Foucault News

Arun Iyer, Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures: The Case of Heidegger and Foucault (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

29 July 2015

Arun Iyer, Towards an Epistemology of RupturesThe Case of Heidegger and Foucault., Bloomsbury, 2014

See also Review by H.A. Nethery at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

About
By systematically uncovering and comprehensively examining the epistemological implications of Heidegger’s history of being and Foucault’s archaeology of discursive formations, Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures shows how Heidegger and Foucault significantly expand the notions of knowledge and thought. This is done by tracing their path-breaking responses to the question: What is the object of thought? The book shows how for both thinkers thought is not just the act by which the object is represented in an idea, and knowledge not just a state of the mind of the individual subject corresponding to the object. Each thinker, in his own way, argues that thought is a productive event in which the subject and the object gain their respective identity and knowledge is the opening up of a space in which the subject and object can encounter each other and in which true and false statements about an object become possible. They thereby lay the ground for a new conceptual framework for rethinking the very relationship between knowledge and its object.

Table Of Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Texts
Introduction
1. Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought (I): From the Transcendental Power of the Imagination to the Ontological Power of Thought
2. Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought (II): On the Relationship between Thought and Being
3. Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Knowledge: From Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism to Heidegger’s Historical Ontology
4. Foucault’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought in The Order of Things
5. Foucault’s Reformulation of the Essence of Knowledge: From Husserlian Phenomenology to Foucauldian Archaeology
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Reviews
“Epistemology as traditionally conceived seeks to determine the nature of knowledge and justification. Its point of departure is Plato’s critique of the relativism of Protagoras, who according to Plato erred by accepting Heraclitus’ construal of being as becoming. Truth, knowledge, and justification must be grounded in timeless entities of some sort. Arun Iyer shows how Heidegger and Foucault reverse this Platonic argument. For them, truth, knowledge, and justification are irreducibly historical. Iyer’s elaboration of their views is subtle, original, and thought-provoking.” – Andrew Cutrofello, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, USA

“This book makes it clear how one can develop a strictly epistemological approach to thinkers as complex as Husserl, Heidegger, and Foucault, and how one can draw basic consequences from their thoughts for a theory of knowledge that admits of breaks, ruptures, and discontinuously emerging epistemic formations. Moreover, it shows how a historical thinking in philosophy can be elaborated without having recourse to any aprioristic philosophy of history. Finally, it provides a lucid analysis of the historical conditions human knowledge finds itself submitted to. For all of these reasons, it is a highly remarkable contribution to contemporary continental European philosophy.” – Laszlo Tengelyi, of Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany.

Michalinos Zembylas, ‘Pedagogy of discomfort’ and its ethical implications: the tensions of ethical violence in social justice education (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 July 2015

Michalinos Zembylas,
‘Pedagogy of discomfort’ and its ethical implications: the tensions of ethical violence in social justice education
(2015) Ethics and Education, 10(2), 163–174.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2015.1039274

Abstract
This essay considers the ethical implications of engaging in a pedagogy of discomfort, using as a point of departure Butler’s reflections on ethical violence and norms. The author shows how this attempt is full of tensions that cannot, if ever, be easily resolved. To address these tensions, the author first offers a brief overview of the notion of pedagogy of discomfort and discusses its relevance with Foucault’s idea of ‘ethic of discomfort’ and the promise of ‘safe classroom.’ Then, he focuses on Butler’s account of ethical violence and norms to show how the subject’s constitution and regulation are inextricably linked to violence in several ways. In the final part of the paper, the author turns more specifically to the ways in which a pedagogy of discomfort might entail ethical violence, suggesting how the turn to a nonviolent ethics might become possible or whether the ethical resonances of that challenge will always entail a degree of ambivalence. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

Author Keywords
ethical norms; ethical violence; Judith Butler; pedagogy of discomfort; social justice education

Examining uncertainty and trust among irrigators and regulatory bodies in the Murray-Darling Basin (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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27 July 2015

Bryant, L., George, J.
Examining uncertainty and trust among irrigators and regulatory bodies in the Murray-Darling Basin
(2015) International Journal of Water Resources Development, 14 p. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/07900627.2015.1028584

Abstract
Due to changing climate and water legislation in South Australia, Australia’s oldest water trust, the Renmark Irrigation Trust (RIT), and the community it serves have faced unprecedented changes in water allocations. Using participatory research methods, this article examines irrigators’ perceptions of risk, uncertainty and trust in relation to changing water legislation and drought. The social, cultural and regulatory relationship between irrigators and the RIT and the conditions in which trust is given are also explored. Foucault’s understanding of power provides the analytical context in which we examine how power and knowledge are constituted, negotiated and reconstructed at the local level to shape trust between individuals and the RIT. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

Author Keywords
drought; Murray-Darling Basin; regulation; rural community; trust

Index Keywords
Drought, Risk perception; Analytical context, Murray-Darling Basin, Participatory research, Perceptions of risks, regulation, Regulatory relationships, Rural community, trust; Laws and legislation

Foucault’s Punitive Society: Visual Tactics of Marking as a History of the Present (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 July 2015

Phil Carney, Foucault’s Punitive Society: Visual Tactics of Marking as a History of the Present, British Journal of Criminology (2015) 55 (2): 231-247. First published online: January 7, 2015

doi: 10.1093/bjc/azu105

Abstract
Applying a form of genealogical method rooted in Nietzsche’s use of history, this article seeks an understanding of ‘marking’ punishments in our own mass-mediated culture. First, Foucault’s analysis of the punitive tactic of marking in his 1973 course, The Punitive Society, will be considered. Second, his concept of ‘virtual marking’ will be extended and applied to the case of the pitture infamanti in the early renaissance. Third, I will use these insights in a genealogical spirit in order to examine the rise of virtual marking in modernity. We will discover that Foucault was mistaken to tether marking punishments so closely to sovereign power. Instead, with certain antecedents in ancient Rome, virtual marking emerged in a largely ‘bourgeois’ society during the early renaissance and re-emerges in our own society of mass, photographic spectacle.

Key words

visual criminology
spectacle
culture
punishment
Foucault

Foucault and Human Rights: Seeking the Renewal of Human Rights Education

Clare O'Farrell

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24 July 2015

Michalinos Zembylas, Foucault and Human Rights: Seeking the Renewal of Human Rights Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Article first published online: 30 JUN 2015

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12148

Abstract
This article takes up Foucault’s politics of human rights and suggests that it may constitute a point of departure for the renewal of HRE, not only because it rejects the moral superiority of humanism—the grounding for the dominant liberal framework of international human rights—but also because it makes visible the complexities of human rights as illimitable and as strategic tools for new political struggles. Enriching human rights critiques has important implications for HRE, precisely because these critiques prevent the dominance of unreflexive and unproductive forms of HRE that lead toward a declarationalist, conservative and uncritical approach. It is argued that Foucault’s critical affirmation of human rights—that is, an approach which is neither a full embrace nor a total rejection—provides a critique that can be disruptive to the conventional HRE approach and creates openings that might renew HRE, both politically and pedagogically.

The paradox of the ‘under-performing professor’

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

23 July 2015

This is the society of control outlined by Deleuze (1990). Foucauldian (sequential) disciplinary regimes (Morrish, 2011) give way to ones in which, just as one hurdle is surmounted, another, higher one presents itself, with the end point always at the far horizon. We find this reflected in management documents on performance review with a lexicon of journeys, milestones and checkpoints, but the individual is never allowed to arrive at the promised reward. Gatekeeping measures such as the imposition of perpetual training, perpetual review of publications or multiple-staged applications for promotion, must be endured, even to participate.

Academic Irregularities

This post has been inspired by an apparent declaration of hostilities towards professors in a number of universities. The weapon of choice has been performance management, and some aspects of audit culture have been liberated from their usual role of absorbing academics’ time to becoming instruments of punishment.

In universities we have seen a deprofessionalization of academic staff which has manifest itself in a number of ways. In, many areas, disciplinary groups have been broken up and atomized across the university, in response to management‘s fear of ‘silos’. In others, productive interdisciplinary groups have been disrupted by reorganizations which have obstructed innovation. In at least one famous case, an entire centre was vandalized (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in 2002) because its members refused to surrender to the neoliberal commandment that research must be a competitive and self-important process.

The one thing that academics were…

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Alex Lee, Formalized Epistemes: Foucault’s Incomplete Order of History (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 July 2015

Alex Lee, Formalized Epistemes: Foucault’s Incomplete Order of History, Entropy January 9, 2015

Review of The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences by Michel Foucault

Update October 2025: Link is to the archived page on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

To answer why do things make sense, in The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, Foucault starts by drawing historical periods of sense making. Because he cannot account for why change has happened to determine how our sense making operates, he instead presents a view that historically-speaking sense making comes in stages.

This trajectory is threefold: in the sixteenth century and before we had resemblance as the episteme of knowing. This past heuristic did not distinguish as strictly between valid and invalid modes as our current epoch of sense making might. For example, today astrology isn’t considered valid but modern scientific formulation is. For the previous the seventeenth century, Foucault writes:

The world is covered with signs that must be deciphered, and those signs, which reveal resemblances and affinities, are themselves no more than forms of similitude. To know must therefore be to interpret: to find a way from the visible mark to that which is being said by it and which, without that mark, would lie like unspoken speech, dormant within things.

This is another way of saying that before the Classical era, knowledge was the ability to name and relate signs to one another heuristically. Likewise, our knowledge about manipulating the material world was through access to those named marks. As Foucault adds “This is why the plants that represent the head, or the eyes, or the heart, or the liver, will possess an efficacity in regard to that organ; this is why the animals themselves will react to the marks that designate them.” This is an understanding of the world in terms of the names of things, or what we might dismiss as interacting with the world through wordplay. We can draw a parallel with how the secret Agent Sterling Archer in the animated TV show “Archer” resolves his conflicts through wordplay with other characters. The application of discursive meaning on the material world reflects the violent process of discourse alignment through his aggressive puns, and seemingly non-sequitur connections, which are always revealed to have an interior logic that is respectful to the reality of the Other (be this other a steak, or a wild ocelot, or a gigantic St. Bernard). Often, Archer’s wordplay slides between his fulfillment of his desires, and as a kind of justification to his mother or to mother figures (the men around him also all answer to mother figures, or at least other women in the office). Nonetheless, violence and disobedience coexist in his ability to get what he wants. In other words, minimally justifying his spy actions from his domineering mother is simultaneous with his hermeneutics. In pre-Classical applications of knowledge, this is akin to Archer being a sorcerer, to needing to say all the magic words to change material and social situations to hide his indiscretions.

read more.

Advertisement for Dean of Education Faculty, QUT (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 July 2015

Editor: The Faculty I am located in (Education, Queensland University of Technology) is currently advertising for a new Dean. See this link for details.

Partha Chatterjee, Governmentality in the East. Lecture (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 July 2015

Partha Chatterjee, Governmentality in the East, lecture delivered 27 April, 2015, at the University of California, Berkeley.

[Updated 5 October 2026. Link above to page archived on the Wayback Machine]

Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality as described in Security, Territory, Population is entirely West European. What would a genealogy of modern state practices look like in a former colonial country in Asia?

Looking at India, one finds that early governmental practices, including those of rational bureaucracy, rule of law and the knowledge of populations, were motivated mainly by raison d’État: it was the creation and maintenance of the sovereign power of British colonial authority that was the objective. In the 19th century, notions of liberal governmentality were introduced by officials influenced by utilitarian ideas to make Indian society the target of policy in order to improve productivity as well as morality. Indian nationalists in the 20th century rejected colonial governmentality and demanded full rights of sovereignty over the state. However, the postcolonial state retained the colonial apparatus of security based on raison d’État while expanding liberal governmentality to include an agenda of welfare of the people. In the more recent period, the spread of governmentality alongside the politics of electoral representation has produced in India forms of claim-making and resistance that go well beyond Foucault’s framework. (Chatterjee)

Partha Chatterjee is a political theorist and historian. He divides his time between Columbia University and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, where he was the Director from 1997 to 2007. He is the author of more than twenty books, monographs and edited volumes and is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. He as awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for 2009 for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies. His books include: The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (2012), Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy (2011), The Politics of the Governed: Considerations on Political Society in Most of the World (2004); A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (2002); The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993), and Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (1993).

Foucault, Governmentality, and Organization Inside the Factory of the Future (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 July 2015

Alan McKinlay, Philip Taylor Foucault, Governmentality, and Organization: Inside the Factory of the Future, Routledge Research in Employment Relations, 2014

About the Book
This book traces how abstract managerial ideas about maximizing production flexibility and employee freedom were translated into concrete, day-to-day practices at the Motorola plant in East Kilbride, UK. Using eyewitness accounts, the book describes how employees dealt with the increased freedom Motorola promoted amongst its employees, how employees adapted to managerial changes, specifically the elimination of large-scale management, and where the ‘managerless’ system came under strain. This book will be of essential reading for researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in the areas of management studies, human resource management, and organizational studies, among others.

Table of Contents

1. The Will to Empower: Governing the Workplace 2. Working for the Yankee Dollar 3. Greenfield Site, Green Labour? 4. ‘Not just Another Number’: Empowerment, Discipline and Teamworking Freedom 5. Confession, Discipline and Freedom 6. ‘Just Like Any Other Factory’

Alan McKinlay is Professor of Human Resource Management, Newcastle University Business School, UK. He has written extensively about long-run developments in industrial relations and work organization. He has contributed to journals such as Business History and Organization, among others. His most recent edited book is Creative Labour Working in the Creative Industries, with Chris Smith, which has gone into a second edition.

Philip Taylor is Professor of Human Resource Management at Strathclyde University, UK. He is a world-leading expert on management strategy and work organization in call centres. He has written articles for the International Journal of Human Resource Management, Industrial Relations Journal, Human Relations, New Technology, and Work and Employment journals.He was the co-author of The Meaning of Work in the New Economy and co-edited Future of Worker Representation.