“Foucault: The Masked Philosopher”
An International Conference
June 8-9, 2014
Bar-Ilan University & The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“Foucault: The Masked Philosopher”
An International Conference
June 8-9, 2014
Bar-Ilan University & The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Semaine du 14 au 20 juin : Spécial Michel Foucault / Alain Juppé / Samuel Pisar / Michael Edwards…
SPECIAL MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984)
> samedi 14 juin
16h-17h UNE VIE, UNE ŒUVRE
Michel Foucault par Christine Goémé
L’œuvre de Michel Foucault est surtout connue pour ses effets militants : elle a démystifié le pouvoir médical, l’enfermement des fous et des criminels ; elle est une vue critique archéologique de nos façons de voir, de savoir et de sentir. Mais on n’insistera jamais assez sur ce qui importait à travers tout cela. Une interrogation sur la nature et l’histoire du vrai. Comment des valeurs, des réalités, ou des discours deviennent-ils vrais ? C’est à saisir cette naissance de la vérité que Michel Foucault s’est consacré. Comment en effet Michel Foucault a-t-il travaillé à faire surgir la vérité, selon cette manière de cerner l’espace où se produisent des effets de vérité, par-delà le jeu entre le vrai et le faux ? Non pas système de pensée, mais méthode d’approche à travers la confrontation de plusieurs discours et de plusieurs réalités. Non pas réflexion sur des objets de savoir, mais à partir d’objets laissés de côté par le savoir, comme en creux. Que l’homme ait à se “dépendre de lui-même”, telle sera la démonstration de cette émission, en prise directe avec l’enseignement de Michel Foucault et sa déconstruction des systèmes. (1ère diff. 7/07/1988).
> du samedi 14 au lundi 16 juin 15 juin, 2 nuits spéciales Foucault : archives et entretiens avec Frédéric Gros, philosophe, Eric Fassin, sociologue et Philippe Artières, philosophe.
Du 14 au 15 juin, 0h-6h30 LES NUITS par Philippe Garbit – Réalisation : Virginie Mourthé
Nuit spéciale Michel Foucault (1/2) avec Frédéric Gros et Eric Fassin
0h-0h30 Entretien avec Frédéric Gros
0h30-5h15 Michel Foucault : l’art de penser (1/2) par Christine Goémé (1ère diff. 3/08/1991)
Avec Raymond Bellour, Robert Castel, Daniel Defert, Bruno Karsenti, Jacques Lagrange, Gérard Lebrun, Anne-Marie Lecoq, Pierre Macherey, Jean-Claude Milner, Judith Revel et Severo Sarduy
5h15-5h45 Entretien avec Eric Fassin
A propos de la réédition de Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B.
5h45-6h25 L’usage de la parole – Langages de la folie (3)
La persécution par Michel Foucault (1ère diff. 21/01/1963)
Du 15 au 16 juin, 0h-6h30 LES NUITS par Philippe Garbit
Nuit spéciale Michel Foucault (2/2) avec Philippe Artières
0h-0h25 Entretien avec Philippe Artières
0h25-5h20 Michel Foucault : l’art de penser (2/2) par Christine Goémé (1ère diff. 4/08/1991)
Avec Daniel Defert, Myriam Revault d’Allonnes, Danielle Rancière, Michelle Perrot, Christian Jambet, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Lagrange, Arlette Farge, François Ewald, Jean-Pierre Vernant et Pierre Hadot
5h20-5h55 L’usage de la parole – Langages de la folie : Le langage en folie par Michel Foucault (1ère diff. 4/02/1963)
Tony McHugh, Faces Inside and Outside the Clinic. A Foucauldian Perspective on Cosmetic Facial Modification. Routledge, 2017
[Originally published by Ashgate, 2013]
Drawing on studies of surface topography, image editing, and diagnostic and surgical experience, Faces Inside and Outside the Clinic addresses the notion of ‘truth’ in what are considered to be ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ faces, whether in clinical cosmetic procedures or in specific sociocultural contexts outside the clinic. With attention to the manner in which the human face – and often the individual herself or himself as a consequence – is physically defined, conceptually judged, numerically measured and clinically analysed, this book reveals that on closer inspection, supposedly objective and evidential ‘truths’ are in fact subjective and prescriptive.
Adopting a Foucauldian analysis of the ways in which ‘normalising technologies’ and ‘techniques’ ultimately preserve and expand upon an increasing array of ‘abnormal’ facial configurations, Faces Inside and Outside the Clinic shows that when determining ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ faces, what happens inside the clinic is inextricably linked to what happens outside the clinic – and vice versa. As such, it will be of interest to scholars and students of social, cultural and political theory, contemporary philosophy and the social scientific study of science, health and technology.
‘Much has been written from outside the clinic about the body and the technologies that are employed to refashion it. This remarkable volume however is written by a surgeon from inside the clinic. The result is an authoritative but compassionate study of the face, its ontological complexity and its diverse cultural meanings.’
Bryan S. Turner, The City University of New York, USA
‘This is a fascinating account of the face and its surgical modification by an oral plastic surgeon and scholar of Foucault. The angle of vision McHugh brings to the subject of cosmetic surgery is unique and imaginative; it is both theoretically sophisticated and grounded in the embodied experiences of patients and surgeons both inside and outside the clinic.‘
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Gary S. Becker, Nobel-winning scholar of economics and sociology, 1930-2014
Obituary by William Harms, UChicago News, May 4 2014
Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, made historic changes to the study of economics and the social sciences, combining disciplines to understand decisions in everyday life, while spawning rich new questions for scholars in diverse fields to pursue.
Becker, 83, University Professor of Economics and of Sociology at the University of Chicago, died on May 3 following complications from a recent surgery. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 [1] “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market behavior.”
Becker pioneered study in the fields of human capital, economics of the family, and economic analysis of crime, discrimination, addiction, and population. University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer said Becker will be remembered as one of the foremost economics scholars of the 20th century.
“Gary was a transformational thinker of truly remarkable impact on the world and an extraordinary individual,” Zimmer said. “He was intellectually fearless. As a scholar and as a person, he represented the best of what the University of Chicago aspires to be.”
Xavier Riondet ECS Forum 13/12/2013
À côté de Freinet : une enquête philosophico-historique d’allure foucaldienne
Education, Culture and Society Research Group Forum
KU Leuven
Henrik Bang, Rethinking Michel Foucault: The Political Circle of Parrhesia and Democracy, 2014
As part of Sydney Democracy Network‘s seminar series, Professor Henrik Bang (University of Canberra) indicates perspectives on Michel Foucault that can inform our understanding of democracy.
Michel Foucault has become an exemplar in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history, linguistics and literary criticism. Ironically, he has never made much of an impact upon the political discipline, to which he first of all belongs, and in which he deserves a prominent position as one of the best political theorists and researchers of all time. In particular in his later strings of lectures from 1978 to 1984 he develops an empirical and normative approach to studying the political as governmentality.
Anthony Merino, Foucault for Dummies, Arts & Opinion. Arts, Culture, Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2014
Michel Foucault wrote anti-historical histories. He is most noted for his histories of four social domains: mental illness, crime and punishment, health systems, and sexuality. With a few exceptions, he does not talk much about art. He wrote a short book on René Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” French for “This is not a pipe,” and in The Order of Things, Foucault wrote on Diego Velázquez’s painting “Las Meninas.” Foucault has been called a lot of things: historian, structuralist, Marxist, linguist, colonialist, nihilist and sociologist. He wrote two books on art, but these were not central to his work. So, why read Foucault? His influence on contemporary thought and society is profound. His thought seeps through academic disciplines into popular culture. Intellectual paranoia permeates his writing. For Foucault the most insidious forms of domination are those guised as given. Foucault was also a serial inverter who constantly switched cause and effect. Foucault’s writings say nothing about making a ceramic pot. The process of making a pot can however, illuminate many of the more difficult theories Foucault promoted.
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Full article
Anthony Merino, independent art critic, has published over 70 reviews. He is a ceramic artist and has lectured internationally on contemporary ceramics.
Governmentality in the Age of Neoliberalism
Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley
Video of Professor Wendy Brown’s talk in March 2014 at the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria in Canada on governmentality in the age of neoliberalism.
The Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age
1-2 August 2014
Staff Common Room, Level 2, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales
Building F8. See map
Daniel McLoughlin and Ben Golder are organising a symposium in the Law School on 1-2 August 2014, under the umbrella of the ‘Public Law and Legal Theory Project’ at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law. The event is supported both by the Centre and by the Faculty’s workshop support scheme.
The organisers would like to warmly invite all who are interested to attend the event. Registration is free but we do ask that people register their intention to attend by emailing an RSVP to gtcentre@unsw.edu.au with the subject line ‘Neoliberalism Symposium’. Please hurry as spaces are limited!
8.30-9.00: Registration and Collection of Name Badges
9.00-9.30 Welcome and Introduction
Daniel McLoughlin (University of New South Wales)
9.30-10.45 Panel 1: The Political Economy of Neoliberalism
Damien Cahill, ‘Embedded Neoliberalism and its Durability’ (University of Sydney)
Rob Nicholls, ‘And so to Bed: Regulatory Regimes as a Mechanism to Embed Neoliberalism’ (University of New South Wales)
10.45-11.15: Morning Tea
11.15-12.30: Panel 2: Neoliberalism and State Authority
Anna Yeatman, ‘Neoliberalism and the Question of Authority’ (University of Western Sydney)
Chris Butler, ‘State Power under Authoritarian Neoliberalism’ (Griffith University)
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.15: Panel 3: Law and Economy in Neoliberal Thought
Jessica Whyte, ‘Governing homo œconomicus: Michel Foucault, Adam Ferguson, and the Providential Logic of Civil Society’ (University of Western Sydney)
Miguel Vatter, ‘Legal Systems and Economic Equilibrium: Hayek vs Becker’ (University of New South Wales)
Paul Patton, ‘Rights, Interests and the Basis of Government’ (University of New South Wales)
15.15-15.45: Afternoon Tea
15.45-17.00: Panel 4: Neoliberal Uses of the Rule of Law
Martin Krygier, ‘Trajectories of the Rule of Law: Pre-liberal, Liberal, Neo-, and Non-’ (University of New South Wales)
Melinda Cooper, ‘Postcolonial Family Law – Economic Liberalization, Rule of Law and the Reinvention of Tradition’ (University of Sydney)
Saturday 2 August 2014
Staff Common Room, Level 2, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales
10.00-11.45: Panel 5: Law and Neoliberalism in the Global South
Fleur Johns, ‘Power Dispersal in the Work of Milton Friedman and in the Mekong River Basin: Nam Theun II and Xayaburi’ (University of New South Wales)
Javier Couso, ‘Constructing “Privatopia”: The Role of Constitutional Law and Courts in Chile’s Radical Neoliberal Experiment’ (Universidad Diego Portales)
Chepal Sherpa, ‘Theorizing Democratic Legality under Neoliberal Capitalism: India’s Neoliberal Project and the Maoist Alternative’ (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
11.45-12.15: Morning Tea
12.15-14.00: Panel 6: Neoliberal Legality Beyond the Nation State
Thomas Biebricher, ‘Understanding the Rise of Juridical Neoliberalism in Europe’ (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Ntina Tzouvala, ‘Neo-liberalism as Legalism: The Rise of the Judiciary and International Trade Law’ (Durham University)
Jothie Rajah, ‘Neo-liberalism and the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index’ (American Bar Foundation)
14.00-15.00: Lunch
15.00-16.45: Panel 7: Strange Bedfellows? Human Rights and Neoliberalism
Samuel Moyn, ‘A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism’ (Harvard)
Zeynep Kivilcim, ‘Articulating Human Rights Discourse in Local Struggles in a Neoliberal Age’ (Istanbul University)
Ben Golder, ‘The Neoliberal Question: Human Rights, Legal Form, and Political Strategy’ (University of New South Wales)
14.45: End
Call for papers
Workshop
Historicising Foucault: What does this mean?
6-8 November 2014
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Michel Foucault figures among the icons of today’s cultural and social sciences. The French philosopher and historian is productively read, quoted, discussed, refuted, and recycled in virtually every cultural and social scientific discipline. Voiced in 1975, Foucault’s invitation that people should help themselves to his works and concepts as if using a toolbox’ (‘make of it what you will’) was so widely taken up that the toolbox has since become standard equipment above all for the work of the cultural sciences. Indeed, the ‘toolbox’ contains an extraordinarily dazzling inventory of concepts, methods, models, sketches, and instruments, and last but not least still proves to be a treasure chest.
But today, thirty years after Foucault’s death, we — the group of editors of the ‘foucaultblog‘ — also face questions regarding the historicisation of this tool box with its instruments whose applicability seems independent of the context of their origins. How did this toolbox that we use actually come about? What does it mean for us today that it originated in the Cold War era in opposition to the ‘hyper-Marxism’ of the New Left, in a certain proximity to structuralism, in the struggle against the French prison system, that it was possibly shaped by commitments to Soviet dissidents, Spanish anarchists, Shiite revolutionaries, or Polish workers and undoubtedly by a fascination with the American counterculture and the Zen culture of Japan, but maybe even influenced by the New Age?? Do all of these ‘contexts’, ‘backgrounds’, and genealogies belong to the Foucauldian toolbox? It can be no other way: Foucault’s thought always and explicitly referred to his present and the poli tical context of his time. But does this not imbue his own concepts and analytical models with an ineluctable historicity? Undoubtedly, and today we should therefore set about writing the genealogy of the Foucauldian toolbox in order to understand it better, to be able to keep using it, but also to bring it up to date and adapt it to today’s scholarly and political situation. And perhaps also to discard some of it.
With such a project in mind, the ‘foucaultblog’ invites all interested scholars to attend a workshop at the University of Zurich on 6-8 November 2014 to discuss the question ‘Historicising Foucault: what does this mean?’ The initial objective will be to locate within a genuine historical context not only the life and work of the author Michel Foucault (1925-1984) but also ‘Foucault’ in his iconic nature and almost ubiquitous presence as a body of interrelated statements that for thirty years has been virulent in the cultural sciences throughout the world. This means interrogating this body of interrelated statements with regard to its specific conditions of possibility, theory formation processes, discursive strategies, and resonance chambers. But it also means taking the claim of historicisation seriously and filling this catchword with life, making the historicisation of Foucault (and ‘Foucault’) the object of one’s own research. We hold the view that such a venture does not by any means require an exclusively historiographical orientation but rather should proceed from all disciplines that work or deal with Foucault. For the new perspective that this can open up is always contemporary in nature: we believe that the historicisation of Foucault’s toolbox opens up new opportunities to think about how this intellectual tool kit can still be used today — or explains why it must perhaps be partially rejected. Work about Foucault is work on Foucault.
Organizational information:
The workshop will take place on 6-8 November 2014 at the University of Zurich.
All interested scholars are invited to send their proposals for papers (abstracts no longer than 500 words) by 30 June 2014 to foucaultblog@fsw.uzh.ch.
The costs of travel and accommodations will be covered for contributors.
The plan is to publish and comment on the workshop contributions on the foucaultblog. The contributors are therefore requested to post brief preliminary versions of their papers on the foucaultblog in advance of the workshops. These will then be provided with commentary, which the contributors can or should address during the workshops. After the conference, the presented papers can be published in full length on the foucaultblog.
Contact: foucaultblog@fsw.uzh.ch
Conference languages: German and English
Foucault News 