Foucault News

Boano, C., Leclair-Paquet, B.
Potential, freedom and space: Reflections on Agamben’s potentialities in the West Bank
(2014) Space and Polity, Published online Feb 2014

Abstract
A special kind of infrastructure has emerged around the West Bank, which lays bare Israel’s capacity to spatialise its colonial power and to constantly solidify its presence. Reading these spatial devices through Agamben’s work, this paper proposes a reflective attempt to read this site of contemporary occupation through a “resistant” lens as a novel take on Agamben’s spatial topology and political aesthetics. The paper offers preliminary remarks on the search for alternative theoretical construction of Agamben “potentialities”. The paper allow speculations on the heterotopian nature of Israeli produced infrastructures, perceived at once as actualised potentials in space, and spaces of potential.

Author Keywords
Agamben; conflicted spaces; Foucault; heterotopian infrastructures; Israel; potentiality; West Bank

DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2013.880010

Hardie, M.
Making Visible the Invisible Act of Doping
(2014) International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 27 (1), pp. 85-119.

Abstract
This paper describes the construction of the visual space of surveillance by the global anti-doping apparatus, it is a space inhabited daily by professional cyclists. Two principal mechanisms of this apparatus will be discussed-the Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport; in order to illustrate how this space is constructed and how it visualises the invisible act of doping. These mechanisms act to supervise and govern the professional cyclist and work to classify them as either clean or dirty in terms of the use of prohibited doping substances or methods. Contrary to the analysis of liberal anti-doping scholars such as Hanstad, Loland and Møller this paper argues that Foucault’s Panopticon paradigm is a useful tool for the analysis of this apparatus. The Whereabouts System and Biological Passport are the instruments by which the anti-doping apparatus intensifies the construction of the space of surveillance in professional sport. This space of surveillance not only locates and makes visible the physical location of each individual cyclist, but it also makes visible their internal bodily functions, in this case the composition and the fluctuations of the composition of their blood. In making the cyclist visible the instruments do not allow the cause of doping, or the event of doping to be known or observed. Rather what they do is cast the body in terms of abnormalities of time, place or blood. In the case of an abnormality of the cyclist’s blood, the cause itself cannot be identified with any certainty, all that is made visible is a suggestion, or a probability, that doping may have occurred. The ultimate effects are twofold-an internalisation and continual monitoring of one’s self as well as by the authorities, and a radical change in the nature and the definition of the offence of doping. No longer is it positive evidence of doping that is punishable, but what becomes punishable is an abnormality, in the cyclist’s location, or their body, which suggests a probability that the invisible act of doping may have occurred. In the course of this process accepted manners of proving an offence by the use of scientific evidence and expert commentary are transformed. The Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport open up a new manner in which the invisible can be visualised. Through the discourse and the attendant commentary of the expert a new alliance between doping and the law is constructed. The result is a redistribution of the way in which the law visualises and treats the symptoms (the signifier) and the signified act of doping. The Whereabouts System and Biological Passport are the instruments by which the anti-doping apparatus intensifies the construction of the space of surveillance in professional sport. This space of surveillance not only locates and makes visible the physical location of each individual cyclist, but it also makes visible their internal bodily functions, in this case the composition and the fluctuations of the composition of their blood. In making the cyclist visible the instruments do not allow the cause of doping, or the event of doping to be known or observed. Rather what they do is cast the body in terms of abnormalities of time, place or blood. In the case of an abnormality of the cyclists’s blood, the cause itself cannot be identified with any certainty, all that is made visible is a suggestion, or a probability, that doping may have occurred. The ultimate effects are twofold-an internalisation and continual monitoring of one’s self as well as by the authorities, and a radical change in the nature and the definition of the offence of doping. No longer is it positive evidence of doping that is punishable, but what becomes punishable is an abnormality, in the cyclist’s location, or their body, which suggests a probability that the invisible act of doping may have occurred. In the course of this process accepted manners of proving an offence by the use of scientific evidence and expert commentary are transformed. The Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport open up a new manner in which the invisible can be visualised. Through the discourse and the attendant commentary of the expert a new alliance between doping and the law is constructed. The result is a redistribution of the way in which the law visualises and treats the symptoms (the signifier) and the signified act of doping

Author Keywords
Biological passport; Biopower; Doping; Foucault; International cycling union; Panopticon; Professional cycling; Society of control; Society of the spectacle; Whereabouts; World anti doping code

DOI: 10.1007/s11196-013-9311-3

Viernes, N.
The Magistrate is the Muse: Law and Visual Economy in Bangkok
(2014) International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 27 (1), pp. 27-46.

Abstract
Governmentality is a spatial formation negotiated within historically-constituted political landscapes. In Bangkok, this spatialization of power is manifested in the militarization of urban life and the protocols of security procedure, but also in anti-government protests and an increasingly politicized visual culture. The memory and meaning of the city’s streets exist as an overlooked legibility that challenges the visual strategies of government control. Monuments, travel routes, and other public sites of national recognition now compete in an extended urban arena of images, such as literature and cinema, which re-stage governmentality and the material contours of Thailand’s contemporary political disagreements outside of its institutional norms. I read this intersection between governing and image circulation through the development of a visual economy in Bangkok and depict how different communities-including a bureaucratized military and a populist political party, but also writers and filmmakers-intervene in its circulation. Each group zooms in on key spaces of the city in the attempt to speak to changing forms of governmentality.

Author Keywords
Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Bangkok; Foucault; Governmentality; Street politics

DOI: 10.1007/s11196-013-9318-9

Webb, P.T.
Policy problematization
(2014) International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27 (3), pp. 364-376.

Abstract
This article places Michel Foucault’s concept of problematization in relation to educational policy research. My goal is to examine a key assumption of policy related to “solving problems” through such technologies. I discuss the potential problematization has to alter conceptions of policy research; and, through this discussion, I provide a set of alternative pragmatics with which to conduct research for, and on, education policy.

Author Keywords
Foucault; policy; problematization

DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2012.762480