Foucault News

Andrew Zimmerman, Foucault in Berkeley and Magnitogorsk: Totalitarianism and the limits of liberal critique (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

10 October 2014

Andrew Zimmerman,
Foucault in Berkeley and Magnitogorsk: Totalitarianism and the limits of liberal critique
(2014) Contemporary European History, 23 (2), pp. 225-236.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777314000101

Abstract
Returning to Stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization almost two decades after its publication allows us to take stock, from a slight temporal distance, of the reception in our discipline of the work of Michel Foucault. Magnetic Mountain is the one of the books that came out of a project that Kotkin and a number of other students began under Foucault’s direction at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983 (p. xviii). Foucault’s work in California occurred during a particular turn in his political thinking, a moment when he experimented with liberal alternatives to the left theories of the first decades of his career. Kotkin’s book is not simply an application of a general Foucauldianism, but rather of a specific California Foucault.

Plato in Weimar. Weber revisited via Foucault: two lectures on legitimation and vocation (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 October 2014

Colin Gordon, Plato in Weimar. Weber revisited via Foucault: two lectures on legitimation and vocation, Economy and Society, Volume 43, Issue 3, 2014

DOI: 10.1080/03085147.2014.956464

The text that follows brings together two papers about resonances between late lectures: Weber’s lectures of 1918 on science and politics as vocations, and Foucault’s final courses (1980–84) on subjectivity, truth and the political. The title alludes to Foucault’s 1983 discussion of Plato’s political experiences in Sicily, as narrated in his Seventh Letter, juxtaposed to Weber’s public interventions in Germany at the time of the foundation of the Weimar Republic. Linked to this is an exploration of the centrality in the work of both Weber and Foucault of an historical ethnography and ethology of the political, and of the forms of connectivity in our cultures between ethics, truth and government.

Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus: Repression, Transformation and Assistance (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 October 2014

Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus: Repression, Transformation and Assistance, Edited by Dave Holmes, University of Ottawa, Canada, Jean Daniel Jacob, University of Ottawa, Canada and Amélie Perron University of Ottawa, Canada
Ashgate, 2014

Further info

Drawing on a broad range of approaches in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, history, philosophy, medicine and nursing, Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus exposes psychiatric practices that are mobilized along the continuum of repression, transformation and assistance. It critically examines taken for granted psychiatric practices both past and current, shedding light on the often political nature of psychiatry and reconceptualizing its central and sensitive issues through the radical theory of figures such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Goffman, and Szasz. As such, this ground-breaking collection embraces a broad understanding of psychiatric practices and engages the reader in a critical understanding of their effects, challenging the discipline’s altruistic rhetoric of therapy and problematizing the ways in which this is operationalized in practice.

A comprehensive exploration of contested psychiatric practices in healthcare settings, this interdisciplinary volume brings together recent scholarship from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia, to provide a rich array of theoretical tools with which to engage with questions related to psychiatric power, discipline and control, while theorizing their workings in creative and imaginative ways.

Meenal Tula & Rekha Pande, Re-inscribing the Indian courtesan: A genealogical approach (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 October 2014

Meenal Tula & Rekha Pande
Re-inscribing the Indian courtesan: A genealogical approach
(2014) Journal of International Women’s Studies, 15 (1), pp. 67-82.
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol15/iss1/5/

Full PDF

Abstract
Women historiography has been one of the major concerns of the feminist movement particularly since 1960s. Looking at the figure of the courtesan in India-its histories, representations, repression and re-emergence, the paper seeks to problematize discourses of both Universalist and minority history writing that have been built around these women. In the context of Post-Colonial theory, and in the light of the dynamic nature of the categories of Truth, Power, Knowledge, and Discourse, the paper seeks to salvage Foucault’s methodology of writing a genealogical history as opening new avenues within the history of the courtesan in India in particular and women’s history writing in general.

Author Keywords
Courtesans; History writing; Indian women; Women on the margins; Women’s history

A Neuroscientist Reads Foucault: Part 1 – History of Madness, Chapter 1

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 October 2014

evoneuro

Some background: A few weeks ago on Twitter I floated around the idea of writing a semi-regular blog post on my experiences reading Foucault for the first time as a neuroscience grad student/MRI researcher. There was some interest, so here’s my first write-up on my experiences and reactions to reading Michel Foucault’s History of Madness, as part of Professor Lynne Huffer’s course (WGS 475) here at Emory.

In this first chapter, Foucault is retracing/uncovering/attempting to uncover the basis of Western ideas related to insanity and institutionalization. We learn about the role of the leper, leprosy, and the leper colony in the European middle ages, where infected individuals were isolated and contained outside city walls, providing a sort of delineation between society and these outcasts. How is this related to insanity or madness? Well, Foucault is building a case for the replacement of the leper, as the infection began to…

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Paul Hanna, Foucauldian Discourse Analysis in Psychology: Reflecting on a Hybrid Reading of Foucault When Researching “Ethical Subjects” (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 October 2014

Paul Hanna
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis in Psychology: Reflecting on a Hybrid Reading of Foucault When Researching “Ethical Subjects”
(2014) Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11 (2), pp. 142-159.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2013.853853

Abstract
This article attempts to address a novel dilemma the author recently faced when undertaking qualitative psychological research into sustainable tourism. The article embraces notions of reflexivity to highlight how the research process was far removed from the sanitised version often presented in research methods textbooks. The article provides a reflexive account of the struggles of analysing Internet and interview data in relation to sustainable tourism via the dominant version of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis familiar to many qualitative/critical psychologists. Turning to an account of Foucault’s later work on ethics, this article presents an alternative approach to Foucauldian Discourse Analysis that adopts a hybrid reading of Foucault’s work on power, knowledge, and ethics. Drawing on Foucault’s four precepts helps us explore the ways individuals “cultivate the self as an ethical subject,” and interview data are presented to highlight the ways such an approach can enrich analysis. It is concluded that while presenting issues surrounding understandings of structure and agency, such an approach did offer a pragmatic solution to an ethical question and may indeed be useful in a range of other areas.

Author Keywords
ethics; Foucauldian Discourse Analysis; knowledge; power; reflexivity

My essay on Foucault’s La société punitive – forthcoming in Historical Materialism

Clare O'Farrell

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3 October 2014

Progressive Geographies

My substantial (c. 8,000 words) essay on Foucault’s La société punitive is forthcoming in Historical Materialism.

Thanks to Sebastian Budgen for his invitation to write this, and Alberto Toscano for taking it through two rounds of review.

My shorter review of this important lecture course appeared in Berfrois earlier this year. You can also hear me lecturing on the course in Melbourne here.

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Ian Hunter, History of Theory workshop (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 October 2014

Ian Hunter, History of Theory workshop

When: October 8th, 12pm-5.30pm

Where: C2.05, Burwood campus, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

12pm. Prof. Ian Hunter (UQ): History of Theory: a précis

1pm. Dr Matthew Sharpe (Deakin): Idols of the Den in the Personae of the Theorist

2pm. A/Prof. Adrian Jones (LTU): “Theory” as coming out of Being or as an Ascesis: Implications of New Notions of Mind

3pm. Dr Richard Sebold (LTU): Truth, History, and the Persona of the Theorist

4pm. Prof. Jack Reynolds (Deakin): University metaphysics today: the analytic-continental divide and the fate of transcendental phenomenology in the light of Hunter

5pm. Prof. Ian Hunter (UQ): rejoinders, discussion

5.30 conclude

The workshop is hosted by the European Philosophy and the History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI), Deakin University.

For further information, please contact Jack Reynolds

CFP: The fifteenth annual meeting of the Foucault Circle (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

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2 October 2014

CALL FOR PAPERS

The fifteenth annual meeting of the Foucault Circle

University of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia

March 20-22, 2015

We seek submissions for papers on any aspect of Foucault’s work, as well as studies, critiques, and applications of Foucauldian thinking.

Paper submissions require an abstract of no more than 750 words. All submissions should be formatted as “.doc” attachments and sent via email to program committee chair Zachary Fouchard (zfouchard@gmail.com) on or before Monday, January 5^th, 2015. Indicate “Foucault Circle submission” in the subject heading. Program decisions will be announced during the week of January 19^th.

All abstracts should be prepared for anonymous review.

The meeting will begin Friday evening with an informal welcome session. Morning and afternoon paper sessions will be held on Saturday, followed by a business meeting and dinner. The conference will conclude with paper sessions on Sunday morning. Presenters of individual papers will have approximately 35 minutes for paper presentation and discussion combined; papers should be a maximum of 3000 words (15-20 minutes, preferably 15).

Logistical information about lodging, transportation, and other arrangements will be available after the program has been announced.

For more information about the Foucault Circle, please see our website:

or contact our Coordinator, Dianna Taylor: dtaylor@jcu.edu

The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 October 2014

Vanessa Lemm, and Miguel Vatter (eds.) The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism, Fordham University Press, July 2014

ISBN: 9780823255979

Further info

See below description for details of book launch at University of NSW

Description

Foucault’s late work on biopolitics and governmentality has established him as the fundamental thinker of contemporary continental political thought and as a privileged source for our current understanding of neoliberalism and its technologies of power. In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary group of Foucault scholars examines his ideas of biopower and biopolitics and their relation to his project of a history of governmentality and to a theory of the subject found in his last courses at the College de France.

Many of the chapters engage critically with the Italian theoretical reception of Foucault. At the same time, the originality of this collection consists in the variety of perspectives and traditions of reception brought to bear upon the problematic connections between biopolitics and governmentality established by Foucault’s last works.

Book Launch
Friday 3 October 2014, 3-5pm, Morven Brown Building, 310, University of NSW
PDF of invitation