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, 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.
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/
Andreas Fejes and Katherine Nicoll (editors) Foucault and a Politics of Confession in Education, Routledge, forthcoming 2015
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.
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
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
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
McKay, J.
Young people’s voices: disciplining young people’s participation in decision-making in special educational needs
(2014) Journal of Education Policy, Published online Feb 2014
Abstract
In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children’s rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people’s voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of ‘truth’ about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces tacit forms of ‘government’ that further classify and divide young people, magnifying their marginalization. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Author Keywords
advocacy; Foucault; governmentality; participation; young people’s voice
Muers, R.
The ethics of stats: Some contemporary questions about telling the truth
(2014) Journal of Religious Ethics, 42 (1), pp. 1-21.
Abstract
This essay argues for the importance and interest, within and beyond theological ethics, of the ethical questions faced by professionals who are called on to be producers of statistics (herein “stats”) for management purposes. Truth-telling, in the context of demands for stats, cannot be evaluated at the level of the individual statement or utterance, nor through an ethical framework primarily focused on the correspondence between thought and speech. Reflection on stats production forces us to treat truth-telling as contextual and political, and to engage with the idea that the capacity to tell the truth is learned or acquired in communities, societies and institutions. I develop this engagement through a rereading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on “telling the truth” and Michel Foucault on parrhēsia, identifying and exploring the relationship between the responsible use of stats and the “cynical” protest against them.
Author Keywords
audit culture; Dietrich Bonhoeffer; lies; Michel Foucault; truth; truth-telling
DOI: 10.1111/jore.12042
Cobb, S., Farrants, J.
Male prisoners’ constructions of help-seeking
(2014) Journal of Forensic Practice, 16 (1), pp. 46-57.
Abstract
Purpose: Help-seeking behaviours are fundamental to mental health and well-being. This study is concerned with how male prisoners talk about help-seeking in order that treatment programmes can be developed that better address their needs. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach: Informed by Foucauldian and Social Constructionist philosophies, this discourse analysis draws on the interview transcripts of nine male prisoners, looking at the discursive constructions mobilised in relation to help-seeking and the implications these have for agency.
Findings: Three overarching discourses are identified: “man-up and deal with it”, “solidarity” and “authoritarian”. Prisoners resist formal help because of a perceived injustice in the system, disrespect for staff and feeling helpless when they are “bombarded with medication to keep quiet”. When they do engage with formal help-seeking behaviours it is frequently “to work the system”. Generally, they are more motivated to engage with informal help-seeking behaviours with each other, learning the knowledge like “a taxi driver” and sharing it with fellow prisoners although, for some, expressing emotion is like “an episode of Eastenders […] like a girlie programme”. Research limitations/implications: The qualitative nature of the analysis requires certain discourses to be privileged over others, acknowledging that there is no one truth. Further research is needed to explore informal sources of help-seeking within the prison population.
Practical implications: There is a need to develop treatment programmes that promote informal help-seeking strategies and work with prisoners in a facilitative rather than coercive manner. Originality/value: To privilege the voices of prisoners.
Author Keywords
Discourse analysis; Foucault; Help-seeking; Male prisoners; Social constructionist
Brown, S.
Moving elite athletes forward: examining the status of secondary school elite athlete programmes and available post-school options
(2014) Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Published online Feb 2014
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this study focused specifically on examining the status of and the promotion of two elite athlete programmes (EAPs), the students/elite athlete selection process and available post-school options. The research was guided by Michel Foucault’s work in understanding the relationship between power and knowledge.
Participants, setting and research design: Two EAPs, a state school with a sport academy option (School A) and a private correspondence school designed specifically for elite athletes (School B), were purposefully selected for the study. Twenty key informant elite athletes and five teachers/coaches became central to the ongoing qualitative data collection for this study.Data collection: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants and teachers/coaches. During the class visits, field notes were recorded using a digital recorder focusing upon key informants’ reactions to the course content, their learning experiences and the social interactions between key informants and teachers/coaches. Documents were also collected to contextualise the two EAPs.Data analysis: First, I analysed the data following the method of constant comparison using NVivo, a software package that assists researchers in the analysis of qualitative data. This involved coding the data to identify key themes. After the data were clustered into key themes, I examined the discourses within the themes that positioned both teachers/coaches and elite athletes in particular power relationships using Foucauldian theory.Findings: The findings revealed that elitism within the ranks of the EAP created tension and jealousy amongst the elite athletes as some were more highly prized than others. Furthermore, the elite athletes and sponsors promoted the EAPs and in turn the EAPs and sponsors promoted the achievements and successes of the elite athletes as their skills and knowledge were highly valued in comparison to other students within the school. The EAPs also offered limited post-school options of obtaining an athletic scholarship to study at a university and/or to become a professional athlete.Conclusions: Foucault’s theoretical framework of govermentality helped map how the EAPs were talked about within discourses of power, and assisted in understanding how acceptance and resistance by participants normalised practices of social exclusion. The data highlighted the need for EAPs to provide more information about possible post-school options and to develop a critical orientation to the labour market, recognising the relationships between elite sports, knowledge, skills, credentials and post-school options. © 2014 © 2014 Association for Physical Education.
Author Keywords
elite athletes; Foucauldian theory; performativity; post-school options; secondary schools
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