Foucault News

Agustín Colombo, «El quiasmo no ontológico de la carne. El enfoque de la subjetividad en las investigaciones tardías de Michel Foucault y su relación con Merleau-Ponty» (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

26 February 2024

Colombo, Agustín. 2023. «El quiasmo no ontológico de la carne. El enfoque de la subjetividad en las investigaciones tardías de Michel Foucault y su relación con Merleau-Ponty». Logos. Anales del Seminario de Metafísica 56, nº 2: 269-85.
https://doi.org/10.5209/asem.88549

Resumen
¿De qué manera el problema de la carne permite analizar el vínculo que tiene el pensamiento de Foucault con el de Merleau-Ponty? Al igual que Merleau-Ponty, Foucault piensa la carne en un modo susceptible de ser comprendido en términos de “quiasmo”. Sin embargo, a diferencia de Merleau-Ponty, la carne en las investigaciones de Foucault designa más bien un quiasmo no ontológico de la subjetividad que ilustra las dinámicas por las cuales esta es constituida y, al mismo tiempo, se constituye a sí misma en la historia. De este modo, la carne aparece como un motivo o un tema clave que permite repensar la evolución de la crítica de la subjetividad que Foucault le hace a Merleau-Ponty y a la fenomenología desde muy temprano, al menos desde Phénoménologie et psychologie.

Palabras clave: Michel Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, carne, subjetividad, Phénoménologie et psychologie, Fenomenología, antropología, experiencia

Peter W Shay, Precluding Critical Pedagogy: Ethical Democracy and the Tyranny of Functional Metrics, Visible Learning, and Data Surveillance (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 February 2024

Peter W Shay, Precluding Critical Pedagogy: Ethical Democracy and the Tyranny of Functional Metrics, Visible Learning, and Data Surveillance, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Volume 21, Number 3, pp. 26-58

http://www.jceps.com/archives/16139

Open access

Abstract
Through a Foucauldian theoretical framework, this article contests the efficacy of the modern assessable and visible learning curriculum, and analyses how the current education episteme disempowers the ethical subjectification of the individual, dislocating the development of aesthetic agency. It articulates a tension between education for the development and enrichment of specific skills and economic growth, which is data-driven, and a more humane, values-driven education. As the vociferous application of, and focus on, standardised tests dominates pedagogical practice and only certain types of empirical knowledge become the accepted norm, then aesthetic agency is subverted. Such data-gazing practices, it is argued, neglect the Foucauldian psychagogical ‘care of the self’ of students through the cultivation of a life practice; instead, as data surveillance pervasively dominates recent pedagogical rationales, students are further alienated from ethical practices of self that lead to an ethically democratic society. Focusing on the Foucauldian concepts of discipline, biopolitics, and biopower, and the way these concepts shape educational practice, some of the studied blindness and lacunae dissimulated in the excitement of measuring the “effectiveness” of education is analysed.

Keywords:
Data-gaze, aesthetic agency, critical education, visible learning ethical democracy

Burrows, L., Holden, D., Tynan, E. Untangling Maralinga: Spatial and Temporal Complexities of Australia’s Atomic Anthropocene (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 February 2024

Burrows, L., Holden, D., Tynan, E.
Untangling Maralinga: Spatial and Temporal Complexities of Australia’s Atomic Anthropocene (2023) Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (3), pp. 515-530.

DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2023.2199757

Abstract
Reflecting on the atomic test sites in the South Australian desert, this article analyses the bisociation of cultural and historical spaces with geographical and geological formations. We expand Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopias to include complex intersections with natural environments. Given the close association of human intervention and landform, these atomic test sites are also important indicators of the Anthropocene, marking transitional geo-spaces influenced by both human and pre-human geological action. Crossing dimensions of colonial contest, tourism, atomic science and geology, we demonstrate that temporal and physical intersections of multiple human cultures at atomic test sites both influence and are influenced by deep-time geological history. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Anthropocene; atomic history; Australia; geology; Maralinga

Etienne Balibar – Structure et politique: les différences anthropologiques (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

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22 February 2024

Titre complet: SPHEPS 2023-2024 – Cycle des invitations – Etienne BALIBAR, “Structure et politique: les différences anthropologiques” (7 février 2024)

Cette vidéo est l’enregistrement de la séance du 7 février 2024 du SPHePS (Séminaire Permanent d’Histoire et de Philosophie du Structuralisme), organisé par Jeanne Etelain et Patrice Maniglier. Le séminaire alterne entre un cycle de conférences que donnent Patrice Maniglier et Jeanne Etelain (et qui porte cette année sur “féminisme et structuralisme”) et un cycle d’invitations de personnalités qui permet d’explorer l’insistance du structuralisme dans la pensée contemporaine. Lors de cette séance du 7 février, Etienne BALIBAR revient sur la question des rapports entre structure et politique dans son propre travail. À travers un récit rétrospectif très complet sur sa propre trajectoire théorique, il explique comment s’est progressivement imposée à lui la thématique de ce qu’il appelle les “différences anthropologiques” (manuel/intellectuel, masculin/féminin, normal/pathologique, commun/étranger… et la liste n’est pas cloturable a priori), et en quoi ces différences exigent une logique qui à la fois s’ancre et renouvelle de l’intérieur l’héritage de la pensée structuraliste, dans un sens qui la reproche des pensées intersectionnelles. A la suite de la conférence, qui dure environ 2 heures, la discussion s’engage sur différents aspects à la fois de la relation de sa recherche avec le structuralisme, et de cette proposition en elle-même. On trouvera dans cette conférence une introduction à la fois complète et profonde de la pensée d’Etienne Balibar et de sa place dans l’histoire de la pensée depuis les années 1960. Une séance à tous égards mémorable.

Foucault quote: Kairos – choosing the right moment

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 February 2024

[…] this problem of being “on time” and not being on time as you know was one of the main problems in Greek ethics— the notion of kairos. Kairos is the right moment. In the first Greek texts, the problem for ethics was choosing the right moment to do something.
[…]
In general, I think the Greeks’ problem was how to deal with necessity and fortune—Ananke and Tykhe. The Greeks had what you might call a very fatalistic attitude toward Ananke and Tykhe, as you know. Anyway, the problem faced by ethics, behavior, conduct, and politics was definitely not in trying to change things in relation to Ananke and Tykhe, but in dealing with them as they were and catching the right moment when you could actually do something. Kairos was the play, the element through which human freedom could deal with and manage Ananke, the world’s necessity. That, I think, is the reason why kairos, the problem of the right moment, was one of the central problems in Greek ethics.

Michel Foucault, Discussion with the Department of Philosophy in What Is Critique? & The Culture of the Self. Edited by Henri-Paul Fruchaud, Daniele Lorenzini, and Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by Clare O’Farrell, Chicago University Press, 2024, pp.84-5.

Michel Foucault | History of Sexuality | Philosophers Explained | Stephen Hicks

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 February 2024

Michel Foucault | History of Sexuality | Philosophers Explained | Stephen Hicks, Feb 10, 2024

“The History of Sexuality” is Michel Foucault’s examination of the history of discourse about and practice of sexuality over the past three centuries. While sexuality was open in the seventeenth century and relatively closed through the Victorian era, it might appear that sexuality in the modern era has been open. In fact, with the increase in the discourse about sexuality in modern times, Foucault argues we live in a new age of repression.

Jacobs, K., Malpas, J. Politics, Sociology, and the “Inevitability” of Failure (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 February 2024

Jacobs, K., Malpas, J.
Politics, Sociology, and the “Inevitability” of Failure
Routledge International Handbook of Failure, Edited By Adriana Mica, Mikołaj Pawlak, Anna Horolets, Paweł Kubicki, Routledge, (2023) pp. 423-432.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429355950-36

Abstract
The chapter begins by pointing out the contribution of sociological interpretations that focus on failure’s discursive and normative effects; for example, as an instrument to advance governmental action, a means to exert control or as an obstacle to be overcome. The main part of the chapter sets out an argument that failure is not something that should necessarily be conceived of in terms of overcoming. It is here the chapter draws attention to a strand of literature that includes Michel Foucault, Max Weber and Hans-Georg Gadamer to illustrate the inevitability of failure across all forms of social interaction such as politics, bureaucracy and science. The final part of the chapter extends a view of failure as ‘inevitable’ that draws on the work of the playwright Beckett and asks what direction politics might take if failure were to be conceived of as a condition for action.

Papoli-Yazdi, L., Hogland, W. Wreckage Installation: Towards an Archaeology of Southern Sweden’s Heterotopias (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 February 2024

Papoli-Yazdi, L., Hogland, W.
Wreckage Installation: Towards an Archaeology of Southern Sweden’s Heterotopias (2023) European Journal of Archaeology, 26 (2), pp. 189-208.

DOI: 10.1017/eaa.2022.44

Abstract
During a survey on the island of Öland in south-eastern Sweden, whose aim was to study the local waste-disposal practices, the authors recorded abandoned machinery and cars dating from the 1940s to today in locations close to residential areas and farms, and complemented the investigation by interviewing informants. This led them to conclude that dumping redundant objects in the surroundings of villages forms an entangled network with other behaviour, i.e. collecting things which had outlived their usefulness and embedding them in the landscape. The behaviour observed in Öland is compared with two other cases of collecting abandoned objects in Öland and southern Sweden. Using the location and chronology of the finds, the authors interpret the behaviour by borrowing the concept of heterotopia, as defined by Foucault.

Valentina Antoniol, Foucault et la guerre. À partir de Schmitt, contre Schmitt (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 February 2024

Valentina Antoniol, Foucault et la guerre. À partir de Schmitt, contre Schmitt, Éditions Mimésis, 2023

Cet essai est consacré aux analyses de Michel Foucault sur la guerre, un sujet qui n’a pas toujours reçu l’attention qu’il mérite et qui joue pourtant un rôle déterminant dans l’œuvre de l’auteur. Les réflexions de Foucault sont ici mises en relation avec celles de Carl Schmitt – une comparaison rarement établie, et sur laquelle la littérature critique reste encore faible aujourd’hui. À partir de matériaux inédits (archives du « Fonds Michel Foucault », conservées à la BnF), ce travail montre que le modèle polémocritique foucaldien se construit sur la base de certaines proximités avec la formulation schmittienne de la théorie du politique, et se développe comme une critique radicale de celle-ci. Considérer Foucault comme critique de Schmitt se révèle non seulement décisif pour comprendre la pensée du philosophe français, mais aussi fondamental pour saisir l’actualité de ces deux auteurs par rapport à la question de la guerre.

Archive: Jonathan Saha, Colonizing Animals. Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 February 2024

Jonathan Saha, Colonizing Animals. Interspecies Empire in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Book description
Animals were vital to the British colonization of Myanmar. In this pathbreaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942, Jonathan Saha argues that animals were impacted and transformed by colonial subjugation. By examining the writings of Burmese nationalists and the experiences of subaltern groups, he also shows how animals were mobilized by Burmese anticolonial activists in opposition to imperial rule. In demonstrating how animals – such as elephants, crocodiles, and rats – were important actors never fully under the control of humans, Saha uncovers a history of how British colonialism transformed ecologies and fostered new relationships with animals in Myanmar. Colonizing Animals introduces the reader to an innovative historical methodology for exploring interspecies relationships in the imperial past, using innovative concepts for studying interspecies empires that draw on postcolonial theory and critical animal studies.