Foucault News

Forum Internacional de Estudos Foucauldianos O cristianismo em Michel Foucault (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

14 November 2010

Forum Internacional de Estudos Foucauldianos O cristianismo em Michel Foucault
25/11/10 – 26/11/10

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA Centro de Comunicação e Expressão
Auditório Henrique Fontes

O objetivo do evento é examinar de que maneira e de que cristianismo trata Michel Foucault, desde a publicação dos três volumes de História da Sexualidade até os três últimos cursos O Governo dos vivos (1980–1981), Hermenêutica do Sujeito (1981-1982), Governo de si e dos outros (1982-1983) e A coragem da Verdade (1984). Vamos reunir pesquisadores que operam diretamente nos arquivos foucauldianos para expor novas maneiras de pensar, investigar e escrever, no âmbito enunciativo do atelier foucauldiano. A pergunta básica do Forum é: como Foucault mobiliza, lê e traduz obras clássicas da antiguidade grega e da patrística para lançar hipóteses sobre a força ainda vigente do cristianismo em processos contemporâneos de subjetivação.

O evento é uma realização dos programas de Pós-Graduação em Literatura e Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução. Terá a participação de convidados estrangeiros e nacionais. Já confirmados estão os pesquisadores:

* Philippe Chevallier, da Biblioteca Nacional da França e membro fundador da Biblioteca Foucauldiana * Anthony Manicki, da École Normale Supérieure de Lyon * Cesar Candiotto, da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná * Durval Albuquerque, da Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Norte * Emerson César de Campos, da Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina * Kleber Prado, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.

* A comissão executiva: Pedro de Souza, Stelio Furlan e Walter Costa. * A comissão organizadora: Pedro de Souza, Mario Resende e Nara Marques

Além das conferências magnas e mesas-redondas, haverá espaço para exposição de trabalhos em duas sessões coordenadas.

Os trabalhos deverão ter alguma relação com o tema geral do Forum ou versar sobre temas de um dos três últimos cursos ministrados por Michel Foucault no Collège de France.

O resumo deverá:

•ser enviado até 30 de outubro de 2010 para o email:
forumfoucault.ufsc@yahoo.com.br

•ter no máximo 200 palavras.
•vir acompanhado de:
1. Título do trabalho; 2. Nome completo do autor(es); 3. Telefone e email; 4. Breve currículo.

As comunicações não deverão exceder os 20.000 caracteres (com espaços), e o tempo de leitura não deverá exceder os 15 minutos.

Somente serão lidas as comunicações selecionadas e cujos autores estejam presentes durante Forum.

Não haverá taxa de inscrição para apresentação de comunicações.

Maiores informações: forumfoucault.ufsc@yahoo.com.br ou pedesou@gmail.com

Congreso “Michel Foucault un pensador poliédrico” (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 November 2010

From the Portail Michel Foucault

Congreso “Michel Foucault un pensador poliédrico”
en el MUVIM de Valencia.
El 15, 16 y 17 de noviembre.
MuVim, Museu Valencià de la Il.lustració i de la Modernitat.
Calle Quevedo, 10 – 46001 València. Tel.:963 883 730. Más inf.: http://www.muvim.es

Michel Foucault un pensador poliédrico. Su pensamiento no es un pensamiento lineal, sino un pensamiento reticular, multidisciplinario, imprevisible… es, al fin y al cabo, un pensamiento que dispersa lo reunido y que reúne lo disperso.

Su filosofía, resultado del cruzamiento de varios intereses, campos de trabajo y etapas, es una filosofía hecha a martillazos a partir del uso de materiales filosóficamente atípicos e innobles. Eso hace que sea posible -y obligado- realizar múltiples lecturas poliédricas de los textos de este experimentador: “Yo soy experimentador en el sentido de que yo escribo por cambiarme a mí mismo y no pensar más la misma cosa que antes”

Director académico: Josep Bermúdez

Law, Culture and the Humanities Special Issue (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 November 2010

The October issue of Law Cultiure and the Humanities contains a number of articles and a book review which relate to Foucault’s work. You can find the abstracts and pdfs (subscription only) on the journal site. The articles in question are:

Jonathan Simon, ‘Beyond the Panopticon: Mass Imprisonment and the Humanities’, Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 327-340.

Abstract
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the role of the prison in modern society was seared into the imagination of the humanities by Michel Foucault’s treatment of the prison in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; his genealogy of the modern “soul.” At a time when the social sciences had little to say about the nature of imprisonment as a specific historical practice (rather than a problem of social organization), the humanities helped define the prison as a contemporary problem. During this era, ironically, a new model of imprisonment was arising, one based on the mass imprisonment of whole demographic categories of the population rather than the disciplinary investment of the deviant individual. The scale of imprisonment has arisen by more than five fold. Unfortunately the humanities and cultural studies have been slow to reckon with the nature of mass imprisonment. While a new wave of social science scholarship, partially inspired by the earlier work of the humanities, is engaging the topic, the absence of the humanities, especially their critical and normative edge, is significant.

Keally McBride, ‘Incarceration and Imprisonment’,
Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 341-353.

Abstract
Incarceration is best understood as an extreme environment which complicates our notions of human freedom. Incarceration helps us think about freedom because it demands consideration of the relationship between body and soul, providing yet another testing ground for the longstanding metaphysical and philosophical question of what makes humans truly free. It also is a remarkable test case for how much of human experience is socially determined and how much individuals can create their own reality because prisons try to substitute external administration for self-discipline entirely. How can we account for resistance to these forms of administration?

Ben Golder, ‘Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights’, Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 354-374.

Abstract
This article argues that in his late work Foucault does not submit to the ”moral superiority” of humanism and introduce a liberal humanist subject. Rather, Foucault’s late investigations of subjectivity constitute a continuation and not a radical departure from his earlier positions on the subject. This helps us in interpreting Foucault’s late supposed ”embrace” of, or return to -human rights; which is here re-interpreted as a critical anti-humanist engagement with human rights, conducted in the name of an unfinished humanity.

Manas Ray, ‘Book Review: Foucault’s Law By Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick, London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2009. 160 pp. $35.95 (Paper). ISBN 0415424542
Law, Culture and the Humanities October 2010 6: 465-469.

Foucault-Marx Paralleli e Paradossi (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

10 November 2010

From the Portail Michel Foucault

FOUCAULT-MARX PARALLELI E PARADOSSI
Libreria delle Moline Via delle Moline,
3/A 40126 Bologna tel. : 051 23 20 53 Buongiorno,
VENERDI, 12 NOVEMBRE 2010
E’, questo, l’invito per il prossimo incontro in libreria. Presentiamo il libro :

FOUCAULT-MARX PARALLELI E PARADOSSI
a cura di Rudy M. Leonelli
Bulzoni editore

Ne parlano : Andrea Cavalletti Università IUAV di Venezia Manlio Iofrida Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Bologna Giuseppe Panella Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Rudy M. Leonelli Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Bologna

Qui si tratta del buon uso che riusciamo a fare di quanto è contenuto nelle riflessioni di Foucault, Marx, Gramsci, sulla natura ambigua e contraddittoria del potere , che è contemporaneamente sia dominio, sia egemonia, attraversando il pensiero politico della modernità, ma anche del rapporto stretto tra cultura e democrazia , dell’intreccio tra potere e sapere, che ha percorso in molteplici direzioni la profonda riflessione del nostro tempo nei testi di suoi protagonisti, quali Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Breton, Sartre, Blanchot, Canguilhem, per esempio, ma anche il poeta René Char, dell’ immaginazione , del pensiero , del possibile.

Da interventi presentati e discussi all’incontro : – Foucault, Marx, marxismi – organizzato dal Dipartimento di Filosofia dell’università di Bologna presso laScuolaSuperiore di Studi Umanistici il volume raccoglie sei saggi :

Alberto Burgio, La passione per la critica.
Stefano Catucci, Essere giusti con Marx.
Guglielmo Forni Rosa, Note sul rapporto Foucault-Marx. A proposito di”Difendere la società”.
Marco Enrico Giacomelli, Ascendenze e discendenze foucaultiane in Italia. Dall’operaismo italiano al futuro.
Manlio Iofrida, Marxismo e comunismo in Francia negli anni ’50. Qualche appunto sul primo Foucault.
Rudy M. Leonelli, L’arma del sapere.Storia e potere tra Foucault e Marx.

Il volume è arricchito da un contributo di Etienne Balibar.

CFP: ESRC Seminar Series on Contemporary Biopolitical Security (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 November 2010

ESRC Seminar Series on Contemporary Biopolitical Security Fourth workshop:

Problematising Danger

Co-sponsored by the Biopolitics of Security Network,
the Emerging Securities Research Unit @ Keele University
and the Centre for International Relations, War Studies Department, King’s
College London

21-22 February 2011
The River Room, King’s College London, Strand Campus

Keynote speaker:
Professor Marieke de Goede
Professor of Politics, with a focus on Europe in a Global Order, at the Department of Politics of the University of Amsterdam

Call for interventions
‘There is no liberalism without a culture of danger.’ (Foucault, 2008: 67)

FOUCAULT, M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979,Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Threats and risks have become the preferred categories for imagining contemporary security. Practices such as defence, border control and the surveillance of populations, insurance, risk profiling to identify suspicious subjects, and risk assessments to protect objects and systems such as critical infrastructure, rely heavily on well-established paradigms of security. Discourses and practices of threats and risks, with their allied technologies of measurement and calculation, however, relate to the wider problem of danger and its allied concept of ‘uncertainty’. Thinking ‘danger’ relates to understandings of uncertainties, otherness of being, and spaces and environments of protection in excess of those accounted for in the language and metrics of discourses of threats and risks.

What happens, then, if the analysis of security resorts to understandings of ‘danger’, ‘dangerousness’, and processes of ‘endangerment’? Is it possible to think security by referring ideas of danger to understandings of life, livelihoods and lifestyles, instead of ready-made ‘objects’ of security such as sovereignty, territory, the nation-state, citizens, borders, and sociological categories such as class and gender? Is it possible to think security in relation to danger away from utilitarian economic categories such as cost-benefit analysis, risk calculus, and rational choice? The workshop aims to explore these questions and to challenge participants to wonder if current policy security priorities such as terrorism, climate change, weapons proliferation, resilience and migration can be thought in relation to ‘danger’ outside discourses of threats and risks.

In the first three workshops of this seminar series we began to explore an agenda for contemporary biopolitical security research around problems such as mobilities and circulations, resilience, values and processes of valuations in relation to the technologies through which lifestyles and livelihoods are treated as referents of security. In this fourth workshop we intend to spark a conversation around the implications of thinking dangerousness in relation to security and life.

The workshop welcomes interventions from scholars working on any area of security and risk and invites them to reflect on the following questions:

* How are ideas of danger constituted? What forms of ‘data’, ‘information’, and ‘knowledge’ are involved in constituting a dangerous subject or a dangerous environment?
* What are the preconditions for understanding endangerment and how do they question the ‘new security challenges’ of for example, terrorism (and cyber-terrorism), proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and health pandemics?
* Can discourses and practices of security be different if reflections on the consequences of endangerment are advanced?

Interventions do not necessarily need to be in the form of a pre-written paper although we would welcome written contributions. We invite emerging and established researchers on the wider field of security studies to reflect on their own work based on the questions noted above. PhD contributions are very welcome.

Please send a 200-300 word abstract of your proposed intervention for the debate to our workshop coordinators (noted below) no later than the 30th of November 2010.

Please include your affiliation and contact details in the abstract. Acceptance of contributions will be confirmed by email on the week commencing the 6th of December.

Funding: Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered for contributors and a limited number of participants based in the UK (according to ESRC rules). If you are a PhD student and want to participate without an intervention, please express your interest to the workshop coordinators as early as possible. Some funds might be available to facilitate your attendance.

Workshop coordinators:
Philip Slann (p.a.slann@ilpj.keele.ac.uk)
Corey Walker-Mortimer (c.b.walker-mortimer@ilpj.keele.ac.uk )

Event organisers:
Dr Luis Lobo-Guerrero (Visiting Research Fellow, King’s College London; and
Lecturer in International Relations, Keele University), and Professor

Vivienne Jabri (Professor of International Politics and Director of the
Centre for International Relations at King’s College London)

CFP: Geographies of power: space and heterotopias, beginning from Foucault (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

6 November 2010

From the Materiali Foucaultiani site.

Geographies of power: space and heterotopias, beginning from Foucault

The online journal mf/materiali foucaultiani dedicates a special issue to the theme of space and its possible declinations in the fields of philosophy, politics and geography-urbanism, starting from the reflections brought forward by Michel Foucault.

In a number of brief texts from the seventies, Foucault confronted repeatedly and directly the question of space. A commitment associated in particular to his participation to research groups on the urbanistic policies of the time and the extended dialogue with the geographers that formed the backbone of the journal Hérodote. At the same time, his analytics of power never ceased to expose the constitutive interrelation between technologies of power and spatial organization.

We think that Foucault’s analytical paradigm can still be used today as an important matrix through which at once read and highlight the centrality of space in contemporary governmental practices. This course of research has been so far developed in fields only tangential to philosophical reflection: geographers, sociologists and urbanists have found in Foucault an innovative tool not only in order to think anew the implicit logics and the underlying power relationships of spatial distributions, but also in order to individuate possible points of resistance to them. Beyond these important and provocative appropriations, the theme of space still remains, within the area of Foucaultian studies, a vast field to explore and wander.

If only for this reason, we think that developing the theme here proposed may effectively extend the Foucaultian trajectory over and beyond the lines of research so far undertook. We would then be happy to receive contributions concerned with the following themes:

•Space, power and resistances in Michel Foucault.
•Contemporary declinations of disciplinary spatiality.
•Genealogical perspectives and the analysis of space.
•Governmental techniques deployed in space and practices of resistance existent and possible, a) in the postcolonial present; b) in the management of migrations.
•Mapping of territory and new urbanistic practices: political stakes.
•Society of control, disciplinary society: two readings of space between Deleuze and Foucault.

Abstracts (500 words, in Italian, English or French) should be submitted by 15 Dicember, 2010 to:
redazione@materialifoucaultiani.org

Selected articles will have to be presented by 15 March, 2011.

Iara Vigo de Lima, Foucault’s Archaeology of Political Economy (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 November 2010

Iara Vigo de Lima, Foucault’s Archaeology of Political Economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Publisher’s page

Description
Michel Foucault was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century, having strongly influenced a large number of disciplines. He has played a fundamental role in the construction of new ways of thinking and radical changes in the development of Western thought.

This book reconstructs and assesses Michel Foucault’s writings on the archaeology of knowledge, focusing on the emergence of political economy. It relates it to three main areas of research in economics: methodology, historiography and studies on Adam Smith’s context and writings. The volume demonstrates how Foucault went beyond offering a reinterpretation of the history of political economy, examining his inspiring notions and ideas. It provides a critical examination on how Foucault’s archaeology relates to current debates in economics today.

This book is indispensable reading for all interested in the history and methodology of economics.

Foucault animation (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 November 2010

short collage animation by Kyle John Moore

CFP: 2011 Colloquium Series for Foucault Society, New York

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 October 2010

The Foucault Society, NYC
Call for Papers: 2011 Colloquium Series

The Foucault Society is pleased to announce a new colloquium series, which will begin in January 2011 and meet monthly in New York City. As a forum for new research and works-in-progress, this series will provide an opportunity for both junior and senior scholars to share new work with a friendly and supportive audience of colleagues.
We invite paper proposals on any aspect of Foucault studies. Papers may offer close readings of Foucault’s texts; analyze social, cultural or political phenomena in the context of Foucaultian critique; or situate Foucault’s work in terms of related thinkers or areas of critical theory. Critiques of Foucault and comparative readings are welcome, as are diverse critical, historical and empirical approaches.

Papers should be approximately 30 minutes reading time.

Graduate students, recent Ph.D.s, new faculty, and independent scholars are especially encouraged to apply. Presenters may come from any field in the humanities or social sciences.
Please send 500-word abstract and c.v. to the Foucault Society’s Executive Committee at foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com. Inquiries are welcome.

Deadline for Spring 2011 presentations: December 1, 2010. Papers received after that date will be considered until the schedule is full.
Deadline for Fall 2011 presentations: May 30, 2011.
For updates and more information, visit the newly updated website

About the Foucault Society
The Foucault Society is an independent, non-profit educational organization offering a variety of forums dedicated to critical study of the ideas of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) within a contemporary context. The Foucault Society is a 501 (c) (3) recognized public charity. As such donations are tax deductible under section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code.
E-mail: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com

Website
Facebook
Twitter: @foucaultsociety

Nick Levine, Hardt waxes theoretical on revolution (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

29 October 2010

See also this post for Hardt’s published work around this topic.

Nick Levine, ‘Hardt waxes theoretical on revolution‘, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, October 26, 2010

First couple of paragraphs from report. See here for rest of article

Marxist political and literary theorist Michael Hardt came to Yale Monday to spark revolution — not with petitions or protests, but with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Chair of the literature department at Duke University, Hardt was invited by the Department of Comparative Literature to give a talk entitled “Militancy Beyond Critique: Foucault Reads Kant” in Linsly-Chittenden Hall. Hardt said critique has been a prominent project for students of philosophy, literature and sociology since the 1960s. But he added that many scholars now think critique — which was intended to “reveal hierarchies of power in what was presumed to be neutral and natural” to society — has failed to improve society; however, during his talk, Hardt said he could not provide examples of how Foucault’s theory of “militant” social change would work in the real world.[…]

Three of four graduate students declined to comment about the talk. Two said they could not comment because they did not want to harm their job prospects.