Foucault News

Conflict, Revolt and Democracy in the Neoliberal World. Conference (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

25 October 2013

Conflict, Revolt and Democracy in the Neoliberal World
Thursday, November 7 2013 BST – Friday, November 8 2013

Conference website

[Update 5 April 2026. Link above to the page archived on the Wayback Machine]

Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics,
University of Brighton
Grand Parade
Brighton
United Kingdom

Keynote speakers:
Wendy Brown
University of California, Berkeley

Details

Neoliberal politics over the past four decades has linked democracy to the extension of markets and competition across the public, private and charitable sectors. These developments have been sustained through the extension of individual debt, ‘humanitarian’ wars and the normalisation of ‘exceptional’ acts of sovereign power including torture and illegal drones. Despite sustained economic crises, disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and marked increased in inequalities both within nation states, and between nation states, neoliberal regimes have flourished. The collapse of the world financial system in 2008 was rearticulated as a crisis of the state. Debts incurred by global financial institutions became sovereign debts while citizens have borne the brunt of the risks generated by the confluence of debt, war and discipline.

These crises have increasingly put in to question the claim that the state is a bulwark of democratic politics, the last outpost for the expression of the sovereign will of the people against the incursion of market mechanisms. States function to regulate and protect actors in markets, extend the remit for markets, and limit the possibility for democratic revolt against the consequences of these freedoms. However, this recognition also opens the possibility of exploring other avenues, other directions and possibilities for the expression of democratic politics. These may involve political actors both below and above the state, as well as the possibility of reconfiguring parts of the state.

This conference investigates neoliberal rationalities, practices and regimes with particular attention to the current conjuncture. It also theorises the limits of the the different theoretical accounts of contemporary capitalist politics, while investigating the news sites and agents of democratic politics. Papers might address any one of these or related topics:

SPECIAL STRAND: Wendy Brown on neoliberal politics

Neoliberal ‘Democracies’
Marxist critiques of Neoliberalism
Critical Theories of Neoliberalism
The Politics of Debt
Neoliberal property regimes
Reconstruction after Invasion: Market and State in Afghanistan and Iraq
The Outsourced State
Foucault on Neoliberal Governmentality
Thinking Resistance: From Cairo to Wall Street
Democracy beyond the state

The conference fee is £160. This includes refreshments, lunch on Thursday and Friday and conference dinner on the Thursday evening

There are a limited number of places available for graduate students and for people who have no institutional affiliation at the reduced price of £80. If you wish to be considered for one of these places please contact Ian Sinclair i.sinclair1@uni.brighton.ac.uk. on as soon as possible.

Please note: the conference fee does not include accommodation and, unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel grants or other forms of financial assistance. If you have any questions about the conference or require further information please contact Ian Sinclair i.sinclair1@uni.brighton.ac.uk.

Stuart Elden, Foucault’s 1972 lecture at Minnesota – summary now available (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 October 2013

Progressive Geographies

In a previous post, I discussed the summary of a 1972 lecture Foucault gave in Minneapolis, entitled “Cérémonie, théâtre et politique au XVIIe siècle”. As far as I am aware the text of the lecture remains in Foucault’s own papers and was never published. It was published in a brief English summary, written by Stephen Davidson, in Acta: Proceedings of the fourth annual conference of XVIIth century French Literature, pp. 22-3. Given the text is so hard to find, I wanted to ask Davidson for permission to put this summary on this site, but sadly I heard he died some years ago.

I’ve therefore gone ahead with make the summary available – in pdf. If anyone knows of a way of making this more legitimate please let me know.

Thanks to Kai Bosworth, Gerald Moore, Arun Saldanha and Garnet Kindervater for detective work.

Incidentally, the question was raised as…

View original post 91 more words

Crisis & Critique of the State. Conference (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 October 2013

Crisis & Critique of the State
Interdisciplinary Goldsmiths Graduate Conference 2013

Friday, October 25 2013 – Saturday, October 26 2013

Goldsmiths, University of London
London
United Kingdom

Keynote speakers:
Sara Farris
Goldsmiths College, University of London

Massimiliano Tomba
University of Padua

Bob Jessop
Lancaster University

The conference is free and open to all.

If you have any questions, please contact goldsmithsgradconference@gmail.com

Conference Programme:

Friday, 25th of October
09.30 – 10.00 – Registration (New Academic Building – Lower Ground Floor)

10.00 – 11.00 am
Keynote I (Room NAB LG01)
Sara Farris, Goldsmiths: The State as ‘Space-Time’ of Convergences: Workfare, Migration and Feminism

11.15 – 13.00 pm – New Materialist Perspectives on the State I (Room NAB LG01)
Christopher Green, University of Oxford: State, space and self: Poulantzas and Foucault on governmentality
Peter Libbey, Duquesne University/Universität Heidelberg: The Truth of False Consciousness: Althusser on Ideology and the Limits of ‘Revolutionary’ Discourse
Aylin Zafer, Goethe-University, Frankfurt: Reading Gramsci with Foucault. Subjectivity between Consensus and Discipline
Respondent: Peter Thomas, Brunel University

– Lunch Break –

2.30 – 4.15 pm – Parallel Panels
Cultural and Political Economy of the Neoliberal State (Room RHB137)
Radman Selmic, Goldsmiths, University of London: State, Derivative Logic and Liquidity
Emma Mahony, National College of Art and Design, Dublin: Where do they Stand? Deviant Art Institutions and the Liberal Democratic State
Matthijs Krul, Brunel University: ‘Mainstream Political Economy and the State: The Conception of State Power and its Origins in the New Institutionalist Economic History
Respondent: tbc

Philosophies of the State I – Hegel and Marx (Room RHB256)
Ian Jakobi, Kingston University: The Eternal State of Temporal Crises: Hegel and Marx on political transformation
Nathanial Boyd, Brunel University: The socialisation of the political and the politicisation of the social: Hegel as a thinker of the problem of the modern state.
Danilo Scholz, EHESS Paris: The Rise of the World State: The Strange Encounter between French Hegelo-Marxists and German Conservatives in the 1950s and 1960s
Respondent: Sara Farris, Goldsmiths, University of London

– Coffee Break –

4.45 – 6.30 pm – Parallel Panels
Critiques of Democracy and Neoliberal Politics (Room RHB256)
Jonathan Baldwin, Royal Holloway, University of London: H. G. Wells’ Critique of the State: The Un-Utopianism of Democracy
Baraneh Emadian, University of Westminster: The Excrescences of Liberal-Democracy: Power of the People vs. Force of the State
JD Taylor, University of Roehampton: Are we post-political? Reading Spinoza on the civil state
Respondent: Saul Newman, Goldsmiths

Biopolitics of the State (Room RHB137)
Richard Morgan, University College London: “A Noxious Superstructure”: Peter Kropotkin, Degeneration and Bio-anti-statism
Zuleykha Mailzada, University of Glasgow: Human right to health after death of Soviet communism
Matthew Cole, London: Crisis, Proletarianization and the Limits of Real Subsumption or The Synthesis of the Biopolitical and the Biocapital
Respondent: Manfred Faßler, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

6.45 – 7.45 pm
Keynote II (Room NAB LG01)
Bob Jessop, Lancaster University: Poulantzas on economic and political crises and the crisis of the state: historical lessons and contemporary relevance

Saturday, 26th of October
09.45 – 10.15 – Registration (RHB 342)

10.15-12.00 am – Parallel Panels
Creating Exceptions within State(s) of Emergency. On the notion of non-citizenship – refugee protests in Europe (and elsewhere) (Room RHB 342)
Sofia Bempeza, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: Pro-testing democracy // The refusal to stay in one’s proper place
Jenny Kneis, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: ‘REFUGEES ARE HUMAN BEINGS’, ‘WORLD HELP US’. Two Protest Banners.
Rachel Rye, Goldsmiths, University of London: ‘Unseeing’ Asylum Seekers: the sovereign state of Nauru and its Australian detention centre
Respondent: Stefan Nowotny, Goldsmiths

Philosophies of the State II – Politics of Community and Justice beyond the State (Room RHB 137)
Marita Vyrgioti, Goldsmiths, University of London: Community beyond identity: towards a rethinking of radical politics
Alison Hugill & Sami Khatib, Freie Universität Berlin: Community, Body Politics, and Profane Illumination. Reading Walter Benjamin with Jean-Luc Nancy
Mauro Farnesi Camellone, University of Padua: Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Liberal City. For a Non-Conservative Interpretation
Respondent: Massimiliano Tomba, University of Padua

– Lunch Break –
1.00-2.45 pm – Parallel Panels
The Sea, Shores, Islands – Territory, Sovereignty and the State (Room RHB342)
Daniel Fernández Pascual, Goldsmiths, University of London: The Construction of the End
Léopold Lambert, New York: The Political Archipelago: For a New Paradigm of Territorial Sovereignty
Jérôme Seeburger, Leipzig: The Multitude of Rackets – A Critique of the ‘Utopia’ of Micronations, its Propagandists and its Theory
Respondent: Leila Whitley, Goldsmiths

Crisis and Protest (Room RHB137)
Sara Salem, The Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag: The Egyptian military and the 2011 uprising: re-alignments within the ruling class.
Alen Toplišek, Queen Mary, University of London: Why austerity is working
José Borges Reis, Goldsmiths, University of London: From theology to economics to moral tales: the winding paths of crisis
Respondent: Emma Dowling, Middlesex University

– Coffee Break –

3.15 – 5.00 pm – New Materialist Perspectives on the State II (Room RHB342)
Chris O’Kane, University of Sussex: Between Vulgar Marxism and Marxology: The State as ‘the force of value’ in Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Lukas Slothuus, Central Saint Martins: State, Capital, and Crisis: Toward a Theory of Neoliberal State Capitalism
Respondent: Bob Jessop, Lancaster University

5.00 – 6.00 pm
Keynote III (Room RHB342)
Massimiliano Tomba, University of Padua: Beyond Political Theology and its Temporality. Benjamin vs. Schmitt

Natalie Depraz, De Husserl à Foucault : la restitution pratique de la phénoménologie (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 October 2013

Natalie Depraz, De Husserl à Foucault : la restitution pratique de la phénoménologie, Les Études philosophiques, 2013/3 (n° 106), 333-344.
https://doi.org/10.3917/leph.133.0333

Resumé
Mon objectif dans cette contribution est d’explorer la pratique phénoménologique en jeu au sein même des descriptions de Michel Foucault. Un tel travail dépasse la portée d’un examen unique et ponctuel et supposerait de mobiliser les champs expérientiels multiples qu’a observés et traités Foucault de l’intérieur : la prison, la clinique, la sexualité. Il sera ici circonscrit à ce que je crois être le noyau de la pratique en jeu. Ce que Foucault nomme de son côté « le souci de soi », « la pratique de soi » ou encore « la technique de soi », et c’est ce qui permet de mettre au jour la conception foucaldienne du sujet comme soi. Pour ce faire, je vais parcourir le Cours de 1981-1982 en suivant le fil conducteur des occurrences du thème de l’attention. Pourquoi cela ? Je suis guidée, dans ce parcours, par l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’attention (plus que la réflexion qui est retour sur soi et clôture, donc en définitive objectivante) est, pour la phénoménologie, le nom concret, expérientiel, pratique de l’épochè, c’est-à-dire de la relation à soi du sujet comme présence à soi. Foucault ne parlant jamais d’épochè ou de réduction (ni d’ailleurs de réflexion), mais plutôt d’attention, en lien avec le souci de soi, la pratique de soi, ou encore l’exercice, il semble que les concepts méthodiques husserliens, ou toute philosophie réflexive résiduelle, ne peuvent que faire écran à l’intuition immédiate du sens de l’expérience et doivent être évités au profit de termes plus sobres et d’emblée intelligibles comme l’attention, le souci et le soin.

English
The main target of this article is to explore the phenomenological practice used by Michel Foucault in the very heart of his descriptions. Such a work would imply to call up the numerous fields of practice studied and developped from the inside by Foucault : such as prison, clinic, sexuality which goes beyond the scope of this article. By taking this path, we try to reach the very center of the practice, that Foucault calls “the Care of the Self” (“le souci de soi”) and “Practices of Self” (“la pratique de soi”) and “Technologies of the Self” (“la technique de soi”), in order to unveil the foucaldian conception of the subject as Self. I will therefore skim through the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982, following the many tokens of the concept of attention. In this journey, I’m suggesting the possibility that the concept of attention (more than the Reflexion which is a return on Self and Closure and finally a process of objectivation) is the pheno- menological equivalent of the practical and concrete Idea of Epoché as the link between the Subject and Itself concieved as the self-presence. Foucault never uses the words “Epoché” or “Reduction” (or even “Reflexion”). He prefers to employ the word “attention” which he links to “the Care of the Self”, “Practices of Self” or “Exercice”. Thus, it seems much more suitable to use plainer and easier to understand words as “attention” and “care” than the methodical concepts developped by Husserl or the one employed in any reflexive philosophy, which hide the immediate intuition of the meaning of experience.

PLAN DE L’ARTICLE

Introduction
I – L’attention comme souci de soi (Michel Foucault)
- 1 – Les occurrences de l’attention
- 2 – Les « mots » de l’attention
II – L’attention comme présence relationnelle à soi (E. Husserl)
III – L’espace de jeu entre Husserl et Foucault : la corporéité (a-)sexuée de l’attention
- 1 – L’attention est un vécu gestuel distinct de sa nomination
- 2 – L’attention, un processus
- 3 – Y a-t-il un bémol à l’union parfaite ?
IV – Foucault avec Husserl : le noyau de la pratique
- 1 – Husserl et la pratique
- 2 – La phénoménologie de Michel Foucault
Conclusion : une éthique commune de l’ascèse

Sonja K. Pieck, “To be led differently”: Neoliberalism, road construction, and NGO counter-conducts in Peru (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 October 2013

Sonja K. Pieck, “To be led differently”: Neoliberalism, road construction, and NGO counter-conducts in Peru (2013) Geoforum. Volume 64, 2015, Pages 304-313,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.06.011

Abstract
This essay explores how neoliberal governance is being contested, adapted, and engaged by Peruvian NGOs responding to the Interoceanic Highway, a large infrastructure project in southern Peru. The road is an anchor project of a continent-wide regional integration effort called IIRSA (Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America), begun in 2000 and spearheaded by Brazil. IIRSA is a result of Latin America’s neoliberal reorientations in the 1980s and 1990s and seeks to facilitate the extraction of resources and the movement of capital. IIRSA has been carried out with very little publicity, but in 2006, a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) formed a coalition named the Civil Society Working Group for the Interoceanic Highway, and began critiquing both the road’s massive ecological and social consequences as well as the Peruvian government’s poorly designed impact mitigation program. Following Foucault, this paper suggests that NGO critique of the IIRSA project represents a form of counter-conduct and at once co-constitutes and challenges neoliberal practices of rule in Peru. Through the lens of “counter-conducts” – defined by Foucault as “the will not to be governed thusly, like that, by these people, at this price” – this essay shows how the NGO working group largely acts within the political space of the state through neoliberal ideas of good governance, while its discourses and actions point to a more profound reworking of environmental politics in Peru, a call in Foucault’s words, “to be led differently… and towards other objectives.”

Author Keywords
Counter-conducts; Governance; Infrastructure; Neoliberalism; NGOs; Peru

DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.06.011

Peter-Paul Verbeek, Resistance is futile: Toward a non-modern democratization of technology (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 October 2013

Peter-Paul Verbeek, Resistance is futile: Toward a non-modern democratization of technology, (2013) Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 17 (1), pp. 72-92.
https://doi.org/10.5840/techne20131715

Abstract
Andrew Feenberg’s political philosophy of technology uniquely connects the neo-Marxist tradition with phenomenological approaches to technology. This paper investigates how this connection shapes Feenberg’s analysis of power. Influenced by De Certeau and by classical positions in philosophy of technology, Feenberg focuses on a dialectical model of oppression versus liberation. A hermeneutic reading of power, though, inspired by the late Foucault, does not conceptualize power relations as external threats, but rather as the networks of relations in which subjects are constituted. Such a hermeneutic approach replaces De Certeau’s tactics of resistance with a critical and creative accompaniment of technological developments.

Author Keywords
Dialectics; Hermeneutics; Mediation theory; Political philosophy of technology; Power

DOI: 10.5840/techne20131715

Michalinos Zembylas, Derrida, Foucault and critical pedagogies of friendship in conflict-troubled societies (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 October 2013

Michalinos Zembylas, Derrida, Foucault and critical pedagogies of friendship in conflict-troubled societies (2013) Discourse. 36(1), 1–14.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2013.812341

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to place Derrida’s and Foucault’s ideas on friendship in conversation and then discuss how those ideas provide a pedagogical space in which critical educators in conflict-troubled societies can promote new modes of being and living with others. In particular, the notion of critical pedagogies of friendship is theorized and the pedagogical implications that follow are examined in the light of the emotional complexities of troubled knowledge in conflict-troubled societies. It is argued that critical pedagogies of friendship that take into consideration the emotional complexities of troubled knowledge help us interrupt the enemy-friend binary and revamp our sense of compassion and responsibility to others. Most importantly, critical pedagogies of friendship enable the creation of new spaces of political subjectification that nurture the invention of new relations of emancipation. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Author Keywords
conflict-troubled societies; critical pedagogy; Derrida; emotion; Foucault; friendship

Johan Hyrén, An Ethics of Self-creation Beyond Foucault: A Theory of Justice for a Multicultural, Liberal and Democratic Society (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 October 2013

Johan Hyrén, Självskapelseetik bortom Foucault: En rättviseteori för ett mångkulturellt, liberalt och demokratiskt samhälle

The English title:

An Ethics of Self-creation Beyond Foucault: A Theory of Justice for a Multicultural, Liberal and Democratic Society.

This recently submitted thesis is written in Swedish but includes an extensive English summary at the end and can be downloaded from this University of Gothenburg link

Abstract
This thesis develops a normative theory of justice centered on the concept of subjectivation. The concept originates from (late) Foucault and is connected to his writing on ethics. Foucault did not himself elaborate on the subject in any great detail. This thesis, however, does, creating a theory of justice for a multicultural, liberal, democratic, society on the basis of subjectivation.

The basic principle of the theory is that a just society is one in which everyone has equal opportunity to engage in active subjectivation. This is related, but not synonymous, to Foucault’s ethics, which is sometimes summarized in a clichéd manner by referring to his statement that we should turn our life into “a piece of art”. I argue that the opportunity to engage in active subjectivation is what ought to be equally distributed in society. Active subjectivation is best understood in relation to its opposite, passive subjectivation. The latter refers to an identity that is molded, subjugated and constituted by power relations external to the subject; the former to an identity-formation attained by the subject’s conscious and active work on itself.

The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the foucaultian ethic and how it is related to its archaic predecessors. This part also develops a critique of Foucault’s version of the ethic of self-creation. In the second part I surpass the foucaultian ethics, creating my own version of the ethic of self-creation. The third and last part is devoted to the questions of group-based rights and organization of education, and tries to explicate how these issues could be handled by a state that affirms the ethic of self-creation.

The Collège de France Lectures: Reappraising Michel Foucault’s Published Works. Roundtable (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

5 comments

17 October 2013

PDF flyer

Alessandra Renzi and Greg Elmer, The Biopolitics of Sacrifice: Securing Infrastructure at the G20 Summit (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

16 October 2013

Alessandra Renzi and Greg Elmer, The Biopolitics of Sacrifice: Securing Infrastructure at the G20 Summit (2013) Theory, Culture and Society, 30 (5), pp. 45-69.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276412474327

Abstract
This article investigates infrastructure spending from a biopolitical perspective and rethinks its connections to emerging regimes of (in)securitization. Starting with a study of the organization and contestation of the G8/G20 summits in Toronto in June 2010, the analysis moves through the shifty territory of a governmental logic that is reconfiguring the body politics of civic participation, as well as the ways in which discourses on economic growth, property and public safety intertwine in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. The case of Toronto shows significant changes to recent security practices, control techniques and funding arrangements. Rather than ‘war on terror’, ‘austerity and crisis’ are the new keywords sustaining current governmental rationality and the criminalization of dissent, which are no longer funded by defence budgets but by economic stimuli packages. This new rationality, while still relying on fear as an affective mode to mobilize masses, has exchanged a set of discourses on the clash of cultures or civilization for one on sacrifice. Following Foucault’s work on the government of populations and security, it is now possible to talk about ‘a sacrifice series’ to describe the series of elements that connect military or economic logics of (in)securitization.

Author Keywords
biopolitics; contemporary activism; crisis; Foucault; global city; militarization; neoliberalism