Foucault News

Gary S. Becker, François Ewald & Bernard E. Harcourt, Becker and Foucault on “Crime and Punishment” with Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt. Session 2 (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

25 September 2013

Gary S. Becker, François Ewald & Bernard E. Harcourt, Becker and Foucault on Crime and Punishment’: A Conversation with Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt: The Second Session (Coase- Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Working Paper No.654, 2013

[Editor: Update 15 March 2026. I have updated the links below to the archived pages held on The Wayback Machine as well as a page still available online]

This is an edited transcript of a conversation held at The University of Chicago on May 15, 2013, in Foster Hall 505, the seminar room of the Committee on Social Thought. The video recording of the open seminar can be viewed on-line at [this link]. It represents a continuation of a conversation begun the year before, titled “Becker on Ewald on Foucault on Becker”: American Neoliberalism & Michel Foucault’s 1979 Birth of Biopolitics Lectures. That first session can be viewed on-line as well at [this link], and the transcript of that first session can be read here. Professors Gary Becker and François Ewald have individually reviewed their portions of the conversation; Professor Bernard Harcourt has edited and annotated the text. We are extremely grateful to Eléonore Rimbault for transcribing the conversation.

In 1968, Gary Becker published a seminal article titled “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach” in the Journal of Political Economy, in which he set forth the contours of an economic perspective on the field of criminal law and punishment. Only a few years later, in his lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics at the Collège de France on March 21, 1979, Michel Foucault analyzed Gary Becker’s article in relationship to his own writings.

This seminar, featuring Gary Becker, François Ewald and Bernard Harcourt, seeks to engage the discursive repercussions of this textual exchange and the impact Becker’s work made on Foucault’s work, including his well-known work Discipline and Punish, published in 1975.

Gary Becker is a Nobel Laureate in economics and currently holds the position of University Professor in Economics, Booth School of Business, and Sociology at the University of Chicago and is the Chair of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

François Ewald is titular professor of the chair of insurance studies at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers and director of the Ecole nationale d’assurances. Professor Ewald was Michel Foucault’s primary assistant and interlocutor at the the Collège de France from 1976 to 1984, and is the founder of the Michel Foucault Centre. He is in charge of publication of Foucault’s teaching works at the Collège de France.

Bernard E. Harcourt is the Julius Kreeger Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author, most recently, of The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (Harvard 2011).

Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, the France Chicago Center, the Computation Institute, and 3CT at The University of Chicago.

With thanks to Daniele Lorenzini for this information

Foucault Studies. Special Issue on Foucault and Feminism. 16 September (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

24 September 2013

Foucault Studies is pleased to announce the publication of issue 16

A Special Issue on Foucault and Feminism
guest edited by Cressida J. Heyes

Issue 16 also includes:

3 original articles on the topics of:
Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche’s notion of power
Foucault, Althusser and the Marxist tradition
Stultitia and patient education.

10 book reviews

a translation of Michel Senellart’s article “Machiavelli Facing the Challenge of Gouvernementalité.”

Foucault Studies is an electronic, open access, peer reviewed, international journal that provides a forum for scholarship engaging the intellectual legacy of Michel Foucault, interpreted in the broadest possible terms. We welcome submissions ranging from theoretical explications of Foucault’s work and texts to interdisciplinary engagements across various fields, to empirical studies of contemporary phenomena using Foucaultian.

All articles are freely available as open access on our website:

Please visit our website to sign up for E-alerts to receive news of CFP’s and new issues.

Number 16: September 2013: Foucault and Feminism

Table of Contents

Editorial
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Patricia Clough, Sven Opitz, Jyoti Puri, Jens Erik Kristensen, Alan Rosenberg, Marius Gudmand-Høyer & Ditte Vilstrup Holm
____________________________________________

Special Issue on Foucault and Feminism

Foucault Studies Special Issue: Foucault and Feminism, September 2013
Cressida J. Heyes

Feminism, Foucault and the Critique of Reason: Re-reading the History of Madness
Amy Allen

Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality
Johanna Oksala

Post-liberation Feminism and Practices of Freedom
Ladelle McWhorter

Queer Feminism: Cultivating Ethical Practices of Freedom
Jana Sawicki

Resisting the Subject: A Feminist-Foucauldian Approach to Cfountering Sexual Violence
Dianna Taylor
____________________________________________

Translations

Machiavelli Facing the Challenge of Gouvernementalité
Michel Senellart
___________________________________________

Articles

Force and Knowledge: Foucault’s Reading of Nietzsche
Kojiro Fujita

Foucault and Althusser: Epistemological Differences with Political Effects
Andrew Ryder

Stultitia and Type 2 Diabetes: The Madness of Not Wanting to Care for the Self
Anders Kruse Ljungdalh

_____________________________________________________

Reviews

Colin Koopman (ed.), “Special issue: Foucault across the disciplines,” History of Human Sciences, vol. 24. no. 4, October (2011)
Michael Solda

Éric Alliez and Andrew Goffey (eds.), The Guattari Effect (London & New York: Continuum, 2011)
Jonathan Fardy

Krzysztof Michalski, The Flame of Eternity: An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)
Apple Zefelius Igrek

Philippe Chevalier, Michel Foucault et le christianisme (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2011)
Michael Maidan

Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)
Michele Spanò

David L. Hildebrand, Dewey: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008)
Kathleen Cole

Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, Human Nature: Justice vs Power, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate, edited by Fons Elders (London: Souvenir Press, 2011)
Asger Sørensen

Ian Marsh, Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Daniel R. Mistich

David Pettigrew & Francois Raffoul (eds.), French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception (State University of New York Press, 2008) & Isabelle Garo, Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser et Marx – La politique dans la philosophie (Demopolis, 2011)
Andrew Ryder

John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)
Joel Alden Schlosser

Jean Condé, Yolande Robveille (dir.) Vincennes : roman noir pour une université rouge. Documentaire (2008)

Clare O'Farrell

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23 September 2013

Vincennes : roman noir pour une université rouge
Un documentaire de Yolande Robveille (2008), Zarafa Films

Résumé

Chronique de la communauté Vincennoise de 1968 à 1980. L’université de Vincennes ; un gouvernement l’a créé à l’été 1968, un autre l’a fait raser à l’été 1980. Le film débute par mai 1968, il se termine par la destruction des bâtiments. Des images d’archives restituent l’ambiance de l’époque, le quotidien du campus, des extraits de cours des philosophes, François Châtelet, Gilles Deleuze et J.F Lyotard, des interventions de Dario Fo et Michel Foucault. Des témoignages des acteurs de l’époque (Hélène Cixous, Bernard Cassen, Alain Badiou, Daniel Defert, Gérard Miller, et bien d’autres…) nous disent que Vincennes reste l’emblème, la démonstration ou l’exemple d’une liberté de l’Esprit authentiquement vécu.

Source: Variazioni Foucaultiane

Lucie Brachy, Le Voyage en Hétérotopie (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

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22 September 2013

Passeport pour un autre monde…

Avec nos voyages en Afrique de l’Ouest, nous étions (trop) souvent confrontés à la négation de la liberté de circulation de nos partenaires, à la bêtise des corridors de sécurité, à la cécité des frontières. On s’était alors dit qu’on pourrait créer un pays dont nous serions tous citoyens, un pays de liberté, de fraternité, d’équité. Ce pays n’aurait pas de frontières : il serait constitué d’un ensemble de lieux écologiques et solidaires, conçus par des citoyen-ne-s pour répondre à leurs besoins, à ceux leurs proches et de leur communauté, dans le respect des personnes et de l’environnement.

Ce pays, nous l’avons appelé « Hétérotopia » en référence à une conférence de Michel Foucault qui parlait des « hétérotopies » pour désigner les utopies réalisées, ces projets concrets et ces lieux qui incarnent aujourd’hui ce qui était un rêve hier.

Hétérotopia, c’est donc un pays potentiel. Il n’existe sur aucune carte : il nous faut la construire. Ses citoyens n’ont pas de papiers, pas d’état civil : il leur faut conquérir leur identité. Il n’a pas d’expert pour le conduire, pas d’Etat pour le diriger, encore moins de monarque : il cherche sa voie, tâtonne, expérimente à travers la multiplicité des éléments qui le composent. Il est en perpétuel mouvement, en incessante (r)évolution.

A Via Brachy, on a décidé de lui créer un Passeport et de le diffuser afin de porter son message et ses valeurs, pour que chacun d’entre nous puisse s’y reconnaitre et puisse contribuer à son émergence.

Le Passeport Hétérotopia est une invitation au voyage. Il attire notre attention sur ce(ux) qui nous entoure. Il nous invite à chercher l’insolite dans notre quotidien et à entrer en contact avec les autres. C’est un passe-droit pour celles et ceux qui veulent voir dans le monde un peu plus que ce qu’il y a déjà. C’est une mémoire vive de ces lieux dans lesquels s’inventent la société de demain, un réservoir d’idées et de projets concrets. C’est aussi un prétexte pour se rencontrer, pour échanger des idées, pour apprendre à se connaître. C’est enfin un signe distinctif qui nous permet de nous retrouver et de nous fédérer.

Mais, nous direz-vous, si le monde se changeait avec des bouts de papiers, ça se saurait ! Et pourtant ! Pourtant, à Via Brachy, on est persuadé que ce Passeport fera son chemin. A condition que nous soyons nombreux à le faire vivre.

C’est donc à vous, simple citoyen-ne, que revient cette tâche. Comment procéder ? C’est très simple. Prenez votre Passeport avec vous, fourrez le dans votre sac : que vous l’ayez cherché ou non, vous rencontrerez certainement sur votre route des personnes dont les projets vous inspireront, vous vous arrêterez dans des lieux qui vous sembleront atypiques, exemplaires, prometteurs. A ce moment-là, vous sortirez votre Passeport de votre sacoche et vous demanderez à vos hôtes d’inscrire un petit mot pour vous souvenir de ce lieu et pour en parler autour de vous. Parallèlement, vous nous enverrez un petit message sur heterotopies@viabrachy.com pour nous raconter ce lieu et ces personnes. Si nous sommes d’accord pour qualifier ce lieu / ce projet d’Hétérotopie, nous l’inscrirons sur la carte que nous construisons ensemble. Et peu à peu, nous verrons se dessiner les contours de ce nouveau pays.

Hétérotopia sera-t-il le 196ème pays déclaré à l’ONU, juste après la Palestine ? Il est trop tôt pour le dire. Mais une chose est certaine : Il y a bien un autre monde, et il est dans celui-ci. A nous d’ouvrir l’œil !

suite

Source: Heterotopian Studies

David Stewart (dir.) Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil. Film documentary (1993)

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

21 September 2013

Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil, a documentary directed by David Stewart in 1993
42 mins
Broadcast as part of a BBC series called “The Late Show”.

Editor: 15 March 2026. Link above is to the archived page on the Wayback Machine.

Some of this documentary is rather speculative and sensationalised.

Sources of this link: Dangerous Minds
Critical Theory

The poststructural anarchist. Interview with Todd May (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 September 2013

The poststructural anarchist. Todd May interviewed by Richard Marshall. First published in 3:AM Magazine: Friday, July 12th, 2013.

Update September 2025. No longer held in the 3am magazine archives. Link above is to the archived page on the Wayback Machine

Todd May is the poststructuralist anarchist who thinks anarchism is more than just a critique of the state, that there is more than one struggle, that Foucault, Deleuze and Lyotard are important, that postructuralism is elusive, that anarchism is bottom-up and liberalism is top-down, that ‘how might one live?’ is the down and dirty question, that Foucault’s thought will remain standing when the dust is settled, that what it means to be human is a matter of practices, that Ranciere gets him emotionally, that friendship offers a different model from neo-liberalism and that his conception is about resistance not cohesion. High Five!

3:AM: What made you become a philosopher? Were you always aware of a kind of crisis?

Todd May: Many philosophers I talk with seem to get their start in philosophy from a teacher, often a college professor, that turns them on to the subject. For me, it was different. I went to a high school in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, where ideas and crisis were in the air. It was the kind of place where Melville, Faulkner, and Dostoyevsky, along with the Vietnam War, were regular staples of conversation. So early on I became interested in both ideas and political resistance. In college I studied psychology, but was never far from philosophy: I read Being and Time with a philosophy grad student. Another friend of mine, also a grad student in philosophy, gave me Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception as a graduation present. In the few years I took off between college and grad school, I read most of Merleau-Ponty’s work. Eventually I decided I wanted to go to grad school in clinical psychology, but wanted a phenomenologically oriented one, and so chose Duquesne University. But, as it happens, at the end of my first year there I was introduced to the work of Foucault and Deleuze, who raised unsettling questions for me about the entire project of psychotherapy. I pressed these questions in my classes at Duquesne, admittedly with the passion of which a person committed to ideas is capable, and at the end of my second year was informed that my funding was going to be cut off. So I spent a few more years reading and thinking about what is often called “poststructuralism,” and finally applied to Penn State, where I had the chance to study these thinkers more rigorously. A friend of mine who is a radical lawyer once asked me why I wanted to study philosophy if I was so interested in politics. My response, to which he offered me a mocking stare, was that I felt somehow that in order to understand and solve political problems I needed to be able to grasp their ontological underpinnings.

materiali foucaultiani Volume II, number 3 (January-June 2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 September 2013

materiali foucaultiani

Volume II, number 3 (January-June 2013)

ISSN 2239-5962

See site for full texts of articles

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Michel Foucault: un phénomène de bibliothèque? Spunti di riflessione a partire da un’installazione di Joseph Kosuth (pp. 3-9)
Laura Cremonesi, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini, Martina Tazzioli

Foucault e la letteratura

Introduzione. Sulle ragioni di una pubblicazione postuma (pp. 11-24)
Miriam Iacomini

Nota alla traduzione (pp. 25-26)
Miriam Iacomini

Linguaggio e letteratura (pp. 27-67)
Michel Foucault

La distanza che ci separa dalla letteratura (pp. 69-90)
Jean-François Favreau

Un mormorio infinito… Ontologia della letteratura e archeologia del sapere (pp. 91-104)
Miguel Morey

La letteratura e il diritto alla follia. Blanchot, Foucault e la questione della letteratura (pp. 105-125)
Bruno Moroncini

Saggi

Medicalizzazione e potere in Naissance de la clinique (pp. 127-147)
Gianluca Vagnarelli

Forum: Foucault, migrazioni e confini

Nota introduttiva (pp. 149-151)
Laura Cremonesi, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini, Martina Tazzioli

Risposte di Nicholas De Genova (pp. 153-177)
Risposte di Brett Neilson (pp. 179-200)
Risposte di William Walters (pp. 201-213)

Simon Lemoine, Le sujet dans les dispositifs de pouvoir (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 September 2013

Simon Lemoine, Le sujet dans les dispositifs de pouvoir. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013

Domaine : Philosophie
Collection : Essais
Nombre de pages : 332 p.
ISBN : 978-2-7535-2741-6

Résumé :
Citons Surveiller et punir de Foucault : “Le pouvoir produit ; il produit du réel ; il produit des domaines d’objets et des rituels de vérité. L’individu et la connaissance qu’on peut en prendre relèvent de cette production.” L’individu et le savoir que l’on élabore à son sujet sont produits par des dispositifs de pouvoir (école, usine, prison, hôpital, caserne, etc.). Le pouvoir traversant ces dispositifs étant diffus, ceux-ci gouvernent les sujets insensiblement (on parlera alors d’assujettissement dans une “microphysique” du pouvoir).

Plus précisément, c’est un réseau d’aménagements discursifs, optiques et architecturaux, qui permet de “conduire les conduites”, dans un exercice du pouvoir à la fois insaisissable et profond (une “âme” est produite, nous dit Foucault).

Parce que nous assistons, de nos jours, comme Foucault l’avait annoncé, à une “grande montée des dispositifs de normalisation”, et parce que l’échelle du dispositif, peu étudié par la philosophie, permet d’adopter une perspective nouvelle sur la constitution du sujet, cet ouvrage entend montrer qu’il est nécessaire d’engager aujourd’hui une “philosophie des dispositifs”.

Sommaire :
■ Le dispositif chez Foucault
■ Les matrices
■ Recherches sur la réitération
■ Le sujet du cycle
■ Un homme est fait de l’homme
■ Maîtrise des sujets par la maîtrise des isotopies, des biotopes et du monde objectivé
■ La maîtrise des phénomènes par les dispositifs
■ La conscience comme lieu de lutte
■ Le sujet est sujet de dispositifs
■ L’identité comme invention tactique
■ La subjectivation détournée
■ Le « faire faire » comme principe premier
■ Le gouvernement invisible
■ Le sujet réfracté
■ La physique des discours charriés
■ L’économie de la vérité, et ses fins
■ Le passage du logos en êthos, répondre de soi
■ L’êthos régulier et le joug des discours
■ Le sujet microphysique

Simon Lemoine est enseignant en philosophie et chercheur postdoctoral au laboratoire de recherche Métaphysique allemande et philosophie pratique (MAPP, EA 2626, Poitiers).

Stuart Elden, Foucault in Rio 1973-74 (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 September 2013

Progressive Geographies

The ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’ lectures

Between 21-25 May 1973, Foucault gave five lectures in Rio de Janeiro. These were under the collective title of ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’. They were published in Portuguese in 1974, in French in 1994 in Dits et écrits (text no 139); and in English in the ‘Power’ volume of Essential Works in 2000 (without the 23 page roundtable discussion that followed the fifth lecture). [Update: I translate a few bits of this here.]

The topics of the five lectures can be briefly summarised as

Introduction and Nietzsche
Oedipus – a variant of the ‘Oedipal Knowledge’ manuscript
The Inquiry, Feudal law and the Carolingian Empire
Panopticism
Institutions

From the newly published and translated Lectures on the Will to Know (which includes ‘Oedipal Knowledge’ as an appendix), it’s clear that the overall framing of the lectures, and the content of the first two, were very…

View original post 797 more words

Jonathan Beever, Nicolae C. Morar (Eds), Perspectives in Bioethics, Science, and Public Policy (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 September 2013

Jonathan Beever, Nicolae C. Morar (Editors), Perspectives in Bioethics, Science, and Public Policy, Purdue University Press, 2013

Book Description

In this book, nine thought-leaders engage with some of the hottest moral issues in science and ethics. Based on talks originally given at the annual “Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science,” the chapters explore interconnections between the three areas in an engaging and accessible way. Addressing a mixed public audience, the authors go beyond dry theory to explore some of the difficult moral questions that face scientists and policy-makers every day.

The introduction presents a theoretical framework for the book, defining the term “bioethics” as extending well beyond human well-being to wider relations between humans, nonhuman animals, the environment, and biotechnologies. Three sections then explore the complex relationship between moral value, scientific knowledge, and policy making. The first section starts with thoughts on nonhuman animal pain and moves to a discussion of animal understanding. The second section explores climate change and the impact of “green” nanotechnology on environmental concerns. The final section begins with dialog about ethical issues in nanotechnology, moves to an exploration of bio-banks (a technology with broad potential medical and environmental impact), and ends with a survey of the impact of biotechnologies on (synthetic) life itself.

Contents: Part 1: Animals: Moral agency, moral considerability, and consciousness (Daniel Kelly) and From minds to minding (Mark Bernstein); Animal Pain: What is it and why does it matter? (Bernard Rollin). Part 2: Environment: The future of environmental ethics (Holmes Rolston III); Climate change, human rights, and the trillionth ton of carbon (Henry Shue); Ethics, environment, and nanotechnology (Barbara Karn). Part 3: Biotechnologies: Nanotechnologies: Science and society (James Leary); Ethical issues in constructing and using bio-banks (Eric Meslin); Synthetic life: A new industrial revolution (Gregory Kaebnick).

About the Editor(s):

Jonathan Beever

Jonathan Beever co-founded the Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science at Purdue University. Beever receives his doctorate from Purdue in December 2012. His primary research in philosophy focuses on applied ethics, science, and bioethics, but also he works in continental philosophy, political and moral philosophy, and semiotics. Beever has published on several interrelated topics concerning semiotics, environmental value, biotechnological risk, and bioethics.

Nicolae C. Morar

Nicolae C. Morar is a 2011-2012 Faculty Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon. He recently received his doctoral degree from Purdue University with a thesis analyzing the ways in which current biotechnologies are altering traditional conceptions of human nature. He is also coediting a book with V. Cisney on New Directions in Biopower: Ethics and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.