Foucault News

Dean, Mitchell. The signature of power, Journal of Political Power, Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2012, Pages 101-117
https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2012.659864

Abstract
This concept of power keeps referring its users to a domain of apparent antinomies, which from a formal theoretical perspective are in turn construed as unities in opposition to further terms. Three such sequences are ‘power to’ and ‘power over’, power as capacity and as right, and juridical conceptions of sovereignty and ‘economic’ conceptions of government. This movement of opposition, unity and renewed opposition is however the signature of the concept of power, which, instead of being transcended or neutralised, must be kept in play in its analysis. As a consequence of the view that there is no essence of power, the paper further argues for a substantive rather than formal approach to power in which the analysis of power proceeds by paradigmatic cases, analogies and exemplars. The work of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Michel Foucault, Max Weber and Giorgio Agamben helps to elucidate this approach.

Author keywords
concept; economy; government; signature; sovereignty; visibility

Stierl, M. ‘No One Is Illegal!’ Resistance and the Politics of Discomfort, Globalizations, Volume 9, Issue 3, June 2012, Pages 425-438
https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2012.680738

Abstract
This work attempts to recast conceptions of global/ised political resistance. Instead of following systematic accounts of actors seeking global social transformation, it is shown how a Foucauldian understanding of power and resistance-here developed into a ‘politics of discomfort’-can help illuminate more situated and cautious approaches to expressions of dissent. It is illustrated how undocumented migrants, or sans-papiers, with the support of the German activist network No One Is Illegal (NOII) can assume political subjectivity to confront and resist the dominating power of sovereign state agencies that attempt to marginalise and silence acts of contestation. I argue that NOII’s practical resistance, although local, nonetheless has important dimensions ‘beyond’, as it critiques through its creative actions (global) sovereign hypocrisy, violence, and the ‘governmentality of documentation’.

Author keywords
discomfort; Foucault; heterotopia; No One Is Illegal; resistance; social movements; undocumented migration

Shaw, J. The Birth of the Clinic and the Advent of Reproduction: Pregnancy, Pathology and the Medical Gaze in Modernity, Body and Society, Volume 18, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 110-138
https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X10394

Abstract
In conjunction with the growing feminist literature on pregnancy and visualization, this paper uses Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic to demonstrate how the effort to make the interior of the pregnant body visible in medical discourse was a crucial part of the development of the modern medical gaze. In doing so I develop two concurrent arguments. First, I argue that the pathological corpse of the Clinic can conceptually serve as a double for the pregnant body as it emerged in modern medicine in the 20th century. At the same time I use the insights of the Clinic to illustrate changes in pregnancy from early modernity to the 20th century. In early modernity, the pregnant body was understood in terms of generation, as a tree that bears fruit; by the 19th century, the pregnant body was a machine that reproduced the species. This transition can be seen in the overlap of pathology and pregnancy in early modernity, an overlap that continued throughout the 19th century and is inadvertently reinforced through the practice of ultrasound.

Author keywords
disease; fetus; Foucault; medicalization; pregnancy; visual culture; women’s bodies

Baldacchino, G. Governmentality is all the rage: The strategy games of small jurisdictions, Round Table, Volume 101, Issue 3, June 2012, Pages 235-251
https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2012.690964

Abstract
This paper discusses the contemporary sovereignty experience of small states and territories in the context of unfolding ‘strategy games’. This paper charts and illustrates some of the most salient issues over which this dynamic is played out, using binary (small state versus big state) relations as its analytic constituency. These practices are understood as part of the evolution of the conduct of government, or governmentality, as envisaged by Michel Foucault: states, no longer concerned with threats to their very existence, can flex their clout extraterritorially, and in so doing provide new and creative opportunities, but also raise threats, for the exercise of sovereignty.

Author keywords
Citizenship rights; Foucault; Governmentality; Indigenous peoples; Islands; Paradiplomacy; Small states; Sovereignty; Strategy games; Subnational jurisdictions; Xenotopia

Natanel, K. Resistance at the limits: Feminist activism and conscientious objection in Israel, Feminist Review, Volume 101, Issue 1, July 2012, Pages 78-96
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41495234

Abstract
This article investigates the relationship between feminism and conscientious objection in Israel, evaluating the efficacy of feminist resistance in the organised refusal movement. While recent feminist scholarship on peace, anti-occupation and anti-militarism activism in Israel largely highlights women’s collective action, it does so at the risk of eliding the relations of power within these groups. Expanding the scope of consideration, I look to the experiences of individual feminist conscientious objectors who make visible significant tensions through their accounts of military refusal and participation in the organised conscientious objection movement. Drawing on original ethnographic research, this article problematises feminist activism in the organised Israeli refusal movement through three primary issues: political voice; privilege; and the realisation of gender agendas. Using Michel Foucault’s conceptualisation of power as it has been critiqued and qualified by feminist scholars, I consider the ways in which resistance may be both multiple and a diagnostic of power, allowing activists and academics not only to envision new avenues for social change, but also to recognise their constraints. Critically, feminist theories of intersectionality enrich and complicate this Foucauldian approach to power, providing further modes of critique and strategy in the context of feminist activism in Israel. Ultimately, I argue not only for engagement with the limits of power, but also attention to their function, as in theory and praxis these boundaries critically inform our theorising on gender and resistance. © 2012 Feminist Review.

Author keywords
conscientious objection; feminist activism; intersectionality; Israel-Palestine; New Profile; power and resistance