Foucault News

Un régard américain sur Michel Foucault avec le sociologue Richard Sennett (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

2 July 2014

Un régard américain sur Michel Foucault avec le sociologue Richard Sennett

durée : 00:30:51 – LA SUITE DANS LES IDEES – par : Sylvain BOURMEAU – Le 25 juin 2014 cela fera 30 ans que Michel Foucault est mort.. A cette occasion et pour lui rendre hommage, France Culture lui consacre une semaine à l’antenne (du 14 au 22 juin). Pour La suite dans les idées, c’est le sociologue américain Richard Sennett qui parle de son ami qu’il a rencontré à New-York à la fin des années 70, avant sa maladie, lorsque Michel Foucault venait à New-York … – réalisé par : Bruno Sourcis

CFP: Discourse of Madness. Special Issue Neohelicon (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

1 July 2014

Editor: See comments on this post and this article and this retraction notice

Also Michel Charles, Le plagiat sans fard. Recette d’une singulière imposture, Fabula, November 2014

Call for Papers: DISCOURSES OF MADNESS/ DISCOURS DE LA FOLIE (Special volume of Neohelicon [43, 2016]. Guest-Editor: R.-L. Etienne Barnett)

PROSPECTUS

Contributions on any aspect of madness in (of, and) textuality are welcome for consideration. Possible areas of focus, among a plethora of other options: literary representations of the alienated mind; mad protagonists or mad writers; madness as a vehicle of exile, as a form of marginalization, of dissipation, of disintegration, of revelation or self-revelation; interpretations of madness as a manifestation of structure, style, rhetoric, narrative; madness as a reflection of cultural assumptions, values, prohibitions; madness, as prophetic or dionysiac, poetic, or other; the esthetics of madness; philosophical, ethical, ontological, epistemological, hermeneutic and esthetic implications of the discourse/narrative of madness..

From an alternative vantage point, one might question: how does the deviant mind-set of authorial figures and/or fictional characters determine the organization of time, space and plot in the narrative? How does the representation of delusional worlds differ from the representation of other “non-mad” mental acts (dreams, fantasies, aspirations) and from other fictional worlds (magic, imaginings, phantoms) — if it does? Contributors are welcome to address these and other questions in a specific work, in a group of works, or in a more general/theoretical reflection, in and across any national tradition(s), literary movement(s) or œuvre(s).

ILLUMINATIONS

Do not mistake for wisdom these fantasies /Of your sick mind. (W. Soyinka)
I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. (A. Breton)
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. (M. Twain)
If we lose our sanity/We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots/The howl of the utterly lost/Howling their nowhere-ness. (D. H. Lawrence)
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? (Cervantes)
There is always some reason in madness. (Nietzsche)
No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness. (Aristotle)
Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The madman will no longer be the exiled one, the one relegated to the margins of our cities, but rather he who becomes a stranger to the self, impugned for being who he is. (M. Foucault)
So long as man is protected by madness, he functions and flourishes. (E. Cioran)
Culture is perishing, as are we … in an avalanche of words, in sheer madness. (M. Kundera)
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. (A. Gide)
Books have led some to learning and others to madness. (Petrarch)
What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is yet minimal; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams. (Calderón de la Barca)
Where am I, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you’ll never know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. (S. Beckett)
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, and moon-struck madness. (J. Milton)

SUBMISSIONS

Theoretical or applied contributions focused upon “discourses of madness” in the literary “arena” are invited and will be accorded full and serious consideration.

Manuscripts in English, French German or Italian — not to exceed twenty (25) double-spaced pages, including notes, bibliography and appendices, where applicable — are welcome. Contributions written in any but one’s first (or native) language must be scrupulously reviewed, edited and proofed by a “native” specialist prior to submission.

Format and submission requirements: Papers must prepared in strict accordance with APA (not MLA) guidelines and are to be accompanied by an abstract and 6-8 key words or expressions in English. (A second abstract and set of key words in the language of the article, if not in English, is strongly recommended.)

Submit via email in the form of a WORD document (attachment) to: R.-L. Etienne Barnett (Guest-Editor) at: RL_Barnett@msn.com (primary submission address) with a second copy to RLEBarnett@editionsdegresecond.be (secondary submission address).

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
OCTOBER 1, 2015

Prof. R.-L. Etienne Barnett
RL_Barnett@msn.com (Primary Email)
RLEBarnett@editionsdegresecond.be (Secondary Email)
Email: rl_barnett@msn.com (primary email)
Visit the website at http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/linguistics/journal/11059

David Fryer and Rose Stambe, Work and ‘the crafting of individual identities’ from a critical standpoint (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 June 2014

David Fryer and Rose Stambe, “Work and ‘the crafting of individual identities’ from a critical standpoint”, The Australian Community Psychologist, Volume 26, No 1, June 2014.

Full PDF for download

Abstract

In this paper we start by critically problematising the argument that employment is important to the crafting of individual identities by drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to trouble taken-for-granted assumptions in psychological research on unemployment and modernist understanding of the ‘individual’ as a unitary and stable subject. We then elaborate our theoretical position and demonstrate how a Foucauldian standpoint can help to rethink how we think about, act upon, and experience unemployment. We then argue that, rather than describing the effect of unemployment, psy power-knowledge has contributed to the production of neoliberal subjectivity, including neoliberal unemployed subjectivity. More particularly we argue that ‘unemployment’ and ‘mental ill-health’ are not independent phenomena in a cause effect relationship but are, rather, two facets of socially constituted violence which functions to maximise the working of the neoliberal labour market in the interests of employers and shareholders.

“Foucault himself favours the dissolution of identity, rather than its creation or maintenance. He sees identity as a form of subjugation and a way of exercising power over people and preventing them from moving outside fixed boundaries.” (O’Farrell, 2014)

Kurt Kohlstedt, Real-Life Panopticons: Deserted Dystopian Prisons in Cuba (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

29 June 2014

Real-Life Panopticons: Deserted Dystopian Prisons in Cuba, From Web Urbanist, Digital Magazine on Urban Architecture, Art, Design, Travel, & Technology

Imagine life inside a ring of cells around a central watchtower, where you can never be sure whether you are being observed. This surreal setup became an extreme reality under dictator Gerardo Machado on the Cuban Isla de la Juventud.

Read more

Clémentine Mélois, Collection automne-hiver: Foucault fashion (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 June 2014

Clémentine Mélois, Collection automne-hiver, Vent contaires.net, Publié le 25/06/2014

Update September 2025. Site no longer live. Link above is to page archived on the Wayback Machine.

Clémentine Mélois’ Facebook page

CFP: Engaging Foucault (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 June 2014

Engaging Foucault

Conference
December 5-7, 2014
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade

June 25, 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the passing of Michel Foucault. During his lifetime, Foucault was, in his own words, described as an anarchist and a leftist; a covert Marxist or an explicit or covert anti-Marxist; a nihilist, a technocrat in the service of Gaullism, and a neoliberal. In addition, Foucault can also be described as an intellectual who cannot be aligned or positioned within the existing matrices of thought and action, especially when defined ideologically. How should one understand the societal and political implications of Foucault’s work? These dilemmas remain very much unresolved today.

The conference “Engaging Foucault” will gather international and regional theorists who have engaged with Foucault’s work, either endorsing or disputing the main premises of his work. The intended aim of the conference is to open up space for a general discussion of the actuality of Foucault’s work. Bearing in mind the specific political economy of truth and power, about which Foucault wrote extensively, we intend to examine the changes in scientific and theoretical discourses, as well as the institutions that produce these changes. In what ways is this production economically and politically initiated, expanded and consumed? What is the form of control and dissemination of certain regimes of truth through reforms and old and new ideological struggles around them? Taking as our point of departure Foucault’s statement that the role of the intellectual is not merely to criticize ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or furnish him/herself with the most appropriate ideology, we want to incite a debate on the possibilities of “constituting new politics of truth”, advocated by Foucault. Thus, central to this conference would be the investigation into the possibilities for (re-)articulating public engagement today: how to change political, economic, social and institutional regimes of production of truths? The debate should, in that sense, critically examine the meanings of emancipatory practices, social movements, contemporary forms of innovative action and engaged theory through the Foucauldian optic of bio-politics and ’thanato-politics’, sexuality and (non)identity, resistance, ’counter-power’, ’techniques of the self’ and the genealogies of societally engaged practices (e.g. insurrectionary knowledge and action). In light of the uprisings that have in recent years spread across the globe and are characterized by a variety of causes and consequences, this conference should critically reflect on the meaning of ’engagement’ – what is public engagement, who can be called ’engaged’ and in what sense, what are the effects of engaged thought and action – in the spirit of Foucault’s cues.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

– Public Engagement and the (Im)possibility of Political Emancipation

– Foucault and Intellectuals

– Foucault and the Micromechanics of Power

– Discursive Orders and Orders of Power

– Embodied Engagement

– Foucault and Feminism

– Foucault and Queer Activism

– Foucault (against) Identity Politics, and Social Movements

– Foucauldian Techniques of the Self

– Microphysics of Resistance and Structural Emancipation

– Economy and Bio-politics

– Foucauldian Approach to Security: Discipline, Control, Surveillance

– (Auto-Regulated) Censorship and Engagement

– (Dis-)engaged History of the Present

– Heterotopias and Distopias

– Sovereign Engagement and War

Organization of the conference

The official languages of the conference are BHS and English.

Conference applications should be sent only via e-mail to the following address: conference@instifdt.bg.ac.rs. We kindly ask you to put in your email subject the following title: ’Application: title of the paper’.

The complete application in the .doc, .docx or .pdf format must contain: the title of the presentation, abstract of up to 250 words, key words in the presenter’s mother tongue – BHS or English – and a short biography.

Click here for registration form.

Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes.

The Program Committee of the conference will select the presenters based on the submitted abstracts. The book of abstracts will be published by the time of the conference, and a collection of conference papers will be published in 2015. The papers submitted for the collection should be in BHS or English (between 5000 and 7000 words).

There will be no registration fees. Conference organisers will provide lunch and beverage refreshments during the conference program. Participants are kindly requested to make their own accommodation and travel arrangements.

Important dates

Application deadline: 15 September 2014

Notification of acceptance: 1 October 2014

Conference dates: 5-7 December 2014

Submission deadline for the collection of papers: 1 February 2015

Publication of the collection: June 2015

Conference organizer

The conference is organized by the Group for the Study of Public Engagement, part of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, with the support of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development.

Program Committee

Čarna Brković, Institute for Advanced Studies, CEU

Hajrudin Hromadžić, University of Rijeka

Peter Klepec, Institute of Philosophy, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Katerina Kolozova, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje

Vjollca Krasniqi, University of Prishtina

Ivan Milenković, Treći program Radio Beograda

Sanja Milutinović Bojanić, Center for Advanced Studies, Rijeka

Ugo Vlaisavljević, University of Sarajevo

Where to stay:

The conference venue is close to the city centre and there are many comfortable hotels in its vicinity. Below is a list of the several most convenient places, not more than 5 minutes walking from the conference venue.

Hotel Excelsior http://www.hotelexcelsior.co.rs/

Hotel Helvetia http://www.hotelhelvetia.info/

Hotel Prag http://www.hotelprag.rs/

Hotel Park http://www.hotelparkbeograd.rs/en

Hostel 40Garden Park http://hostel40.net/

Foucault and a Politics of Confession in Education (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 June 2014

Andreas Fejes and Katherine Nicoll (editors) Foucault and a Politics of Confession in Education, Routledge, forthcoming 2015

Publisher’s page

PDF flyer

Description
In liberal, democratic and capitalist societies today, we are increasingly invited to disclose our innermost thoughts to others. We are asked to turn our gaze inwards, scrutinizing ourselves, our behaviours and beliefs, while talking and writing about ourselves in these terms. This form of disclosure of the self resonates with older forms of church confession, and is now widely seen in practices of education in new ways in nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, workplaces and the wider policy arena.

This bookbrings together internationalscholars and researchers inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, to explore in detail what happens when these practices of confession become part of our lives and ways of being in education. The authors argue that they are not neutral, but political and powerful in their effects in shaping and governing people; they examine confession as discursive and contemporary practice so as to provoke critical thought.

International in scope and pioneering in the detail of its scrutiny of such practices, this book extends contemporary understanding of the exercise of power and politics of confessional practices in education and learning, and offers an alternative way of thinking of them. The book will be of value to educational practitioners, scholars, researchers and students, interested in the politics of their own practices.

Contents

Author bios Acknowledgements Part 1 – Introduction 1. An emergence of confession in education Part 2 – A politics of confession in assessment 2. Confession and subjectifications in school performance evaluations 3. Fabricating the teacher’s soul in teacher education 4. Assessing confession in shaping the professional 5. Confessions of an individual education plan 6. Visualization, performance, and the figure of the researcher

Part 3 – A politics of confession in dialogue 7. On confessional dialogue and collective subjects 8. Guiding adults: researching the ANT-ics of confessing 9. Confessional talk in parenting Part 4 – A politics of confession in State programmes 10. Is giving voice an incitement to confess? 11. Are we constructing Lutherans, people with values or US citizens? 12. Subjectivity, youth unemployment and culture of self 13. Historicizing Chinese self-reflection as a technology of confession Part 5 – A politics of confession as Care of the self 14. Reflections on lifelong learning and the making of the self in 15. Living the present otherwise.

Editors

Andreas Fejes is Professor in Adult Education Research at the division for education and adult learning at Linköping University, Sweden.

Katherine Nicoll is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Reproductive autonomy as self-making: Procreative liberty and the practice of ethical subjectivity (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 June 2014

Mills, C.
Reproductive autonomy as self-making: Procreative liberty and the practice of ethical subjectivity
(2013) Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (United Kingdom), 38 (6), pp. 639-656.

Abstract
In this article, I consider recent debates on the notion of procreative liberty, to argue that reproductive freedom can be understood as a form of positive freedom-that is, the freedom to make oneself according to various ethical and aesthetic principles or values. To make this argument, I draw on Michel Foucault’s later work, on ethics. Both adopting and adapting Foucault’s notion of ethics as a practice of the self and of liberty, I argue that reproductive autonomy requires enactment to gain meaning within the life contexts of prospective parents. Thus, I propose a shift away from the standard negative model of freedom that sees it solely as a matter of noninterference or nonimpedance, a view advocated by major commentators such as John Harris and John Robertson. Instead, reproduction should be understood as a deeply personal project of self-making that integrates both negative and positive freedom.

Author Keywords
Autonomy; Ethics of the self michel foucault; Reproductive liberty

DOI: 10.1093/jmp/jht046

Heterotopias in physical education: towards a queer pedagogy? (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 June 2014

Larsson, H., Quennerstedt, M., Öhman, M.
Heterotopias in physical education: towards a queer pedagogy?
(2014) Gender and Education, Published online Feb 2014

Abstract
This article sets out to outline how prevailing gender structures can be challenged in physical education (PE) by exploring queer potentials in an event that took place during a dancing lesson in an upper secondary PE class. The event and its features were documented through video recording and post-lesson interviews with the teacher and some of the students. It is argued that the event can be seen as a heterotopia, according to Michel Foucault a ‘counter-site’ enabling the resistance to authority, where the production of normalcy was challenged. Furthermore, even though the event happened spontaneously, the authors suggest that it can show a way towards a queer pedagogy for PE through teaching paradoxically; it indicates a preferred ethos of the lesson and the use of conceptual tools by teachers and students that make them able to intervene in the production of normalcy.

Author Keywords
education; gender; heteronormativity; sexuality; teaching paradoxically

DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2014.888403

Bruce P Braun, A new urban dispositif? governing life in an age of climate change (2014)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 June 2014

Bruce P Braun,
A new urban dispositif? governing life in an age of climate change
(2014) Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32 (1), pp. 49-64.
https://doi.org/10.1068/d4313

Abstract
In an interview in 1977 Michel Foucault proposed the term dispositif for a heterogeneous set of discourses, practices, architectural forms, regulations, laws, and knowledges connected together into an apparatus of government. Drawing upon later articulations of the concept by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, and exploring a range of innovations in the ‘management’ of urban life, this paper reworks Foucault’s concept as a means for understanding-and potentially contesting-new modes of government that have emerged in response to the crisis of climate change. Against understandings of ‘government’ in terms of a totalizing plan from which new practices and technologies usher forth, this paper emphasizes the ad hoc, and ex post facto nature of ‘government’ as a set of diverse and loosely connected efforts to introduce ‘economy’ into existing relations in response to a perceived ‘crisis’. The paper concludes by exploring Agamben’s notion of ‘profanation’ as an adequate political response to the dispositif of resilient urbanism.

Author Keywords
Cities; Climate change; Government; Profanation; Technology