Foucault News

‘No Posthumous Publications’ – responses to some questions about Foucault and the future publication of the History of Sexuality Vol IV

Clare O'Farrell

17 October 2015

In the German interview with Daniel Defert I linked to earlier this week, it was revealed that the fourth volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality will eventually be published. This is my attempt at answering some of the common questions – some I’ve received by mail, twitter, etc. and some that have been asked before.

Didn’t Foucault want ‘no posthumous publications’?

– yes, but this wish has been interpreted more and more liberally over the past several years, and has been broken repeatedly recently, so this is not surprising. Dits et écrits in 1994 was a literal following of the wish – a posthumous collection, but only of pieces which were published in some form in his lifetime, or a few which were authorised but appeared later due to publishing delays. It brought a number of pieces into/back into French which had been published in other languages. But it missed a few…

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Governing childhood through crime prevention: the case of the German school system (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 October 2015

Schreiber, V., Stein, C., Pütz, R.
Governing childhood through crime prevention: the case of the German school system
(2015) Children’s Geographies, 15 p. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2015.1048426

Abstract
Over the last decade, numerous crime prevention programmes have been implemented across the German school sector. Although several serious violent attacks have happened in the last 12 years in German schools, the emergence of crime prevention programmes within the education sector cannot simply be conceived as a reaction to a rise in youth crime. Following Michel Foucault’s writings on power and governmentality, and drawing upon extracts of a discourse analysis of crime prevention programmes and political speeches, we argue that crime prevention within German schools signifies a new mode of governing childhood. Although we focus on Germany, our findings may illustrate an international trend within education policy, which first tends to spatialise socio-structural problems and transform them into local solutions, and second seeks to create childhood subjectivities that cause children to feel responsible for their own safety, while simultaneously subjecting children and young people to wide-ranging social control via area-based networks.

Author Keywords
crime prevention; Germany; governmentality; school; self-governance

Different ways of problematising biotechnology – and what it means for technology governance (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 October 2015

Bogner, A., Torgersen, H.
Different ways of problematising biotechnology – and what it means for technology governance
(2015) Public Understanding of Science, 24 (5), pp. 516-532.

DOI: 10.1177/0963662514539074

Abstract
To understand controversies over technologies better, we propose the concept of ‘problematisation’. Drawing on Foucault’s idea of problematisation and on the concept of frames in media research, we identify characteristic forms of problematising biotechnology in pertaining controversies, typically emphasising ethical, risk or economic aspects. They provide a common basis for disputes and allow participants to argue effectively. The different forms are important for how controversies are negotiated, which experts get involved, what role public engagement plays and how political decisions are legitimised – in short, for technology governance. We develop a heuristic for analysing the link between forms of problematisation and different options for technology governance. Applied to synthetic biology, we discuss different problematisations of this technology and the implications for governance. © The Author(s) 2014

Author Keywords
bioethics; biotechnology; framing risk; governance of science and technology; public participation; studies of science and technology

The “Biological Turn” in Law – A Critical Appraisal (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 October 2015

The “Biological Turn” in Law – A Critical Appraisal

This symposium is a cooperation between UNSW Law, the Initiative for Bio-Legalities, the School of Social Sciences, and the Biopolitical Studies Research Network, UNSW.

Date: Friday, 23 October, 2015
Venue: Staff Common Room, Level 2, UNSW Law Building
RSVP: http://thebiologicalturninlaw.eventbrite.com.au

This symposium is interested in pursuing some of the implications of the “biological turn” in the human and social sciences as they touch upon jurisprudence and legal theory. Many studies show that with the increasing use of biological markers of identity (genetic, biometric, etc.), the traditional category of the legal (and moral) person is increasingly becoming unable to articulate or track the new interfaces between life and law. This symposium thematizes the empirical and normative transformations in the ideas of legal personhood, legal form, and subjective rights caused or motivated by the biologization of law and politics.

PDF of full program and speaker biographies

Foucault 3/13 The Punitive Society (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

13 October 2015

Bernard E. Harcourt, Foucault 3/13 The Punitive Society: Didier Fassin, Axel Honneth, Nadia Urbinati, and the Question of the Political and Moral Economies of Punishment

[This article draws on a longer essay titled “The ’73 Graft: Punishment, Political Economy, and the Genealogy of Morals”]

In their fascinating and provocative articles on The Punitive Society, Didier Fassin, Axel Honneth, and Nadia Urbinati raise a set of critical questions about Foucault’s 1973 lectures, concerning:

the idea of civil war as a model for relations of power in society, and the related notion of the “criminal as social enemy” as a specific instantiation of the matrix of war;
the concept of “illegalisms” as the basis for a political economy of punishment that criminalizes the poor and minorities;
the relation of that particular political-economic theory to a Weberian-inspired, genealogical analysis of the protestant roots of the wage- and prison-form;
the contemporary reflections of all this in our present condition of massive and racialized over-incarceration, or what has come to be known as the New Jim Crow; and
the role and method for militant specific intellectuals to intervene in our present, drawing on The Punitive Society as a political text.

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Foucault 13/13 Seminar 3 (2015) livestream

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

12 October 2015

Livestream of Seminar 3 of Foucault 13/13
This will also be available as a recording after the event

October 12, 2015, 6:15pm
Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton) and EHESS
Axel Honneth, University of Frankfurt & Columbia University
Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University

Moderators:
Bernard E. Harcourt, Columbia University
Jesús R. Velasco, Columbia University

Deleuze and Foucault’s Political Philosophy (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 October 2015

Deleuze and Foucault’s Political Philosophy
Conference

PDF of full program
13 – 14 November 2015

Purdue University
Organized by the Philosophy and Literature Interdisciplinary Program and the Department of Philosophy with the generous support of a Global Synergy Grant from the College of Liberal Arts

Organizers: Nicolae Morar, Thomas Nail , Daniel W. Smith

The “Deleuze and Foucault’s Political Philosophy” conference brings together philosophers and scholars for a two – day conference ex amining the political philosophies of Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) and Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984), two of the most important and influential French philosophers of the twentieth – century.

The conference is taking place through the generous support of a “Global Synergy Grant” from the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University. By fostering innovation and excellence in international and global research in the College of Liberal Arts, the Global Synergy Grants seek to enhance Purdue’s national and international reputation of research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The Global Synergy Grant is supporting an on-going project to transcribe the lectures that Gilles Deleuze gave at his seminar at the University of Paris 8, St. Denis, recordings of which have been archived in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The project started in 2012 with the transcription of Deleuze’s 1985-86 seminars on Michel Foucault, which are now available at the La Voix de Deleuze website at Paris 8.

The current grant is supporting the transcription of Deleuze’s 1979-80 seminar entitled “Appareils d’Etat et Machines de Guerre” (Apparatuses of State and War Machines). We are happy to mark the online publication of these lectures by Deleuze on both Michel Foucault and the war machine by hosting this conference on the relation between the political philosophies of Deleuze and Foucault.

Sessions will be held on the Purdue University West Lafayette campus in the Yue-Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts, Room 1197.

Speakers:
Claire Colebrook, Penn State University, cmc30@psu.edu
Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University, lul19@psu.edu
Justin Litaker, Purdue University, jsanderslitaker@gmail.com
Mary Beth Mader, University of Memphis, mmader@memphis.edu
Todd May, Clemson University, mayt@clemson.edu
Nicolae Morar, University of Oregon, nmorar@uoregon.edu
Thomas Nail, University of Denver, thomas.nail@du.edu
Chris Penfield, Purdue University, chrispenfield@gmail.com
Jason Read, University of Southern Maine, jason.read@maine.edu
Dan Selcer, Duquesne University, selcerd@duq.edu
Fredrika Spindler, Södertörn University, Sweden, fredrika.spindler@sh.se
Daniel Smith, Purdue University, smith132@purdue.edu
Kevin Thompson, DePaul University, kthomp12@depaul.edu Stephen Zepke, Vienna, Austria, eszed@hotmail.com

Michel Foucault on refugees – a previously untranslated interview from 1979

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 October 2015

Progressive Geographies

‘The refugee problem is a foreshadowing of the 21st century’s great migration’

(“Nanmin mondai ha 21 seiku minzoku daiidô no zenchô da”, an interview by H.Uno, originally published on 17 August 1979, in Shûkan posuto, pp. 34-35) republished under the title “Le problème des réfugiés est un présage de la grande migration du XXIe siècle” in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, text 271, Volume 3. 1976-1979, Gallimard, 1994, pp. 798-800.

(Partially republished by Libération on 18 September 2015 and by Libération.fr on 17 September 2015 under the title “Michel Foucault en 1979 : «Les hommes réprimés par la dictature choisiront d’échapper à l’enfer»” )

Translated from Japanese into French by Ryôji Nakamura, 1994 ; translated from French into English by Felix de Montety, 2015. Thanks to Stuart Elden, Steve Legg and Mike Heffernan for comments and corrections.

H. Uno: What according to…

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Forum: Foucault and Neoliberalism (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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11 October 2015

Forum: Foucault and Neoliberalism, History and Theory, Volume 54, Issue 3, October 2015.

1. Introduction (pages 367–371)
Matthew Specter

2. Can the critique of capitalism be antihumanist? (pages 372–388)
Michael C. Behrent

3. Foucault must not be defended (pages 389–403)
Mitchell Dean

4. Neoliberalism through Foucault’s eyes (pages 404–418)
Serge Audier

Monstruosités critiques et surdités politiques (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

10 October 2015

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Monstruosités critiques et surdités politiques. Réponse à un article publié dans Clarin à propos de La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault

(Une version de cet article en espagnol est également publié sur ce site. A Spanish version of this piece is also available on this website)

En 1971, Michel Foucault publie un texte où il s’en prend à ce qu’il appelle les « monstruosités de la critique », aux opérations de déformation qu’accomplissent, par incompréhension, ignorance, et mauvaise foi, ceux qui sont censés savoir lire.
Les attaques publiées par l’auteur d’un compte-rendu – Veronica Gago – de mon livre La Ultima Leccion de Michel Foucault dans le supplément N du journal argentin Clarin appartiennent à cette catégorie. L’incompréhension n’est pas surprenante et son article n’a rien d’original. Elle exprime la manière dont celles et ceux qui adhérent sans distance à des perceptions installées réagissent à un livre qui pose des questions nouvelles. L’auteur ne peut pas rendre compte de mon livre et comprendre mon projet. Elle leur reste extérieure. Elle lit avec des lunettes idéologiques un livre de réflexion. Comme elle ne peut pas imaginer que Foucault s’est intéressé au néolibéralisme, elle se livre à une pratique d’exorcisme et de dénégation.

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