Foucault News

Digital humanities e Archeologia del sapere: quale dialogo? (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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21 October 2017

Seminar of Historical Epistemology (SHE)
“Digital humanities e Archeologia del sapere: quale dialogo?”

Università degli Studi di Milano, Aula Malliani
Milano, 9 Novembre 2017

Facebook page on workshop

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9.00-9.30 Apertura lavori

9.30-10.30_Utopia archeologica e Digital Humanities : verso una storia materiale delle idee?

Luca PALTRINIERI – Université des Rennes 1

11.00-12.00_Penser la matérialité du travail intellectuel avec Foucault

Jean-François BERT – Université de Lausanne

14.30-15.30_Per una critica genealogica della ragione computazionale nelle Digital Humanities

Teresa NUMERICO – Università di Roma Tre

16.00-17.00_ Documenti e monumenti. Qualche esperienza personale nel campo delle Digital Humanities

Guido BONINO – Università di Torino

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Organizzazione

Eugenio Petrovich / eugenio.petrovich@unimi.it Matteo Vagelli / matteo.vagelli@univ-paris1.fr

Il workshop è realizzato grazie al sostegno della Scuola di Dottorato in Filosofia e Scienze dell’Uomo dell’Università di Milano, dell’Institut Français e dell’Ambasciata di Francia a Roma.

Who’s Looking At You? (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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21 October 2017

Who’s Looking At You? BBC 4 podcast, 17 October 2017

Editor’s note: Apart from the Panoptic photo, not sure how much Foucault content is here, but may be of interest in the wake of Foucault’s work.

Once upon a time, total surveillance was the province of George Orwell and totalitarian states, but we now live in a world where oceans of data are gathered from us every day by the wondrous digital devices we have admitted to our homes and that we carry with us everywhere. At the same time, our governments want us to let them follow everything we do to root out evil before it can strike. If you have nothing to hide, do you really have nothing to fear?

In Who’s Looking At You , novelist and occasional futurist Nick Harkaway argues surveillance has reached a new pitch of penetration and sophistication and we need to talk about it before it’s too late.

This is our brave new world: data from pacemakers are used in criminal prosecutions as evidence, the former head of the CIA admits ‘we kill people based on meta-data,’ and scientists celebrate pulling a clear image of a face directly from a monkey’s brain.
Where does it end, and what does it mean? Surveillance used to end at our front door, now not even the brain is beyond the prying eyes of an information-hungry world. The application of big data brings many benefits and has the potential to make us wealthier, keep us healthier and ensure we are safer – but only if we the citizens are in control.
The programme uses rich archive to illustrate how the ‘watchers’ have adapted to technology that has super-charged the opportunity to snoop. It examines the arguments of those who claim the right to keep their secrets while demanding that we the people give up more and more of ours. Transparency for the masses? Or simple necessity in a chaotic technological future? What happens to us, to our choices under the all-seeing eye? One thing is certain: if we don’t make choices about surveillance, they will be made for us.

Stefanos Geroulanos, Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present – now out with Stanford UP (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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20 October 2017

Progressive Geographies

Stefanos Geroulanos, Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present is now out with Stanford University Press.

This book returns to a time and place when the concept of transparency was met with deep suspicion. It offers a panorama of postwar French thought where attempts to show the perils of transparency in politics, ethics, and knowledge led to major conceptual inventions, many of which we now take for granted.
Between 1945 and 1985, academics, artists, revolutionaries, and state functionaries spoke of transparency in pejorative terms. Associating it with the prying eyes of totalitarian governments, they undertook a critical project against it—in education, policing, social psychology, economic policy, and the management of information. Focusing on Sartre, Lacan, Canguilhem, Lévi-Strauss, Leroi-Gourhan, Foucault, Derrida, and others, Transparency in Postwar France explores the work of ethicists, who proposed that individuals are transparent neither to each other nor to themselves, and philosophers, who clamored…

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Politics of life itself and the future of medical practices: dialogues with Nikolas Rose (Part 3) (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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20 October 2017

Sergio Resende Carvalho,Ricardo Rodrigues Teixeira, Politics of life itself and the future of medical practices: dialogues with Nikolas Rose (Part 3), Interface – Comunicação, Saúde, Educação
On-line version ISSN 1807-5762
Interface (Botucatu) vol.21 no.60 Botucatu Jan./Mar. 2017

http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.0848

Extract

This is the third and last interview with Nikolas Rose which we sought to explore important aspects of his wide academic production. At the first interview1 we explore aspects about State, Public Policy and Health and their relation with the concept of governmentality. On the second2 on we discussed the role of psy’s knowledge and practices in the government of conduct. I this last one we had the opportunities to reflect with Rose on his current researches about the transformations of life sciences, biomedicine, neurosciences relating those changes with the clinical practices and their impact upon the Health Systems.

POLITICS OF LIFE ITSELF AND A NEW STYLE OF THOUGHT

After affirming that ‘the truth discourse of contemporary genomics no longer sees genes as the hidden entities that determine us” and that new technologies had open ‘“the gene” to knowledge and technique at the molecular level”, you affirm that we are entering a new ‘style of thought’ (ways to think, see and intervene) where the molecularization of vitality is central to it, that at this molecular level life itself has become open to politics, that biology is not destiny but opportunity. Can you detail this idea for us?

Well, there are two parts to that question. The first part is about determinism and biological determinism. So let me start by saying a little bit about that. I suppose genetics is the clearest example of the retreat of biological determinism. Genetic determinism, the idea that the complement of genes with which an individual is born shapes inescapably their capacities, both physical and mental, has if not completely disappeared at least become significantly weakened. We know that this idea that the gene is like a single unit of DNA and all the genes are stretched out like beads on a string on the chromosomes and that each gene determines a particular protein which creates a particular characteristic. We know that this idea has been disproved by developments in genomics following the human genome project. So now we know that humans do not have 100 000 or perhaps even 300 000 genes that were hypothesized. They have about 20 to 25 000 coding sequences, and that these sequences are spread across many parts of the genome, they can be read in many different ways and what’s crucial is not so much the genes, but how they are activated. Secondly, we know, and this is now becoming a cliché of what’s called epigenetics, we know that what’s crucial is not the DNA that you are born with, but how this is activated or de-activated across a lifetime in a process called methylation which enables the DNA sequence to produce its effects. We know that these epigenetic processes are shaped in all sorts of ways by the relationship between the organism and its milieu. In fact, developmental geneticists have known this known this for many decades, but now this has become a much more salient way of trying to understand how genes are expressed in organisms across a lifetime. All these and many other developments suggest that genetic determinism, as a general programme for understanding not only biological organisms but their destiny is no longer the style of thought that characterises contemporary genetics.

Stuart Elden, Daniel Defert on the Foucault-Sartre relation – a 1990 letter (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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19 October 2017

Progressive Geographies

product_9782070720392_195x320 This was not a source I knew about before: Daniel Defert, “Lettre à Claude Lanzmann”, Les Temps Modernes, No 531-533, Vol 2, 1990, pp. 1201-1206.

It’s a short piece in a massive 1400 page collection devoted to Sartre, ten years after his death. Defert was asked for a contribution but replied with a long letter, which he says can be used however the recipient wants. They decided to publish it.

As well as discussing the intellectual disagreements between the two around the publication of Foucault’s Les mots et les choses [The Order of Things], and extending to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Defert says a bit about their overlapping political commitments in the 1970s. I was looking at it because it has a minor point about a 1950s text I’m currently working on, but it would have been a useful source when I was working on

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Special Section: Foucault and religion: Critical engagements (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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19 October 2017

Special Section: Foucault and religion: Critical engagements (2017), Critical Research on Religion, Volume 5, Issue 2, August 2017

Contents

A genealogy of critique: From parrhesia to prophecy
Tom Boland, Paul Clogher
First Published February 10, 2017; pp. 116–132

Reexamining Foucault on confession and obedience: Peter Schaefer’s Radical Pietism as counter-conduct
Elisa Heinämäki
First Published May 7, 2017; pp. 133–150

Pastoral power, sovereignty and class: Church, tithe and simony in Quebec
Bruce Curtis
First Published July 28, 2017; pp. 151–169

Journalistic challenges of the public and private: Exploring professional and ethical norms (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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18 October 2017

Stevens, Jeremy and Fuller, Glen. Journalistic challenges of the public and private: Exploring professional and ethical norms [online]. Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 39, No. 1, Jul 2017: 113-125.

Authors’ note: This article develops the idea of ‘commentary as method’. ‘Commentary’ is derived from Foucault’s Discourse on Language and related texts and reworked into a method for engaging with ‘commentary’ texts assembled into large corpus of materials (i.e. via ‘big data’ methods).

Abstract:
Journalism has been described as a “profession in a permanent process of becoming” (Deuze and Witschge, 2017, p. 13). This paper investigates a decade of commentary (2006-2015) from news media industry “grey literature” that engages with the ongoing rearticulation of professional norms. We focus on the ethical challenges resulting from changes in part wrought by social media-based communications technologies. Our archive consists of 1156 articles published through US-based Poynter Institute, Nieman Lab and Nieman Reports. Using a “hybrid methodology” (Lewis, Zamith, and Hermida, 2013), we carried out a close reading discourse analysis of the commentary. Our initial goal was to understand the shift in the character of discourse from one organised around a single set of changes (“the digital”, “the internet”, and so on) to a more multi-dimensional appreciation of such changes. The character of critical commentary itself changes at various points in the archive to engage with problems that are now familiar. These include commentary about the verification of information and the “truth”, sourcing techniques, the blurring of public and private spheres and changing behaviours of publicity. Indeed, these ethical and professional challenges for journalists are not new for the most part. Our key finding is that there is a struggle to rearticulate “traditional” norms in order to adapt to the shifting dynamics of online networked media and their ethical and professional implications. In an era of ongoing change, this normative reflex demands further attention.

Obsessional subjectivity in societies of discipline and control (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

17 October 2017

Roberts, J.L.
Obsessional subjectivity in societies of discipline and control
(2017) Theory and Psychology, 27 (5), pp. 622-642.

DOI: 10.1177/0959354317716308

Abstract
Drawing on the work of the later Foucault, especially that concerning disciplinary power and bio-power, as well as Deleuze on the emergence of “societies of control,” this article traces the trajectory of obsessional subjectivity from its emergence as a firmly psychiatric category within a disciplinary matrix (i.e., monomania) toward its contemporary position within the bio-political sphere (i.e., obsessional neurosis and obsessive–compulsive disorder) in societies of control. It is argued—pursuant to Lacanian formulations—that obsessional neurosis simultaneously contributes to the efficacy of the workings of bio-power in imagining, vis-à-vis university discourse, a psychologized and psycho-biographical subject knowable and traceable, while also conferring an openness in being that would surmount the dysfunctionality inhering in repetitious thinking and doubt. The aim of this essay is to discern the structural dimensions of mechanisms of obsessional subjection as they implicate certain changing forms of power, and specifically that of our current predicament in the West, in a world where desire and the production of knowledge are governed through bio-power. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.

Author Keywords
consciousness; history; philosophy; psychotherapy; theory

A station in motion: Termini as heterotopia (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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16 October 2017

Brioni, S.
A station in motion: Termini as heterotopia
(2017) Italian Studies, 72 (4), pp. 443-454.

DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2017.1370792

Abstract
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s definition of heterotopia, the article analyses the filmic and literary representation of Stazione Termini, Rome’s main train station. The Fascist architectural project, which mirrors an idea of the nation as homogeneous, monolithic, and white, begins to be challenged in the post-World War II representations of Termini which depict the station as the place where liminal and unexpected experiences can occur and accepted moral codes of behaviour are put into question. The article then focuses on the recent representation of Termini as a key place of contact with and among immigrants. While migration literature describes the station as a place of belonging, other contemporary representations of Termini depict it as a non-place, revealing the fear of a globalised world. The representation of Termini either as an isolated place in the urban geography of Rome or as a place that mirrors the multicultural reality of present-day Italy highlights a tension between different ways of practicing the same space. © 2017 The Society for Italian Studies.

Author Keywords
Colonial legacy; Heterotopia; Migration; Non-place; Rome; Train station; Urban geography

CFP: Foucault face à la norme (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

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16 October 2017

APPEL A COMMUNICATIONS
COLLOQUE “FOUCAULT FACE A LA NORME”

Faculté de droit d’Orléans, Jeudi 15 et vendredi 16 novembre 2018

Le colloque “Foucault face à la norme” s’inscrit dans une série de colloques ambitionnant de questionner un auteur, sa trajectoire de vie autant que son oeuvre, sur la question des normes telle qu’elle se pose avec acuité dans nos sociétés contemporaines.

Enjeux.
La pensée de Foucault intéresse les juristes depuis son début. Interrogée maintes fois sous l’angle de la politique, du droit et plus particulièrement du droit pénal, l’oeuvre de Foucault est féconde pour la théorie du droit. Maintenant bien connue des spécialistes, elle laisse entrevoir son potentiel sur la question spécifique de l’évolution démesurée des normes tant privées que publiques dans nos sociétés. Tout l’enjeu de cette interrogation nouvelle consisterait alors à confronter l’oeuvre de Michel Foucault à la problématique des normes au-delà des disciplines. C’est dans ce décloisonnement que pourra le mieux être cerné l’originalité de sa pensée et surtout son caractère fécond pour la théorie du droit.

• Foucault peut-il offrir un cadre de pensée à la théorie du droit en prise avec la concurrence des autres normativités contemporaines, notamment celles de l’éthique, de la technologie numérique, du management, et de la gestion ?
• Existe-il en ce sens un concept foucaldien de la norme à même de mettre en dialogue ces normativités concurrentes et propre à dégager des enseignements pour un renouveau de la théorie du droit ?
• Dans quelle mesure la pensée de Foucault peut-elle nous aider à comprendre et agir sur le développement exponentiel des normes de toute nature que connaissent nos sociétés occidentales ?
• Son engagement politique et personnel durant sa vie dessine-t-il également une posture face à la norme susceptible de nous guider en tant que chercheur et citoyen ?

Perspectives.
Déjà initiée avec Roland Barthes (https://www.upicardie.fr/barthesvsnorme/), cette série de colloques se poursuit avec Michel Foucault sous le même format : un colloque interdisciplinaire et international sur deux jours réunissant des spécialistes de l’auteur toute discipline confondue et des juristes intéressés par faire le lien avec la théorie du droit. Ce questionnement de certains des auteurs les plus inspirants du XXe siècle, qui se poursuivra avec Deleuze et Derrida notamment, dessine des voies possibles de contournement, de lutte et d’affranchissement face à la norme. La série de colloques Face à la norme s’inscrit dans le thème de recherche sur la Mutation des normes du Centre de recherche juridique Pothier de l’Université d’Orléans et de l’axe de recherche Technique(s) et histoire de la norme du Centre de Droit Privé et de Sciences Criminelles de l’Université d’Amiens.

Les propositions, en anglais ou en français et limitées à 500 mots, sont à envoyer à l’adresse foucaultvsnorme@u-picardie.fr avant le 31 janvier 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS SYMPOSIUM FOUCAULT FACES THE NORM
Faculty of Law of Orleans, Thursday 15 and Friday 16 November 2018

ISSUES
Foucault’s thought has interested lawyers since its start. Frequently questioned from the point of view of politics, law and more particularly of criminal law, Foucault’s work is fruitful for the Law theory. Now well known to specialists, it reveals its potential on the specific issue of the disproportionate development of both private and public standards in our societies. Then, the challenge of this new question would be to confront Michel Foucault’s work with the problematic of norms above disciplines. This is in this departitioning that the originality of his thought, and especially his fertile character for the theory of law could be best determined.
¥ Can Foucault offer a framework of thought to the theory of law in competition with other contemporary normativities, in particular those of ethics, digital technology, and management?
¥ Is there, in this sense, a Foucauldian concept of the norm capable of putting into dialogue these competing normativities, and which could provide lessons for a renewal of the law theory ?
¥ To what extent can Foucault’s thought help us understand and act on the exponential development of norms of all kinds that our Western societies are experiencing?
¥ Does his lifelong political and personal commitment also draw a posture to the norm that can guide us as a researcher and a citizen?

PROSPECTS
The Foucault symposium facing the norm is part of a series of conferences confronting an author to the problematic of standard. Already initiated with Roland Barthes (https://www.u-picardie.fr/barthesvsnorme/), this series continues with this symposium devoted to Michel Foucault, which reiterates the same format: an interdisciplinary and international two-day symposium bringing together specialists of the author in all disciplines and lawyers interested in making the link with the law theory. The prospect of this series of conferences, which will continue with Deleuze, Derrida, Levinas, and then Bourdieu, outlines possible ways of bypassing, struggling, and emancipating from the norms, thought and lived by some of the most inspiring authors of the twentieth century. The series of conferences Facing the norm is part of the research theme on the mutation of norms of the Pothier Legal Research Center of the University of OrlŽans and of the Research Focus Technique(s) and history of the norm of the Center of Private Law and Criminal Sciences of the University of Amiens.

Proposals, in English or French and limited to 500 words, should be sent to foucaultvsnorme@u-picardie.fr before January 31, 2018