Foucault News

Foucault Circle Program 2015

Clare O'Farrell

17 February 2015

Foucault Circle 2015
University of Richmond Downtown
Richmond, VA
March 20-22

All sessions will be held the University of Richmond Downtown, 626 E. Broad St, Suite 100

Friday, March 20th

6:00pm-8:00pm – Reception (drinks and light fare) at the University of Richmond Downtown
(626 E. Broad St, Suite 100, Richmond, VA 23219)

Saturday, March 21st

8:30am-9:00am – Coffee, tea, light breakfast

9:00am-10:45am – Neoliberalism
Moderator: Steven Ogden

“Advertising and Public Relations as Corporate Governmentality: Retooling Liberalism and the Liberal Subject for Permanent, Continuous, and Intensive Government”
Cory Wimberly, University of Texas-Pan American

“Hermeneutics of the Neoliberal Subject”
Ricky Crano, Ohio State University

“Caring for the Self or Building a Better Enterprise?: Foucault’s Ethics in Contemporary Contexts”
Erinn Gilson, University of North Florida
Bryan Bannon, Merrimack College

11:00am-12:45pm – Intersections/Engagements
Moderator: Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University

“Foucault, Biomedical Ethics, and Bioethics”
Charles Scott, Vanderbilt University

“Arts of Resistance: Locating Black Women’s Philosophies”
Devonya Havis, Canisius College

“Foucault and the Family”
Katherine Logan, University of Oregon

1:00pm-2:15pm – Lunch

2:30pm-4:15 – Language & Life
Moderator: Zachary Fouchard

“Beyond Biophilosophy: Diagnosing the Vitalist Misreading of Foucault’s Thought from the Outside”
Romy Opperman, Pennsylvania State University

“The Untimely Speech of the GIP Counter-Archive”
Lynne Huffer, Emory College of Arts and Sciences

“Modalities of Failure: Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons and Incarceration Today”
Perry Zurn, DePaul University

4:30pm-5:10 – Vision & Visibility
Moderator: Cooper Francis, Kingston University, London

“The Panopticon and the Garden: Diagrams of Visibility and Power in Earth Art”
Gary Shapiro, University of Richmond

“Delusions of Grandeur: The Politics of Vision in Foucault’s Magritte”
Samuel Talcott, University of the Sciences

5:15 – Business Meeting

6:30 – Dinner: Location TBD

Sunday, March 22nd

8:30am-9:00am – Coffee, tea, light breakfast

9:00am-10:45 – Abnormal Monsters
Moderator:

“Monsters of Sex: Foucault and the Problem of Biological Sex”
Sarah Hansen, Drexel University

“Foucault’s Lombroso: Criminal Typologies, Physiognomy, and the Question of Racial Profiling”
Corey McCall, Elmira College

“Monsters, Perverts, and Criminals: Death in Biopolitics”
Ege Selin Islekel, DePaul University

11:00am-12:45 – Freedom in the Later Work
Moderator: Richard A. Lynch, St. Ambrose University

“The Debate about Freedom in Foucault: Can Foucault’s Later Work be Read as a Correction of his Earlier Deficient Understanding of Freedom?”
Karsten Schubert, New School for Social Research

“A Practice of Freedom: The Art of Not Being Governed Thus”
Nicole Ridgway, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

“Irony and The Courage of Truth: Socrates, Foucault, and Lear on Irony, Power, and the Care of the Self”
Edward McGushin, Stonehill College

CFP: Historical Epistemology: beginnings and current issues (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

16 February 2015

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Ecole Doctorale de Philosophie

CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop

Historical Epistemology: beginnings and current issues

22-23 May 2015

PDF of Call for papers

We hereby invite contributions by graduate students and young researchers for the two-day workshop “Historical epistemology: beginnings and current issues”, which will take place at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne on 22-23 may 2015.

Historical epistemology (HEP) can be placed within the renewed debate about the “marriage between the philosophy and the history of science” (HPS). Located at the crossroad of conceptual analysis and the history of practices, this methodological approach to the sciences combines historical and philosophical perspectives. HEP finds its roots in France with the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte and represents the deployment of the complex path of the so-called “French style in epistemology”, whose principal representatives are G. Bachelard, G. Canguilhem and M. Foucault. Since the 90s, it is possible to talk of a renaissance of HEP within Anglo-American domains, thanks to the works of I. Hacking, A. I. Davidson and L. Daston, among others. The international development of HEP in its contemporary phase is paralleled by a sort of paradoxical void in its birth place. The reconnection of this kind of epistemology to the original philosophical framework from which it emerged represents the occasion to reopen the debate in France.

The aim of the workshop will be to gather the graduate students and young researchers working within the constantly expanding field of HEP. This first meeting will allow the creation of a space of reflection wherein those involved can expose and share their research, methods and difficulties, as well as discuss the formation of a research group on HEP for future activities.

Proposals will be considered in the following areas:

History of historical epistemology: of the French tradition (Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault) and its contemporary forms.
Methodological debates over the history and the philosophy of medicine, psychology and psychiatry. These disciplines have represented and still represent particularly fertile domains for HEP, which has transformed their methods and issues.

III. Open section. HEP has been linked to the most diverse disciplines and themes, and new directions are currently being opened.

Proposals (400 words and a brief presentation of the candidate) are to be forwarded before January 26th (with a reply by February 16th), as word or pdf files, to epistemologiehistorique@gmail.com. French and English are the two languages of the workshop. A limited number of financial aid covering the totality or a part of the travelling expenses of the participants is available and can be solicited.

Dates importantes / Important dates

Limite de proposition d’interventions / Application deadline : January 26th 2015

Réponse / Notification of acceptance: February 16th 2015

Journées d’études / Workshop days : May 22-23rd 2015

Comité scientifique / Scientific Committee

Jean-François BRAUNSTEIN, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Bernadette BENSAUDE VINCENT, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Arnold I. DAVIDSON, University of Chicago

Frédéric FRUTEAU DE LACLOS, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Les organisateurs / The organizers,

Iván MOYA DIEZ et Matteo VAGELLI

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

EA3562 Centre de Philosophie Contemporaine de la Sorbonne (PhiCo)

epistemologiehistorique@gmail.com

Heterotopia is out now!

Clare O'Farrell

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16 February 2015

The Astral Plane

Release day is always a bit bittersweet, because, despite all the dithering and busy work that goes into releasing music, it means that the process is almost over. That being said, Heterotopia has been a passion project of ours for quite some time now and it’s with great, treacly pleasure that we finally get to unleash it on all of you. Heterotopia is inspired by Michel Foucault’s essay of the same, but not to the extent that the compilation is imprisoned within the French philosopher’s admittedly problematic framework. The tape is positioned to guide the listener into an alternate reality, not in the science fiction sense, but in the liminal, distinctly body-oriented manner of the club-verse. It was our intention to gather a group of transcendent, progressive musicians and the artists who participated in the project took the conceptual framework to heart and drafted 12 polyglot heat rocks that have…

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Colin Gordon, Notes on some papers (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

15 February 2015

Notes on some papers uploaded on Academia.edu

Colin Gordon, 11 February 2015.

All but one of these uploads are about Michel Foucault’s History of Madness and/or issues relating to madness and psychiatry.

There is some information about individual pieces in the abstracts.

“History of madness, history of exclusion” was the result of a commission for the Blackwells Companion to Foucault. This version had to be significantly shortened for publication, omitting discussions of complementary work by other historians which bears on the idea of a history of exclusion. The chapter aimed to restore an understanding of the conceptual architecture and political context of a book which has tended to be consistently underrated by commentators.

History of madness really deserves its own ‘companion’ volume, and I have a longish-term aspiration to put one together. Watch this space…

“La ‘Storia della follia’ in Inghilterra” was commissioned by Mauro Bertani and the Italian journal Aut Aut for a special issue in 2011 marking 50 years since the publication of History of Madness

“La ‘Historia de la locura’ en Inglaterra” appeared in El evangelo del diablo. Foucault y la Historia de la locura (ed. V Galvan, tr. Blanca Garcia Seballos. Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid 2013) the augmented Spanish translation of the Aut Aut issue.

The chapters in Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s `Histoire de la Folie’, eds. A Still, I. Velody correspond to my articles in the two special issues History of the Human Sciences on which this volume is based. The first piece has one minor amendment, the second was revised and expanded to cover additional or revised responses to the first.

“Extreme Prejudice…” was a French translation of my response to Andrew Scull’s TLS review of History of Madness, included in a collection marking the 50^th anniversary of the publication of Foucault’s book.

« La réception de l’Histoire de la folie chez les historiens et les géographes : l’exemple anglo-saxon. » was an invited presentation at an international public conference, Culture psychiatrique-culture juridique : relire Michel Foucault, Folie et justice, at La Villette, Paris in Sepember 2008 organized by Philippe Cheavllier and Tim Greacen. The event which included an intervention by Robert Badinter, was focussed on new security and carceral policies and proposals of the Sarkozy administration in France.

“Philosophy in the Water Supply” was a guest editorial for the Journal of Mental Health Promotion.

“Translator’s note” to The Philosophical Imaginary: I met Michèle Le Doeuff in Paris in the late 1970s while reporting for Radical Philosophy on the activities of GREPH, an initiative seeking to change the way philosophy was taught in French schools. I helped to arrange for the translation of her article ‘Women in Philosophy’ in Radical Philosophy, and translated two other articles of hers, on Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Roussel, for Ideology & Consciousness. Her essay collection Recherches sur l’imaginaire philosophique was published in 1980, and my translation was published by Athlone Press in 1989.

Foucault in Italia (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

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14 February 2015

With thanks to DMF for this news

Foucauldian Genealogies of Desire: Interest, Instinct and the Law

Clare O'Farrell

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13 February 2015

Foucauldian Genealogies of Desire: Interest, Instinct and the Law

A talk by Miguel de Beistegui (Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick)

Link to event page

This talk is available on itunes. Search this page

Taking his point of departure in Foucault’s work from the mid to late 1970s, Professor de Beistegui will argue that the lecture courses and books from that period lay the ground for a genealogy of the western subject as a subject of desire. Beyond Foucault’s own genealogy, he’ll ask about the connections and tensions between the rationalities of the sexual instinct and economic interest , and suggest that they require a third rationality, and a third sense of desire, which involves the Law and the symbolic order, the significance of which Foucault recognizes, but doesn’t explore.

Gil Anidjar, professor in the Departments of Religion and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) and core ICLS faculty member, will be the respondent.

Miguel de Beistegui was educated in France (BA, MA in Philosophy at the Sorbonne), the US (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago), and Germany (Postdoc, Hegel-Archiv, Bochum). He specializes in 20th century German and French philosophy, and has published books and articles in the following areas: ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and politics. Initially specializing in the thought of Martin Heidegger, and in phenomenology in general, he has become convinced that philosophy needs to resist extreme specialization and develop the conceptual tools to engage with our time, not only bringing together the various branches of philosophy, but also establishing a dialogue between philosophy and the other disciplines, in the social as well as the natural sciences. His publications include Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (2004), The New Heidegger (2005), Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze (2010), Proust as Philosopher: the Art of Metaphor (2012), and Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor (2012). He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics.

Foucault: Critical Theory of the Police in a Neoliberal Age (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

12 February 2015

Andrew Johnson, Foucault: Critical Theory of the Police in a Neoliberal Age, Theoria, Volume 61, Number 141, December 2014, pp. 5-29(25)

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/th.2014.6114102

Open access version on academia.edu

Abstract:
In Discipline and Punish the police is a state institution isomorphic with the prison. In his Collège de France lectures, Foucault unearths a ‘secret history of the police’ where greater attention is paid to public health, social welfare and regulating the marketplace than investigating and arresting criminals. This broad overview of Foucault’s writings on the police exhibits a ‘splintering-effect’ in his modalities of power. To resolve this apparent contradiction, a nominalist reading that conflates Foucault’s divergent paradigms of power results in a more multifaceted history and a ubiquitous mode of power with diverse and precise techniques. There are strengths and weaknesses in Foucault’s theory when applied to modern neoliberal police. Foucault should not be employed for one-dimensional criticisms of modern police or as an analytical cure-all.

Keywords: BIOPOWER; DISCIPLINE; FOUCAULT; GOVERNMENTALITY; NEOLIBERALISM; POLICE

Foucault That Noise: The Terror of Highbrow Mispronunciation (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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11 February 2015

Megan Garber, Foucault That Noise: The Terror of Highbrow Mispronunciation. From Anaïs to Zizek, a brief list of “shibboleth names” The Atlantic, Feb 6 2015.

[Editor: Foucault is of course on this list]

In October 1937, the president of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, devised a simple way to identify the Haitian immigrants living along the border of his country. Dominican soldiers would hold up a sprig of parsley—perejil in Spanish—and ask people to identify it. Those who spoke Spanish would pronounce the word’s central “r” with that language’s characteristic trill; the Haitians, on the other hand, would bury the “r” sound in the throaty way of the French. To be on the receiving end of the parsley test would be to seal, either way, one’s fate: The Spanish-speaking Dominicans were left to live, and the Haitians were slaughtered. It was a state-sponsored genocide that would be remembered, in one of history’s greatest understatements, as the Parsley Massacre.

Today, thankfully, the stakes of the shibboleth—the term gets its name from the Biblical story—tend not to involve such horrific matters of life and death. On the contrary, they tend to involve matters that don’t much matter at all. To a large extent, modern-day shibboleths are status signifiers, the kind of loaded terms that reveal their utterers to be on a single side of a stubbornly binary line. They are not mistakes (“noo-cular” instead of “nuclear,” “mis-chee-vee-ous” instead of “mischievous”) so much as they are keys: They afford a kind of aural entry into arbitrary echelons. You know you’ve made it, for better or for worse, when you know that it’s pronounced pee-kuh-TEE.

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Improving Reality 2014 – Nathan Jurgenson

Clare O'Farrell

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10 February 2015

From the conference Visibility is a Trap

Parrhesia (Part 1): Foucault’s Parting Shot at Derrida (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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9 February 2015

Gordon Hull, Parrhesia (Part 1): Foucault’s Parting Shot at Derrida, New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Foucault’s last lecture courses at the Collège de France – recently published as The Government of Self and Others [GS] and The Courage of Truth [CT] – are interesting for a number of reasons. One is of course they offer one of the best glimpses we have of where his thought was going at the very end of his life; he died only months after delivering the last seminar in CT, and there is every reason to believe that he both knew that he was dying, and why. There’s a lot to think about in them, at least some of which I hope to talk about here over a periodic series of posts. Here I want to say something introductory about the material, and look at Foucault’s critique of Derrida in it.

The lectures contain a sustained investigation of parrhesia, the ancient Greek ethical practice of truth-telling. “Truth to power” is the closest modern term we have for such a practice, though you don’t have to get very far into the lectures to realize how richly nuanced the topic is, and how many different ways it manifest itself in (largely pre-Socratic) Greek thought and literature. The lectures also contain a number of references to contemporary events and people (from the beginning: GS starts with Kant, before going back to the Greeks), and it’s hard to put CT down without a sense that, had there been another year of lectures, Foucault would have been more explicit in assessing the implications of the study of Greek parrhesia today.

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