Foucault News

Jeremy W. Crampton, Stuart Elden (Eds.), Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography, London: Ashgate (now Routledge – 2025), November 2012 (E.book, Illustrated edition)
Previous Ed: paperback February 2007; hardback February 2007. I have also uploaded the more attractive original book cover for this post

Michel Foucault’s work is rich with implications and insights concerning spatiality, and has inspired many geographers and social scientists to develop these ideas in their own research. This book, the first to engage Foucault’s geographies in detail from a wide range of perspectives, is framed around his discussions with the French geography journal Hérodote in the mid 1970s. The opening third of the book comprises some of Foucault’s previously untranslated work on questions of space, a range of responses from French and English language commentators, and a newly translated essay by Claude Raffestin, a leading Swiss geographer.The rest of the book presents specially commissioned essays which examine the remarkable reception of Foucault’s work in English and French language geography; situate Foucault’s project historically; and provide a series of developments of his work in the contemporary contexts of power, biopolitics, governmentality and war. Contributors include a number of key figures in social/spatial theory such as David Harvey, Chris Philo, Sara Mills, Nigel Thrift, John Agnew, Thomas Flynn and Matthew Hannah. Written in an open and engaging tone, the contributors discuss just what they find valuable – and frustrating – about Foucault’s geographies. This is a book which will both surprise and challenge.

Contents:
Introduction: Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography, Stuart Elden and Jeremy W. Crampton.

Part 1 Questions:
Some questions from Michel Foucault to Hérodote, Michel Foucault (translated by Stuart Elden).

Part 2 Francophone Responses – 1977:
Hérodote editorial, translated by Gerald Moore;
Response: Jean-Michel Brabant (translated by Gerald Moore);
Response: Alain Joxe (translated by Gerald Moore);
Response:Jean-Bernard Racine and Claude Raffestin (translated by Gerald Moore);
Response: Michel Riou (translated by Gerald Moore).

Part 3 Anglophone Responses – 2006:
The Kantian roots of Foucault’s dilemmas, David Harvey;
Geography, gender and power, Sara Mills;
Overcome by space: reworking Foucault, Nigel Thrift;
Foucault among the geographers, Thomas Flynn.

Part 4 Contexts:
Strategy, medicine and habitat: Foucault in 1976, Stuart Elden;
Formations of ‘Foucault’ in Anglo-American geography: an archaeological sketch, Matthew Hannah;
Catalysts and converts: sparking interest for Foucault among Francophone geographers, Juliet J. Fall;
Could Foucault have revolutionized geography?, Claude Raffestin (translated by Gerald Moore).

Part 5 Texts:
The incorporation of the hospital into modern technology, Michel Foucault (translated by Edgar Knowlton Jr., William J. King, and Stuart Elden);
The meshes of power, Michel Foucault (translated by Gerald Moore);
The language of space, Michel Foucault (translated by Gerald Moore);
The force of flight, Michel Foucault (translated by Gerald Moore);
Questions on geography, Michel Foucault (translated by Colin Gordon).

Part 6 Development:
Geographies of governmentality, Margo Huxley;
The history of medical geography after Foucault, Gerry Kearns;
Maps, race and Foucault: eugenics and territorialization following World War I, Jeremy W. Crampton;
Beyond the Panopticon? Foucault and surveillance studies, David Murakami Wood;
Beyond the European province: Foucault and postcolonialism, Stephen Legg; Foucault, sexuality, geography, Philip Howell;
The problem with Empire, Mathew Coleman and John A. Agnew;
‘Bellicose history’ and ‘local discursivities’: an archaeological reading of Michel Foucault’s Society Must be Defended, Chris Philo.

About the Editors:
Dr Jeremy W. Crampton is from the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, USA. Dr Stuart Elden is from the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK.

Reviews: ‘Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography elaborates Foucault’s thinking about geography and space in fascinating ways. Foucault scholars will be delighted and perhaps amazed to see this side of Foucault, and the book will immediately become an essential text for all geographers and everyone interested in Foucault’s understanding of space and its broader influence in the social sciences and social and cultural theory.’
John Pickles, University of North Carolina, USA

‘For anyone interested in Foucault, geography and space, this is the essential reference work. This outstanding and comprehensive collection brings together for the first time, not only original texts by Foucault, but also the work of French and Anglophone commentators and authorities in the area. An invaluable and beautifully organized resource, highly recommended for both students and scholars alike.’
Clare O’Farrell, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

‘The work of French philosopher Foucault is here excavated, translated, interpreted, assessed, and applied…This is a thoughtful and imaginative undertaking, replete with utile index .…Recommended.’
Choice

‘…it avoids the trap of “hyper-reflexivity” which would harm the quality of the work…the most enriching aspect of this volume is clearly that it identifies that Foucault’s reflections represent a veritable goldmine for geographers and anyone interested in questions of space.’
a contrario

With thanks to Variazioni foucaultiane for this news