Foucault News

Feely, M.
Sexual surveillance and control in a community-based intellectual disability service
(2016) Sexualities, 19 (5-6), pp. 725-750.

DOI: 10.1177/1363460715620575

Abstract
Within contemporary policy documents regarding intellectual disability and sexuality we often find a progress narrative that contrasts a dark past, when the sexuality of disabled people was suppressed, with an enlightened present, when we recognize the sexual rights of all human beings. In this paper – which pertains to the Republic of Ireland – I take up the Foucauldian and Deleuzian position of treating such progress narratives with suspicion. From this perspective, I offer an alternative reading of the treatment of intellectual disability and sexuality in the present, and I seek to map just some of the subtle but effective ways this population’s sexuality continues to be controlled today. © 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.

Author Keywords
Assemblage; Deleuze; Foucault; intellectual disability; sexuality; surveillance

Beer, D.
The social power of algorithms
(2016) Information Communication and Society, pp. 1-13. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1216147

Abstract
This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Author Keywords
Algorithm; big data; code; Foucault; power; software

Daniele Lorenzini, Pierre Hadot (1922/2010) et Michel Foucault (1926/1984) – La culture de soiLa philosophie, un art de vivre, Les Grands Dossiers des Sciences Humaines, 2016/6 (N° 43)

Premières lignes
Qu’est-ce que la philosophie ? En posant cette question, dans un article intitulé « La philosophie est-elle un luxe ? », Pierre Hadot remarque que le plus souvent les non-philosophes considèrent la philosophie comme un discours abstrus et abstrait, développé par quelques privilégiés pour répondre à des questions incompréhensibles et sans intérêt. La philosophie serait donc un vain bavardage, infiniment…

Mots-clés
Antiquité Foucault philosophie Hadot histoire de la philosophie Lorenzini

Plan de l’article
La philosophie : discours ou mode de vie ?
Pierre Hadot et les exercices spirituels
Michel Foucault : techniques de soi et esthétique de l’existence
Actualité de la philosophie antique ?