Foucault News

Linda Graham, The Product of Text and ‘Other’ Statements: Discourse analysis and the critical use of Foucault (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

2 December 2011

Linda Graham, (2011), The Product of Text and ‘Other’ Statements: Discourse analysis and the critical use of Foucault. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43: 663-674.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00698.x

Abstract
Much has been written on Michel Foucault’s reluctance to clearly delineate a research method, particularly with respect to genealogy (Harwood, 2000; Meadmore, Hatcher & McWilliam, 2000; Tamboukou, 1999). Foucault (1994, p. 288) himself disliked prescription stating, ‘I take care not to dictate how things should be’ and wrote provocatively to disrupt equilibrium and certainty, so that ‘all those who speak for others or to others’ no longer know what to do. It is doubtful, however, that Foucault ever intended for researchers to be stricken by that malaise to the point of being unwilling to make an intellectual commitment to methodological possibilities. Taking criticism of ‘Foucauldian’ discourse analysis as a convenient point of departure to discuss the objectives of poststructural analyses of language, this paper develops what might be called a discursive analytic; a methodological plan to approach the analysis of discourses through the location of statements that function with constitutive effects.

Mary Gibson, Review Essay: Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 November 2011

Mary Gibson, Review Essay: Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison, The American Historical Review, Vol. 116, No. 4 (October 2011), pp. 1040-1063
https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.4.1040

In a review essay, “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” Mary Gibson surveys the globalization of prison history since the turn of the twenty-first century by focusing on new books about Vietnam, Africa, China, Japan, and Peru. Originating in Europe and the United States, prisons have become the dominant mode of punishment through cross-cultural interaction that makes them truly global institutions. Historiographical interest turned to prisons in 1975 with the publication of Michel Foucault’s landmark work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, which challenged the traditional Whig interpretation of the prison as a humane institution of reform. Instead, Foucault and other “revisionist” historians argued that prisons replaced corporal punishment with a more insidious type of discipline typical of the “carceral continuum” of modern society. During the 1980s and 1990s, historians of Europe and the United States both embraced and critiqued the revisionist paradigm. More recently, the focus has shifted to the non-Western world, where the “birth of the prison” occurred in the context of colonialism and imperialism. Rupp argues that new works on Africa, Asia, and Latin America complicate the Foucauldian paradigm by emphasizing the centrality of race and prisoner agency to the theory and practice of punishment.

Foucault buttons/badges (2011, 2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 November 2011

Christmas presents perhaps for the theorist who has everything?
For purchase from this site. They are still going strong in 2025

Nadia Fadil, Not-/unveiling as an ethical practice (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 November 2011

Fadil, Nadia, Not-/unveiling as an ethical practice, Feminist Review, no.98, July 2011, 83-109
https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2011.12

Abstract
The practice of Islamic veiling has over the last ten years emerged into a popular site of investigation. Different researchers have focused on the various significations of this bodily practice, both in its gendered dimensions, its identity components, its empowering potentials, as a satorial practice or as part of a broader economy of bodily practices which shape pious dispositions in accordance with the Islamic tradition. Lesser, however, has this been the case for the practice of not veiling or unveiling. If and when attention is accorded to the latter, it is often grasped as a product of integration or an effect secular governmentality, but only rarely as a bodily practice. Drawing on narratives of second generation secular and religious Maghrebi Muslims in Belgium, this paper pursues this second perspective by examining to which extent not-veiling can be understood as a technique of the self (Foucault) that is functional to shaping a liberal (Muslim) subject. While a first part of this article will unpack the ethical substance of such discursive interrogations and point to the ways in which they are intertwined with the enactment of a liberal self, the second part will examine the embodied contours of this problematization, which appeared through the labour upon one’s affect and bodily dispositions that this refusal of the hijab, or the act of unveiling, implies.

Aut Aut. Foucault e la “Storia della follia” (1961-2011) special issue (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 November 2011

Aut Aut. Foucault e la “Storia della follia” (1961-2011), no. 351, July-September 2011

MATERIALI 1
Michel Foucault “Non esiste cultura senza follia” [1961]

Frédéric Gros Nota sulla “Storia della follia”
Daniel Defert L’altra scena della pittura
Pier Aldo Rovatti “Sarai un malato di mente” (una risposta ai detrattori di Foucault)
Mario Colucci La storia negata
Pierangelo Di Vittorio Togliersi la corona. Foucault e Basaglia, storia di una ricezione “minore”
Mauro Bertani Un’opera morale (e la storia della psichiatria)

MATERIALI 2
Michel Foucault Storia della follia e antipsichiatria [1973]

Jean-François Bert, Philippe Artières Foucault 1970. “Storia della follia”, atto III
Colin Gordon La “Storia della follia” in Inghilterra
Alain Beaulieu Foucault e la “Storia della follia” in Nord America
Valentín Galván La ricezione della “Storia della follia” in Spagna
Cesar Candiotto, Vera Portocarrero Effetti della “Storia della follia” in Brasile

Lauren Kinney and Matt MacFarland, Foucault is doing the laundry – page 2 (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

22 November 2011

This is the second page from a forthcoming short graphic novel written by Lauren Kinney and drawn by Matt MacFarland.

I will be posting additional panels on Foucault News as they are produced.

Link to page 1
Link to page 2
Link to page 3
Link to page 4
link to page 5
link to page 6
link to page 7
link to page 8

CFP: Varieties of Continental Thought and Religion (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 November 2011

CFP: Varieties of Continental Thought and Religion

Deadline: Saturday, December 31
Conference Venue:
Ryerson University
Toronto, Canada

See Immanentism and Religion below for Foucault

Details
We invite submissions from scholars and graduate students based in Canada and abroad on the topic of Continental Thought and Religion. The general theme of the conference is meant to reflect the variety of articulations of religion that have emerged in contemporary European thought. While the focus of the conference is continental thought, we nonetheless conceive the latter in an interdisciplinary manner (including literary theory, social and political thought, psychoanalysis, and religious studies). We also encourage submissions from people interested in exploring possible connections with analytic philosophy.

Confirmed Speakers: John Caputo (Syracuse U.), Bettina Bergo (U. de Montréal), more to be announced in the near future.

In addition to our keynote speaker, John Caputo, we will have four commissioned workshops comprised of two papers and a response, and a series of themed panels. We invite submissions of three-page proposals for essays for the following themed panels with included possible topics:

Phenomenology of Religion
The thought of Chrétien, Henry, Lacoste, Levinas, Marion, and Ricoeur
Topics: the gift; the work of art; appearance and transcendence; call and response

Religion and Politics
The thought of Agamben, Asad, Connolly, Derrida, de Vries, Girard, Habermas, Schmitt, and Taylor
Topics: political theology; the post-secular; sovereignty; religion and violence; pluralism

Religion and Speculative Realism
The thought of Brassier, Harman, Laruelle, and Meillassoux
Topics: materialism; correlationism; nihilism; the things themselves; divine inexistence; ‘future Christ’

Beyond Theism and Atheism
The thought of Caputo, Kearney, Kristeva, Milbank, Vattimo
Topics: kenosis; anatheism; weak theology; a/theology; radical orthodoxy

Continental Thought, Religion, and Aesthetics
The artwork of Bresson, Caravaggio, Celan, Chagall, Dostoyevsky, Dumont, Artemisia Gentileschi, Kahlo, Kapoor, Kiarostami, Kiefer, Malick, Newman, O’Keefe, and Stevens
The thought of Cavell, Cixous, Critchley, Irigaray, Marion, Nancy, and Rancière
Topics: transcendence in art; image and icon; creativity and creation; representation and idolatry

Immanentism and Religion
Agamben, Badiou, Bergson, Deleuze, James, Foucault, Keller, and Žižek
Topics: self-organization; the event; plurality; bio-power; polydoxy

History of Continental Thought and Religion
Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger
Topics: death of God; reason and faith; scripture and philosophy; religion and fantasy; onto-theology

Please send only one three-page (double-spaced) proposal on one of the above themes and any questions to varieties2012@gmail.com by December 31, 2011. We intend to notify authors about our decisions by February 28, 2012. Other conference details (registration fee, preliminary program, etc.) will be announced in new year.

Histoire de la folie: cinquante ans après (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 November 2011

From the materiali foucaultiani site

HISTOIRE DE LA FOLIE : CINQUANTE ANS APRÈS
Jeudi 15 décembre 2011, 9h30-17h30
Université Paris-Est Créteil
– 61, av. du Général de Gaulle,
Créteil,
bâtiment i, salle 222 –

Conference flyer (pdf)

Matinée Président de séance : Frédéric Gros (Université Paris-Est Créteil)

09h30 Daniele Lorenzini et Arianna Sforzini : Introduction au colloque
10h00 Jean-François Bert (EHESS) : Histoire d’un succès philosophique. L’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique
10h30 Kojiro Fujita (Université Paris-Est Créteil) : La naissance du cogito chez Foucault
11h00 Discussion
11h15 Pause
11h30 Jérémy Romero (Université Paris-Est Créteil) : La folie et la mort chez Foucault : éléments pour une pensée du dehors
12h00 Emmanuel Gripay (Université Bordeaux III) : La perception morale de la folie : une appréhension néantisante ou objectivante ?
12h30 Discussion

Après-midi – Président de séance : Daniele Lorenzini (Université Paris-Est Créteil/Università « La Sapienza » di Roma)

14h30 Arianna Sforzini (Université Paris-Est Créteil) : La présence du théâtre dans l’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique
15h00 Caroline Mangin-Lazarus (psychiatre, revue Superflux) : Ignorer la démence dans le droit pénal : une voie politique au moment de la Révolution française ?
15h30 Roger Ferreri (psychanalyste et chef d’un service de psychiatrie infanto-juvénile) : Du fou à la folie, histoire de la folie ou question à la démocratie ?
16h00 Discussion

Infos et contacts : d.lorenzini@sns.it, ari_s86@yahoo.it

Michel Foucault e os 50 anos de História da Loucura : inflexões, ressonâncias (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 November 2011

Michel Foucault e os 50 anos de História da Loucura : inflexões, ressonâncias.

29 November – 2 December 2011
Museu de Arte Contemporànea de Niterói
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil

Um evento para a comemoração da passagem dos 50 anos de História da Loucura – será que é a isto a que atende o evento ? Diríamos que sim. Embora saibamos que se trata aqui de uma de suas metades. Porque se trata, é certo, desta evocação. Remontar à letra que desde o livro se deflagra como máquina de guerra. Remontar à letra que é desde o livro. Todavia – ela não se encerra no livro, ela não encerra o livro, pelo contrário, ela o esgarça, ela o desvira para fora, ela o vilipendia de algum modo. Foucault, no curto prefácio à 2ª. edição de História da Loucura, busca situar seu livro ‘numa série de eventos ao qual ele pertence, e que é sua verdadeira lei’. São como pistas de ingresso a sua leitura. São indicativos de que o livro ele não se contém. São sugestões a que se percebam os contornos, os vieses aos quais um livro ele reverbera, ele rebate, ele é emudecido, ele se faz vetor de lutas que em última instância não constavam do projeto a que atendeu o trabalhar até que um livro se faça. Foucault dirá ainda com relação a esta ‘série de eventos’ que ela não está concluída. Disse isto em 1972. Perguntamo-nos no agora, este ano de 2011 : será se encerrara esta série de eventos aludida por Foucault ? Será podemos dizer que tudo o que pode História da Loucura agora é tão somente uma data a que se comemora – data estancada às contendas a que ele atendia, data envelhecida cravada à parede na que se cola os deveres para com a efeméride ? Apostamos que não ! O seminário é esta aposta !

Michel Foucault, Le beau danger. Un entretien de Michel Foucault avec Claude Bonnefoy (2011)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 November 2011

Michel Foucault, Le beau danger. Un entretien de Michel Foucault avec Claude Bonnefoy Édition établie et présentée par Philippe Artières
Novembre 2011 – Ed. EHESS – Coll. Audiographie

Pour la première fois publié, cet entretien de Michel Foucault avec le critique d’art Claude Bonnefoy nous révèle le penseur intime, qui déroule le fil de sa vie pour décrire son rapport à l’écriture. Nous voici dans les coulisses du travail du savant.

Foucault vient d’achever Les Mots et les choses et fait avec Claude Bonnefoy, critique d’art, une expérience de langage : peu habitué du genre de l’entretien, il lui est demandé d’évoquer son rapport à l’écriture. Au début réticent et inquiet, Foucault adopte pour réfléchir à la manière dont il travaille, pour dire ses difficultés d’écrivant, un registre inédit, une langue nouvelle, avoue finalement son plaisir à défaire son langage habituel. Il déroule le fil de sa vie pour dire l’histoire de son écriture, revient sur ses écrits, ceux des autres aussi, décrit le poids de son milieu « médical » où la parole était dévalorisée, les filiations repérables dans son écriture, notamment ce « regard de diagnosticien ».

« […] Quelque chose d’absolument inédit s’énonce lors de cet entretien entre le philosophe et le critique, quelque chose d’inédit survient par la parole. Un événement singulier : la mise en danger de Foucault par lui-même. » (P. Artières) .

« Je me place résolument du côté des écrivants, de ceux dont l’écriture est transitive. Je veux dire dont l’écriture est destinée à désigner, montrer, manifester hors d’elle-même quelque chose qui, sans elle, serait resté sinon caché, du moins invisible. C’est peut-être là qu’existe, malgré tout, pour moi, un enchantement de l’écriture. » (Michel Foucault)

A voir aussi:
Michel Foucault, (2004) [1969] Michel Foucault à Claude Bonnefoy – Entretien Interprété par Éric Ruf et Pierre Lamandé, Paris: Gallimard. CD