Foucault News

Thomas Bolmain, Ni Foucault ni Lacan. De la Loi, entre éthique et finitude Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, Vol. VI, no. 1, June 2014:198-240

Full PDF (in French)

Abstract

After highlighting Foucault’s ambivalent position with regards to psychoanalysis, this paper first shows that Foucault’s critical thought, insofar as it finds its condition of possibility in modern philosophy understood as a theoretical discourse on human finitude, must imperatively be complemented in the vicinity of psychoanalytical praxis-discourse: the ethical and political issue of the finished and desiring subjectivity can thus be examined anew. On the basis of the historicization of the Lacanian Law undertaken in La volonté de savoir, the paper therefore concludes that a philosophical anthropology which is able to heave up to today’s decisive issues for the social critique and the politics of emancipation should build upon the Foucaldo-Lacanian critique of “modern” philosophical anthropology, but should not fear to confront it with radical criticism in return.

Keywords: Foucault/Lacan ; Theory/Practice ; Critique/Finitude ; Ethics ; Subjectivity ; Desire ; Law ; Philosophical Anthropology ; Radical Politics

Oleg Bernaz, Usages de Foucault entre la psychanalyse et le marxisme. Discours de la résistance et pratiques de l’intervention intellectuelle en société, Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, Vol. VI, no. 1, June 2014: 241-265.

Full PDF (in French)

Abstract

In this paper I analyze two distinct contemporary perspectives on the Foucauldian concept of power and resistance, namely the perspectives enlightened by Judith Butler’s La vie psychique du pouvoir and by Stéphane Legrand’s Le marxisme oublié de Foucault. Although these two approaches are interesting ways of discussing the Foucauldian concept of resistance and power, they fail to take into account the role that intellectuals play in practices of social emancipation. Instead I develop the concept of “specific intellectual” in order to explore in more depth the Foucauldian concept of resistance and social innovation.

Keywords: Power, Resistance, Specific Intellectual, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Institution, Michel Foucault

Henrik Enroth,
Governance: The art of governing after governmentality
(2014) European Journal of Social Theory, 17 (1), pp. 60-76.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431013491818

Abstract
As Michel Foucault and others have shown, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, Western political discourse has perpetuated an art of governing aimed at societies and populations. This article argues that this modern art of governing is now coming undone, in the name of governance. The discourse on governance is taking us from an art of governing premised on producing policy for a society or a population to an art of governing premised on solving problems with no necessary reference to any kind of society or population. Tracing the evolution of that discourse, the article argues that existing social and political theory has failed to make sense of this shift. It concludes that in order to access and assess the new art of governing on its own terms we need a sociological imagination that stretches beyond societies and a political imaginary without the presupposition of collectivities.

Author Keywords
Foucault; global governance; governance; governmentality; policy

Skålevåg, S.A.
The irresponsible criminal in Norwegian medico-legal discourse
(2014) International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 37 (1), pp. 82-90.

Abstract
This article discusses discourses on criminal responsibility in Norway in the 19th and 20th centuries, in light of Michel Foucault’s regimes of power and knowledge: the apparatuses of law, discipline and security. The passing of two criminal codes, in 1842 and 1902 marks a development from neo-classical law to a law influenced by positivist criminology. In these consecutive ways of thinking law, the figure of the irresponsible criminal constituted a contentious issue. From being a figure marking the limits of the law, the irresponsible criminal became an object to be disciplined and a security threat. This redefinition of criminal responsibility created or was created by new groups of experts speaking from positions increasingly close to the criminals. The most important professional group was of course the psychiatrists, that emerged in Norway as a distinct professional group in the second half of the 19th century, and whose influence in the legislative process culminated in the 1920s. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Author Keywords
Criminal law; Criminal responsibility; Forensic psychiatry; History; Norway

Index Keywords
article, criminal justice, criminal law, criminology, forensic psychiatry, government, history of medicine, medicolegal aspect, mental health, Norway, political system, psychiatrist, war

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2013.09.008