Foucault News

Leonard D’Cruz, Foucault’s naturalism: The importance of scientific epistemology for the genealogical method (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

15 April 2024

Leonard D’Cruz,
Foucault’s naturalism: The importance of scientific epistemology for the genealogical method, Philosophy & Social Criticism, March 16, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537241235571

Abstract:
This article offers a novel reconstruction of Foucault’s methodology that emphasises his respect for the natural sciences. Foucault’s work has long been suspected of reducing knowledge to power, and thus collapsing into unconstrained relativism and methodological incoherence. These concerns are predicated on a misunderstanding of Foucault’s overall approach, which takes the form of a historico-critical project rather than a normative epistemology. However, Foucault does sometimes make normative epistemological judgements, especially about the human sciences. Furthermore, there are outstanding questions about what secures the descriptive rigour of the genealogical method. To address these issues, I develop two claims that will significantly enrich our understanding of Foucault’s methodology. The first is that Foucault’s respect for the natural sciences is crucial in making sense of his normative epistemological judgements. The second is that the descriptive rigour of his genealogical method derives from the fact it is modelled on empirical inquiry.

Gordon Hull, LLM, Inc. (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

15 April 2024

Gordon Hull, LLM, Inc. New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science blog, 27 February 2024

In previous posts (one, two, three), I’ve been exploring the issue of what I’m calling the implicit normativity in language models, especially those that have been trained with RLHF (reinforcement learning with human feedback). In the most recent one, I argued that LLMs are dependent on what Derrida called iterability in language, which most generally means that any given unit of language, to be language, has to be repeatable and intelligible as language, in indefinitely many other contexts. Here I want to pursue that thought a little further, in the context of Derrida’s (in)famous exchange with John Searle’s speech act theory.
[…]

Let’s look at intentionality first. In responding to Searle, Derrida explains that he finds himself “to be in many respects quite close to Austin, both interested in and indebted to his problematic” and that “when I do raise questions or objections, it is always at points where I recognize in Austin’s theory presuppositions which are the most tenacious and the most central presuppositions of the continental metaphysical tradition” (38). Derrida means by this a reliance on things like subjectivity and representation – the sorts of things that Foucault is getting at when he complains in the 1960s about philosophies of “the subject” (think: Sartre and phenomenology).
[…]

Baxter, K.I. Cecily Shoots a Rhinoceros: Big Game Hunting in British Somaliland and the 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 April 2024

Baxter, K.I.
Cecily Shoots a Rhinoceros: Big Game Hunting in British Somaliland and the 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa
(2023) Law and Literature

DOI: 10.1080/1535685X.2023.2289771

Abstract
In 1900, seven European nations gathered in London to agree the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa. The Convention sought to regulate game hunting across the African continent, in response to the decimation of wildlife that unregulated hunting for sport and ivory had caused. Six years later, Agnes Herbert and her cousin Cecily set out from London to British Somaliland on a big game hunt. In this article, I explore the interrelationships of memoirs, such as Agnes Herbert’s, with law and literary imagination in the creation of a colonial conservation culture. I do so by invoking Foucault’s thinking about heterotopias. I unpack the temporal modalities in which ideas about big game operate in administrative and literary texts: both the idea of a lost golden age and, more particularly, the futurities of big game that they construct and debate through ideas of “preservation.”. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
big game; British Empire; heterotopia; memoir; Somaliland

Bright, D., McKay, A., Firth, K. How to be reflexive: Foucault, ethics and writing qualitative research as a technology of the self (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 April 2024

Bright, D., McKay, A., Firth, K.
How to be reflexive: Foucault, ethics and writing qualitative research as a technology of the self
(2023) International Journal of Research and Method in Education

DOI: 10.1080/1743727X.2023.2290185

Abstract
This paper explores reflexivity in qualitative research, challenging conventional perspectives that revolve around the binary of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ positioning. While traditionally reflexivity has been understood through the lens of a researcher’s socio-historical positionality, we argue for a more dynamic understanding, emphasizing that academic self-formation is an ongoing process of self-creation. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Akadēmía, where writing was a method of self-reflection, we recontextualize reflexive qualitative writing, aligning it with Foucault’s interpretations of Ancient Greek and Renaissance concepts. We posit that writing, especially in doctoral research, is not just a tool for communication but a means of self-formation. This perspective redefines reflexivity as a transformative intellectual and existential process. The paper critically examines the prevailing insider/outsider binary in the research literature, suggesting that researcher identities are fluid and constantly shaped by interactions. By integrating Foucault’s later work on ethics, we explore the ethical dimensions of reflexivity and the formation of the ethical subject. Ultimately, this paper contributes to the academic discourse on reflexivity, offering a more fluid, transformative view of the doctoral process and reflexive writing in qualitative research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Foucault; Insider; outsider; reflexivity; writing as a method of inquiry

Gjerde, Lars Erik Løvaas. “Marrying the Sources and Mechanisms of Power? Understanding the Quarantine Hotel through Michel Foucault and Michael Mann.” (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 April 2024

Gjerde, Lars Erik Løvaas. “Marrying the Sources and Mechanisms of Power? Understanding the Quarantine Hotel through Michel Foucault and Michael Mann.” Journal of Political Power, (2024), 1–20.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2024.2337617

ABSTRACT
Using the Norwegian quarantine hotel as a case, I analyse the narratives of 46 ‘guests’, so to explore this biopolitical device, which for biopolitical objectives enables a series of disciplinary mechanisms of power. To do this, I marry Michel Foucault’s approach to the mechanisms of power with Michael Mann’s work on the sources of power, fixating my analysis around the link between ‘discipline’, ‘control’ as well as ‘biopolitics’ and ‘infrastructural power’. The paper’s objective is to explore this empirical case so to advance our understanding of how mechanisms of power work, and are made to work, by exploring the infrastructural sources of power underpinning the quarantine hotel as a nexus of power. This theoretical marriage between two giants in the scholarship on power is operationalized in this empirical case to reveal the utility of exploring the link between the microphysics and macrophysics of power, in general and in the context of COVID-19, through combining these approaches.

KEYWORDS:
Biopolitics COVID-19 discipline Foucault Infrastructural power; Mann

Joinau, B. Cultural Governance and New Forms of Governmentality Focus on the South Korean Case (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 April 2024

Joinau, B.
Cultural Governance and New Forms of Governmentality Focus on the South Korean Case
(2023) Journal of Arts Management Law and Society

DOI: 10.1080/10632921.2023.2280646

Abstract
The paper discusses the reasons behind the dominance of governance in contemporary societies. The techniques of government cannot be understood apart from a critical genealogy of governmentality. This article references Michel Foucault’s analysis of governmentality to analyze the role of governance in arts and cultural management. It argues that, following the governmental state described by Foucault, the contemporary governance state is defined by a new spectacle governmentality. The globalized context of this governmentality produces a simulacrum of governance that tends to substitute for actual outcomes. The South Korean case is used to illustrate this new form of ubiquitous cultural governance. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Author Keywords
Cultural governance; Foucault; governmentality; South Korea; spectacle

Yuetong, Z., Jianxing, B. The Transgressive Individual in Foucault’s Rights-Punishment Theory – A Record of Self-Resistant Subjectivity in China (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

3 April 2024

Yuetong, Z., Jianxing, B.
The Transgressive Individual in Foucault’s Rights-Punishment Theory – A Record of Self-Resistant Subjectivity in China
(2023) Deviant Behavior

DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2023.2291048

Abstract
Foucault’s philosophical theories and sociological boundaries are not mutually exclusive, and his idea of “micro-power” breaks through the traditional sociological perspective of power studies to reveal a set of hidden mechanisms of power operation and networks of power relations, as well as an anthropological examination of how to regulate the human physical and mental spheres. In modern society, as sexual minorities, addicts, AIDS patients and criminal ex-convicts are typical marginalized figures under different social types and community governance. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze how individuals become marginalized and excluded in the social order of functioning through the transformative mechanism from punishment to regulation in Foucault’s micro-power, and to reveal how abnormal people, behaviors and phenomena are regulated and implicitly dismembered by the rapidly constructed new social order in China’s transition period through the documentary the two lives of Li Ermao. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Lovell, J. The Panaural People’s Republic: Loudness, Loss of Self, and Sonic Social Control in Mao’s China (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 March 2024

Lovell, J. The Panaural People’s Republic: Loudness, Loss of Self, and Sonic Social Control in Mao’s China (2023) Annali di Ca Foscari Serie Orientale, 59, pp. 43-70.

DOI: 10.30687/ANNOR/2385-3042/2023/02/002

Abstract
Perspectives on the establishment of social control have long been shaped by theories concerning visibility and observation, such as Foucault’s concept of the Panopticon. In Mao era China, however, sound and hearing had a greater impact on citizens becoming self-disciplined. Reflecting on a variety of sources, with a particular focus on memoirs, this article details how the Mao era soundscape helped to fashion a new form of disciplinary society. This disciplinary society was chaotic, however, and sites of resistance remained, in which some individuals fought to retain their sense of self, even amid all the tumult and violence. © 2023 Lovell.

Author Keywords
China; Loudspeaker; Noise; Radio; Sound; Soundscape

Federico Soldani, Due commenti sulla ‘psicolingua’ (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 March 2024

Federico Soldani, Due commenti sulla ‘psicolingua’ Psypolitics, 8 marzo 2024

“Qui si tocca un discorso sulla cosiddetta “psichiatrizzazione del linguaggio politico”, aperto da Federico Soldani, che merita ben altri approfondimenti”. Dalla prima nota al primo capitolo del libro del giurista Ugo Mattei “Il diritto di essere contro. Dissenso e resistenza nella società del controllo” (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2022).

Con Il professor Mattei, che ringrazio per la citazione, tenemmo un seminario – in inglese – in cui si trattò anche il tema della psichiatrizzazione del linguaggio politico, appena tre mesi dopo lo scoppio del CoViD – durante la fase “abbassiamo la curva” – il 4 maggio 2020 nell’ambito delle Pandemic Lectures dell’International University College di Torino, dal titolo “Da cittadini a pazienti, una minaccia a cui resistere” (2020).

Il termine ‘psyspeak’ o ‘ideopathological lexicon’ – in italiano ‘psicolingua’ o ‘lessico ideopatologico’ – che riprende il temine orwelliano di newspeak ovvero neolingua, è stato proposto in una relazione al Royal College of Psychiatrists a Londra nell’estate 2019 – relazione nella quale sono state proposte anche diverse formulazioni riguardo le funzioni della psichiatrizzazione della politica – dal titolo “Stiamo assistendo alla nascita di un nuovo potere psichiatrico globale?”. Titolo che si rifaceva a quello della serie di lezioni di Michel Foucault al College de France nel ’73-’74 su “Il potere psichiatrico” (Il potere psichiatrico. Corso al Collège de France (1973-1974) Feltrinelli, 2004).

[…]

Book series: Brill Research Perspectives in Critical Theory (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 March 2024

Brill Research Perspectives in Critical Theory

Series: Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences

Series Editor: Peggy Karpouzou

Brill Research Perspectives in Critical Theory offers a comprehensive reference resource for scholars and students working in the areas of cultural and literary theory, aesthetics, philosophy, political and social theory. Critical thought about literature, society, ethics, and culture has become vital to the interdisciplinary dialogue across the humanities and social sciences. This book series provides state-of-the-art overviews and concise research monographs on the main issues and figures in critical theory understood in its broadest terms. The series also aims to offer a forum for exploring the most current trends in critical theory and the theoretical agenda for rethinking the future of the humanities.

More information on the Brill Research Perspectives concept and format can be found here.