Foucault News

M. Alejandra Energici, José Antonio Román B., Claudio Ramos Z. y Sebastián Ibarra G., Solidaridad en la gubernamentalidad liberal avanzada: un análisis en piezas publicitarias, Polis, Revista Latinoamerica, 32, 2012

Further info

Resúmenes
El artículo presenta una reflexión sobre la manera en que en los últimos veinte años la promoción de un determinado tipo de solidaridad en Chile ha contribuido a la conformación de una gubernamentalidad liberal avanzada, necesaria para la instalación de un programa neoliberal. La reflexión se enmarca en los aportes teóricos de Michel Foucault y tiene por objeto empírico piezas de publicidad de promoción de la solidaridad emitidas en Chile entre los años 2009 y 2010, que han sido analizadas en el contexto del proyecto Fondecyt 1090534. Se presentan tres tipos de resultados: (a) se describen los sectores sociales que se construyen como agentes de la solidaridad, (b) se reflexiona sobre las prácticas solidarias más promovidas y (c) se indaga en la forma en que se interpela a los sujetos a ser solidarios.

Abstract
The article presents an analysis on the way in which during the last twenty years the promotion of a certain kind of solidarity in Chile has contributed to the formation of an advanced liberal governmentality, necessary for the installation of a neoliberal agenda. The reflection follows the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault and focuses on the empirical analysis of ads that promote solidarity, issued in Chile between 2009 and 2010, in the context of the project FONDECYT 1090534. We present three types of results: (a) description of the social sectors that are constructed as agents of solidarity, (b) analysis on the most promoted solidarity practices and (c) investigation on the way it adresses the people in order to raise their solidarity.

Palabras claves :
solidarité, gouvernementalité libérale, publicité
Keywords :
solidarity, liberal governmentality, advertising
Palabras claves :
solidaridad, gubernamentalidad liberal, publicidad
Palavras chaves :
a solidariedade, governamentalidade liberal, a publicidade

Boland, T.
Critique is a thing of this world: Towards a genealogy of critique
(2014) History of the Human Sciences, 27 (1), pp. 108-123.

Abstract
Although Foucault was clearly a critical thinker, his approach also provides for the possibility of a genealogy of critique. Such an approach problematizes critique, and I trace the emergent problematization of critique in Foucault’s later works, and briefly in Latour and Boltanski. From this I move on to the ‘critical problematic’, that is, how critique operates as a form of power/knowledge, as a discourse that creates subjects through a critical regime of truth and critical truth-games. Specifically, I argue that critique is a discourse which transforms and unmasks other ‘truth-claims’, replacing them with a starker vision of reality, which in the end is also a specific cultural vision. To elaborate this view, I return to Foucault’s discussion of Kant, his late lectures on Cynicism and also on ordo-liberalism. The wider circulation of critical discourses is demonstrated through an analysis of ‘cool’ or critical consumerism. In conclusion, the relationship between critique, crisis and modernity is considered.

Author Keywords
critique; cynicism; discourse; Michel Foucault; power/knowledge

DOI: 10.1177/0952695113500972

Murray, S.J.
Allegories of the Bioethical: Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year
(2014) Journal of Medical Humanities, February 2014

Abstract
This essay reads J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Diary of a Bad Year, as an occasion to problematize contemporary bioethical (and neoliberal) paradigms. Coetzee’s rhetorical strategies are analyzed to better understand the “scene of address” within which ethical claims can be voiced. Drawing on Foucault’s Socratic understanding of ethics as the self’s relation to itself, self-relation is explored through the rhetorical figure of catachresis. The essay ultimately argues that the ethical voice emerges when the terms-terms by which I relate to myself, to others, to my own body, and to the bodies of others-are themselves subject to catachrestic refiguration. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Author Keywords
Bioethics; Catachresis; J.M. Coetzee; Michel Foucault; Rhetoric

DOI: 10.1007/s10912-014-9273-9

Bowden, G.
Disorders of inattention and hyperactivity: The production of responsible subjects
(2014) History of the Human Sciences, 27 (1), pp. 88-107.

Abstract
This article explores some of the normative commitments which persist in the literature on behavioural interventions for disorders of inattention and hyperactivity. These programmatic texts grapple with a contradiction: on one hand, they posit individuals who cannot be held responsible for their behaviour on the grounds that it is pathological, rather than wilful; on the other hand, these texts are written for individuals diagnosed with these disorders and for related authorities, obliged to mitigate said behaviour on the grounds that it is disvalued and impairing. Facing the practical problem of alleviating impairing and disruptive behaviours, this literature has also consistently expressed a goal of producing individuals who demonstrate self-control. Self-control, in this context, however, is not simply the manifestation of wilful autonomy over one’s body, but the capacity to be ascribed responsibility for one’s actions. In the move from bodily control to self-control, institutions responsible for treating those diagnosed with these disorders produce what Foucault has called a ‘political economy of illegality’, where the management of disvalued behaviour is not the eradication of said behaviour, but a redistribution of the right to reward and punish based on the individualization of action.

Author Keywords
ADHD; disorder; Michel Foucault; responsibility; social control

DOI: 10.1177/0952695113503325