Foucault News

Another Liberty Canon: Foucault

Clare O'Farrell

2 January 2015

Post by Barry Stocker 7 July 2014. With thanks to Brandon Christensen for this link.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French writer on various but related topics of power, knowledge, discourse, history of thought, ethics, politics, and so on. His name to some summons negative associations of French intellectual fashion, incomprehensibility, and refinements of Marxist anti-liberty positions.

However, his influence in various fields has become too lasting, and too much taken up by people who do not fit into the categories just mentioned, for such reactions to be considered adequate. Foucault himself resisted and mocked labels, which was a serious issue for him because in his work he tried to question the absolute authority of any one system of knowledge and the authority of isolated great thinkers.

He said that once he had written something it was no longer what he thought, which is in part a playful attempt to resist labelling, but also a rather serious point deeply embedded in his thought, about the…

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Oggi Foucault sarebbe renziano?

Clare O'Farrell

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1 January 2015

Le Palais Du Rire

Un precursore del blairismo e della Terza via? Un pensatore sedotto dal neoliberismo? L’ultima barriera della borghesia contro Marx?

La collocazione politica di Michel Foucault da sempre è fonte di dibattito. Un libro appena uscito e curato dal sociologo belga Daniel Zamora, Critiquer Foucault. Les années 1980 et la tentation néoliberale (Aden), tenta di dare una risposta alla questione prendendo in esame le opere del filosofo francese degli anni ’70 e ’80, in particolare dopo Sorvegliare e punire, che Foucault aveva pubblicato presso Gallimard nel 1975. Se prima del 1970, nelle sue opere, le parole ‘proletariato’ e ‘capitalista’ non figurano mai, nel 1977 Foucault prende parte alla discussione a proposito del libro di André Glucksmann I padroni del pensiero. Il libro è scandaloso perché rappresenta un atto d’accusa contro la sinistra giacobina e statalista, di cui peraltro Glucksmann aveva fatto parte. Foucault ne scrive bene sul Nouvel Observateur

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Daniel Zamora, Foucault’s Responsibility (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

4 comments

31 December 2014

Daniel Zamora, Foucault’s Responsibility, Jacobin magazine, 15 December 2014

Editor’s note: This is a response to the article by Peter Frase posted yesterday on Foucault News

Foucault was not asking the “right questions.” And the answers he came up with helped disorient the Left.

The question of the welfare state’s role in a capitalist society is a complex one. Of course, depending on the context, it can serve to contain social contestation, to limit movements of radical transformation, even to reproduce certain quite conservative social structures (especially regarding race or gender roles).

The welfare state is obviously the result of a compromise between social classes. It is not, therefore, a question of “stopping there,” but, on the contrary, of understanding that the welfare state can be the point of departure for something new. My problem with Michel Foucault, then, is not that he seeks to “move beyond” the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment. His objective was not to move towards “socialism,” but to be rid of it.

But before discussing the issue of the welfare state in the late 1970s and the role it might play in an emancipatory politics today, let’s return to some of these “good questions” that Foucault was asking.

Did Foucault Ask “Some of the Right Questions?”

The first question about the welfare state posed by Foucault concerned the “situations of dependency” that it was said to cause. In his eyes, “on the one hand, we give people more security, and on the other we increase their dependence.” Social security produces dependence? This critique is rather unexpected coming from an author classified as “left-wing.”

Yet this phrase is not an isolated statement. Thus, in a 1983 interview, Foucault says he is in complete agreement with a journalist who states that there is a need today to “assert each person’s responsibility for their own choices” and to move towards greater “accountability” (responsabilisation).

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Peter Frase, Beyond the Welfare State (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

30 December 2014

Peter Frase, Beyond the Welfare State, Dec 10, 2014.

Jacobin has published Seth Ackerman’s translation of an interesting interview with French sociologist Daniel Zamora, discussing his recent book about Michel Foucault’s affinities with neoliberalism. Zamora rightly points out that the “image of Foucault as being in total opposition to neoliberalism at the end of his life” is a very strained reading of a thinker whose relationship to the crisis of the 1970’s welfare state is at the very least much more ambiguous than that.

At the same time, Zamora’s argument demonstrates the limitations imposed by the displacement of “capitalism” by “neoliberalism” as a central category of left analysis. For his tacit premise seems to be that, if it can be shown that Foucault showed an “indulgence” toward neoliberalism, we must therefore put down his influence as a reactionary one. But what Foucault’s curious intersection with the project of the neoliberal right actually exemplifies, I would argue, is an ambiguity at the heart of the crisis of the 1970’s which gave rise to the neoliberal project. That he can be picked up by the right as easily as the left says much about the environment that produced him. Meanwhile, Zamora’s own reaction says something important about a distinction within the social democratic left that is worth spending some time on, which I’ll return to below.

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Foucault, literature, and feminist theories of technology (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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29 December 2014

Foucault, literature, and feminist theories of technology
Dr Lena Wanggren (English Literature, University of Edinburgh)

Science, Technology and Innovation seminar series

Date and Time
2nd Feb 2015 15:30 – 17:00
Location
Room 1.06, Old Surgeons’ Hall, High School Yards
School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh.

Abstract

Building on French philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings on technology, this paper explores the specific trope of literary texts as technologies, as social and cultural agents. Writing itself in its material, literal, sense is noticeably a technology; writing is made material through the use of technologies, and the alphabet might be seen as one of the most important technologies in world history. Critiquing technological determinism as well as gender essentialism, the paper through feminist theories of technology and examples of technologies such as the bicycle, proposes that exploring literature as technology problematises a definition of the latter, suggesting technology as a volatile concept rather than simply as a tool in the hands of the inventor/author.

Speaker’s biography
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/lwanggre

20th Century Continental Philosophy Ph.D. Programs

Clare O'Farrell

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27 December 2014

20th Century Continental Philosophy Ph.D. Programs

Editor’s note: This is a very new project which has just gone up on the web. Contributions are invited!

This wiki’s goal is to provide an unranked yet searchable list of Ph.D. (and terminal M.A.) programs that have strengths in 20th (and early 21st) century continental philosophy throughout the world. To meet this goal, all readers should also think of themselves as editors. If you see anything that needs to be changed or added, please do so.

This wiki is part of a larger wikiproject to help prospective graduate students in philosophy identify programs with strengths in their areas of interest. Ideally links will be provided to the websites, CVs, and PhilPapers profiles of the relevant faculty at each program. If faculty are unable to take on new students, they should be omitted from this wiki. The wiki’s primary intended audience is prospective or current graduate students with interests in 20th century continental philosophy who want to get the lay of the land by seeing who works where, and on what.

This wiki is very much under construction. Many programs and faculty members that should be listed here are not yet here–simply because this wiki was started almost from scratch quite recently. If you can, please pitch in. Still, there is already much information here. So take a look.

Non-normative critique: Foucault and pragmatic sociology as tactical re-politicization (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

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26 December 2014

Magnus Paulsen Hansen Non-normative critique: Foucault and pragmatic sociology as tactical re-politicization, European Journal of Social Theory December 21, 2014

doi: 10.1177/1368431014562705

Abstract

The close ties between modes of governing, subjectivities and critique in contemporary societies challenge the role of critical social research. The classical normative ethos of the unmasking researcher unravelling various oppressive structures of dominant vs. dominated groups in society is inadequate when it comes to understand de-politicizing mechanisms and the struggles they bring about. This article argues that only a non-normative position can stay attentive to the constant and complex evolution of modes of governing and the critical operations actors themselves engage in. The article outlines a non-normative but critical programme based on an ethos of re-politicizing contemporary pervasive modes of governing. The analytical advantages and limitations of such a programme are demonstrated by readings of both Foucauldian studies and the works of and debates regarding the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot.

Keywords: Boltanski critique Foucault politics pragmatic sociology re-politicizing Thévenot unmasking

Jacques Bouveresse, Le désir, la vérité et la connaissance : la volonté de savoir et la volonté de vérité chez Foucault (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

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26 December 2014

Jacques Bouveresse, Le désir, la vérité et la connaissance : la volonté de savoir et la volonté de vérité chez Foucault. In Claudine Tiercelin (dir.) La reconstruction de la raison. Dialogues avec Jacques Bouveresse, Collège de France, 2014.

1. Ce qui est connu doit-il être vrai ?

1Pour vous donner une idée du problème dont j’ai choisi de vous parler, il sera utile, je crois, de commencer par vous dire quelques mots d’une question plus classique et plus ancienne, en citant le début d’un petit article d’Elisabeth Anscombe, intitulé « Necessity and Truth », qui a été publié pour la première fois dans le Times Literary Supplement du 14 février 1965 :

Ce qui est connu doit être vrai ; par conséquent, on peut facilement avoir l’impression que seul le nécessairement vrai peut être connu. C’est probablement la racine de la conception des Grecs selon laquelle la connaissance est la connaissance de ce qui est vrai de façon immuable. De nos jours, un étudiant débutant apprend très tôt à critiquer le passage de « Ce qui est connu est nécessairement vrai » à « Seul ce qui est nécessairement vrai est connu » ; la première proposition est correcte seulement en ce sens que, si une chose n’est pas vraie, alors ma certitude qu’elle est le cas – nécessairement – n’est pas une connaissance ; et de cela rien ne résulte qui impose une restriction quelconque aux objets de la connaissance.

Effectivement, la faute logique qui est impliquée dans le raisonnement est d’une espèce suffisamment élémentaire pour pouvoir être facilement reconnue. Mais cela n’a pas empêché certains philosophes traditionnels d’éprouver des difficultés sérieuses à résoudre le problème, surtout quand la question se posait à propos de Dieu, dont il peut sembler légitime de supposer que les seuls objets possibles pour sa connaissance devraient être des choses non seulement vraies, mais nécessairement vraies. Elisabeth Anscombe, dans son article, s’est intéressée spécialement à l’attitude que saint Thomas d’Aquin a adoptée à l’égard de cette difficulté :

Suite

Best wishes for the festive season of 2014

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

25 December 2014

With all best wishes for the festive season from Foucault News!

Poster and other items for sale on the Keep-Calm-O-Matic site

Laura Pinto and Selena Nemorin, Who’s the Boss? “The Elf on the Shelf” and the normalization of surveillance (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 December 2014

Laura Pinto and Selena Nemorin, Who’s the Boss? “The Elf on the Shelf” and the normalization of surveillance, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Dec 1, 2014

The Elf on the Shelf® is a special scout elf sent from the North Pole to help Santa Claus manage his naughty and nice lists. When a family adopts an elf and gives it a name, the elf receives its Christmas magic and can fly to the North Pole each night to tell Santa Claus about all of the day’s adventures. Each morning, the elf returns to its family and perches in a different place to watch the fun.

After several years of observing parents and teachers sharing photos of Elf on the Shelf dolls in various (sometimes compromising!) poses on social media, our curiosity led us to critically examine this cultural phenomenon.

The Elf on the Shelf is a wildly popular, Christmas-themed book that comes with a doll to reinforce the story in home and school settings. The purpose of this article is to explore theoretical and conceptual concerns about the popularity and widespread educational use of The Elf on the Shelf in light of the contemporary literature on play and panoptic surveillance.

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