Foucault News

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

EDGES BLOG: CSC Interview with Daniel Zamora (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 April 2016

EDGES BLOG: CSC Interview with Daniel Zamora. Cultural Studies blog, George Mason University, 12 March 2016

The Cultural Studies Program’s colloquium (CSC) series features talks by distinguished scholars from across the disciplines. Graduate student Dave Zeglen interviewed Daniel Zamora, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago. See below for the transcript.

Let us begin with your primary thesis, which has already stirred controversies and debates: How did Foucault understand neoliberalism, and how did he actually position himself vis-à-vis the shifting political currents of the 1970s? How was his thinking shifting on questions related to the social democratic welfare state? What factors contributed to Foucault’s open anti-socialism and anti-statism in the French context?

These are probably some of the most important questions to ask in order to understand Foucault’s relationship to neoliberalism. And we can’t understand that relationship without placing Foucault’s work within the French context of the mid-1970s. More specifically, Foucault’s work is situated in the conflict between old and new lefts, in the post-1968 left’s increasing opposition to the post-war left.

read more

Julio Groppa Aquino, Fabiana Augusta Alves Jardim, Wearing Foucault’s Clogs: Biopolitics in Brazilian Educational Research (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 April 2016

Julio Groppa Aquino, Fabiana Augusta Alves Jardim, Wearing Foucault’s Clogs: Biopolitics in Brazilian Educational Research, Sisyphus – Journal of Education, 2015, vol 3, no.3, 10-37.
https://doi.org/10.25749/sis.8900

Abstract
The article initiates by presenting the context and effects of the uses of biopolitics, a notion that Foucault frames during a period of theoretical transition, when he operates important displacements in his analytics of power. In the second section, we take 45 articles that appeared in Brazilian main journals in the field of education, during the past fifteen years, and that referred either to the notion of biopolitics or biopower. We noticed that the problems confronted by Foucault during this biopolitical interlude have undoubtedly found an echo in the angst, hopes and obstacles faced by Brazilian researchers during the post-dictatorial times. We believe this happened, among other reasons, because of the paradox they were witnessing: the first steps Brazil was walking towards democratization of relations and institutions, at the very same time neoliberal practices and reforms were introduced into the horizon.

Keywords
Michel Foucault, Biopolitics, Brazilian education, Educational research

The Limits of Neoliberalism: An Interview with Will Davies (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 April 2016

The Limits of Neoliberalism: An Interview with Will Davies

Posted by Stephen Dunne in Management is too Important Not to Debate Blog on April 15, 2015

Stephen Dunne (henceforth SD): Can I ask you to recount, when you set out on the book, what you were trying to do and in relation to what body of work?

WD: The main question I had, following on from my PhD, concerned competition and competitiveness as forms of justification, or as sources of political authority. It appeared to me that appealing to competitive processes, or claiming that certain actions were going to be good for competitiveness or improve competition, was a basis on which to win consent to certain things. It seemed to be a form of justification or a way of legitimating certain types of action. I was interested in the fact that it was almost not tenable in today’s society and particularly in today’s policy establishment to be against competition or against competitiveness in some way.  It was almost that to be against those ideas was to put yourself in some sort of irrational or futile position.  And that immediately concerned me because it made me think about where these ideas came from.

[…]

It was only later that I started to become interested in the notion of neoliberalism. In the space of about three years, there were a series of very good critical historical books on neoliberalism as a distinct tradition of thought.  In 2008 Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics was translated into English then in the summer of 2009 Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe’s The Road from Mont Pelèrin, a series of articles on different aspects of what they call The Neoliberal Thought Collective was also published. I think it was 2010 when Jamie Peck’s Constructions of Neoliberal Reason came out and much more recently there was Angus Burgin’s The Great Persuasion, the most historical and detailed history of the neoliberal intellectual movement, although probably also the least critical or theoretical.

Foucault points out that the key trait of markets from a neoliberal perspective is not that they facilitate exchange but that they facilitate competition. For liberals, the market is a space of equivalence in that two people come together and perform an act of exchange. Money is equivalent to a good or a service or a unit of labour. For neoliberals, the market is something which produces inequality between people.  One person wins and another person loses and that is the key moral trait of markets for them. Suddenly I realised the reason I was interested in competitiveness was precisely this issue: competition as a mode of justification. This effectively means generating more inequality and preventing the push towards equality that was a trait of the socialists, Keynesians and social democrats: projects that initially prompted the creation of the neoliberal thought collectives as a critical response.

read more

Archive: Of Prisons, Tropics and Bicycles: A Conversation with David Arnold (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 April 2016

Rohan Deb Roy and David Arnold, Of Prisons, Tropics and Bicycles: A Conversation with David Arnold, Asian Medicine 6 (2010–11) 149–163

DOI:10.1163/157342110X606914
Full text on academia.edu

Abstract
David Arnold who retired this year as the Professor of Asian and Global History at the University of Warwick remains one of the most prolific historians of colonial medicine and modern South Asia. A founding member of the subaltern studies collective, he is considered widely as a pioneer in the histories of colonial medicine, environment, penology, hunger and famines within South Asian studies and beyond. In this interview he recalls his formative inspirations, ideological motivations and reflects critically on his earlier works, explaining various shifts as well as mapping the possible course of future work. He talks at length about his forthcoming works on everyday technology, food and monsoon Asia. Finally, he shares with us his desire of initiating work on an ambitious project about the twin themes of poison and poverty in South Asian history, beginning with the Bengal famine in the late eighteenth century and ending with the Bhopal gas tragedy of the early 1980s. This conversation provides insights into the ways in which the field of medical history in modern South Asia has been shaped over the past three decades through interactions with broader discussions on agency, resistance, power, everydayness, subaltern studies, global and spatial histories. It hints further at the newer directions which are being opened up by such persisting intellectual entanglements.

Keywords
Colonialism, medicine, subaltern, everyday, South Asia

Subsequently, Foucault has been the most important single influence on my work and my thinking about history. Of course, Foucault’s work takes many forms and it is the early Foucault that I tend to go back to, particularly Discipline and Punish and the Power/Knowledge interviews rather than the later Foucault of The History of Sexuality

Live and let die: did Michel Foucault predict Europe’s refugee crisis? (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

4 April 2016

Stephane J Baele, Live and let die: did Michel Foucault predict Europe’s refugee crisis?, The Conversation, February 25, 2016

Translation into French

Translation into Turkish

In March 1976, philosopher Michel Foucault described the advent of a new logic of government, specific to Western liberal societies. He called it biopolitics. States were becoming obsessed with the health and wellbeing of their populations.

And sure enough, 40 years later, Western states rarely have been more busy promoting healthy food, banning tobacco, regulating alcohol, organising breast cancer checks, or churning out information on the risk probabilities of this or that disease.

Foucault never claimed this was a bad trend – it saves lives after all. But he did warn that paying so much attention to the health and wealth of one population necessitates the exclusion of those who are not entitled to – and are perceived to endanger – this health maximisation programme.

Biopolitics is therefore the politics of live and let die. The more a state focuses on its own population, the more it creates the conditions of possibility for others to die, “exposing people to death, increasing the risk of death for some people”.

read more

Special issue: Special education and the deviant child in the Nordic countries – the impact of Foucault (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

3 April 2016

Vol 7 (2016): Special issue: Special education and the deviant child in the Nordic countries – the impact of Foucault, Nordic Journal of Social Research

Table of Contents

Letters

Guest editorial: special education and the deviant child in the Nordic countries – the impact of Foucault PDF
Julie Allan, Bjørn Hamre

Articles

The subject of exemption: through discourses of normalization and individualization in Denmark PDF
Bjørn Hamre, Tine Fristrup, Gerd Christensen
Intelligence testing, ethnicity, and construction of the deviant child: Foucault and special education in Sweden PDF
Thom Axelsson
Why Michel Foucault in Norwegian Special-Education Research? PDF
Hege Knudsmoen, Eva Simonsen
Foucault and deaf education in Finland PDF
Lauri Siisiäinen
Diagnosing, special education, and ‘learnification’ in Danish schools PDF
Bjørn Hamre
Democratic and Inclusive Education in Iceland: Transgression and the Medical Gaze PDF
Ólafur Páll Jónsson

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

ISSN 1892-2783

La fracture politique. Archéologie de l’inégalité démocratique (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 April 2016

La fracture politique. Archéologie de l’inégalité démocratique,

par Hamdi NABLI, diplômé de Science Politique, Consultant indépendant, Enseignant à la Sorbonne Nouvelle et Fondateur du Centre d’Etudes et de Prospective Internationale (C.E.P.I.). Connaissances et Savoirs, 2016

Cet essai constitue une explication du malaise que ressentent les citoyens et les dirigeants face à la distance qui les sépare tous les jours un peu plus. Cette explication s’oriente autour d’une reconstruction de la notion de « représentation », avec ses deux versants principaux : le premier, royal et monarchique, permettait à l’élite de faire reposer son pouvoir sur une domination traditionnelle relative à une pratique discursive transcendantale. Le second, bourgeois et parlementaire, permet à l’élite des Temps modernes de faire reposer son pouvoir sur une domination légale-rationnelle relative à une pratique discursive immanente. C’est cette matrice qui s’ébranle à l’âge postmoderne. Fin de la représentation, volonté de ressemblance. L’État-nation n’est plus le modèle sociopolitique des pays occidentaux, et c’est la scène sur laquelle jouaient les dirigeants modernes qui s’effondre, via la démocratie de l’opinion, en même temps que le public ‘‘citoyen et humaniste” s’éclipse à travers l’abstention…

Informations complémentaires
Version papier : 13,95 € ISBN : 9782753902831
134 pages – Histoire/Politique – Edition brochée

Comment commander cet ouvrage
Ce livre est disponible à la vente au format papier. Pour vous le procurer, connectez-vous sur le site Internet de Connaissances et Savoirs (www.connaissances-savoirs.com) ou commandez-le en librairies.

Relations presse
Clémence BOURDON – Responsable Communication
e-mail : clemence@connaissances-savoirs.com – Tél. : 01 84 74 10 03
Ouvrage numérique disponible en service de presse sur simple demande par e-mail avec vos coordonnées complètes.

Connaissances et Savoirs – S.A.S. au capital de 120 000 € – R.C.S. PARIS B 453 879 306 – SIRET : 453 879 306 000 18 – Code NAF : 5811Z

Archive: Controverse autour du changement climatique (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 April 2016

Editor: With thanks to the researcher who sent me this dossier. Foucault’s work is invoked in this media controversy.

François Ewald, Apologie de Claude Allègre Les Echos.fr 2/3/10

Voir aussi ce lien

[…]
Le travail de Claude Allègre montre que la thèse du réchauffement climatique produit par l’activité humaine suppose tout un dispositif à la fois scientifique et politique qu’il démonte dans ses différentes composantes. Il ne fait rien d’autre que ce qu’un Michel Foucault a pu faire pour expliquer d’autres propositions qui nous sont devenues familières comme « la folie est une maladie mentale » ou « la sexualité est fondamentalement réprimée dans nos sociétés ». Il démonte le mythe d’une science du climat qui serait pure et désintéressée comme les écolos le font de leur côté pour les OGM et autres technologies.

suite

Olivier Godard dénonce «l’imposture du climat» de Claude Allègre, Libération, 10 mai 2010

L’économiste Olivier  Godard, directeur de recherche au Cnrs et enseignant en économie à l’Ecole Polytechnique, vient de publier un texte percutant dans le N° de mai de la revue Esprit. Son titre ? «De l’imposture au sophisme, la science du climat vue par Claude Allègre, François Ewald et quelques autres». Il y dénonce en particulier le dernier livre de Claude Allègre «L’imposture climatique» (Plon).

suite

Olivier Godard, Le climat, l’imposteur et le sophiste, Alternatives Economiques, 12 mars 2010

Olivier Godard, directeur de recherche au CNRS, économiste du développement et de l’environnement, répond aux « sophistes » et aux « imposteurs » qui, de Claude Allègre à François Ewald, prétendent s’appuyer sur la science pour contester les études du Giec sur le dérèglement climatique.

[…]

C’est dans ce contexte que le 2 mars, Les Echos publiaient une « apologie de Claude Allègre » signée François Ewald, cet ancien assistant de Michel Foucault devenu l’intellectuel de la Fédération française des sociétés d’assurances puis le titulaire d’une chaire au Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam). Ewald s’en prenait aux journalistes qui auraient fait preuve d’intolérance et cédé à leurs convictions militantes. Protestant avec gravité, il le faisait, prétendait-il, au nom de l’éthique des sciences : pointer les erreurs serait une manière d’esquiver la thèse centrale de l’ancien ministre. Et Ewald de juger impératif un débat national sur les conditions de transformation d’une « hypothèse douteuse » (sic) (celle du réchauffement climatique en cours et à venir) en « dogme »(sic). Et de voir en Allègre un nouveau Michel Foucault déconstruisant l’imposture climatique née des amours adultères de la science et du pouvoir ! Pauvre Foucault !

suite

De l’imposture au sophisme, la science du climat vue par Claude Allègre, François Ewald et quelques autres. Esprit, mai 2010. Full PDF

Le dernier livre d’entretiens de Claude Allègre publié en février 2010 est un livre de dénonciation d’une soi-disant imposture climatique. La théorie selon laquelle les émissions de gaz à effet de serre dues à l’activité humaine depuis le début de la révolution industrielle seraient en train de bouleverser le climat de la planète, théorie dont les prémisses ont été le fait de savants du XIXe siècle comme Joseph Fourier ou Svante Arrhenius , est présentée comme un mythe sans fondement scientifique. Qui plus est, un mythe imposé à la communauté internationale à la suite d’une prise du pouvoir par un petit groupe d’hommes sans scrupules, avides de fortune ou de gloire, ou emportés par une idéologie écologiste totalitaire – quelques scientifiques mafieux, quelques responsables politiques dont Olof Palme, Premier ministre socialiste suédois assassiné en 1986, et Margaret Thatcher, Premier ministre du Royaume-Uni de 1979 à 1990, et quelques hauts fonctionnaires onusiens. Cette prise de pouvoir n’aurait de précédent, aux yeux d’Allègre, que celle des bolcheviks lors de la révolution russe de 1917.

suite

A voir aussi

Olivier Godard, Dossier Adaptation aux changements climatiques.

François Ewald, The Precautionary Principle and Water Management.

Concluding remarks: Michel Foucault, neoliberalism and beyond conference (2016)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 April 2016

FOUCAULT 8/13 EPILOGUE: MICHEL FOUCAULT, NEOLIBERALISM AND BEYOND

The following is a guest post by Stephen Sawyer, organizer of the March 25-26 Foucault and Neoliberalism Conference at the American University of Paris. Professor Sawyer has kindly provided us with concluding remarks on the conference.

By Stephen Sawyer

Michel Foucault’s reflections on neoliberalism have ultimately left us with more questions than answers. They have opened a path toward a more sophisticated reflection on one of the most important thinkers of the last half century, while providing an unexpected point of entry into one of the most vexing political, economic, cultural and social movements of our contemporary world. While the “critique” of Foucault as a closet neoliberal by the far left and the right is tenuous at best (Steinmetz-Jenkins), the extraordinary success of neoliberal ideology has made Foucault’s interest in this question in the late 1970s at once prescient, puzzling and alluring. Moreover, the full release of Foucault’s Collège de France lectures along with the spate of previously unreleased material has led to something of a Foucault renaissance that has only raised the stakes. The question, then, almost four decades after Foucault’s reflections is: How do we craft a sophisticated history of this moment without either falling into sensationalist critiques or an uncritical assumption that Foucault’s exploration of neoliberalism was an insignificant passing concern.

read more

Alan McKinlay and Ken Starkey (eds), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory From Panopticon to Technologies of Self (1998)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 March 2016

mckinlayAlan McKinlay and Ken Starkey (eds) Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of Self, Sage, 1998

This volume draws together critical assessments of Michel Foucault’s contribution to our understanding of the making and remaking of the modern organization.
The volume provides a valuable summary of Foucault’s contribution to organization theory, which also challenges the conventions of traditional organizational analysis. By applying Foucauldian concepts such as discipline, surveillance and power/knowledge, the authors shed new light on the genesis of the modern organization and raise fresh questions about organization theory. The bureaucratic career is, for example, analyzed as a disciplinary device, a mechanism that seeks to alter rational choice rather than constrain bodies. This raises questions about Foucault’s linking of the modern organization’s birth with the enlightenment. Other contributions review the impact of totalizing managerial discourses and the limits and possiblities of resistance, and question the profound pessimism of Foucault. The volume concludes by examining the implications of Foucault’s later work in which he suggests that people are much freer than they feel.

Blog at WordPress.com.