Foucault News

Johansen, K.B.H., Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, T.
The consequences of coping with stalking—results from the first qualitative study on stalking in Denmark
(2016) International Journal of Public Health, pp. 1-7. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-016-0851-7

Abstract
Objectives: The purpose of this article is to explore: (1) how victims of stalking experience the phenomenon in their daily life, (2) how the nature of stalking informs the victim’s internal coping strategies, and (3) how the victims’ internal coping strategies negatively affect their daily life and well-being. Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 victims of stalking. Thematic content analysis was employed, and themes were primarily identified inductively and broad into dialogue with concepts, such as Foucault’s panopticism. Results: The results of the study indicate that rather than the stalkers’ harassment itself; it is the unpredictability of the stalkers’ potential actions that inform the victims’ primary coping strategy—self-regulation. Self-regulation consists of various strategies victims employ to avoid the stalker. Our analysis shows that self-regulation as a coping strategy has social and psychological consequences for the victims, leading to various degrees of social isolation and apprehension. Conclusions: We conclude that it is necessary to consider how professionals advise victims to cope with their situation as how legal measures should focus on the security of victims. © 2016 Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)

Author Keywords
Consequences; Coping; Latent violence; Self-regulation; Stalking

Jappah JV, Smith DT. Global governmentality: Biosecurity in the era of infectious diseases, Global Public Health. 2015;10(10):1139-56. Epub 2015 May 18.

doi: 10.1080/17441692.2015.1038843

Abstract
This paper uses Foucault’s concept of governmentality to examine relationships between globalisation, the threat of infectious diseases and biosecurity. It draws attention to forms of calculated practices which Foucault notes as technologies of power that aim to foster positive demographic and economic trends in societies through the apparatus of security. These practices are employed at the global level with similar ambitions; hence, we adopt the term global governmentality. We discuss the applications of global governmentality by actors in the global core through the apparatus of security and (neo)liberal economic practices. We then provide examples of resistance/contestation from actors mainly in the global periphery through discussions of viral sovereignty; access to essential medicines, including HIV drugs; and health for all as a human right. We conclude that despite the core-periphery power asymmetry and competing paradigms, these developments tend to complement and/or regulate the phenomenon termed global governmentality, which is made evident by the tremendous successes in global health.

Keywords: globalisation, infectious disease, biosecurity, governmentality, global health,

Gross, D.M.
Rhetoric and the origins of the human sciences: A Foucauldian tale untold
(2016) Quarterly Journal of Speech, 102 (3), pp. 225-244.

DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2016.1190858

Abstract
Michel Foucault’s famous history of the human sciences focused on “the order of things” and in doing so it overwhelmed a rhetorical perspective that can track the arts of moving souls: pedagogy, politics, and psychology. If we revisit Foucault from a rhetorical perspective there are consequences: (1) at the level of architectonic, we rediscover rhetoric’s role at the inception of the human sciences, and (2) at the level of thematic, we can make better sense of rhetorical phenomena such as the sixteenth-/ seventeenth-century sacred arts of listening, which feature a “public ear.” Foucault’s late interest in the pastoral picks up this rhetorical thread, although he never was able to revise the disciplinary and biopolitical history implicated therein. This article initiates just such a revision, paying particular attention to historiographic questions, and to recent discussions of biopower that wind up looking very different from this rhetorical perspective. © 2016 National Communication Association.

Author Keywords
Biopower; Foucault; Human sciences; Listening; Sacred rhetoric

Pløger, J.
The evental city: Moment, situation, presence
(2016) Space and Culture, 19 (3), pp. 260-274.

DOI: 10.1177/1206331215595729

Abstract
Events are part of everyday life and cities, and cities’ experience economy. Affect and emotions – real or imagined, collective or subjective, lived or dreamed – are crucial issues to events, including being insecure on what one experiences is part of the attraction of events. Events are most often seen as situated encounters in planned spaces, where the mode of social exchange is significant to people’s experience (both as Erlebnis and Erfahrung) and identification with place. Emphasizing the eventness or eventful experiences of city life highlight the importance of forces of moments and situations as presence forces. Experiencing events happens in between sense-body-mind effects. Presence is a wirkungs-kraft. This article discusses presence effects exploring some “types” of urban experiences – presence-culture, presence-meaning, present-presence – using street art, everyday experiences, and community art events as examples. It is an exploration inspired by Hans Ulrich Gumbrect’s writings on presence and Michel Foucault on event and eventalization. © SAGE Publications.

Author Keywords
event; eventalization; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht; Michel Foucault; presence