FOUCAULT IN ITALIA Testimonianze, ricezioni, attualità
PDF and more readable version of the program
Karlsen, M.P., Villadsen, K.
Foucault, Maoism, Genealogy: The Influence of Political Militancy in Michel Foucault’s Thought
(2014) New Political Science, . Article in Press.
Abstract
Foucault’s inspiration from Nietzsche in terms of writing critical histories is difficult to overestimate. However, this article advances an interpretation of Foucault’s approach to history which focuses on another, less readily evident, dialogue partner, namely the Marxist tradition and, more precisely, French Maoism. The first part of the article details Foucault’s involvement in the Maoist-inspired activist group, Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP). It is argued that Foucault’s practical experience from GIP left crucial marks on his contemporaneous statements on the genealogical method and his critique of “totalizing institutions,” “uniform discourse” and “juridical universality.” The second part of the article offers a close reading of Foucault’s reflections on genealogy in his 1976 lecture series which demonstrates how the Maoist activist principles noticeably resonate in these statements. The aim of the article is threefold. First, to bring attention to largely neglected sources of inspiration for Foucault’s genealogical approach, which complement those represented by Nietzsche. Second, it seeks to obtain a better understanding of Foucault’s relationship to Marxism, a relationship often portrayed as unambiguously negative. And third, the goal is to demonstrate how principles developed in Maoist political activism are not only realized in Foucault’s activities within the GIP, but also in his lecture-hall formulations of genealogy, power, and critique.
Update from organisers. Unfortunately this event is now full and there are no more places.
Neoliberalism and Biopolitics Working Group | Foucault and Marx: A Disjunctive Synthesis?
Lecture | December 9 | 5-7 p.m. | 370 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker/Performer: Etienne Balibar, Anniversary Chair of Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University London and Visiting Professor at Columbia University
Sponsor: The Program in Critical Theory
Étienne Balibar’s lecture revolves around connections and disjunctions between Michel Foucault and Karl Marx, using Foucault’s 1972 Collège de France lectures on La société punitive as an alternative lens for the question of “reproduction” and its relationship to class struggles. Using these thinkers as a starting point for a new confrontation, he also reconsiders the idea of “communism” today.
Etienne Balibar was born in 1942. He graduated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris, later took his PhD from the University of Nijmegen. After teaching in Algeria and France, he is currently Anniversary Chair of Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University London and Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York. His books include Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser) (Verso, 1965), Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991, with Immanuel Wallerstein), Masses, Classes, Ideas (Routledge, 1994), The Philosophy of Marx (Verso, 1995), Spinoza and Politics (Verso, 1998), We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton, 2004), Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness (Verso, 2013).
Response by Judith Butler, Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
On December 10, The Program in Critical Theory presents a seminar with Professor Balibar on the new configurations of the “debt economy.” In preparation for the seminar, participants are asked to read Professor’s Balibar article, “Politics of the Debt.”
The Neoliberalism and Biopolitics Working Group and Conference is supported by the University of California Humanities Research Institute, organized by UC Berkeley graduate students William Callison (Political Science) and Zachary Manfredi (Rhetoric), and supervised by The Program in Critical Theory faculty Martin Jay (History) and Wendy Brown (Political Science).
Event Contact: info.cir@berkeley.edu
Graham Burchell has sent me the following comments on the translation of Michel Foucault’s ‘Society Must be Defended’ lecture course. Graham is the translator of all the other Paris lecture courses: this course, the first to appear, was made by David Macey.
Some notes on the translation of “Il faut défendre la société”; “Society Must Be Defended” (pdf)
Here’s the opening explanation and disclaimer:
View original post 128 more words
Le séminaire Actualités Foucault reprendra ses activités le jeudi 4 décembre 2014, de 17h à 19h. La première séance aura lieu à l’Ecole doctorale de Sciences Po (199 bd Saint Germain, troisième étage, métro : Saint Germain de Près – ligne 4 ; Rue du bac – ligne 12).
La séance sera consacré à la présentation du livre de Jacques Bidet : Foucault avec Marx (La fabrique, 2014), avec la participation de l’auteur.
(org. Frédéric Gros, Daniele Lorenzini, Ariane Revel, Arianna Sforzini)
Pierre Rivière – Infamie et Normalisation
13 avril 2014 par Maria Muhle, Ici et Ailleurs
Les trois termes qui donnent le titre à notre colloque, « Exclusion, discipline, terreur », mettent en perspective deux points fondamentaux de l’analytique du pouvoir élaborée par Michel Foucault : D’une part, il s’agit de la discussion entamée depuis la publication de la Volonté de Savoir en 1976 au moins, autour du partage entre les différents régimes de pouvoir dont parle Michel Foucault ; et d’autre part, il s’agit de la question épineuse de la « positivité » du pouvoir que Foucault semble définir en introduisant la notion de biopolitique comme « un pouvoir qui investit la vie de part en part ». Le malaise formulé dans l’exposé par rapport à ces questions étant celui de savoir si vraiment le pouvoir moderne biopolitico-gouvernemental peut se passer du recours aux techniques répressives, d’exclusion voire de terreur. Foucault lui-même a souligné dans la Volonté de savoir que le XXème siècle, siècle biopolitique donc, a été bien plus meurtrier que les siècles précédents et que le pouvoir biopolitique se doublait donc d’un « formidable pouvoir de mort » ou d’une thanato-politique. On connaît les analyses d’Agamben qui, à partir d’ici, a tenté de montrer que toute biopolitique était au fond traversée par un pouvoir souverain d’exception. Je pense, néanmoins, que cette interprétation passe à côté de l’analyse de biopouvoir de Foucault qu’elle homogénéise du côté du pouvoir souverain, et qu’il faudra repenser la « labilité des dispositifs du pouvoir » dont il est question dans l’exposé en termes généalogiques, en se tournant, justement, vers les écrits des années 1970–75 autour du rapport entre le savoir psychiatrique sur les anormaux et leur prise dans les dispositifs disciplinaires qui viennent à constituer la généalogie directe, si l’on veut, de ce que Foucault appellera en 1976 la biopolitique ou, un an plus tard, la gouvernementalité : l’exclusion, technique principale du pouvoir psychiatrique, se maintient donc à l’intérieur du dispositif biopolitico-gouvernemental à travers le pouvoir de normalisation mais elle y change d’apparence : car le trait fondamental de la normalisation comme mécanisme fondamental des dispositifs de sécurité est de projeter l’exclusion dans le futur, c’est-à-dire d’élaborer des analyses de risques futurs ainsi que de mettre à disposition des moyens pour remédier à ces risques avant d’avoir pris forme.
Ce que pense l’Historien Henri Guillemin des structuralistes (Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan)
No dates or other information on this entertaining presentation, but probably from the late 1960s. See here for a collection of other televised videos lectures by Henri Guillemin
When
NOV 18, 2014 | 7PM
Where
Albertine Books
972 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10075
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Collège International de Philosophie present Minds in Migration: a series of lively debates on contemporary issues.
Non-fiction books, recently translated from French, will serve as a starting point to explore crucial issues such as conflicts and reconciliations, untranslatables, whistleblowing and self-censorship, environmental threats, capitalism and dialogue between religions. Philosophers, novelists, artists, social and political scientists, translators, journalists and movie directors alike will join the conversation and shed light on questions raised by these works.
The debates should not only prove to be great food-for-thought, but hopefully also efficient tools of empowerment.
A discussion about Michel Foucault’s The Courage of Truth (transl. Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
In his last course at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault investigated the function of ‘truth telling’ in politics. In view of sobering revelations such as the Snowden affair, panelists will delve into the subject of self-restraint as contrasted with the risks taken by whistleblowers.
With DIDIER FASSIN (Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) ANN STOLER (Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies, New School for Social Research) DIOGO SARDINHA (Chair, Collège International de Philosophie)
Moderated by ERIC BANKS (Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities)
In partnership with the Institute for Public Knowledge and the New York Institute for the Humanities.
WATCH THIS EVENT LIVE ONLINE 7PM EST
Eric Banks is a writer and editor based in New York. A former senior editor of Artforum, Banks relaunched Bookforum in 2003 and was editor in chief until 2008. Banks’s writing has appeared in Bookforum, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, Aperture… From 2011 to 2013, he served as president of the National Book Critics Circle. He is a two-term member of the NBCC board of directors and chair of its award committees on Biography and Criticism. He is researching a book about the life and afterlife of Renaissance writer, doctor, and savant François Rabelais.
Didier Fassin is an anthropologist and a sociologist who has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Ecuador, South Africa, and France. Trained as a physician in internal medicine and public health, he dedicated his early research to medical anthropology. More recently, he has developed the field of critical moral anthropology. He is currently conducting an ethnography of the state, through a study of police, justice, and prison, and analyzes the possible contribution of the social sciences to a public debate regarding security, punishment, and inequality. His recent books include The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry Into the Condition of Victimhood (2009), Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (2011), Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (2013).
Diogo Sardinha is the Chair of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, where he also heads the research program “Violence and Politics” (2010-2016). He studied philosophy in Lisbon and at Paris-Nanterre University before continuing his research in São Paulo and Berlin. He has published L’Emancipation de Kant à Deleuze (Hermann, 2013) and Ordre et Temps dans la Philosophie de Foucault (L’Harmattan, 2011). In 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University.
Ann Stoler is Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the The New School for Social Research in New York. She holds a PHD in anthropology from Columbia University and is known for her writings about the treatment of race in the works of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Stoler has worked on issues of colonial governance, racial epistemologies, and the sexual politics of empire, and is the Founding Director of the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at the New School for Social Research
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