Foucault News

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

Maier, H.O.
Soja’s thirdspace, Foucault’s heterotopia and de Certeau’s practice: Time-space and social geography in emergent Christianity
(2013) Historical Social Research, 38 (3), pp. 76-92.

Further info

Abstract
This essay uses analytical tools developed by Edward Soja, Michel Foucault, and Michel de Certeau to investigate time-space configurations in the religious movements inaugurated by Jesus and promoted by Paul. The article begins with an account of the domination of time as a conceptual tool for analyzing both figures and their teachings to establish the context for an alternative space-time reading of the data represented in the New Testament and extra-canonical sources. Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God is placed in the context of the monetization and hence disruption of traditional kinship and social structures. His parables, sayings, and the traditions associated with him represent thirdspace performances of his rural world. His proclamation of the Kingdom of God coheres with Foucault’s notion of heterotopia in that it places listeners in places outside of place. His articulation of behaviours coincides with de Certeau’s notion of tactics inserted within dominant social strategies. Through a reading of Paul’s message against the backdrop of urban poverty Paul’s motif of the church as body is seen as a thirdspace articulation of social groups, heterotopic place outside of place, and communal solidarity within the urban context of the Roman Empire.

Author Keywords
Galilee; Household; Jesus; Monetization; Paul; Roman city; Space-time

Didier Mineur, Après Foucault. La philosophie politique en France depuis les années 1980, Cités, 2013/4 (n° 56), Pages 51 – 76

DOI: 10.3917/cite.056.0051

Premières lignes
Il pourrait sembler paradoxal de faire de l’œuvre de Michel Foucault une borne dans l’histoire de la philosophie politique en France, et le point de fuite à partir duquel se lisent les différentes perspectives contemporaines, puisque Foucault, on le sait, récusait pour lui-même, à l’instar d’Hannah Arendt, le titre de philosophe. Pourtant, de son propre aveu, c’est bien de philosophie qu’il s’occupait….

Plan de l’article

Retour sur Foucault
La réévaluation de la démocratie depuis les années 1980
Aujourd’hui : revitaliser la démocratie
Demain : les enjeux à penser