Foucault News

CFP: Foucault and Benjamin (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

26 January 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS

materiali foucaultiani journal / Associazione italiana Walter Benjamin

Materiali foucaultiani journal and the Italian Association “Walter Benjamin” launch a call for papers dedicated to a comparison between Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault.

MF journal proposes to open up new research pathways that jointly crisscross the works of Benjamin and Foucault, beyond the philosophical differences between the two authors. Indeed, we contend that despite their different philosophical horizon and conceptual constellations, both Benjamin and Foucault equip us with powerful tools for undertaking a critical analysis of our present time. In both cases, such a critique is carried on through a refusal of the concept of “progress” and of an understanding of history conceived as a linear and incessant process, as an accumulation of events taking place in an empty and heterogeneous time. Although in different ways, Benjamin and Foucault situate their work within a triangulation between philosophical thought, historical past and present which escapes the modern understanding of contemporaneity, as an epoch unrelated to the others. In Foucault, “contemporary reality” is the term which conveys/refers to in the best way to such a triangulation, designating the way in which, through a series of genealogical analyses, it is possible to produce and boost critical movements that transform the present. For Benjamin as well, a history which does not account for those who write it, and which separates the past from the present moment, is unavoidably the triumphing history of the winners. Therefore, according to Benjamin, the task of the historian consists in reconnecting past and present, through an understanding of contemporaneity that has considerable convergences with Foucault.

We welcome articles that shed light on the possible convergences between Benjamin’s thought and Foucault’s one, essays that develop the relationship between past, present and philosophical thought, as well as contributions that retrace new and different contact points between the two authors with the purpose of bringing to the fore the present relevance of their philosophical work.

In particular, we welcome contributions that find thematic constellations which are common to Benjamin and Foucault, although tackled from different standpoints, as for instance the following ones:

The relationship between the history and the present
The history of the present
Political power, economic power and religion
Reading of the poetics of Charles Baudelaire
Elaboration of the concept of modernity
Space and metropolis
Critique of capitalism
Critical comparison with the Frankfurt School

Abstracts of about 1000 words (in English, Italian or French) should be sent by February 15, 2018 to: redazione@materialifoucaultiani.org

Michel Foucault, Patrice Maniglier, Dork Zabunyan. Trans & Ed. Clare O’Farrell, Foucault at the Movies (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

5 comments

22 January 2018

Editor: I am pleased to announce a new book which I translated which will be out in August.

Foucault at the Movies
Michel Foucault, Patrice Maniglier, Dork Zabunyan. Translated and Edited by Clare O’Farrell
Columbia University Press, forthcoming July 2018

Michel Foucault’s work on film, although not extensive, compellingly illustrates the power of bringing his unique vision to bear on the subject and offers valuable insights into other aspects of his thought. Foucault at the Movies brings together all of Foucault’s commentary on film, some of it available for the first time in English, along with important contemporary analysis and further extensions of this work.

Patrice Maniglier and Dork Zabunyan situate Foucault’s writings on film in the context of the rest of his work as well as within a broad historical and philosophical framework. They detail how Foucault’s work directly or indirectly inspired both film critics and directors in surprising ways and discuss his ideas in relation to significant movements within film theory and practice. The book includes film reviews and discussions by Foucault as well as his interviews with the prestigious film magazine Cahiers du cinéma and other journals. Also included are his dialogues with the noted French feminist writer Hélène Cixous and film directors Werner Schroeter and René Féret. Throughout, Foucault and those he is in conversation with reflect on the relationship of film to history, the body, power and politics, knowledge, sexuality, aesthetics, and institutions of internment. Foucault at the Movies makes all of Foucault’s writings on film available to an English-speaking audience in one volume and offers detailed, up-to-date commentary, inviting us to go to the movies with Foucault.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Patrice Maniglier is a senior lecturer in the department of philosophy at the University of Paris–Nanterre.

Dork Zabunyan is professor of film studies at the University of Paris–8.

Clare O’Farrell is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. Her books include Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (1989) and Michel Foucault (2005).

Réal Fillion, Freedom, Responsibility, and the ‘American Foucault’ (2004)

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

21 January 2018

Réal Fillion, Freedom, Responsibility, and the ‘American Foucault’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Volume: 30 issue: 1, page(s): 115-126
January 1, 2004

https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453704039400

Abstract
Foucault’s work is rich enough to sustain multiple readings. I argue in this paper for the continued construction and maintenance of what I have called the ‘American Foucault’, whose principal preoccupation is with the question of how to be free within our contemporary political constraints and possibilities. (Such a Foucault can be found in the works of American writers such as W. E. Connolly, Todd May, and Thomas Dumm.) Appreciation of Foucault’s contribution to an understanding of freedom is too often hampered, however, by the insistence on the part of many of the most influential of Foucault’s critics (and some of his defenders) that his particular mode of thinking is ultimately too irresponsible. It is thought that Foucault’s refusal to account for the grounds of his work vitiates his overall project. I argue that, if we distinguish between the ‘account-ability’ demanded by his critics and the ‘response-ability’ that his work permits, we will be in a better position to appreciate the timeliness of his conception of freedom.

Keywords accountability, critique, Foucault, freedom, genealogy, responsibility, theory

Alexandre Lefebvre, The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

19 January 2018

Alexandre Lefebvre, The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought
Genealogy 2017, 1(1), 2;
https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1010002

Open access

Abstract
This article examines the reasons why Foucault thought that morality based on the care of the self died out in the modern age. I pay special attention to his contention that modern political thought was a key player in bringing about this demise. The essay consists of two parts. In Part One, I overview Foucault’s conception of the care of the self and situate it within his later work on ancient philosophy and culture. In Part Two, I turn to his remarks on the incompatibility between the ancient tradition of the care of the self and an ascendant modern political philosophy based on the notions of rights and the juridical subject. To conclude, I suggest that while Foucault may have overstated this compatibility he opened the door to consider how the care of the self could be taken up in the context of modern and contemporary political theory.

Keywords: Foucault; care of the self; political theory; rights; human rights

Paul Patton, Foucault on Power and Government (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

18 January 2018

Paul Patton, Foucault on Power and Government
Full text available on academia.edu

Abstract:
Foucault’s lectures in 1976 open with the statement of an intellectual crisis. They proceed to a series of questions about the nature of power and the ways that he has conceived of it up to this point: what is power? How is it exercised? Is it ultimately a relation of force? Only some of these questions are answered in the course of these lectures. His answer to the conceptual questions about the nature of power and the appropriate means to analyze it is not forthcoming until after the discovery of ‘governmentality’ in 1978 and his lectures on liberal and neoliberal governmentality in 1979. This talk aims to retrace his answers to these questions in the light of the published lectures and to examine the consequences of these answers for his overall approach to the analysis power, and for his analysis of liberal and neoliberal governmental power.

Issue: 3-4
Page Numbers: 57-76.
Publication Date: 2016
Publication Name: Sociological Problems (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Special Issue edited by Antoinette Koleva, Kolyo Koev, Michel Foucault: New Problematizations

This paper will appear, translated into Bulgarian and in a paper-printed version, in a special issue of the journal Sociological Problems {Социологически проблеми}, a publication of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Michel Foucault. This special issue’s editors are Antoinette Koleva
and Kolyo Koev

Nikolas Rose, Neurotechnologies of Justice (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

17 January 2018

Neurotechnologies of justice: Neuroscience beyond the courtroom
By Professor Nikolas Rose, Australian Neurolaw Database, On Soundcloud, March 2017

In this talk I will explore the actual and potential impacts of developments in neuroscience and neurotechnology in the criminal justice system beyond the courtroom. There has beenmuch discussion about the role of genetics and brain scanning in criminal trials and their impact on the legal fiction of free will, although evidencethat genetic or brain based defences succeed in exculpation is equivocal. In this talk, I will focus elsewhere, and explore the impact of claims to be able to ‘read the brain’ in neural lie detection and beyond, the potential uses of novel neurotechnologies for risk assessment, preemptive intervention, and their role in ‘law enforcement’ and ‘crowd control’, and some questions arising from machine learning and artificial intelligence. The challenges posed by the ‘dual use’ potential of some advances in neuroscience, where technologies intended for civilian purposes also have military and security uses, are particularly significant at a time when the boundaries between the criminal justice and the wider security system are increasingly blurred.

O Poder e o Panoptismo da Cidadania, Segundo M. Foucault – Profa. Dra. Olaya Fernandez (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 January 2018

O Poder e o Panoptismo da Cidadania, Segundo M. Foucault – Profa. Dra. Olaya Fernandez

21 de agosto de 2017 (segunda-feira)

Conferência – O Poder e o Panoptismo da Cidadania, Segundo M. Foucault

Conferencista: Profa. Dra. Olaya Fernandez – Universidad de La Rioja UR – Espanha

Horário: 19h30min às 22h

Local: Auditório Erico Verissimo, Laboratório Avançado de Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (LABTICS) – Setor D2 118. Campus São Leopoldo

A atividade ocorreu como um pré-evento do ‘IX Colóquio Internacional IHU. A Biopolítica como Teorema da Bioética‘.

Isabelle Galichon, Le récit de soi. Une pratique éthique d’émancipation (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

15 January 2018

Isabelle Galichon, Le récit de soi. Une pratique éthique d’émancipation, Ouverture Philosophique, Paris. L’Harmattan, 2018

Les derniers travaux de Michel Foucault peuvent être appréhendés comme une nouvelle grille de lecture pour l’analyse des pratiques d’écriture personnelle dont peut se saisir la théorie littéraire. Dans ses cours au Collège de France sur les pratiques de soi antiques, Michel Foucault ébauche une généalogie de l’écriture de soi : celle-ci ne vise pas à découvrir ce qui est « intus et in cute » comme l’annonçait Rousseau en exergue des Confessions, mais à élaborer un sujet éthique par l’ascèse, par l’exercice de l’écriture. La pratique de l’écriture personnelle, dès lors qu’elle renonce au psychologique, à une « histoire de la personnalité » (Philippe Lejeune) et s’ouvre à une altérité, devient une « pratique de liberté » (Michel Foucault). Face à une épreuve existentielle (le deuil, la maladie), face aux agressions de l’histoire, face à un contexte sociopolitique répressif, le récit de soi en tant que pratique éthique de subjectivation offre un cheminement vers une émancipation que la littérature peut aussi aider à interpréter.

Le récit de soi requiert dès lors une lecture éthique et convoque, nécessairement, pour son analyse, la littérature et la philosophie.

Isabelle Galichon est docteure en littératures française, francophone et comparée, et chercheuse associée à l’EA Telem (Bordeaux-Montaigne). Elle co-dirige un séminaire de recherche au Collège International de Philosophie sur l’écriture de soi. Elle est membre du comité de rédaction de la revue Mémoire en jeu (éd. Kimé).

Video: Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault — Philosophy and Psychology (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 January 2018

Video: Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault — Philosophy and Psychology (1965), From the Verso Books blog, 9 January 2018

Watch a televised 1965 discussion between Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault on philosophy and psychology.

A televised 1965 discussion between Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault, under the heading “Philosophy and Psychology,” is available to stream in three parts below. Parts 1 and 2 include English subtitles, while Part 3 does not (Spanish subtitles are available for all three segments).

[…]

A full transcript of the discussion is available in Badiou and the Philosophers: Interrogating 1960s French Philosophy, edited and translated by Tzuchien Tho and Giuseppe Bianco. Tamara Chaplin’s Turning on the Mind: French Philosophers on Television describes the history of L’enseignement philosophique and explores the broader effort to televise philosophy in France.

Frieder Vogelmann, The Spell of Responsibility. Labor, Criminality, Philosophy (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 January 2018

Frieder Vogelmann, The Spell of Responsibility. Labor, Criminality, Philosophy Trans. Daniel Steuer, Bloomsbury, 2017

Most people would agree that we should behave and act in a responsible way. Yet only 200 years ago, ‘responsibility’ was only of marginal importance in discussions of law and legal practice, and it had little ethical significance. What is the significance of the fact that ‘responsibility’ now plays such a central role in, for example, work, the welfare state, or the criminal justice system? What happens when individuals are generally expected to think of themselves as ‘responsible’ agents? And what are the consequences of the fact that the philosophical analysis of ‘responsibility’ focuses almost exclusively on conditions of agency that are mostly absent from real life?

In this book, Frieder Vogelmann demonstrates how large parts of philosophy have fallen under responsibility’s spell, and he uses a Foucauldian approach in an attempt to break it. The three axes of power, knowledge, and self are used in a detailed analysis of the practical regimes of labour (including the welfare state), criminality (including policing, punishment practices, and criminal proceedings), and philosophy, and of the two subject positions required by ‘responsibility’ – those of the attributors and bearers of responsibility – within them. The power relations between these positions, which Vogelmann carefully excavates from the grounds of our practices, reveal that the deck is stacked unevenly from the start.