Foucault News

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”.

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

Yngfalk, C.
Bio-politicizing consumption: neo-liberal consumerism and disembodiment in the food marketplace
(2016) Consumption Markets and Culture, 19 (3), pp. 275-295.

DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2015.1102725

Abstract
How consumerism proliferates in society is central to consumer culture studies, yet little research has examined the power of consumerist discourses in shaping consumption at the intersection of marketing with State regulation. Drawing on Foucault’s notions of governmentality and bio-power, a discourse analysis is conducted of food date labeling regulation. The study problematizes how labeling actualizes a form of neo-liberal consumerism within manufacturing and retail in which consumption is enacted as a site of bio-political control. Labeling, it is argued, fosters unsustainable excess consumption in the name of life and health of people by temporalizing and standardizing consumption, as well as disembodying the marketplace as an area for knowledge creation in consumption. Accordingly, the study discusses two processes “bio-politicizing” consumption that seek to dispense responsibility and re-distribute embodied consumption competence. Finally, it highlights the potential in people to resist such consumerism by developing alternative subjectivities and embodiments in the marketplace. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Author Keywords
bio-power; Consumerism; food date labeling; governmentality; state regulation; the body

Moore, F.
‘A band of public-spirited women’: Middle-class female philanthropy and citizenship in Bolton, Lancashire before 1918
(2016) Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41 (2), pp. 149-162.

DOI: 10.1111/tran.12114

Abstract
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the cultural ideal of private and public as separate spheres and a lack of formal voting rights, many middle-class women engaged in philanthropic and social work outside the home. Taking as its focus a group of middle-class women in Bolton, Lancashire, this paper conducts a prosopography, or group biography, in order to shed light on female citizenship and make a historical contribution to literature on citizenship beyond voting rights. The paper uses archive traces to reconstruct the experience of the female philanthropist and understand her motivations. The focus of the paper is a new theoretical approach to women’s citizenship in the early 20th century. Using Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, or life politics, the paper reconceptualises women’s social work as a form of biopolitical patriotism that was the basis of a scalar claim to citizenship. This historical evidence from Bolton reveals that biopolitical action was not solely the preserve of the state. Women claimed fitness for citizenship and the vote by nation-building, carrying out work that shaped children into the citizens of the future and safeguarded the moral and physical health of the nation. Copyright © 2016 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

Author Keywords
Biography; Biopolitics; Citizenship; Gender; Lancashire; Philanthropy

Clinton, M.E., Springer, R.A.
Foucault’s legacy for nursing: Are we beneficiaries or intestate heirs?
(2016) Nursing Philosophy, 17 (2), pp. 119-131.

DOI: 10.1111/nup.12113

Abstract
Drawing upon selected literature from the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Canada we examine how Foucault’s concepts of ‘episteme’, ‘rupture’ ‘parrhesia’ ‘care of the self’, and ‘problemitization’ have been applied to particular contexts of leadership development, pedagogy, nursing knowledge, and the relationship between caring and politics. Our aims are threefold: to give examples of how selected Foucauldian concepts have been taken up in practice; to clarify how we are positioned today as nurses; and to invite more nurses to engage critically with historical inquiry and to engage in deep philosophical reflection about their relationship with nursing. We begin by examining the conditions and circumstances of Foucault’s life, and conclude by posing the question in our subtitle to stimulate debate about the philosophical relevance of Foucauldian scholarship to nursing. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Author Keywords
Care of the self; Episteme; Foucault; Parrhesia; Problematization; Rupture