Foucault News

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

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

Inowlocki, S.
From Text to Relics: The Emergence of the Scribe-Martyr in Late Antique Christianity (Fourth Century–Seventh Century) (2024) Journal of Early Christian Studies, 32 (3), pp. 403-430.

DOI: 10.1353/earl.2024.a936760

Abstract
This paper delves into the conflation of two prominent figures of authority in the early Christian world: the scribe-scholar and the martyr. While previous scholarship has largely examined these figures separately, this study focuses on their association and argues that they were meaningfully combined to establish a new form of textual authority. The motif of the scribe-martyr is explored in a series of Christian texts, from Pseudo-Pionius to John Moschus and late ancient hagiographic texts, tracing its origins to the fourth century. This development emerged from the growing association between the authority of written texts as physical objects and the rise of the cult of saints and their relics.

In parallel with Foucault’s concept of the author-function, a distinct Christian “scribe-function” emerged within this context, i.e., discourses of authority, fictitious or historical, involving the individuals who reproduced or corrected texts. The paper posits that the motif of the scribe-martyr was then strategically employed in legal, scholarly, and institutional contexts to express faithfulness, resistance, authorization, and legitimation. As a result, this conflation contributed significantly to the attribution of holiness and authority to texts, sacred places, and religious institutions. Thus, the scribe-martyr, connected to the revered relic-texts, assumed a particularly potent role as a figure of theological authority within late ancient Christianity. © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press.

With all my very best wishes for the festive season and the new year from Foucault News.


(This picture was found some years ago on the Blingee site)

Leonard D’Cruz, The Limits of Radical Historicism: The Methodological Significance of Foucault’s Relationship to Transcendental Philosophy, Angelaki, 29(6), 2024, 53–76.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2024.2430899

Abstract:
This article examines the methodological significance of Foucault’s relationship to transcendental philosophy. While Foucault presents his work as a historicist transformation of Kant’s critical project, some commentators question whether he succeeds in eradicating the transcendental dimension of critique. In this way, they raise doubts over whether he can sustain his methodological commitment to radical historicism. In response, I argue that Foucault can reflexively account for his use of transcendental motifs while remaining faithful to his historicist methodology. More specifically, I show how the concept of sedimentation can give coherence to the supposedly paradoxical notion of the historical a priori. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Foucault’s ostensibly transcendental assumptions about power and subjectivity are best understood as contingent features of his analytical framework rather than earnest metaphysical claims.

Keywords:
Foucault genealogy transcendental critique historical a priori sedimentation