Foucault News

He, X. Juxtaposition of English and Japanese native-speakerism: through the concept of the international university being a heterotopia (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

29 June 2024

He, X.
Juxtaposition of English and Japanese native-speakerism: through the concept of the international university being a heterotopia
(2024) Asian Englishes

DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2024.2350085

Abstract
Research on the native-speakerism ideology of different languages has demonstrated the unbalanced power relation created between those who are labeled as native speaker (NS) and as non-native speaker (NNS). While the research on native-speakerism has expanded beyond the English language, the juxtaposition of native-speakerism of different languages is under-explored. This study applies Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to investigate how international universities in Japan, as a heterotopia, create spatial distinguishments of English and Japanese native-speakerism and how migrant students construct native-speakerist discourses while shuffling among different spaces. The interview result demonstrates that the international university led a Vietnamese migrant to reinforce native-speakerist discourses while providing space for counter-native-speakerist discourse to occur. It also shows that counter-native-speakerist discourses emerge in spaces where native-speakerism decoupled from the neoliberal market. Unveiling the multiplicated function of the juxtaposition of different native-speakerism, this result provides clues for tackling native-speakerism in Asian multilingual contexts. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
English language in Asia; heterotopia; ideology construction; international university; migrants; Native-speakerism

Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France – audio recordings online (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 June 2024

Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France – audio recordings being posted online

Ximenez, A. What is wrong with urban regeneration practices? Towards a Foucauldian analysis of urban regeneration documents. (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 June 2024

Ximenez, A.
What is wrong with urban regeneration practices? Towards a Foucauldian analysis of urban regeneration documents.
(2024) Articulo – Journal of Urban Research, 2024 (24), .

DOI: 10.4000/articulo.5650

Abstract
Urban design practices are hard to analyse and critique. In this paper, we suggest that part of the difficulty can be alleviated if one problematises them as having a “positivity”. That Foucauldian notion refers to the discursive rules that must be met in order for a statement to be considered as “knowledge” in a specific discipline and at a specific time in history. We then describe the “archaeological” method that Foucault developed to analyse “positivities”. Applying this method to the analysis of a multidimensional diagnosis document produced by a team of consultants in the first stage of an urban regeneration project, we describe the discursive rules of construction that seem to underlie the reasoning displayed in the document. The findings cannot be generalised but they provide strong hypotheses for future inquiry into urban regeneration discursive practices. © 2024, Articulo – Journal of Urban Research. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
diagnosis; discourse; Foucault; practitioners; Urban design; urban regeneration

Krylova, A. Foucault, Post-structuralism, and the Fixed “Openness of History” (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

23 June 2024

Krylova, A.
Foucault, Post-structuralism, and the Fixed “Openness of History”
(2024) Modern Intellectual History

DOI: 10.1017/S1479244324000088

Abstract
Today, it seems impossible to discuss historians’ encounter with post-structuralist theory, the ensuing triumphant surge of the cultural turn, and the establishment of what scholars have recently called the postcultural historiography without the help of such paramount concepts of post-structuralist analysis as contingency, variability, instability, open-endedness, and so on. Having defined the last forty years of theoretical and methodological developments in history, these nowadays conventional tools of critique and interpretation have grown to become synonymous with the post-structuralist conceptual promise and outcome.

This article questions this standard and exceptionally generous account. What if, the article asks, we start our account not with the resolute assertion of the radical contingency and variability of the post-structuralist view of history, but with something more fundamental to it – its own fixed and totalizing presuppositions? To show how an intellectual agenda opposed to fixed and totalizing reasoning can end up operating with fixed and totalizing logics of its own, the essay turns to Michel Foucault and his momentous career, to be traced from the 1960s to the 1980s. Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press.

David Koepsell et al (eds.)Mad Max and Philosophy: Thinking Through the Wasteland

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 June 2024

Mad Max and Philosophy: Thinking Through the Wasteland
David Koepsell (Editor), Matthew P. Meyer (Editor), William Irwin (Series Editor)

Description
Explore the philosophy at the core of the apocalyptic future of Mad Max

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world around him.

Requiring no background in philosophy, this engaging and highly readable book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind’s relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and much more.

Covers all of George Miller’s Mad Max films, including Mad Max: Fury Road
Discusses connections between Mad Max and Nietzsche, Malthus, Mill, Foucault, Sartre, and other major philosophers
Follows Max’s journey from policeman and family man to lost soul in search of redemption
Examines the future of technology and possible impacts on society, the environment, and access to natural resources
Delves into feminist themes of Mad Max, such as the reversal of heroic gender roles in Fury Road and relationships between power and procreation

Part of the bestselling Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, Mad Max and Philosophy: Thinking Through the Wasteland is a must-read for anyone wanting to philosophically engage with Max, Furiosa, and their dystopian world.

Loriane Lafont-Grave, The Mystical Quality of Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh: An Inquiry from Within (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 June 2024

Loriane Lafont-Grave, The Mystical Quality of Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh: An Inquiry from Within, The Journal of Religion 2024 104:2, 145-170

Abstract
This article offers an investigation of Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh—published in 2018, thirty-four years after the death of the author—through a literary approach. It argues that “The Laborious Baptism,” the second section of the first chapter of the book, “The Formation of a New Experience,” has an immersive quality of writing that signals a way of writing “from within,” to take up an expression coined by Emerson.

By putting Foucault in conversation with James Bernauer, Willemien Otten, Philippe Büttgen, and Pierre Macherey, among others, this article aims to show that Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh may best be seen, in a final analysis, as a confessio fidei in the flesh. It owns, at some point, a mystical quality so that the book truly offers a peculiar experience to its readership. In the first part of the article, we make some metaliterary comments about the potential pitfalls of dealing with a posthumous book, helped by T. S. Eliot and Nietzsche. In the second part, we delve into “The Laborious Baptism” by making a close reading of it. In concluding remarks, we reflect on how Confessions of the Flesh may display a form of Christian parrhesia under the sign of risk-taking in keeping with Foucault’s ultima verba as a professor in his very last lecture at the Collège de France.

Echoes of Foucault, forty years after (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 June 2024

Echoes of Foucault, forty years after

The Foucault Circle NL/BE is organizing a conference about interdisciplinary uses of Foucault’s work, with a focus on themes which Foucault did not think much about himself, but we do. Among other topics, colonialism and decolonization, gender, ecology.

University of Amsterdam: Amsterdam Roeterseilandcampus
25-06-2024
Few philosophers have been such fertile and suggestive thinkers as Michel Foucault. His general theme of practices concerning ‘the subject’ led him to explore a wide range of different topics. His investigation into the subject took him from analyses of the human sciences, to dividing practices that categorize subjects as normal or abnormal, to analyses of neoliberalism, and eventually to the modes in which we change ourselves into subjects. Foucault’s work always supported emancipation of marginalized groups. Yet, many commentators have argued that, despite the wide range of his work, Foucault has left some surprising lacunae in his analyses. For example, in his work, he appears to have had little attention for feminist movements, decolonization, and climate change. The Echoes of Foucault conference aims to critically celebrate Foucault’s thought forty years after his death, by focussing on these lacunae. How is his work helpful for researchers today, across different disciplines? We will ask whether and how it might be possible to think with Foucault about these kinds of topics. With a wink, we say: Woke Foucault!

We are very happy to announce that professor Jeannette Pols will provide the keynote address.
Jeannette Pols is Professor Anthropology of Everyday Ethics in Healthcare at the department of Anthropology, Faculty of Behavioral & Social Sciences, and the department of Ethics, Law & Humanities of the Amsterdam Medical Center, University of Amsterdam. Her most recent book, Reinventing the Good Life: an empirical contribution to the philosophy of care (2023), provides fascinating insights into Foucault’s reading of the Cynics, and how to employ his concepts in our contemporary world.

The conference will be mostly in-person only. However, we will have a session with online presenters only, which will be possible to join online. The keynote address will also be live streamed. The links for the streams will be provided in due course.

Participation is free, but we kindly ask you to register through this Google Form by June 23nd:
https://forms.gle/4kwosCSZc2UpQkRy8

Conference Programme

09:30 – 10:00 Walk-in & coffee (A2.11)
10:00 – 10:45 Day opening by Guilel Treiber (A2.11)
11:00 – 13:00 Resistance and Foucault (B2.05)
Moderator: Steven Dorrestijn

Bolan Zhang Foucault’s dominant resistance, his self-critique, and a reflection of China’s resisting movements

Plami Dimova, The biopolitical manifestations of hetero-nationalism in post-Soviet countries

Goran Kusic, Ambiguity, Aesthetics, and Animosity: How P-Valley’s Uncle Clifford Resists Categorization Through an Ethics of the Self

Samu/elle Striewski, Regimes of (De)Recognition: Butler and Preciado as Foucauldian recognition theorists Rereading Foucault (C1.08)
Moderator: Michiel Leezenberg

Berend van Wijk, Between politics and friendship: avowal and the art of living

Casper Verstegen, Missing links: towards a genealogy of homo economicus

Maria Jankowska, Suicide in the Age of Biopower

Anastasiia Maslova, Digital information through the lenses of power-knowledge theory

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch (A2.11 or Waterside picnic)
14:00 – 16:00 Digital Discourse (B3.04)
(online session)
Moderator: Guilel Treiber

Giorgi Vachnadze, The Silence of Savoir: Foucault and Wittgenstein in the Classroom

Adriano Habed, Not against but with Foucault. Queer and feminist discontents with Foucault’s critique and a proposal to move forward

Jade Gonçalves Roque, The notion of punishment in Foucault before Surveiller et Punir: a new tool for Brazil’s case?

Charles Piecyk, After the ‘end of man’: a Foucauldian analysis of Transhumanism and Posthumanism as contemporary discourses on the surpassing of the human Foucault in the Field (C1.08)
Moderator: Steven Dorrestijn

Liza Steultjens, Foucault and the politics of agropastoralism: analyzing the securitization of Sahelian agri-spaces through a governmentality lens

Abigail Cunningham, Conforming to belong: a dialogic exploration of Scottish Pakistanis’ experiences of self and belonging

Dirk Lafaut, Beyond biopolitics: the importance of the later work of Foucault to understand care practices of healthcare workers caring for undocumented migrants

Kimberley Vandenhole, Eco-shaming

16:30 – 18:00 Keynote: Jeannette Pols (A2.11)
Reinventing the good life, an empirical contribution to the philosophy of care

Foucault quote: Thought and criticism

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 June 2024

Thought does exist, both beyond and underneath systems and edifices of discourse. It is something that is often hidden but always drives everyday behaviors. There is always a little thought occurring even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits.

Criticism consists in uncovering that thought and trying to change it: showing that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To practice criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy… [A]s soon as people begin to no longer be able to think things the way they have been thinking them, transformation becomes at the same time very urgent, very difficult and entirely possible. (trans. mod)

Michel Foucault, (1981) [2000] “So is it important to think?” in In J. Faubion, ed., Power Translated by Robert Hurley, New York: New Press, 2000, pp. 456-7.

Thomas Nail, The Philosophy of Movement. An Introduction (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 June 2024

Thomas Nail, The Philosophy of Movement. An Introduction, University of Minnesota Press, 2024
Foreword by Daniel W. Smith

Why are city dwellers worldwide walking on average ten percent faster than they were a decade ago? Why are newcomer immigrant groups so often maligned when migration has always constituted civilization? To analyze and understand the depth of the reasons, Thomas Nail suggests that it serves us well to turn to a philosophy of movement. Synthesizing and extending many years of his influential work, The Philosophy of Movement is a comprehensive argument for how motion is the primary force in human and natural history.

Nail critiques the bias toward stasis at the core of Western thought, asking what a philosophy that began with the primacy of movement would look like. Interrogating the consequences of movement throughout history and in daily life in the twenty-first century, he draws connections and traces patterns between scales of reality, periods of history, and fields of knowledge. In our age of rapid movements shaped by accelerating climate change and ensuing mass global migration, as well as ubiquitous digital media, Nail provides a contemporary philosophy that helps us understand how we got here and how to grapple with these interlocking challenges.

With a foreword by philosopher Daniel W. Smith, The Philosophy of Movement: An Introduction is a must-read for scholars and students not only of philosophy but also history, anthropology, science and technology studies, mobility studies, and other fields across the humanities and social sciences.

Thomas Nail is distinguished scholar and professor of philosophy at the University of Denver. He is author of Matter and Motion: A Brief History of Kinetic Materialism; Lucretius III: A History of Motion; Theory of the Object; and Being and Motion.

Daniel W. Smith is professor of philosophy at Purdue University. He has translated, from French, books by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Klossowski, Isabelle Stengers, and Michel Serres.

Colóquio Foucault Presente 40+ (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 June 2024

O Colóquio Foucault Presente 40+ acontecerá para celebrar a vida e a obra de um dos maiores intelectuais do Séc. XX. Na perspectiva de como a filosofia foucaultiana demanda uma análise do presente, o Colóquio tem por objetivo refletir e debater as possibilidades e os sentidos de seu legado, segundo alguns usos conceituais e metodológicos que seu pensamento emplacou séculos XX e XXI adentro. O colóquio está organizado sob a forma de mesas-redondas e 5 Grupos de Trabalhos Temáticos cujos resumos serão selecionados.

Instagram link

Qualquer dúvida encaminhar e-mail:
foucault40mais@gmail.com