Foucault News

La gauche face au djihadisme: les yeux grands fermés (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

10 April 2015

La gauche face au djihadisme: les yeux grands fermés
LE MONDE | 03.03.2015 | Par Jean Birnbaum

The complete article can be found on the Comité Laicité République site. (Thanks to Mauricio for this link)

En 1978, le philosophe Michel Foucault arrive en Iran pour y effectuer un reportage sur la révolution islamique. Envoyé par le quotidien italien Corriere della sera, il va à la rencontre des insurgés et leur pose des questions. Bien sûr, cet intellectuel de gauche ne manque pas de s’intéresser aux causes économiques du soulèvement. Il commence par détailler les inégalités de classe et de statut qui rongent la société iranienne. Mais son ouverture d’esprit et sa disponibilité à l’événement le rendent sensible à un autre enjeu : « la religion, avec l’emprise formidable qu’elle a sur les gens ». Après avoir interviewé des étudiants et des ouvriers, il dresse le constat suivant : si les facteurs sociaux sont importants pour expliquer la contestation, seule l’espérance messianique a vraiment pu mettre le feu aux poudres. D’ailleurs, les militants se réclamant du communisme ou des droits de l’homme se trouvent peu à peu balayés par ceux qui en appellent à la charia.

Une vulgate marxisante

A l’évidence, « le problème de l’islam comme force politique est un problème essentiel pour notre époque et pour les années à venir », prévenait Foucault. Telle est la leçon de ce reportage signé par un philosophe qui a pu observer de près, et avec une certaine bienveillance, la puissance politique de l’espérance religieuse.

Cette leçon, délivrée par l’un des grands intellectuels de gauche, la gauche française l’a aujourd’hui oubliée. Les femmes et les hommes qui peuplent ses groupes militants, ses cercles de réflexion ou ses cabinets ministériels en sont revenus à une…

Foucault and ancient polizei: a genealogy of the military pastorate (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

9 April 2015

Kevin Scott Jobe, Foucault and ancient polizei: a genealogy of the military pastorate, Journal of Political Power, Vol. 8, No. 1, 21, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2015.1011378

Full PDF here

Abstract

While Foucault claimed that biopower, as a form of political pastorate, did not exist in ancient Greece, he did take the view, following Hegel, that the ancient ‘ethical community’ [sittlichkeit] constituted a kind of ‘political technology of the individual’, an ancient form of ‘police’. In this paper, I trace Foucault’s conception of ‘police’ in his Tanner Lectures to Hegel’s analysis of politeia as the origin of the modern polizei. Through an examination of politeia in ancient political and military literature, I uncover a military–pastoral technology, founded on the relation not between shepherd–flock, but between leader [hegemon] and follower [epistatae]. I suggest two forms that a military–pastoral technology has taken shape, both in the politeia of the Spartans and in the early American Republic. This line of inquiry, I conclude, would not only suggest that a political pastorate existed in ancient Greece, but would also force us to re-consider modern forms of ‘police’ through the lens of a military–pastoral technology.

The Islamic State’s Atrocities—and Ours (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 April 2015

The Islamic State’s Atrocities—and Ours
John Feffer and Foreign Policy In Focus on March 5, 2015

This article is a joint publication of TheNation.com and Foreign Policy In Focus.

The description of the death of Robert-Francois Damiens, the man who attempted to kill Louis XV, is not for the faint-hearted.

On March 2, 1757, in front of a crowd of spectators, Damiens was drawn and quartered, which means that his limbs were tied to four horses that were then urged to gallop toward the four points of the compass.

To discover why six horses were needed in the end and why various additional tortures were inflicted on the convict, you need to turn to the detailed description that opens French philosopher Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, perhaps the most blood-curdling beginning to an academic book ever.

In this 1975 masterpiece, Foucault argued that punishment, which was public and dramatic for much of recorded history, became progressively more hidden during the construction of the modern penal system. As part of this pivotal transformation, Foucault noted, “it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.”

Institutions, in other words, replaced the theater of cruelty. What was once spectacle has become hidden from our eyes.

The Existential Crisis of the American University (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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7 April 2015

Jim Russell, The Existential Crisis of the American University, Pacific Standard, Mar 11, 2015

My favorite philosopher (Michel Foucault) wasn’t a philosopher so much as he was an innovative historian. Instead of casting his gaze at some well-defined era, Foucault studied the breaks between eras. Why did the model of the way the world works change? Instead of a history, Foucault offered histories. In that tradition, I offer the recent histories of the American university. The first Foucauldian moment, “The Day the Purpose of College Changed“:

Foucault and Heidegger (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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6 April 2015

Gordon Hull, Parrhesia (Part 3): On Heidegger, New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science, 30 March 2015

Unlike Derrida, with whom he had frequent, highly public polemics, Foucault says relatively little about Heidegger. Much of that is incidental: in a 1983 interview, for example, while talking about the postwar influence of Sartre, he notes parenthetically that “the roots of Sartre, after all, are Husserl and Heidegger, who were hardly public dancers” (Aesthetics, 452). In his 1982 lecture on the “Political Technology of Individuals,” Heidegger’s name shows up in a list of those who are in the “field of the historical reflection on ourselves” (Power, 402). But, in a late interview, he says that “my entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger” (see the discussion here). He makes a comparable remark in one of the Hermeneutics of the Subject lectures; in response to a question, he names Heidegger and Lacan as the two 20c thinkers who have dealt with the subject and truth, and says that “I have tried to reflect on all this from the side of Heidegger and starting from Heidegger” (p. 189). What are we to make of this?

Foucault and neoliberalism (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 April 2015

Just in case you missed it: This post, Searching for Foucault in an Age of Inequality posted yesterday on Foucault News was the latest entry in the neoliberal debate.

Discussion: Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 April 2015

Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault
link to book details

Published on 12 Mar 2015

Mark D. Jordan of the Harvard Divinity School discusses his recent publication, Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault.
Respondents include James Bernauer, S.J., of Boston College, Amy Hollywood and Mayra Rivera Rivera, both of Harvard Divinity School.

00:00 Welcome and introduction by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard Divinity School

07:45 Mark D. Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School

19:43 Respondent introductions by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard Divinity School

24:13 Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies, Harvard Divinity School

40:06 Mayra Rivera Rivera, Associate Professor of Theology and Latina/o Studies, Harvard Divinity School

56:44 James Bernauer, S.J., Professor of Philosophy, Boston College

1:11:40 Response by Mark D. Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School

1:14:20 Q&A with Mark D. Jordan, James Bernauer, Amy Hollywood, Mayra Rivera Rivera

Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://www.hds.harvard.edu.

Searching for Foucault in an Age of Inequality (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

4 April 2015

Searching for Foucault in an Age of Inequality

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Alexander Arnold on Critiquer Foucault: Les Années 1980 et la tentation néolibérale, Los Angeles Review of Books, 18 March 2015

JACOBIN RECENTLY PUBLISHED an interview with a little-known sociologist that provoked a wave of reactions. A young Belgian scholar named Daniel Zamora claimed that the philosopher Michel Foucault — a major contributor to radical thought of the last 30 years — not only helped bring about the success of free-market ideology, but also is significantly responsible for the left’s inability to oppose it. Immediately after the interview’s publication, many scholars and intellectuals rushed to Foucault’s defense. Supporters claimed that although Foucault was never a rank-and-file socialist, he never abandoned his radical commitments or embraced the ideology, neoliberalism, often associated with the rise of the modern right. Zamora did not back down. Five days after the release of his interview he published another piece in Jacobin raising the stakes. Foucault, he said, “actively contributed” to the “destruction” of the welfare state and “in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment.” Again, Foucault’s defenders refuted Zamora’s arguments as based on weak, ahistorical, and ideologically driven readings of the philosopher’s works.

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“Foucault insults the police”, photo by Elie Kagan (1972)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

3 April 2015

Progressive Geographies

Foucault insults the police, 1971 “Foucault insults the police”, photograph by Elie Kagan from 17 January 1972, in Michel Foucault – Une journée particulière. It seems this photo was taken only moments after a much more famous one with Foucault, Deleuze and Sartre – such as appears here.

The book has many more images, and bilingual English-French text.

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Madness in Civilization: from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull – Review (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 April 2015

Madness in Civilization: from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull
Reviewed by Salley Vickers, The Telegraph, 29 Mar 2015

I doubt whether many people other than social science students read Michel Foucault these days. Andrew Scull, whose review of Foucault’s The History of Madness in 2007 took the French philosopher to task for historical inaccuracies, references his most famous work, Madness and Civilization, in the title of his own book (a sly corrective?). As the subtitle of Madness in Civilization suggests, Scull’s book is as epic as Foucault’s in its aim to consider “the encounter between madness and civilisation over more than two millennia”. This not inconsiderable undertaking encompasses the ancient civilisations of Greece, China and Persia, the art and writings of the Renaissance, the First World War poets and brain imaging, to name just a few of Scull’s subjects.

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