Foucault News

CFP: 23rd annual meeting of the Foucault Circle (2024-5)

Clare O'Farrell

15 September 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS
The twenty-third annual meeting of the Foucault Circle

Stockholm, Sweden
June 26-29, 2025

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 a “.doc” or “.docx” attachment, prepared for anonymous review, and sent via email to the attention of program committee chair Daniel Schultz (schultdj@whitman.edu) on or before December 20, 2024. Indicate “Foucault Circle submission” in the subject heading. Program decisions will be announced during the week of January 20, 2025.

We expect that the conference will begin Thursday morning and will conclude around lunch time on Sunday. Presenters will have approximately 40 minutes for paper presentation and discussion combined; papers should be a maximum of 3500 words (20-25 minutes reading time). Please note that conference presentations will be in person and in English.

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:
http://www.foucaultcircle.org
or contact our Coordinator, Edward McGushin:
emcgushin@stonehill.edu

Civitarese, G., Distel, E. “Thus far and no further”: Inquiry into a dreamless society (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 September 2024

Civitarese, G., Distel, E.
“Thus far and no further”: Inquiry into a dreamless society (2024) International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

DOI: 10.1002/aps.1889

Abstract
Humans are highly social primates who naturally seek out groups in which to live. Our individual psychology is inherently intertwined with that of the group, forming an inextricable link between the two. In keeping with Bion’s insights into group dynamics, we approach contemporary conflicts by examining them through both social and psychoanalytic lenses. Drawing on Foucault’s and Deleuze’s analyses of societies, as well as considering the impact of technology and the COVID-19 pandemic, we illustrate how modern societies function under the influence of three behaviors observed by Bion. Activated as a result of a psychological disaster, the ruins consist of the symptomatologic triad of arrogance, stupidity, and curiosity. We have called this functioning Bion’s disastrous triad. We suggest that when it is set in motion, it leads to a withdrawal from the beauty of life, as Bion well expresses with the phrase “Thus far and no further.” Using Meltzer’s notion of aesthetic conflict, we suggest that while operating under the mandates of the triad, recognition of the other becomes an impossibility. A plea for relationships based on mutual recognition—namely, aesthetic relationships—is in order. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Author Keywords
aesthetic conflict; arrogance; contagion; groups; infection; intersubjectivity; technology

David Langwallner, The Relevance of Jurisprudence to Law Part 3 (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 September 2024

David Langwallner, The Relevance of Jurisprudence to Law Part 3, Cassandra Voices, 12 September 2024

Extract
[…] Foucault makes very relevant contributions to Jurisprudence and the practice of law.

First, the transplantation of Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the panopticon – the all-seeing surveillance prison such as Kilmainham in Dublin – is in Foucault’s view a depiction of modern society, where a uniform doctrine is enforced in schools, law courts and hospitals, leading to blind conformity.

Foucault presaged the age of Surveillance Capitalism and 24-hour data surveillance in Ireland, achieved in camera in the Quirke Case through the representations of the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee. Thus, we have a global panopticon wherein the value of privacy and freedom is thrown to the wolves.
[…]

Reiner Keller, Michel Foucault, 2. überarbeitete Auflage (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 September 2024

Reiner Keller, Michel Foucault, 2. überarbeitete Auflage Köln, Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2023. Reihe Klassiker der Wissenssoziologie [classics in the sociology of knowledge]

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) gilt als einer der wichtigsten, eigenwilligsten und aktuellsten Denker des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Bis zu seinem frühen Tod im Jahre 1984 war er Inhaber eines philosophischen Lehrstuhls für die ‘Geschichte der Denksysteme’ am renommierten Pariser Collège de France. Seine Arbeiten waren aus gegenwartsbezogenen Fragestellungen abgeleitet und zielten auf das allgemeine Projekt einer ‘Geschichte der Gegenwart’, einer ‘Ethnologie unserer Kultur’ oder einer Untersuchung der historischen Abfolge von ‘Wahrheitsspielen’. Ihn interessierte insbesondere der Zusammenhang von Wissen, Macht und Subjektkonstitution. Anhand unterschiedlicher historisch-gesellschaftlicher Praxisfelder – etwa der Umgangsweisen mit Wahnsinn oder der Veränderungen des Überwachens und Strafens – untersuchte er die Veränderungen der jeweiligen Wissens- und Machtbeziehungen.

Der einleitende Band von Reiner Keller stellt das Foucault’sche Werk in seinem biografischen und zeitgenössischen Kontext vor und geht dabei sowohl auf Foucaults Arbeitsweise wie auf die Inhalte und Wirkungen seiner Studien ein. Dies geschieht entlang einer originellen, in der deutschen Foucault-Rezeption bislang kaum verfolgten Perspektive: Keller schlägt vor, Foucault als einen ‘Klassiker der Wissenssoziologie’ neu zu lesen und aus seinem Werk Anregungen für heutiges soziologisches Forschen zu gewinnen.

Michel Foucault, 2nd updated edition

Description
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is considered one of the most important, idiosyncratic and topical thinkers of the twentieth century. Until his untimely death in 1984, he held a chair for the ‘History of Systems of Thought’ at the renowned Collège de France in Paris. His work was and is interested into contemporary issues and aimed at the general project of a ‘history of the present’. He particularly focused the connection between knowledge, power and the constitution of the modern subject. Using different historical and social fields of practice – such as ways of dealing with madness or sexuality – he examined the changes in the respective regimes of knowledge and power. The book provides a consistent reading of Foucault as an original, ‘experimental’ thinker and ‘grounded’ researcher inquiring into historical fields and practices of discourse, knowledge and dispositives, and coming back with stimulating conceptual diagnostics – an amazing way of working and thinking which still challenges our today’s research activities across the social scienes and humanities.

Reiner Keller & Marting Blessinger, Positionierungsmacht – Über Formierung und Regierung der Marktakteure (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 September 2024

Reiner Keller & Marting Blessinger, Positionierungsmacht – Über Formierung und Regierung der Marktakteure, Weinheim: BeltzJuventa 2023

Der Begriff Positionierungsmacht greift die foucaultsche Machtanalytik auf. Er bezeichnet eine gouvernementale Machtform, die sich in den gegenwärtigen Phänomenen des Wertens und Bewertens, in Castings, Rankings, Ratings usw. entfaltet. Diese aktuellen Formen der gesellschaftlichen Konstruktion des Wertvollen bilden neue Komplexe der Formierung und Regierung von Marktakteuren, deren Wirkweise über die bekannten foucaultschen Machtdiagnosen hinausweisen.
Der Band entwickelt zentrale Aspekte und Dimensionen der Positionierungsmacht und illustriert deren Wirkweise anhand zweier Fallstudien.

Positioning power – On the formation and government of market actors

The term positioning power takes up the Foucaultian analysis of power. It denotes a governmental form of power that unfolds in the current phenomena of valuing and assessing, in castings, rankings, ratings, etc.. These current forms of the social construction of the valuable form new complexes of the formation and government of market actors, whose mode of operation points beyond the familiar Foucauldian diagnoses of power.

The volume develops central aspects and dimensions of positioning power and illustrates its mode of operation by means of two case studies

Reiner Keller, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Foundations, Concepts and Tools for a Research Programme (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 September 2024

Reiner Keller, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Foundations, Concepts and Tools for a Research Programme, Springer 2024

About this book

Sets out the basic principles of a genuinely social-science oriented discourse perspective
Presents concrete steps of ‘how to do SKAD research’
Uses exemplary case studies from sociology, political sciences, area studies and education

In this updated version of a contemporary classic of discourse research, Reiner Keller develops the theoretical and methodological foundations of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD). Translated from the original German into English for the first time, this book brings together two previously unconnected domains of knowledge analysis in social science: the rich traditions of sociology of knowledge and symbolic interactionism on one hand and the works of discourse studies, especially in relation to Michel Foucault, on the other. It presents a critical discussion of key developments in sociology of knowledge, symbolic interactionist, and related interpretive approaches, explains the communicational turn of recent work in the field, and examines how traditions within sociology of knowledge shifted focus or converged over time. Following this, the book discusses the development of discourse theory and discourse analysis since the 1960s, including critical discourse analysis, hegemony analysis, or cultural studies approaches. Embarking from a profound reconstruction of Michel Foucault’s work, the book then sets its own distinctive course by integrating major elements of Foucault’s perspective with the sociology of knowledge. Along this path, Reiner Keller establishes the heuristics and methodology for a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, providing a comprehensive research programme for the study of social relations of knowledge and politics of knowledge. Since its first publication in 2005, SKAD has informed a multitude of studies worldwide and across several academic disciplines. Today it can be considered as one of the major perspectives in discourse research in social science and beyond.

Keywords
dispositive, discourse, discourse analysis, discourse studies, discourse theory, Foucault, methodology, politics of knowledge, power/knowledge, science studies, social constructionism, sociology of knowledge, symbolic interactionism

About the author
Reiner Keller is Chair of Sociology at the University of Augsburg (Germany). He has made major contributions to the establishment of empirical discourse research in German social sciences since the late 1990s. Some of his main research interests include social science discourse research, sociology of knowledge and culture, sociological theory, interpretive methods, and analysis of discursive struggles in contemporary societies. His numerous publications include books such as Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists; Michel Foucault; Das Interpretative Paradigma (“The Interpretive Paradigm”), Müll. Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion des Wertvollen (“Waste. The Social Construction of the Valuable”).

Davoudi, S., Schoneboom, A., Díaz-Aldret, A. Counter-Conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Popup Civic Actions in Mexico (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 September 2024

Davoudi, S., Schoneboom, A., Díaz-Aldret, A.
Counter-Conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Popup Civic Actions in Mexico (2024) Global Society

DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2387010

Abstract
This paper draws on Foucault’s concept of counter-conduct to move beyond the binary understandings of civil society and social movement. Using illustrative examples of popup civic actions in the aftermath of a flooding disaster that hit the Mexican state of Guerrero in 2013, we argue that for many grassroots and indigenous people with a longstanding struggle for recovery of communal lands (ejidos) and autonomy, mutuality (perceived as the domain of civil society) and resistance (perceived as the domain of social movement) are co-constitutive and continually invoked in their counter-conducts. That, their ethical desire for “being otherwise” and “doing things differently” is constitutive of their political will “not to be governed like that”. Using a Foucauldian analytics of counter-conduct, we discuss how self-organised popup actions in Guerrero both unsettled power relations by creating new fields of visibility, techniques, and knowledge, and imbued critical self-reflections, engendering new political identity. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
civil society; Counter-conduct; disaster; Mexico; social movement

Vaseková, V., Müller, M., Kročil, O. Acting like Living in a Panopticon? Hong Kong Social entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Risks and Vulnerabilities (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 September 2024

Vaseková, V., Müller, M., Kročil, O.
Acting like Living in a Panopticon? Hong Kong Social entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Risks and Vulnerabilities
(2024) Journal of Social Entrepreneurship

DOI: 10.1080/19420676.2024.2388042

Abstract
Hong Kong faces significant business and social uncertainty, which affects social entrepreneurs’ perceptions of risks and vulnerabilities. This study examines their narratives, taking into account the influence of Chinese propaganda, discourse and fear. Their experiences are likened to Foucault’s panopticism, where entrepreneurs feel constantly monitored, which influences their behaviour and statements. This study investigates 26 Hong Kong social enterprises through semi-structured qualitative interviews, where entrepreneurs expressed vulnerabilities, particularly of products, marketing, business model, staff, finance, low capacity and mission-related issues. Entrepreneurs also cited significant risks such as financial, operational, marketing, competitive, market, existential and political risks. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Governmentality; Michel Foucault; panopticism; risks; social entrepreneurship; vulnerabilities

Krupar, S., Ehlers, N. The Racial Spectacular: Pandemic Governance Through Dashboards and State Biosecurity (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 September 2024

Krupar, S., Ehlers, N.
The Racial Spectacular: Pandemic Governance Through Dashboards and State Biosecurity (2024) Science Technology and Human Values

DOI: 10.1177/01622439241265641

Abstract
Data visualizations related to COVID-19 operate as forms of spectacle essential to the racialized governance of the pandemic. Guy Debord theorized spectacle as separation—between subjects, populations, regions, dots on a map. We extend and revise Debord’s framework of spectacle, drawing on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism and Sylvia Wynter’s critique of monohumanism to position spectacle as ways of seeing as separation: constructed ways of seeing that divide and partition. In this sense, spectacle contributes to material geographies of race and racism: what W.E.B. Du Bois referred to as the global color line and Michel Foucault called the caesura of race. We deploy this anti-racist interpretative methodology to analyze research from the 2020–21 period of the COVID-19 pandemic: first, COVID-19 dashboards that map infections, death, and other pandemic data; and, second, state biosecurity measures of lockdown in so-called areas of concern during the Delta outbreak in Sydney, Australia. Our methodology positions all real-time pandemic monitoring as part of the recursive operation of administering race as problem space, where the biopolitical twinning of life-and-death-making meet. We conclude by asking: what alternative forms of accounting of or for race are possible? © The Author(s) 2024.

Author Keywords
biosecurity; COVID-19; dashboards; pandemic; race; spectacle

Karl Katz Lydén, Critique and the Care of the Self: The Economy of Truth and Government in Michel Foucault’s Late Work (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 September 2024

Karl Katz Lydén, Critique and the Care of the Self: The Economy of Truth and Government in Michel Foucault’s Late Work, 2024
Doctoral thesis, monograph

Södertörn University, School of Culture and Education, Philosophy. Södertörn University, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Baltic & East European Graduate School (BEEGS).

Alternative title
Kritik och omsorgen om sig : sanningssägandets och regerandets ekonomi i Michel Foucaults sena verk (Swedish)

Abstract [en]
This thesis engages Michel Foucault’s late work on ancient philosophy in relation to his earlier investigations of modern forms of government and events in his political present. Beginning with a reinterpretation of the function of style in Foucault’s oeuvre, it demonstrates that the ancient notion of the care of the self – the style of existence – unfolds as a critical project. The thesis considers Foucault’s last three lecture courses at the Collège de France: “The Hermeneutics of the Subject” (1982), “The Government of Self and Others” (1983), and “The Courage of the Truth” (1984). It shows that what is at stake in the ancient notions of truth-telling and the technologies of the self is not reducible to an ethical, individual subject in Greco-Roman antiquity, but rather something that bears on Foucault’s previous critical work on modern forms of subjection, on his notion of critique, and on political, collective subjects in the present.

No previous study has treated this relation between Foucault’s notion of the care of the self and his theory of critique. And while shorter attempts have noted their conceptual common basis in “virtue” and “government,” this thesis opens new perspectives. Through a formal analogy to Kant’s critical project, it proposes a model of three Foucauldian kinds of critique: the historical-philosophical practice of theoretical work, truth-telling in the political field, and the individual or collective “art of not being governed like that.” Moving between the theoretical work and lesser discussed materials – specifically Foucault’s engagement with the Polish trade union “Solidarność” and the French labor union CFDT – important continuities are identified. It is demonstrated that Foucault understands critique, the care of the self, and collective movements in his own time, not only by the same conceptual framework of government, virtue, and truth, but also as non-discursive forms or practices in which means and ends merge. This is significant in relation to Foucault’s definition of modern economic government in his lecture course on neoliberalism, “The Birth of Biopolitics” (1979): a government guided by an equally non-discursive “veridiction of the market.” Building on these continuities in Foucault’s oeuvre, it is concluded that the ancient notions of truth-telling and of the style of existence offer significant tools in the art of not being governed like that: as collective configurations of critique in the present.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2024. , p. 254
Series
Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations, ISSN 1652-7399 ; 229

Keywords [en]
Foucault, Critique, Care of the self, Governmentality, Socialist Governmentality, Neoliberalism, Means and ends, Self-finalization, Parrēsia, Parrhesia, Truth-telling, Veridiction of the market, Solidarność, labor unions, CFDT, Style, Performativity, Montage

Abstract [sv]
Denna avhandling tar upp Michel Foucaults sena verk om antik filosofi i relation till hans tidigare undersökningar av det moderna regerandet och händelser i hans politiska samtid. Utifrån en omtolkning av stilens funktion i Foucaults arbeten visas här att den antika idén om omsorgen om sig – levnadsstilen – hos Foucault läggs fram som ett kritiskt projekt. Avhandlingen tar upp Foucaults tre sista föreläsningsserier vid Collège de France: ”Subjektets hermeneutik” (1982), ”Styrandet av sig själv och andra” (1983), och ”Modet till sanning” (1984). Den visar att det subjektsbegrepp som introduceras i den grekisk-romerska antikens läror om sanningssägande och självteknologier inte kan reduceras till ett etiskt, individuellt subjekt begränsat till sin egen historiska situation, utan står i relation till Foucaults tidigare kritiska verk om moderna former av ”subjektion” eller underkastelse (asujettissement), hans kritikbegrepp och hans diskussioner om politiska kollektiva begrepp i samtiden.

Detta är den första svenska avhandlingen i filosofi om Michel Foucaults arbete. Internationellt har ingen längre studie behandlat denna relation mellan Foucaults begrepp om omsorgen om sig och hans definition av kritik. Medan kortare forskningsbidrag har noterat deras begreppsliga gemensamma nämnare i ”dygd” och ”regerande” öppnar denna avhandling nya perspektiv. Med en formell analogi med Kants kritiska projekt föreslås här en modell av tre foucauldianska typer av kritik: det teoretiska arbetets historisk-filosofiska praktik, sanningssägandet inom det politiska fältet och den individuella och kollektiva ”konsten att inte låta sig styras på ett visst sätt”. Genom att undersöka både de teoretiska arbetena och mindre uppmärksammat material – som Foucaults engagemang i ”Solidarność” och den franska fackföreningen CFDT – kan viktiga kontinuiteter uppmärksammas. Här visas att Foucault förstår kritik, omsorgen om sig och kollektiva rörelser i sin egen samtid inte bara genom ett och samma begreppsliga ramverk av regerande, dygd och sanning, utan också som icke-diskursiva former eller praktiker i vilka mål och medel sammanfaller. Detta är viktigt med avseende på Foucaults definition av modernt ekonomiskt regerande i föreläsningarna om nyliberalism, ”Biopolitikens födelse” (1979): ett regerande grundat på ”marknadens veridiktion”. Utifrån dessa kontinuiteter dras slutsatsen att de antika idéerna om sanningssägande och levnadsstilen erbjuder avgörande verktyg för konsten att inte låta sig styras på ett visst sätt: som kollektiva konfigurationer av kritik i samtiden.

Keywords [sv]
Foucault, kritik, omsorgen om sig, regerande, socialistisk regeringskonst, nyliberalism, medel och mål, parrēsia, parrhesia, sanningssägande, marknadens veridiktion, Solidarność, fackföreningar, CFDT, stil, performativitet, montage.