Foucault News

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

McGowan, Deirdre (2015) The Normalising Power of Marriage Law: An Irish Genealogy, 1945 – 2010. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Abstract

Marriage law is often conceptualised as an instrument of power that illegitimately imposes the will of the State on its citizens. Paradoxically, marriage law is also offered as a route to liberation. In this thesis, I question the efficacy of this type of analysis by investigating the actual power effects of marriage law. Using Michel Foucault’s concepts of bio-power and government, and his genealogical approach to history, I identify the role played by marriage law in governing the social domain over a discrete period of Irish history. Drawing on this analysis, I suggest that marriage law is part of a dense network of power relationships that cannot be reduced to a binary relationship of oppression and liberation. Rather, marriage law acts, in conjunction with other techniques of government, to conduct conformity in social behaviour.

Until the 1960s, marriage was considered a fully social matter outside the jurisdiction of politics. With the adoption of a Keynesian economic model at the end of the 1950s the welfare of the population became a matter of political concern. In the 1970s, the vulnerable dependent wife emerged as an object of regulation and marriage law was enacted to protect her through enforcement of the obligations of morally bound, gendered, lifetime marriage. The need to protect this form of marriage drove further reform of marriage law in the 1980s and divorce legislation enacted in 1997. An increasingly rationalised, economic approach to government, adopted following ratification of the Maastricht treaty, required the deployment of social scientific knowledge by government. Within the domain of family life, science connected social stability to relationship stability. Marriage law reform in the 2000s, therefore aimed to promote stability in relationship behaviour by acknowledging, regulating, and promoting relationship practices that performed lifetime marriage. Over the research period, marriage law operated as one among many techniques of government that installed a detailed apparatus of surveillance and control around individual lives, with the objective and effect of conducting conformity in relationship behaviour.

Deirdre McGowan, “Governed by marriage law: An Irish genealogy” (2016) 25 Social and Legal Studies 311.

doi: 10.1177/0964663915614110

Abstract:
Marriage law links the private and the political, connecting the aspirations of individuals to the regulatory ambitions of the state. Marriage has significant social and cultural importance, but the assumptions of stability and care it entails are also useful to government. As a result, marriage law has, both historically and in the present, been offered as the solution to a range of social problems. Using Ireland as a case study example, this essay focuses on the problems that marriage law reform has attempted to address and the political frameworks within which reform took place. It suggests that marriage law is a technique of government that aims to encourage marriage performance in the interests of economic and social stability.

Afiche VII JORNADAS DATPC

VII Jornadas Debates Actuales de la Teoría Política Contemporánea
El neoliberalismo a debate: hacia una genealogía del presente

17 y 18 de noviembre de 2016
Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Campus Miguelete, Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Presentación:
¿Cómo interpretar el neoliberalismo? Más allá de cualquier salida fácil que lo reduzca a una doctrina económica o a una ideología política, el neoliberalismo se ha vuelto un objeto elusivo, ya casi indistinguible por la forma que ha ido tomando: la de una suerte de gobierno de los vivos a través de la configuración de un ‘ethos’ empresarial. Por eso, nos proponemos pensar y debatir acerca de los discursos, las experiencias de lo común y de su negación, los dispositivos de control y gobierno, las formas de subjetivación, los procesos tecnológicos y las geografías que el neoliberalismo, como racionalidad gubernamental dominante, establece en la actualidad. En ese marco nos preguntamos por las modalidades con las cuales esta lógica transversal que gobierna la vida en un mundo globalizado establece sus dispositivos en los distintos campos que proponemos como ejes temáticos de estas Jornadas.

En ese sentido invitamos a encarar la cuestión del neoliberalismo desde distintas perspectivas temáticas y enfoques teóricos. La propuesta es pensar colectivamente al neoliberalismo y sus implicaciones desde distintos planteos, experiencias, y trabajos teóricos en el tema.

En Debates Actuales de la Teoría Política Contemporánea proponemos pensar “más allá del diagnóstico”, dar un paso más respecto a la reducción del fenómeno a la identificación de sus síntomas. Por el contrario, proponemos utilizar estos planteos teóricos para contribuir de manera concreta para transformar las formas y prácticas de saber que configuran las lógicas de poder de nuestro tiempo.

Ejes Temáticos:

Eje 1:“Teorías y políticas de lo común en la era neoliberal”. Coordinador: Matías Saidel (CONICET/UCSF, UNER)

Eje 2: “Territorios y espacios en el ensamblaje neoliberal”. Coordinador: Adrián Velázquez (IDAES/EH-UNSAM, CONICET)

Eje 3: “Artefactos y artificios neoliberales: técnicay tecnología en tiempos del gobierno de la(s) existencia(s)”. Coordinadores: Camilo Rios (UBA, IDAES/CONICET) y Jimmy Ortiz (UBA, IIGG/CONICET)

Eje 4: “Nuevas formas de gubernamentalidad: Neoliberalismo, Empresa y Deuda”. Coordinador: Emiliano Sacchi (CONICET/CEFC Comahue)

Eje 5: “Discurso, política y neoliberalismo”. Coordinador: Ricky Esteves (UBA/UNA)

El encuentro:

En las Jornadas proponemos una dinámica colectiva de trabajo que comienza compartiendo grupalmente las ideas principales de los textos presentados —lo que implica una dosis importante de protagonismo del participante—, y de registro de los trabajos escritos.

Las Jornadas Debates Actuales de la Teoría Política Contemporánea son un encuentro en el que la discusión grupal –basada en la lectura previa de los textos enviados– es la actividad principal del evento. La dinámica de las jornadas exige la participación a lo largo de dos días de discusiones grupales en los ejes temáticos y un debate plenario entre todos los participantes junto a los coordinadores.

El proceso de las Jornadas comienza un mes antes del encuentro con la publicación y distribución de los trabajos presentados por los participantes de cada eje temático (en nuestra web: teoriapoliticacontemporanea.org, con ISSN 2313-9609), para su lectura y posterior discusión en grupo, y finaliza con la selección y publicación de los trabajos destacados en formato digital como eBook con ISBN. Por esta razón, se especifican las características de formato que el texto debe cumplir para ser incluido en la publicación digital.

Las jornadas proponen una modalidad de participación y discusión grupal diferente a la de la mayoría de los encuentros académicos, que da lugar a los participantes a difundir su texto entre otros participantes –y el público en general con la posterior publicación de las actas–, discutir con ellos, y con los demás participantes de los distintos ejes, presentando diferentes miradas sobre la misma problemática: el neoliberalismo.

Las Jornadas se realizarán los días jueves 17 y viernes 18 del mes de noviembre de 2016 en la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina (toda la información será publicada oportunamente en nuestra web).

Fechas Importantes:

• Envío de resúmenes (ver especificaciones, más abajo): 16 de septiembre de 2016.
• Envío de textos (ver especificaciones, más abajo): 21 de octubre de 2016.
• Día del encuentro: jueves 17 y viernes 18 del mes de noviembre de 2016

Formatos y estilos para el envío de textos:

• Resúmenes:
o Archivo WORD (*.doc // *.docx)
o Hoja A4.
o Título del trabajo, nombre de autor(es), y adscripción institucional.
o Eje propuesto.
o CV del autor de hasta 200 palabras por cada autor.
o Resumen hasta 250 palabras.
o Hasta 5 palabras clave separadas por comas.
o Nombre del archivo: “Eje#_Apellido_RES” (Ej. “Eje4_Perez_RES.doc”

Textos:
o Archivo WORD (*.doc // *.docx)
o Hoja A4.
o Letra Times New Roman, 12pts.
o Interlineado 1,5.
o Título del trabajo, nombre de autor(es), y adscripción institucional.
o Eje propuesto.
o Cuerpo del texto hasta de 8000 palabras (incluyendo pies de página, bibliografía, anexos, tablas, etc.).
o Sistema de citación y referencias APA.
o Citas textuales de más de 4 líneas, en párrafo aparte, entre comillas, y sangría a ambos lados.
o Nombre del archivo: “Eje#_Apellido_TEX” (Ej. “Eje4_Perez_TEX.doc”

Enfatizamos que se deben respetar los formatos propuestos para poder ser publicados. Todos los resúmenes y textos deben ser enviados tanto al correo del coordinador del eje propuesto y al correo de Debates Actuales (debatesactuales@gmail.com).

Hospedaje:
En la circular del año pasado figura una lista de hospedaje en Buenos Aires.

Inscripción:

Los participantes y asistentes podrán inscribirse el día de las jornadas.

Aranceles:
Participantes $300.- Asistentes $150.-
Incluye materiales, certificado, bebidas y café.
Otorgamos factura de pago.

Para Mayor Información:
debatesactuales@gmail.com
http://teoriapoliticacontemporanea.org/

Las Jornadas Debates Actuales de la Teoría Política Cuentan con la Adhesión Institucional de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la UBA y del Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales de la UNSAM .

Eduardo Rivera Vicencio, Monetary Conformation of the Corporate Governmentality II The Monetary System and the Privatization Process, Journal of Governance and Regulation, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2016, 75-90

Abstract
The global governance of large corporations or corporate governmentality changed over time through the penetration of the economy in all aspects of society but which has shaped the monetary system as an integral part of corporate governmentality and which gave it a big push in the last forty years. The conformation of the monetary system and the introduction of the neoliberal model which brought about the private process and which started from the late seventies of the twentieth century and marked the turning point in the acceleration of wealth will be discussed in this document. The shaping of this accelerated private process would not have been possible without the establishment of the monetary system. These conformations are described through Foucault’s approach to power relations and its manifestations such as discourse, discipline, ethics and governmentality. This document uses the archaeological and genealogical method Foucaultian approach and therefore looks at historical, philosophical and economic aspects. The period covered in this document corresponds from the interwar period to the beginning of the 21st century in terms of monetary aspects that have influenced the formation of the monetary in the privatisation process and the effects of both on the economy.

Keywords: Monetary System, Private Process, IMF (International Monetary Fund), the Gold Standard, Corporate Governmentality, Rent Appropriation, Concentration of Wealth and Monetary Disturbances

Colin Koopman, Historicizing the Critique of Power
20th March 2015 | 14:15 – 15:00

Conference paper, audio podcast on the Voice Republic site

Colin Koopman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, where he is also 2014-15 Humanities Research Fellow and 2015-16 Wulf Professor of Humanities. He has published widely on genealogy, pragmatism, and political theory. His works on genealogy include his 2013 book Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (Indiana University Press, 2013) and articles in Critical Inquiry, Constellations, Foucault Studies, and James Faubion’s recent Foucault Now (Polity, 2014) collection.

Michel Foucault’s Death Valley Trip
Heather Dundas
20th March 2015 | 17:30 – 18:15

Conference Paper, audio and podcast on Voice Republic

Heather Dundas is a Russell Fellow and a candidate for the Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, where she is writing her dissertation on the intersection of American landscape and culture and Foucault’s later work. In addition to her critical work, Dundas is a playwright and fiction writer. Her story “House Menu” has been nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and her play Cannibals, described as “a comic reverie” by The New York Times, has received dozens of productions and is published by Faber and Faber. Other stories and essays have been published in PMSpoemmemoirstory, Brain, Child, The Los Angeles Times, among others.

Kordela, A.K.
Monsters of biopower: Terror(ism) and horror in the era of affect
(2016) Philosophy Today, 60 (1), pp. 193-205.

DOI: 10.5840/philtoday2016113104

Abstract
This paper argues that today the true source of terror in the economico-bio-politically advanced countries of global capitalism lies in biopower’s own constitution as a normative field (the protection of life) that presupposes its exception (the superfluity of life) as its own precondition. At the two extreme poles of this exception we find “terrorism,” and particularly suicide bombing, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones), as the pair revealing the core of biopower. However, of the two only “terrorism” is discursively constructed in the “West” as a monstrous act that should incite horror. Linking horror to the psychoanalytic concepts of repression and foreclosure, I argue that the biopolitical function of horror lies in rendering unreadable the message of such “monstrous” acts. Furthermore, insofar as horror’s experience is an affective state of being that can, nevertheless, be incited discursively, affect shifts to the center of the political domain. The affect of horror in particular becomes instrumental to politics as it can provide the criterion for determining the bio-racial break between, in Foucault’s words, “what must live and what must die “. © 2016. Philosophy Today.

Author Keywords
Affect; Biopolitics; Psychoanalysis; Racism; Terrorism

Sokhi-Bulley, B.
Re-reading the Riots: Counter-Conduct in London 2011
(2016) Global Society, pp. 1-20. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2016.1143348

Abstract
The riots that took place in England in August 2011 have widely been described as destructive, senseless and without purpose. This article, taking inspiration from Michel Foucault’s later work on revolt as counter-conduct, argues for a new understanding of how to read political expression and thereby calls for the riots to be thought differently, as a form of counter-conduct. This demands a new appreciation for the possibilities of revolt where spontaneous, impulsive, mundane and non-spectacular events like riots can be construed as political rather than purely criminal. It also opens up possibilities for how we might understand the ethos of the “revolting subject”.

Foucault: The Birth of Power Update 15 – revision and resubmission of the manuscript, and table of contents

17 May 2016


stuartelden's avatarProgressive Geographies

While I had made some changes to the manuscript after submission, and again after receiving the reports, on Sunday evening I finished four long days of thoroughly revising the text and resubmitted it to the publisher.

Just as I was beginning the review process for the second book I received a very nice letter from Daniel Defert, Foucault’s long-term partner, saying how much he’d liked Foucault’s Last Decade. This was obviously a wonderful thing to receive, and gave me a great motivation to finish up this second study.

The key changes are to the Introduction, which is restructured and some parts extensively revised. I wrote a bit about the work here and here. I think the Introduction now more clearly sets up the argument, approach and sources of the work. I also made lots of changes through the text, and added some sentences to the Conclusion. While the reports…

View original post 771 more words

Berthold Molden,
Resistant pasts versus mnemonic hegemony: On the power relations of collective memory
(2016) Memory Studies, 9 (2), pp. 125-142.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698015596014

Abstract
The politics of history and memory in any society are determined by the relations of forces between hegemonic master narratives, defiant counter-memories, and silent majorities whose historical experience is rarely articulated in public. Based on Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, as well as postcolonial critique, this article explains historico-political processes through a specified reading of hegemony theory. Two common, though by no means unambiguous, terms are reloaded with specific definitions: politics of history as the political agency directed at the establishment of specific representations of the past, and memory cultures as the structural frameworks for these politics. This approach sheds light on the relationship between official and group-specific politics of history within defined memory cultures: the possibly conflictual interaction between those who interpret certain events, inscribe them into a historical canon and thus make them points of historical reference, and those who are the carriers, consumers, reproducers, but also challengers of this history. © 2015, The Author(s) 2015.

Author Keywords
Counter-memory; Foucault; Gramsci; hegemony; Laclau; memory culture; politics of history