand Braudel, dans la mesure où ils inaugurèrent une nouvelle approche de l’espace dans l’historiographie française. D’autre part, l’article cherche à contextualiser les relations établies par Foucault avec les Annales en prenant appui sur ses notes de lecture des années 1950 déposées à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) et sur ses textes des années 1970, qui proposent une histoire des espaces en tant qu’histoire des pouvoirs. Nous nous servirons ainsi de la philosophie de Nietzsche comme une grille d’analyse afin de réfléchir sur les perspectives spatio-temporelles développées par tous ces penseurs.

Mots clés :
École des Annales, Espace, Historiographie, Nietzsche, Temps historique

Geller, P.L. In Small Plastic Things Forgotten: The Contradictions and Consequences of Biopower (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 February 2025

Geller, P.L.
In Small Plastic Things Forgotten: The Contradictions and Consequences of Biopower
(2025) In The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Plastics Edited By Genevieve Godin, Þóra Pétursdóttir, Estelle Praet, John Schofield, Routledge, pp. 152-166.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272311-10

Abstract
This chapter explores the contradictions raised by and consequences of small plastic things forgotten that were born from scientific innovation, entrepreneurial incentive, and concern for public health. Here, I consider a few in depth (e.g. condom, surgical mask). To frame my discussion, I draw on ideas about biopower. I am less interested in thinking about a disciplinary anatomo-politics of the human body and more concerned with regulatory techniques that impact species bodies, to paraphrase Michel Foucault. Biopowered plastic things evoke contradictory responses – compliance and resistance – especially in times of public health crises. Lost in all of the political vacillating, however, is a discussion of deep-time consequences. That is, despite their intended disposability and beneficence, the mobility, degradation, and toxicity of biopowered plastic hyperobjects, a concept gifted by Timothy Morton, will exert long-term control over humans, non-humans, and ecosystems. For this reason, they require us to expand what exactly the bio in biopower encompasses. They also attest to biocultural entanglements, which will result in unanticipated outcomes. Plastics relates information about plasticity, of species and the planet. For Homo sapiens, whether adaptability (a new biological and ontological normal), a compromised condition (a pathological reaction), or both, only future archaeology will tell.

Butchart, G.C. Poststructuralism: A Philosophy of Difference (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

12 February 2025

Butchart, G.C.
Poststructuralism: A Philosophy of Difference,
(2025) In The Handbook of Communication Ethics. Edited By Amit Pinchevski, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Jason Hannan, Second Edition, Routledge, pp. 93-107.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003274506-9

Abstract
This chapter offers an overview of poststructuralism as relevant to media and communication ethics. Research informed by poststructuralist thinking typically emphasizes alterity over identity, plurality over singularity, reception and interpretation over authorship and transmission, as well as conflict and disagreement as productive conditions of community. The chapter focuses on “difference” as the main conceptual point at which several strands of this tradition converge. It asks: What is a philosophy of difference? How does difference work to construct identity and produce meaning? How do structuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to difference, language, and subjectivity relate to and differ from poststructuralist and hermeneutic conceptions of discourse and otherness? The chapter rehearses how difference is theorized by Levinas, Saussure, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Butler, Deleuze, Laclau, Mouffe, and others, offering a guide to the analytical style of poststructuralism that underpins communication and media ethics.

Clare O’Farrell, Review: Michel Foucault, Entretiens radiophoniques (Radio Interviews) 1961-1983 (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 February 2025

Review: Michel Foucault, Entretiens radiophoniques (Radio Interviews) 1961-1983

Liz Teston (ed), Public Interiority Exploring Interiors in the Public Realm (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 February 2025

Liz Teston (ed), Public Interiority Exploring Interiors in the Public Realm, Routledge, 2024

Public Interiority reconsiders the limits of the interior and its perceived spaces, exploring the notion that interior conditions can exist within an exterior environment, and therefore challenging the very foundations of the interior architecture field.

Public Interiority contains eight chapters and 16 visual essays that document the historical, material, and social conditions in contemporary cities, reconsidering the limits of the interior, resiliency in design, spatial perception, and territories within curated urban exteriors. Topics include the supergraphics of Black Lives Matter protests, privacy and US Supreme Court landmark cases, Instagram as a quasi-public interior, domestic simulation in Victorian curative environments, the micro-urban commons of public transit, and the timely study uncovering Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s approach to “urban interior designing,” among many others.

Including scholarly and visual essays by experts from a range of disciplines, including architecture, interior architecture, landscape architecture, exhibition design, craft and the visual arts, and design history and theory, this volume will be a helpful resource for all those upper-level students and scholars working in these related fields.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Moreno-Mulet, C. et al, Transgressive Acts: Michel Foucault’s Lessons on Resistance for Nurses (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 February 2025

Moreno-Mulet, C., Valdivielso-Navarro, J., Miró-Bonet, M., Carrero-Planells, A., Gastaldo, D.
Transgressive Acts: Michel Foucault’s Lessons on Resistance for Nurses
(2025) Nursing Philosophy, 26 (1), art. no. e70008

DOI: 10.1111/nup.70008

Abstract
In this paper, we bring together Foucault’s biography and oeuvre to explore key concepts that support the analysis of nurses’ acts of resistance. Foucault reflected on the power relations taking place in health services, making his contribution especially useful for the analysis of resistance in this context. Over three decades, he proposed a nonnormative philosophy while concomitantly engaging in transgressive practices guided by values such as human rights and social justice. Hence, Foucault’s philosophy and public activism are an apparent contradiction, but we argue that when analysed together they allow for a different understanding of his work. We describe the evolution of the concept of resistance in Foucault’s work, supported by the approaches of Brent Picket (1996) and Miguel Morey (2013).

Foucault started his work considering the idea of transgressiveness as it connects to being at the margins of society. He then spent considerable time elaborating the concept of power and identifying resistance strategies as forms of power exercise. In doing so, he considered that people engage with social change from multiple positions, including limited desire for change, fomenting reforms, or engaging in everyday revolutionary acts. As he further elaborated on power relations and defined resistance, Foucault asserted that resistance involves both repressive and productive dimensions of power, governance of biological life, state governance, and deliberate practices of illegalisms. Finally, Foucault shifted his attention to the freedom of ethical subjects, proposing the use of counter-conduct and counter-discourses to speak truth against oppression. Such framework offers a comprehensive lens for analysing nurses’ acts of resistance within the complexities of the healthcare system and in society. In summary, Foucault’s conceptual framework on resistance expands the role of nurses, to understand them not only as caregivers, but also as political agents capable of confronting and transforming oppressive institutional practices. © 2024 The Author(s). Nursing Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Author Keywords
ethics; Foucault; healthcare; nursing philosophy; power; resistance

Index Keywords
behavior, human, nurse, philosophy, psychology; Humans, Nurses, Philosophy, Nursing, Power, Psychological

Open access directories

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

5 February 2025

Open access directories
A new resource page on Foucault News

[Editor]: Accessing electronically published scholarly material can be difficult for those with no formal affiliation to a university – and this includes former long-standing staff members. Even people working within the system can run into problems of access for a variety of reasons. This is usually more to do with the rules set in place by the large commercial publishers of books and databases rather than individual university libraries, who are often struggling to do their best with limited resources.

The Open access movement in its various iterations seeks to address this problem. I have put together this page to assist in finding the relevant directories. The page can be found under the Foucault Resources tab at the top of the site. Do let me know either via email or in the comments on the page if anything is missing.

Hiba, B. If you don’t problematize it, you won’t see it, and you won’t understand it (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

3 February 2025

Hiba, B.
If you don’t problematize it, you won’t see it, and you won’t understand it
(2025) New Ideas in Psychology, 77, art. no. 101141

DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101141

Abstract
This paper critically redefines problematization as both a research method and a transformative approach to critical thinking, positioning it as a pivotal modus operandi that transcends the limitations of conventional research practices. Diverging from traditional established research methods focused on gap-spotting and incremental contributions, this paper underscores problematization’s unique capacity to interrogate and disrupt the foundational assumptions underpinning existing knowledge structures. By doing so, it drives researchers to reimagine and expand the horizons of scholarly inquiry. Grounded in the intellectual contributions of Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx, Heidegger, Deleuze, and Lacan, this paper addresses the theoretical limitations of the discourse about problematization, often clouded by complex philosophical jargon, while dismantling misconceptions about its nature and application. Beyond theoretical exploration, this paper introduces a practical framework that integrates innovative metaphors, discursive clarity, and actionable strategies.

This framework is tailored to empower doctoral students and early-career researchers, equipping them with a taxonomy of epistemological and critical questions for effectively problematizing research problems. The research questions guiding this paper investigate how problematization can be reinterpreted and operationalized to challenge the ideological and power dynamics within dominant research paradigms. Furthermore, this paper explores how a multi-modal approach—combining rhizomatic, genealogical, visual, metaphorical, and ecological thinking—can deepen the practice of problematization. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
Ecological thinking; Genealogical thinking; Ideology; Metaphorical thinking; Power dynamics; Problematization; Research methodology; Rhizomatic thinking