Foucault News

Carlo, Andrea di. “The Problem of Toleration: Tacitus, Foucault and Governmentality.” History of European Ideas, (2024), 1–16.
doi:10.1080/01916599.2024.2346031

ABSTRACT
This article proposes a novel interpretation of Montaigne’s and Bayle’s comments on Tacitus. My contention is that their Tacitism is a Foucauldian discourse on toleration. Toleration is an example of governmentality, a strategy to govern a population, not a genuine call for religious diversity. This novel reading applies to Michel de Montaigne’s Essays and Pierre Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet and his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Montaigne’s essay On the Useful and the Honourable, he shows that there is a difference between his public and private persona. The author discusses ideas of toleration in a Tacitist style. This happens in his essay Something Lacking in Our Civil Administrations, where the author laments the death of Sebastian Castalio and, indirectly, he supports his commitment to religious pluralism. As I will show, Montaigne embraces a Gallican belief system, which is more conciliatory. Bayle a century later, discusses the same issues. In his Various Thoughts, he makes a case for toleration as a tool to manage a population. Ultimately, it will be clear how this plea for toleration is not a product of the Enlightenment, but it is rather a discourse to achieve societal compliance.

KEYWORDS:
Tacitus Tacitism Montaigne Bayle Foucault

Leonard, M.
The Power of Oedipus: Michel Foucault with Hannah Arendt
(2023) Arethusa, 56 (3), pp. 393-412.

DOI: 10.1353/are.2023.a917343

Abstract
It has become increasingly common to draw connections between Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt: there are strong continuities between their respective theories of power, and Foucault and Arendt share an account of modernity and of the entry of biological life into the political sphere. Both thinkers are also immersed in the texts of antiquity and place an analysis of the ancient world at the heart of their thinking about the modern condition. This article explores how their different accounts of Oedipus as a political figure reveal their preoccupations with questions of power and political subjectivity. © 2023 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Stypinska, D.
Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification
(2024) Theory, Culture and Society, .

DOI: 10.1177/02632764231216896

Abstract
Taking its cue from Michel Foucault’s analyses of the pastoral ‘conduct of conduct’, this paper considers social media as a specific dispositif that derives its mode of operation from the religious techniques of individualization. It argues that today’s preoccupation with digital performances, far from exorcizing the pastoral logic, in fact manifests its secular intensification. By examining social media practices through the lens of the sacramental paradigm of confession, the article shows how the digitalization of the pastoral directive culminates in the production of spectral subjects. These spectral subjects, it contends, function as the conduits of the dominant power, guaranteeing the persistence of capitalism by embodying the imperative to complete economization. © The Author(s) 2024.

Author Keywords
confession; Michel Foucault; pastoral power; social media; subjectification

Jentoft, E.E., Sandset, T., Haldar, M.
Problematizing loneliness as a public health issue: an analysis of policy in the United Kingdom
(2024) Critical Policy Studies, .

DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2024.2306240

Abstract
This article presents an analysis of discourses in recent UK policy on loneliness reduction. We use Carol Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be’ approach (WPR) to explore how the problem of loneliness produces specific solutions, subject positions, and forms of responsibility. Our findings suggest loneliness is understood as a public health threat that both emerges from and causes ill health. Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality, we argue that policy discourses construct loneliness as a problem requiring governance to minimize health ‘risks.’ Loneliness is problematized as creating strain on health and social care systems, as well as the economy by reducing productivity. The projected ‘costs’ of loneliness are managed via social prescribing. Social prescribing positions GPs and link workers as guides whose role is to transfer lonely subjects away from costly healthcare settings and toward the civil sector. The policies are produced in a context of continued budget cuts which we propose may threaten the effectiveness of projects like social prescribing. Social determinants of health, closely tied to loneliness, are largely left unaddressed in favor of solutions that individualize and responsibilize lonely citizens. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Foucault; governmentality; Loneliness; public health policy; WPR