(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, argues that genealogies (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) present the revenge of naturalism on rationalism. Hegel teaches us how to replace the genealogical hermeneutics of suspicion with a hermeneutics of magnanimity that allows us to see naturalism and rationalism as complementing rather than competing with one another. Series: “UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures” [6/2013] [Humanities]
La bibliothèque universitaire porte désormais le nom du célèbre philosophe internationalement reconnu. L’intellectuel militant s’est élevé toute sa vie contre les différentes formes d’oppression et d’enfermement.
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Notre équipe a retrouvé un de ces enseignants en philosophie, un jeune étudiant prêt à dispenser des cours au jeune lycéen pour sa préparation au baccalauréat. Louis Girard a bien connu le jeune homme c’était pendant la guerre en 1943, un jeune poitevin qui deviendra des années plus tard professeur au Collège de France.
Reportage d’ Elodie Gérard et François Gibert
Au cours des journées consacrées à la pensée du philosophe Michel Foucault, son nom a été donné à la bibliothèque de la faculté de sciences humaines.
C’est un heureux hasard, convient Myriam Marcil, conservatrice en chef des bibliothèques de l’université de Poitiers. D’un côté, l’université qui réfléchissait au nom de sa nouvelle bibliothèque de sciences humaines s’arrêtait sur le nom emblématique de Michel Foucault, de l’autre, Jérôme Lecardeur, directeur du Tap, imaginait un événement autour de la pensée du philosophe mondialement reconnu et originaire de Poitiers. L’inauguration de la bibliothèque universitaire Michel-Foucault est finalement intervenue, jeudi soir, à la croisée de ces deux initiatives.
Le thème du genre retenu pour 2014
Inaugurée sans nom particulier il y a maintenant deux ans, la bibliothèque Michel-Foucault couvre l’ensemble du champ des sciences humaines. « Chaque département avait sa petite bibliothèque séparée. Nous avons fait le choix de réunir l’ensemble des disciplines, explique Yves Jean, président de l’université. Au moment où l’on n’a jamais eu autant besoin de l’intellectuel pour réfléchir sur la cité, cette bibliothèque, dans son interdisciplinarité, illustre bien tout ce que Foucault nous apporte. »
« Si on veut rêver, il ne faut pas fermer les yeux, il faut lire. » Cette citation empruntée à Foucault pour l’occasion par Frédéric Chauvaud, doyen de l’UFR sciences humaines et art, prend là tout son sens : 1.500 m2, 270 places assises de consultation, 70.000 ouvrages définissent en chiffres cet outil au service des étudiants mais aussi, ce que l’on sait moins, du public poitevin puisque – comme toutes les bibliothèques de l’université – elle est gratuite et libre d’accès.
Avant que la députée Catherine Coutelle ne dévoile officiellement la plaque en compagnie d’Yves Jean, Sara Louis et Lucie Nicolas, deux comédiennes du collectif Foucault 71 ont donné, symboliquement au milieu des livres, un aperçu de la pensée et de l’engagement du philosophe dans un dialogue constitué d’extraits de « Surveiller et punir » puis de l’émission « Radioscopie » de Jacques Chancel.
Forts de l’intérêt porté cette semaine à cette première collaboration entre Tap et université, date a déjà été prise pour l’an prochain entre les deux partenaires avec l’idée de pérenniser ce rendez-vous autour de la pensée et de sa représentation. Le thème du genre a d’ores et déjà été retenu pour 2014.
Abstract
A noteworthy conversation that took place in September 1971 between Michel Foucault and Dutch philosopher Fons Elders is to be published for the first time later this year. It reiterates some of the best-known Foucauldian positions on the Enlightenment idea of reason, madness, foreign cultures, and sexuality, while reminding us what Foucault’s rare practice of knowing has to offer today.
Richard Weiskopf and Hugh Willmott, Ethics as Critical Practice: The “Pentagon Papers”, Deciding Responsibly, Truth-telling, and the Unsettling of Organizational Morality (2013) Organization Studies, 34 (4), pp. 469-493. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840612470256
Abstract
This paper contributes to the development of a practice-based understanding of ethics. Ethics is here conceived as a critical practice of questioning and problematizing moral orders and moral rules-in-use in which subjects (re)define their relations to self and others. Situating this conception of ethics in the context of practice theory, we draw upon ideas of responsible decision-making (Derrida) and truth-telling (Foucault) to examine Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” as illustrative of ethics as critical practice.
Author Keywords
Derrida; Ellsberg; ethics; Foucault; parrhesia; practice theory; whistleblowing
Campbell, P., Kelly, P. In/Between Feminism and Foucault: Iraqi Women’s War Blogs and Intellectual Practices of the Self (2013) Critical Sociology, 39 (2), pp. 183-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920511431851
Abstract
In this article we inquire into the forms of intellectual work that are possible when non-Muslim, non-Arab, western academics (female PhD candidate, male PhD supervisor) seek to work together to analyse the war-blogs of a small number of Iraqi women. We confront the central challenge of how to understand and account for such things as freedom, choice, self, gender, politics and relationships in the stories these women tell about themselves. We discuss how, in working in/between Foucault and feminism, it is possible to establish spaces in which a useful, though provisional and shifting, vocabulary of critique can emerge. Our aim is not to be for or against feminism or Foucault. Our position is that Foucault’s vocabulary of enlightenment and critique provides a means to think and talk about how we approach the task of accounting for the selves that we encounter in Iraqi women’s blogs.
Author Keywords
critical theory; critique; enlightenment; feminism; Foucault; Iraqi women’s war blogs; practices of the self
Niesche, R. Foucault, counter-conduct and school leadership as a form of political subjectivity (2013) Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45 (2), pp. 144-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2013.768968
Abstract
Globally, a range of new schooling accountabilities have created a complex and often contradictory context in which school leaders work. For principals of low socio-economic status (SES) and disadvantaged schools, they must balance the accountability, performance and reporting requirements against the other needs of their communities. These tensions require new ways of rethinking leadership in the current educational context. This article draws on the work of Foucault, particularly the notions of power and counter-conduct, to examine the case study of one principal in a very low SES school as she negotiates her way through these new schooling accountabilities. This case study illuminates the importance of leadership as a form of counter-conduct through the constitution of the principal as a political subject or form of advocacy leadership.
Spieker, J. Defending the open society: Foucault, Hayek, and the problem of biopolitical order (2013) Economy and Society, 42 (2), pp. 304-321. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2012.687929
In opting for “exit” I allowed my reason to be guided by one particular discussion of Kant’s essay: that of Michel Foucault. In his Berkeley lecture on the question “What is Enlightenment?” he argued that, for Kant, the concept of Aufklärung
it is neither a world era to which one belongs, nor an event whose signs are perceived, nor the dawning of an accomplishment. Kant defines Aufklärung in an almost entirely negative way, as an Ausgang, an “exit,” a “way out.”5
As I’ve suggested elsewhere, there are a few minor problems with Foucault’s interpretation of Kant’s essay. But they pale in comparison with how much he got right, which means that his lecture has much to tell us both about how to translate Ausgang and, more importantly, about how to think about the question Kant was trying to answer. And, while I’ve have (at last) finished thinking about how to translate the opening sentence of Kant’s little essay, I’m far from finished thinking about Kant’s essay. And I’ve come to think that the best account of why it is so difficult ever to be finished with thinking about the questions that Kant’s answer poses in the one that Foucault offered. I hope to say more about that in future posts.
Qvarsebo, J.U.D. Swedish progressive school politics and the disciplinary regime of the school, 1946-1962: A genealogical perspective(2013) Paedagogica Historica, 49 (2), pp. 217-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2012.725841
Abstract
This article examines the vision of the Swedish comprehensive school reform between 1946-1962 as it pertains to the ever-troubling questions of discipline and order in school. Inspired primarily by the work of Michel Foucault and his genealogical perspective, the article problematises the notion that character formation and school discipline during this period underwent a radical democratic transformation, and that this was the successful result of a progressive political agenda. This account of school discipline is shown to be problematic since it conceals a complex and even ironic historical process, where a disciplinarian discourse in school lingered and even widened and deepened disciplinary practice during the period.
Author Keywords
Foucault; Genealogy; Historical theory; Post world war II; Power; School discipline; Sweden
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