Foucault News

Elizabeth Tucker, Review: Late Friends: Remembering Michel Foucault, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Wassily Leontief, Alan Lomax, William Kunstler and Others Who Changed Tense

Clare O'Farrell

2 February 2012

Tucker, Elizabeth (2011). Review “Late Friends: Remembering Michel Foucault, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Wassily Leontief, Alan Lomax, William Kunstler and Others Who Changed Tense”. The Journal of American folklore (0021-8715), 124 (491), pp. 119-20.

Review of Bruce Jackson, Late Friends: Remembering Michel Foucault, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Wassily Leontief, Alan Lomax, William Kunstler and Others Who Changed Tense. Buffalo, NY: Center for Working Papers, 2005.

Further details

Extract
In this book of essays, Bruce Jackson offers character sketches of twenty-one remarkable individuals who “changed tense” (passed away) between 1976 and 2005. Only a few of them are folklorists. Others include writers, political activists, a baker, an economist, a film historian, and four memorable dogs.

Jackson observes that as we grow older, we find ourselves engaging in “constant communion and conversation with the dead who are gone but who are not only not forgotten, but not, in our heads, the least bit silent” (p. 102). Two such deceased folklorists are Richard M. Dorson and Benjamin A. Botkin, whose feud has resonated in the annals of folklore scholarship. In his tribute to Botkin, Jackson suggests that “Dorson’s proselytizing was institutional; his mission was institutional. Ben’s proselytizing was personal: to the other person in the room, to the recipient of the letter, the reader of the book” (p. 14).

Vincent Lloyd, Violence: Religious, Theological, Ontological. The Myth of Religious Violence (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 January 2012

Lloyd, Vincent. (2011). “Violence: Religious, Theological, Ontological”. Review of The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict by William T. Cavanaugh Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009″. Theory, culture & society, 28 (5), pp. 144-54.

https://doi.org/10.1177/026327641139930

Abstract
Violence may be productively understood as a secularized theological concept. Doing so challenges claims that secularism is necessary to prevent religious violence, and it also challenges claims for a Christian triumphalist alternative. William Cavanaugh’s embrace of such a triumphalism is called into question when his genealogical method is interrogated in light of the Foucaultian genealogical project.

Lucian Popescu, Foucault, cunoasterea si istoria. Foucault, Knowledge, and History (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 January 2012

Lucian Popescu, Foucault, cunoasterea si istoria, Editura Institutul European
Publisher’s page
Pdf of abstract in English

Extract from Abstract in English
Foucault, Knowledge, and History

This synthesis on Foucault’s ideas and subjects (author, discourse, sexuality, madness, technologies, methods of writing and representing knowledge, power-knowledge etc.) presents a new way of understanding knowledge, power, history beyond academic labels stuck on Foucault’s social and professional identity. I explained why Foucault saw "relations of power" in every human relationship, and I criticized some of his generalizations concerning this concept. Power is not everywhere…

‘Problems’, in Foucault’s acception, include: how power works from the bottom to the top of societies and vice versa, from citizens to politicians and from politicians to citizens, as a circular and diffuse phenomenon; how sexuality became an important discourse and what implications it has for our contemporary mentality; how madness was defined and elaborated by socio-political powers; how and why our intellectual texts and discourses are controlled, repressed, modelled or, in extreme cases, censured and prohibited by sociopolitical institutions. The book has an introductory part, which explains why Foucault rejected the idea of the author and how he conceived his books as a series of vivid representations in which he paints his thoughts in chiaroscuro tones. Concrete examples from his works illustrate his chiaroscuro manner of thinking/writing.

Claire Blencowe, Biopolitical Experience: Foucault, Power and Positive Critique (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 January 2012

Claire Blencowe, Biopolitical Experience: Foucault, Power and Positive Critique, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Description
Biopolitical Experience offers an original and comprehensive interpretation of Michel Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics – situating biopolitics in the context of embodied histories of subjectivity, affective investments and structures of experience. Going beyond lamentation at the horrors of biopolitical domination, the book develops a positive-critique of biopolitical experience: offering explanations as to the enormous appeal of biopolitical discourse; and cultivating an affirmative, ethical and productive response to the technologies of biopolitical racism and securitization. Such a response is not about life escaping power or a retreat from life, but rather involves critical work on the conditions of production of population life (becoming collective). In addition to a detailed account of Foucault’s writings on biopolitics, biology and experience the book offers a critique of some key contemporary interpretations of Foucault and develops the positive-critique of biopolitical experience by exploring the place of biopolitics, racism and contingency in feminist politics.

Interview with author (podcast)

With thanks to Dirk Felleman for the podcast link

Donna Kalmbach Phillips, Biopower, disciplinary power, and the production of the ‘good Latino/a teacher’ (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 January 2012

Kalmbach Phillips, Donna (2011). “Biopower, disciplinary power, and the production of the ‘good Latino/a teacher'”. Discourse, 32 (1), p. 71.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2011.537074

Abstract
This inquiry explores who is the ‘good teacher of color’. Through Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower and disciplinary power, the analysis attempts to problematize the subject-position of ‘teacher of color’ by exploring how a Latino intern and a Latina intern negotiated their subjectivity in a large diverse school district. Participants’ construction of subjectivity was found to be located within the nexus of the school district, the university, and the Latino counter-discourse through which biopower and disciplinary power operated.

Chia-Ling Wang, Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 January 2012

Wang, Chia-Ling (2011). “Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault”. Journal of philosophy of education, 45 (1), p. 141.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2011.00789.x

Abstract
This paper explores the significance of the concept of power/knowledge in educational theory. The argument proceeds in two main parts. In the first, I consider aspects of Stephen J. Ball’s highly influential work in educational theory. I examine his reception of Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge and suggest that there are problems in his adoption of Foucault’s thought. These problems arise from the way that he settles interpretations into received ideas. Foucault’s thought, I try to show, is not to be seen in a confined way. In the second part, I seek a different reading of Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge in order to break with this tendency to confine, referring to the work of Gilles Deleuze. I draw particularly on Deleuze’s thought of the outside as a means of manifesting the significance of power/knowledge in relation to processes of subjectification. At the end of the paper, I suggest how educational theory might be reconceived in the light of potencies of power/knowledge that the paper has demonstrated.

Nick Hardy, Foucault, Genealogy, Emergence: Re-Examining The Extra-Discursive (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 January 2012

Hardy, Nick (2011). “Foucault, Genealogy, Emergence: Re-Examining The Extra-Discursive”. Journal for the theory of social behaviour, 41 (1), p. 68.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2010.00446.x

Abstract
This paper offers an alternative theorization of a well known account of restructured social relations-Foucault’s analysis of the production of “delinquency” in Discipline and Punish. The paper argues that in his later “genealogical” accounts like Discipline and Punish, Foucault does not maintain the same analytical and theoretical depth with regard to the “extra-discursive” that can be found in his earlier “archaeological” works. Furthermore, a key element of his genealogies was the concept of “emergence”, which Foucault used to denote the moment of a new “domination”. This paper argues that by inadequately theorizing the extra-discursive, Foucault cannot make a sufficiently strong enough argument with regard the formation and effect of “emergent” entities-indeed, that Foucaultian theory itself should broaden its conception of “emergence” to include other properties and entities, not only those that are part of “dominations”. By adapting critical realism to re-theorize the extra-discursive and emergence, the argument is made that Foucault’s account can be greatly strengthened. The paper concludes by critically re-examining the role of extra-discursive in producing the emergence of “delinquency” and thereby offering a richer understanding of complex social relations.

Maria Mendel, Heterotopias of Homelessness: Citizenship on the Margins (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 January 2012

Mendel, Maria (2011). “Heterotopias of Homelessness: Citizenship on the Margins”. Studies in philosophy and education, 30 (2), p. 155-68.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9226-y

Abstract
The concept of heterotopia challenges political theory, which has often focused on utopic thinking. Foucault describes a heterotopia as a heterogenous space that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Streets, squares and parks form heterotopias when their utopic purity as public space is juxtaposed with the private spaces created by the cardboard boxes and other temporary shelters of homeless people. Since citizenship has traditionally been thought of as participation in a democratic public sphere, how do heterotopias of homelessness challenge the ideas about citizenship? Based on narrative research with homeless people in Poland, I show how the homeless conceive of their marginality. Their participation or non-participation in democracy is not hidden but, on the contrary, very visible in public spaces where they are included as excluded.

Ben Anderson, Population and Affective Perception: Biopolitics and Anticipatory Action in US Counterinsurgency Doctrine (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 January 2012

Anderson, Ben (2011). “Population and Affective Perception: Biopolitics and Anticipatory Action in US Counterinsurgency Doctrine”. Antipode, 43 (2), p. 205-36.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00804.x

Abstract
This paper analyses the biopolitical logics of current US counterinsurgency doctrine in the context of the multiple forms of biopower that make up the “war on terror”. It argues that counterinsurgency doctrine aims to prevent spectral networked insurgencies by intervening on the “environment” of insurgent formation-the relations between three different enactments of “population” (species being, logistical life and ways of life) and a fourth-affectively imbued perception. Counterinsurgency is best characterised, then, as an “environmentality” (Foucault M 2008 The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France, 1978-1979. Translated by G Burchell. London: Palgrave Macmillan) that redeploys elements from other forms of biopolitics alongside an emphasis on network topologies, future-orientated action and affective perception.

Daniele Lorenzini, Le rôle de la vérité dans la généalogie foucaldienne du sujet moderne (2012)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 January 2012

« Le rôle de la vérité dans la généalogie foucaldienne du sujet moderne ».
Public lecture by Daniele Lorenzini
(Université Paris-Est Créteil/Università « La Sapienza » di Roma)

Saturday, the 21st January 2012, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (escalier C, premier étage, salle Lalande)

Hosted by the Séminaire Foucault, organised by Jean-François Braunstein,

The aim of this lecture will be to investigate the meaning and the scope of Michel Foucault’s “history of truth”, i.e. his genealogy of the relationship between truth, power and subjectivity in western societies. Its basic argument will be that Foucault’s history of truth has to be understood as an ethical and political task, far more than as an epistemological one, since it is clearly presented as a study of the different “truth-regimes” (lectures at the Collège de France, 1979-80) which represent the conditions of possibility for the government of human beings and, at the same time, the conditions of intelligibility for the processes of subjectivation in which these human beings are involved.