Foucault News

Australian LGBTQ teachers, exclusionary spaces and points of interruption (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

22 April 2016

Gray, E.M., Harris, A., Jones, T.
Australian LGBTQ teachers, exclusionary spaces and points of interruption
(2016) Sexualities, 19 (3), pp. 286-303.

DOI: 10.1177/1363460715583602

Abstract
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) teachers are a marginalised group that historically have been absent from research on sexuality and schooling. Rather, much research in the field has focused upon the experiences of same sex attracted and increasingly, gender diverse young people in schools, as well as the delivery of sexuality education. Up until recently, very little research has been carried out that explicitly addresses the experiences of LGBTQ teachers, particularly within the Australian context. This article focuses upon key issues arising from the semi-structured interviews that the Out/In Front team carried out as part of a pilot study that took place between April and July 2013 in the state of Victoria, Australia. We interviewed nine current or former teachers working within primary and secondary education across the public, Catholic and private sectors. This paper focuses upon the notion that LGBTQ teachers exist within a ‘space of exclusion’ that is dominated by discursive mechanisms that (re)produce heteronormativity. We also argue that the Victorian policy context – as well as increasing socio-political tolerance for LGBTQ people within Australia – enables LGBT teachers to interrupt the discursive frameworks within which their professional lives are situated. © The Author(s) 2016.

Author Keywords
Foucault; heteronormativity; homophobia; queer teachers

Index Keywords
Australia, bisexuality, Catholic, education, homosexual female, human, human experiment, pilot study, semi structured interview, teacher, transgender

On practising in sport: towards an ascetological understanding of sport (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 April 2016

Aggerholm, K.
On practising in sport: towards an ascetological understanding of sport
(2016) Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, pp. 1-15. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/00948705.2016.1159917

Abstract
Within the philosophy of sport, the phenomenon of practising (askēsis) has received very little attention, whereas other related aspects of sport such as excellence (aretē) and competition (agon) have been subjected to many and thorough studies. This essay will attempt to clarify this particular phenomenon of practising through the notion of athletic ascetics, which will be analysed as a special variant of askēsis. Drawing especially on Foucault’s lectures on ascetics in ancient philosophy and Sloterdijk’s anthropology of the practising life, the essay outlines and interrogates the potential relevance of an ascetological understanding of sport. Through both descriptive and normative analysis, it is argued that athletic ascetics can refine our understanding of performance in sport and comprise an embodied account of the formative aspect of ethics, with implications for ethical considerations related to performance enhancement. © 2016 IAPS

Author Keywords
Askēsis; ethics; Practising; resilience; Stoicism; testing

Foucault, Political Life and History (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

19 April 2016

Foucault, Political Life and History – Workshop 5
Friday April 22nd 2015 11.00 – 16.00

London School of Economics
Room CLM.1.02 , first floor,
Clement House, The Aldwych

We are very happy to confirm the programme for the next workshop.

[10:15 approx] Dr Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University) : “System-Cybernetic Governmentality: Depoliticisation of Scientific Governance During the Cold War”

Dr Rindzeviciute’s new book, with the preliminary title “The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World”, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press in 2016. Focusing on the history of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the first international think tank in the world, established by the Soviet Union and USA in Luxemburg, Austria, in 1972, she examines how East-West scientists used transnational social networks and computer technologies to create an intellectual and institutional framework for global governance.

[13:45 approx] Dr S M Amadae (MIT and University of Helsinki) : “The challenges of appreciating and resisting neoliberalism” .
(Dr Amadae writes: “The idea is to capture the need to be charitable to the core intellectual and institutional basis of neoliberalism as the best means to critique and resist it. Recommended reading: Chapter 1, “Neoliberalism” in Prisoners of Reason, pp. 3-23 ; the concluding chapter of Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, “From the Panopticon to the Prisoners Dilemma,” 291-96.

Please also note that Dr Amadae will also be speaking during her UK visit at Goldsmiths College on Monday April 25th at 4pm in room RHB 150, on: “From Panopticon to Prisoner’s Dilemma: Neoliberal Subjects as Prisoners of Reason”. The topic is intended to compliment her talk at FPLH. This event is open to all.

In this talk, S. M. Amadae (MIT and University of Helsinki) will explore how the pedagogy of game theory and practice of institutional design generates neoliberal subjects and neoliberal governance. This analytic approach enables us to understand the legitimation of a reactionary interventionist security state as well as the neopaternalism of ‘nudge’. Neoliberalism is staunchly counter-Enlightenment in reducing agency to consumptive preference satisfaction. It anticipates the further step toward algorithmic governance and mindless rationality consistent with treating information as signals sustaining rational choice rather than elementary ingredients to be vetted and shared to jointly create horizons of meaning and institutions based on shared expectations.

OPEN TO ALL – SPACE IS LIMITED – TO ATTEND PLEASE REGISTER ASAP BY EMAIL TO colinngordon@aol.com

Tyrannies of thrift: Governmentality and older, low-income people’s energy efficiency narratives in the Illawarra, Australia (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 April 2016

Waitt, G., Roggeveen, K., Gordon, R., Butler, K., Cooper, P.
Tyrannies of thrift: Governmentality and older, low-income people’s energy efficiency narratives in the Illawarra, Australia
(2016) Energy Policy, 90, pp. 37-45.

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2015.11.033

Abstract
Social scientists are arguing that energy policies should pay more attention to everyday life to address energy efficiency. Scholars are now positing that energy policy needs to move beyond essentialised understandings of people positioned as the problem and seek to involve household members as part of the solution. Joining this conversation, we explore the energy narratives of low-income people aged 60 years and over, living in private sector housing. Participants shared their energy efficiency stories during focus groups conducted in the Illawarra, Australia. The paper explores how Foucault’s concept of governmentality may help inform energy efficiency programs by paying close attention to the way in which individual energy choices made under certain circumstances create who an individual becomes. Learning from participants, our governmentality analysis revealed the tyrannies of thrifty domestic energy conduct. We illustrate our argument drawing on the examples of practices relating to clothing and lighting. We outline how governmentality analysis can be used by researchers, policy makers and practitioners to assist people to safely negotiate energy efficiency in their domestic lives. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.

Author Keywords
Domestic energy use; Energy efficiency; Foucault; Policy; Programs; Qualitative research; Social marketing; Social Practice Theory

Index Keywords
Computer software, Energy policy, Energy utilization, Marketing, Public policy, Social sciences; Domestic energy use, Foucault, Qualitative research, Social marketings, Social practice theories; Energy efficiency; Armeria

Monetary conformation of the corporate governmentality III Description of the monetary system (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 April 2016

Eduardo Rivera Vicencio, Monetary conformation of the corporate governmentality III Description of the monetary system, Eurasian Journal of Economics and Finance, 4(2), 2016, 18-41

DOI: 10.15604/ejef.2016.04.02.003

Full PDF available

Abstract
This paper describes the current monetary system, identifying different components and the relationship between them. It is part of the Foucaultian approach of power relations and forms part of a body of work on the monetary conformation of corporate governmentality. It also forms part of the theoretical framework: the general monetary theory and, in particular, the quantity theory of money and the theory of business cycles. It describes four major components such as international organizations with effects on the money supply, states from dominant or dominated economies, the economy of large financial and non-financial companies and the real economy, made up of families and small and medium size companies. Within these four main components, there are different levels of action and influence in the money supply. The relationships, that are addressed, are the relationships which occur within each one of the components and the relationships between the different components. In these relationships between components of the monetary system, the creation of excess money supply is explained which produced the economic crisis as a result of the structure of the monetary system and its historical conformation. This document also describes the conformation of rent appropriation and yields, together with the process of the concentration of wealth, where the monetary system acts as an essential tool for achieving these purposes by large companies.

Keywords:
Monetary System, Rent Appropriation, Concentration of Wealth, Corporate Governmentality, Monetary Theory, Quantity Theory of Money, Money Supply and Crisis.

Monetary conformation of the corporate governmentality I from the new art of governing to the beginning of neoliberal governmentality (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 April 2016

Eduardo Rivera Vicencio, Monetary conformation of the corporate governmentality I From the new art of governing to the beginning of neoliberal governmentality, Eurasian Journal of Economics and Finance, 4(2), 2016, 72-90

DOI: 10.15604/ejef.2016.04.02.006

Full PDF available

Abstract
From the perspective of the Foucaultian approach and using the archaeological and genealogical methodology, this paper describes the origins of the first monetary institutions which are those that have the greatest impact on the development of the monetary system that took shape over time. The origin of the first central Banks, the gold standard system, the origins of the FED (Federal Reserve) and the birth of neoliberal governmentality, institutions whose conformation gave rise to the origins to, from a monetary standpoint, corporate governmentality. This document, of a historical, philosophical and economic character, describes relationships of power which shaped and defined the lines of development of a monetary system in conformation and is based on the concentration of wealth and the appropriation of income and their yields. The crisis, monetary shocks or monetary imbalances began to be more frequent and linked to the monetary conformation of institutions that give rise to the rising monetary system.

Keywords:
Governmentality, Monetary Conformation, Foucault, Archaeological and Genealogical Methodology, Relationship of Power, Gold Standard Crisis, Concentration of Wealth and Income Appropriation

Daniel Defert, Reflections on Foucault’s Lessons on the Will to Know. Seminar (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 April 2016

Political Science Department and the The France Chicago Center present “Reflections on Foucault’s Lessons on the Will to Know”, with Daniel Defert, Moderated by Bernard E. Harcourt Julius Kreeger Professor and, Chairman of the Political Science Department.

Daniel Defert edited the French edition of Foucault’s Leçons sur la volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France 1970-1971 (Gallimard/Seuil 2011), which is being released in English in May 2013 under the supervision of Professor Arnold Davidson of the University of Chicago.

Daniel Defert is a prominent French AIDS activist and the founding president (1984-1991) of the first AIDS awareness organization in France, AIDES. He started the organization after the death of his partner, the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

He is an alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. A professor of sociology, Daniel Defert has been Assistant (1969-1970), Maître-assistant (1971-1985), then Maître de Conférence (from 1985) at the Centre Universitaire of Vincennes, which became in 1972, Université de Paris VIII Vincennes.

Daniel Defert is author of numerous articles in the domain of ethno-iconography and public health. He also co-edited with François Ewald the Dits et Ecrits of Michel Foucault (1994), a posthumous collection of Foucault’s interviews and writings.

‘Language Background Other Than English’: a problem NAPLaN test category for Australian students of refugee background (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 April 2016

Creagh, S.
‘Language Background Other Than English’: a problem NAPLaN test category for Australian students of refugee background
(2016) Race Ethnicity and Education, 19 (2), pp. 252-273.

DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2013.843521

Abstract
Since 2008 Australia has held the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Despite the multilingual character of the Australian population, these standardized literacy and numeracy tests are built on an assumption of English as a first language competency. The capacity for monitoring the performance of students who speak languages other than English is achieved through the disaggregation of test data using a category labelled Language Background Other than English (LBOTE). A student is classified as LBOTE if they or their parents speak a language other than English at home. The category definition is so broad that the disaggregated national data suggest that LBOTE students are outperforming English speaking students, on most test domains, though the LBOTE category shows greater variance of results. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of governmentality, this article explores the possible implications of LBOTE categorisation for English as a Second Language (ESL) students of refugee background. The article uses a quantitative research project, carried out in Queensland, Australia, to demonstrate the potential inequities resultant from such a poorly constructed data category. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Author Keywords
categorization; English as a Second Language; governmentality; Language Background Other Than English; NAPLAN; refugees

Philippe Sabot, De Foucault à Macherey, penser les normes (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 April 2016

Philippe Sabot, « De Foucault à Macherey, penser les normes », Methodos [En ligne], 16 | 2016
https://doi.org/10.4000/methodos.4652

Texte intégral

Penser avec Pierre Macherey – avec Foucault. Tel est l’objet des lignes qui vont suivre. Penser avec, ce n’est pas simplement penser (à) quelque chose, ce qui revient à circonscrire un objet pour en faire justement un ob-jet pour la pensée, disponible pour une pensée compréhensive ou conceptuelle qui s’en empare. Ce n’est pas non plus, lorsque l’on s’applique à penser une autre pensée, celle d’un autre que soi, chercher à en restituer seulement le sens général ou les arguments particuliers, en vue d’en cerner les contours, d’en faire le tour, d’en rendre raison dans la cohérence (pourquoi pas systématique ?) d’un discours. Penser avec, cela s’entend plutôt comme la prise de contact avec sa propre pensée à travers celle d’un autre qui en déclenche la possibilité, qui en impulse le mouvement, sans que ce mouvement soit nécessairement finalisé, pré-orienté par son point d’appui initial. Penser avec peut même conduire à une certaine désorientation lorsque l’on en vient à penser autrement, à réviser ses certitudes (voire à les abandonner) au moment même où on cherche à les formuler pour soi-même. En ce sens, penser avec Foucault, comme nous y invite Pierre Macherey dans les ouvrages qui vont nous occuper, c’est moins chercher à dire ce qu’a ou ce qu’aurait pensé Foucault (sur le sujet, la vérité, le discours, le pouvoir) que s’exercer à reprendre dans sa propre pensée le mouvement même de cette pensée – qui est aussi, dans son ordre propre, une pensée avec – pour en éprouver la dynamique transformatrice.

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Orazio Irrera, Michel Foucault et les critiques de l’idéologie. Dialogue avec Pierre Macherey (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 April 2016

Orazio Irrera, « Michel Foucault et les critiques de l’idéologie. Dialogue avec Pierre Macherey », Methodos [En ligne], 16 | 2016;
https://doi.org/10.4000/methodos.4667

Texte intégral

Orazio Irrera – On a l’habitude un peu hâtive de dire que lorsque Foucault critique l’idéologie, il s’adresse surtout à la conception althussérienne de l’idéologie. Mais en suivant votre argumentation, il semble plutôt que Foucault et Althusser ont tenté tous les deux d’échapper à une conception représentationnelle et seulement négative (donc non productive) de l’idéologie. Pour cette raison, à votre avis, serait-il utile de distinguer parmi les critiques de Foucault entre celles qui sont adressées à l’idéologie comme système de représentation, donc comme « reflet et transposition », ou encore comme rationalisation (Althusser lui aussi semble critiquer cette conception de l’idéologie) et celles qui sont plutôt adressées à la manière dont Althusser cherche, pour sa part, à surmonter cette idée représentationnelle de l’idéologie à travers une conception positive de l’idéologie, entendue comme agent effectif du processus de reproduction sociale ? Pourquoi, face aux efforts déployés par Althusser pour sauver la notion d’idéologie, Foucault tient-il, au contraire, cette notion comme étant non-amendable – ce qui revient à jeter le bébé avec l’eau du bain ? Est-ce que toutes les critiques que Foucault adresse à l’idéologie ont pour lui le même poids, ou est-ce qu’il y en a une qui, à un certain moment, se révèle plus importante ou plus décisive que les autres et qui aurait enfin persuadé Foucault qu’il n’est pas possible de se servir de cette notion ?

Pierre Macherey – Il me semble, c’est une hypothèse que je propose à la discussion, que la manière tranchante utilisée par Foucault pour aborder la question de l’idéologie est le symptôme d’un embarras.

Mots-clés : Foucault, Althusser Louis, idéologie, Macherey Pierre

suite