Foucault News

Katarina Damjanov, Lunar cemetery: Global heterotopia and the biopolitics of death (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

25 July 2013

Katarina Damjanov, Lunar cemetery: Global heterotopia and the biopolitics of death
(2013) Leonardo, 46 (2), pp. 159-162.
https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00516

Abstract
The burial of human remains on the Moon conjures up the idea of a lunar cemetery. This paper reviews related artistic projects and practices and situates the concept of the lunar cemetery in relation to Michel Foucault’s articulation of the notions of heterotopia and biopolitics to explore the implications of perceiving the Moon as a globally shared space populated by the dead. The author also suggests that the possibility of a cemetery on the Moon reveals peculiar biopolitical approaches toward lunar space, in which death is used to uphold its heterotopic potential and support the envisioning of prospects for humanity’s future beyond the globe.

Suze Wilson, Situated knowledge: A Foucauldian reading of ancient and modern classics of leadership thought (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 July 2013

Suze Wilson, Situated knowledge: A Foucauldian reading of ancient and modern classics of leadership thought (2013) Leadership, 9 (1), pp. 43-61.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715012455129

Abstract
This paper aims to provoke reflection and debate on researcher assumptions and the potential functions and consequences of truth claims made about leadership. A Foucauldian approach informs this comparative case study of key Classical Greek and transformational leadership texts, aiming to unsettle what we normally take for granted about leadership so as to enhance our capacity to explore new ways of thinking. Initially I address what is said about leaders, followers and their relationship in each case, after which I consider the historical context of these ideas, their potential effects for leader and follower subjectivity and their wider social function. The paper then identifies continuities and discontinuities in thinking, suggesting social context has a greater effect than is normally understood in shaping what is sayable and thinkable in respect of leadership, and revealing that leadership may possess mutable ontological foundations.

Author Keywords
Classical Greece; Foucault; leadership research; Leadership theories; ontology of leadership; transformational leadership

Victoria Kannen, These are not ‘regular places’: women and gender studies classrooms as heterotopias (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 July 2013

Victoria Kannen, These are not ‘regular places’: women and gender studies classrooms as heterotopias (2013) Gender, Place and Culture, 21(1), 52–67.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.759910

Abstract
This article questions the transformative potential of women and gender studies classrooms through a discussion of student experiences of privilege and oppression in these spaces. Using in-depth interviews with 22 undergraduate students from two contrasting Canadian universities, this article explores how women and gender studies classrooms function as heterotopias or ‘other places’ – sites that challenge ‘regular’ places outside of the academy. Critically analyzing student experiences illustrates to how the intersections of space/location, power, and identities inform notions of privilege and oppression within these classrooms. Analysis of the participants’ reflections points to how it is through these ‘other places’ that students are able to recognize identities that were once unknown to them, become conscious of their embodiments via feelings of worry and discomfort, and question their sense of place in the classroom. It is because of these findings that this research functions as a call to instructors regarding the need to prioritize student experiences, so as to be able to critically reflect upon the social and academic significance of women and gender studies classrooms.

Author Keywords
Canada; Foucault; heterotopia; identity; students; women and gender studies

Charles Barbour, Doing Justice to Foucault: Legal Theory and the Later Ethics (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 July 2013

Charles Barbour, Doing Justice to Foucault: Legal Theory and the Later Ethics
(2013) International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 26 (1), pp. 73-88.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9281-x

Abstract
This article provides a critical evaluation of Ben Golder’s and Peter Fitzpatrick’s recent Foucault’s Law, which it characterizes as a decisive intervention into both legal theory and Foucault scholarship. It argues in favour of Golder’s and Fitzpatrick’s effort to affirm the multiplicity of Foucault’s work, rather than treat that work as either unified by a consistent position or broken into a series of relatively stable periods. But it also argues against Golder’s and Fitzpatrick’s analysis of Foucault’s understanding of the law through a conceptual framework borrowed from Derrida, and especially Derrida’s distinction between law and justice. It shows how this approach to reading Foucault effectively transforms some of his more powerful criticisms of the law into defences of justice. In place of this interpretation, the second half of this paper initiates a reading of Foucault’s later work on ethics and the self in the ancient world. It develops the theme of an ethics, or a way of life, that takes shape at a distance from politics on the one side and law on the other.

Author Keywords
Derrida; Ethics; Foucault; Justice; Law

Mikko Joronen, Conceptualising New Modes of State Governmentality (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 July 2013

Mikko Joronen, Conceptualising New Modes of State Governmentality: Power, Violence and the Ontological Mono-politics of Neoliberalism (2013) Geopolitics, 18 (2), pp. 356-370.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.723289

Abstract
This paper explores the ontological constitution of the neoliberal state. By enriching Michel Foucault’s work on neoliberal governmentality with Heideggerian reading of the ontological conditions involved in the process, the paper argues for an understanding of neoliberalism as a mono-political process of ‘enframing’, through which things and human capabilities are revealed as an array of ‘reserves’ set available for the market rational utilisation. It is argued that the neoliberal state is not based on the ideological or discursive turn in political practices, but on the extending drive, through which the real itself, including the ethical constitution of human conducts, natural entities, and life (with its possibilities), is ontologically positioned to serve the interests of profit-making. The paper concludes by showing how the neoliberal state and the economisation of everyday life are fundamentally based on the ontological violence of concealing the openness of being, and thus, the possibility for ontological politics.

Index Keywords
conceptual framework, geopolitics, government relations, neoliberalism, political discourse, political ideology, violence

Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Foucault et la genealogie des sexes (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 July 2013

Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Foucault et la genealogie des sexes, Ici et ailleurs, 9 juin 2013

Comment aborder l’œuvre d’un auteur qui ne voulait pas être un auteur, qui reniait la notion d’œuvre, et en plus dans une recherche sur un sujet dont d’ailleurs il ne s’occupa pas trop ? Probablement de la même façon dont il parlait des autres : « Les gens que j’aime, je préfère les utiliser…, les déformer, les faire geindre et protester ». Il s’agit d’utiliser des textes, des intuitions et de les appliquer en amplifiant leur premier champ d’expérimentation, de contraindre des engrenages et des structures pour retourner la théorie sur elle-même ou jusqu’au point de non-retour de sa dissémination. Faire circuler les suggestions, appliquer les méthodologies à des objets qui en principe resteront en dehors de leur horizon, forcer les interprétations jusqu’à leur contradiction ou leur saut qualitatif, capables ainsi de clarifier d’autres perspectives. Pour ce faire, la fidélité n’est qu’une première étape qui se résout dans un nouveau prisme créatif. Qu’ai-je voulu faire avec ce livre ? Il s’agit de relire Foucault, tout en partant d’une hypothèse simple : les sexes sont au nombre de deux. Comment les thèmes traités dans ses textes : pouvoir, vérité, subjectivation, technologie du moi, etc. affectent-ils la généalogie de la femme comme sujet/objet de désir, l’identité de genre féminine ?

suite

David Webb, Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 July 2013

David Webb, Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, 256pp., $95.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780748624218.

Open access

Puts The Archaeology of Knowledge at the heart of Foucault’s thought

David Webb reveals the extent to which Foucault’s approach to language in The Archaeology of Knowledge was influenced by the mathematical sciences, adopting a mode of thought indebted to thinkers in the scientific and epistemological traditions. By aligning his thought with the challenge to Kantian philosophy from mathematics and science in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, he shows how Foucault established his own perspective on the future of critical philosophy.

Key features

Sheds new light on a crucial period of Foucault’s work
Highlights Foucault’s relation to thinkers such as Cavailles and Serres

Review by Samuel Talcott

Via Stuart Elden at Progressive Geographies

Roberto Esposito lecture: Immunisation and Violence (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 July 2013

Italian Philosopher Roberto Esposito is the author of such works as Communitas and Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy.

This is the first section of a talk – see other uploaded clips for the remainder.
With thanks to Dirk Felleman for this link

Philippe Theophanidis sent the following information to Foucault News:

This lecture by Roberto Esposito is not so much about Foucault than it is about Esposito’s own work. The lecture, which was given at the Occidental College on November 29, 2011, is actually titled “Immunization and Violence”. It is the English translation (by Thimothy Campbell) of a chapter of Esposito’s book Termini della politica. Comunità, immunità, biopolitica first published in 2008. The text of the lecture is available online as a PDF. More detail about it can be found on Philippe Theophanidis’ blog Aphelis.

It remains a very interesting text and one of most succinct introductions there is to Esposito’s philosophical work. And the video on YouTube is one of the rare video recording of a conference or lecture in English by Roberto Esposito.

John Searle on Foucault and the Obscurantism in French Philosophy (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

17 July 2013

John Searle on Foucault and the Obscurantism in French Philosophy
From the Open Culture site, July 1 2013

It is sometimes noted–typically with admiration–that France is a place where a philosopher can still be a celebrity. It sounds laudable. But celebrity culture can be corrosive, both to the culture at large and to the celebrities themselves. So it’s worth asking: What price have French philosophy and its devotees (on the European continent and elsewhere) paid for the glamour?

See also Foucault On Obscurantism: ‘They Made Me Do It!’ on the Critical Theory site

Now, as Open Culture notes, Foucault admitted to his friend John Searle that he intentionally complicated his writings to appease his French audience. Searle claims Foucault told him: “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.”

Editorial comment. A discussion to be taken with a grain of salt perhaps. More contributions to that well-worn and highly problematic trope of the clarity of Anglo-Saxon and Analytic philosophy versus ‘continental’ obscurity.

Link via Philippe Sabot

Stuart Elden, Foucault’s Last Decade (2013)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 July 2013

Progressive Geographies

I’ve just signed a contract with Polity for a book entitled Foucault’s Last Decade. I had a really good experience with Polity for the Sloterdijk Now edited volume, and am very pleased to be working with them and the philosophy editor Emma Hutchinson again. Here’s the opening part of the proposal:

This book offers a detailed account of the last decade of the work of Michel Foucault, in order both to situate his key works in relation to each other, and to outline an intellectual history of his final project on the history of sexuality. It works in a textual and contextual way, offering close readings of Foucault’s works and situating them in relation to his life, political activism and collaborative projects at the Collège de France. The arguments of those works will be carefully reconstructed, filling in details and making links between published works, lecture material and unpublished…

View original post 418 more words