Foucault News

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

Clare O'Farrell

6 November 2010

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.

Foucault mugs and teeshirts (2010, 2025)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

27 October 2010

August 2025. The site below no longer exists. Try these mugs.

How can one resist these Foucault mugs and teeshirts on the Philosophy is Dangerous site? Although… a quote from Foucault as a caption, rather than the existing slightly dodgy ones would have been nice.

And if Foucault is not your mug of tea -you have a number of other theorists to choose from, including Kierkegaard, Arendt, Rorty, Kuhn, Nietzsche, Adorno, Camus, Cixous, Bourdieu, Freud and others.

Sarah Wilson, The Visual World of French Theory (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 October 2010

Sarah Wilson, The Visual World of French Theory. Yale: Yale Univeristy Press, Figurations, 2010.

For further details see publisher’s site.

Description
This revelatory book focuses on a remarkable series of encounters between the most prominent French philosophers of the 1960s and 1970s—Sartre, Deleuze, Bourdieu, and Foucault among them—and the artists of their times, most particularly the protagonists of the Narrative Figuration movement. Each encounter involved either a mutual engagement or the writing of critical texts or catalogue prefaces—texts that illuminate not only the work of the artists but also the production of the philosopher-writer concerned.

Although the protagonists of “French theory” are universally known and studied, their thought is presented without a sense of contiguity, chronology, or context in translation, while the artists with whom they engaged are virtually unknown outside the French-speaking world. This account restores the lived context of artistic production. What Bourdieu called “cultural competence” is seen to be essential for these particular philosophers, and Sarah Wilson shows that it is through them that the figurative art of 1970s France can be introduced to the audience it deserves.

Sarah Wilson is professor of modern art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

Michael Hardt, Militant Life (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 October 2010

Michael Hardt, ‘Militant Life’, New Left Review 64, July-August 2010

Michael Hardt on Michel Foucault, Le gouvernement de soi et des autres and Le courage de la vérité. Parting words from the Collège de France on life as the scandal of truth.

First paragraph

Visit New Left Review for the rest. (You need a subscription).

It is ironic that Foucault had to go all the way to ancient Greece to grapple with contemporary political problems. [1] [2] Only at that distance, it seems, could he see clearly, like the farsighted reader who holds the page at arm’s length to focus. Arguably, Greek thought provided not only a temporal remove from the present but also a disciplinary separation from politics: what could be more iconic of scholarly seriousness than a return to the classics? Yet perhaps he also needed the safety of ancient Greece to experiment with dangerous ideas.

Macmillan, Alexandre, Foucault’s “Materiality of the Incorporeal” and Communication in Modern Society (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

5 comments

21 October 2010

Macmillan, Alexandre. “Foucault’s “Materiality of the Incorporeal” and Communication in Modern Society” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Suntec Singapore International Convention, Exhibition Centre, Suntec City, Singapore, Jun 22, 2010

Abstract
The ontological status of communication and its material/immaterial nature is one of the most important questions for a philosophical enquiry of communication. The post-Nietzschean tradition in France offers many valuable insights to consider the specific type of materiality that characterizes communication processes. Of particular interest for such questions are the works of Michel Foucault. By developing his philosophy of events, Foucault will argue that he develops a “materialism of the incorporeal”. This paper will present Foucault’s philosophy of events, and argue that communication can be considered as an organizing process that will at the same time distribute objects in an empirical field, and determine the rules for a true statement. Communication can therefore be considered as being both material and incorporeal. Foucault’s critique of representation and rationalism can then be read as a critique of the materiality of the modern regime of communication.

Anders Fogh Jensen & Rasmus Sverre, Foucault and epidemics (2010)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 October 2010

Danish artist Rasmus Sverre is currently working on the illustrations for a new book on Foucault and epidemics by Danish philosopher Anders Fogh Jensen