Foucault News

Clegg, Stewart, and Johan Ninan. Foucault’s governmentality and the issue of project collaboration (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

8 August 2023

Clegg, Stewart, and Johan Ninan. “Foucault’s governmentality and the issue of project collaboration”. In Research Handbook on Complex Project Organizing, Edited by Graham Winch, Maude Brunet and Dongping Cao (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023)
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880283.00020

Abstract
The concept of governmentality has proven useful to analyse how the reflexive management of people within and without the project is conducted. In this chapter we explore the organizational theory of governmentality and its importance in project settings. First, we identify the specificity of project governance and relate it to the definition and discussion of governmentality by Michel Foucault. Following this, the use of governmentality within projects through project culture is discussed. Subsequently, the use of governmentality outside projects through social media is discussed. Finally, the chapter concludes by highlighting new directions for research with governmentality as the focal point, discussing the types of research questions that a concern with projects and governmentality raises and how addressing these might further develop project management as a field of enquiry.

Sinn, M.-C. Theorizing on Engaging in Identity Work from Spiritual Formation to Vocation Discernment: Narratives of a Hong Kong Chinese (Prospective) Seminarian (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 August 2023

Sinn, M.-C.
Theorizing on Engaging in Identity Work from Spiritual Formation to Vocation Discernment: Narratives of a Hong Kong Chinese (Prospective) Seminarian
(2023) International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 13 (2), pp. 159-187.

DOI: 10.18848/2154-8633/CGP/v13i02/159-187

Abstract
While research efforts have been devoted largely to priestly identity in the priesthood, it is surprising that there is little academic scholarship on identity research prior to entering the seminary as a stage of vocation discernment to priesthood. This article attempts to bridge the research gap by investigating the ongoing process of engaging in identity work of a prospective seminarian through life history research. Adopting a narrative research paradigm and drawing on the sociological lens of Foucault’s four axes of ethics, this article theorizes the experience from spiritual formation to vocation discernment of Lee, a Hong Kong Chinese Catholic, to engage in identity work. Adapting Clarke’s diagram for doing teacher identity work, the researcher expands the model across professions from (prospective) teachers to (prospective) seminarians to expound on the reflexive process of accepting, resisting, and being in-between in Lee’s narratives of religious calling. This article postulates that ongoing discursive identities of (prospective) seminarians are contingent on an iterative process of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a myriad of capacities to harbor hope for being more accommodating and understanding. The researcher also considers that engaging in identity work is crucial for (prospective) seminarians to maximize their continuous potential for spiritual and priestly formation. As religion and spirituality are key facets of understanding social life, this article contributes to research studies in seminary education by drawing on interpretive sociological methods as an alternative research paradigm. © 2023 Common Ground Research Networks. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Axes of Ethics; Faith-Based Research; Foucault; Hong Kong Chinese; Life History Research; Seminarian; Sociology of Religion; Spiritual Formation; Vocation Discernment

Anfinson, K. Capture or Empowerment: Governing Citizens and the Environment in the European Renewable Energy Transition (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 August 2023

Anfinson, K.
Capture or Empowerment: Governing Citizens and the Environment in the European Renewable Energy Transition
(2023) American Political Science Review, 117 (3), pp. 927-939.
DOI: 10.1017/S0003055422001034

Abstract
The European renewable energy transition is a leading model for responding to the urgent threat of climate change, which it does by empowering citizens. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of German neoliberalism, this article argues that despite some measure of empowerment, the economic constraints structuring the transition ultimately disempower citizens, undermining the attainment of environmental goals. Specifically, the transition gives citizens control of their energy while burdening them with entrepreneurial tasks to do so, substitutes economic activity for political citizenship, and shifts the epistemological terrain they take for granted when determining what environmental crises society faces and how best to respond. Understanding the transition as composed of theories for sustainability governance, policies, and practices of implementation, this article analyzes the energetic society governance theory, the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package, and the renewable energy organization REScoop.eu. © The Author(s), 2022.

Asad L. Asad, Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 August 2023

Asad L. Asad, Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life, Princeton University Press, 2023.

Some eleven million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, carving out lives amid a growing web of surveillance that threatens their and their families’ societal presence. Engage and Evade examines how undocumented immigrants navigate complex dynamics of surveillance and punishment, providing an extraordinary portrait of fear and hope on the margins.

Asad L. Asad brings together a wealth of research, from intimate interviews and detailed surveys with Latino immigrants and their families to up-close observations of immigration officials, to offer a rare perspective on the surveillance that undocumented immigrants encounter daily. He describes how and why these immigrants engage with various institutions—for example, by registering with the IRS or enrolling their kids in public health insurance programs—that the government can use to monitor them. This institutional surveillance feels both necessary and coercive, with undocumented immigrants worrying that evasion will give the government cause to deport them. Even so, they hope their record of engagement will one day help them prove to immigration officials that they deserve societal membership. Asad uncovers how these efforts do not always meet immigration officials’ high expectations, and how surveillance is as much about the threat of exclusion as the promise of inclusion.

Calling attention to the fraught lives of undocumented immigrants and their families, this superbly written and compassionately argued book proposes wide-ranging, actionable reforms to achieve societal inclusion for all.

See also The everyday surveillance of undocumented immigrants By Asad L. Asad, July 26, 2023

Attention to the everyday forms of surveillance that undocumented immigrants manage takes seriously Michel Foucault’s idea that surveillance entails elements of both risk and reward. The laws, regulations, and policies that circumscribe undocumented life are not only normalized but also undeniably injurious, as sociologists Leisy Abrego and Cecilia Menjívar show.

Miguel Vatter, Care of the Self and the Invention of Legitimate Government. Foucault and Strauss on Platonic Political Philosophy (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

3 August 2023

Miguel Vatter, Care of the Self and the Invention of Legitimate Government. Foucault and Strauss on Platonic Political Philosophy. In Jeffrey A. Bernstein and Jade Larissa Schiff, eds. Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought : Reading Strauss Outside the Lines. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.

This chapter offers an interpretation of Michel Foucault’s last lectures at the Collège de France, The Courage of Truth : The Government of Self and Others II, by reading them against the backdrop of Leo Strauss’s conception of classical natural right formulated in such works as On Tyranny, Natural Right and History and What is Political Philosophy? The justification for what appears, at first blush, an unseemly and even shocking comparative exercise is that in these last lectures Foucault’s chosen theme is the one preferred by Strauss— namely, the opposition between Platonic political philosophy and democratic political life. His analysis coincides with the genealogy offered by Leo Strauss on several key points. Ultimately, Foucault and Strauss agree that “political philosophy” or “normative political thought” is not what the Western tradition has made of it: it is neither a discourse that seeks to understand the nature of political things, nor does it delineate a theory of justice for the sake of moralizing politics. For these two authors, “political philosophy” is a practice that seeks to replace the pre-philosophical practice of political life in democracies with a new practice of politics: the philosophically justified “legitimate government” of some over others.
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Sfara, E. From technique to normativity: the influence of Kant on Georges Canguilhem’s philosophy of life (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 August 2023

Sfara, E. From technique to normativity: the influence of Kant on Georges Canguilhem’s philosophy of life. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 45, 16 (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-023-00573-8

Abstract
Many historical studies tend to underline two central Kantian themes frequently emerging in Georges Canguilhem’s works: (1) a conception of activity, primarily stemming from the Critique of Pure Reason, as a mental and abstract synthesis of judgment; and (2) a notion of organism, inspired by the Critique of Judgment, as an integral totality of parts. Canguilhem was particularly faithful to the first theme from the 1920s to the first half of the 1930s, whereas the second theme became important in the early 1940s. With this article, I will attempt to show that a third important theme of technique arose in the second half of the 30s also in the wake of Kant’s philosophy, especially Sect. 43 of the Critique of Judgment. This section, which states that technical ability is distinguished from a theoretical faculty, led Canguilhem to a more concrete and practical conception of activity. I will then suggest that it was by considering technique that the concept of normativity, which characterizes Georges Canguilhem’s philosophy of life, also took shape.

Foeken, E. Embodied, caring and disciplinary: A Foucauldian reading of ‘process time’ as constitutive of the biopolitical institution of the family (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 August 2023

Foeken, E. (2023). Embodied, caring and disciplinary: A Foucauldian reading of ‘process time’ as constitutive of the biopolitical institution of the family. Time & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X231176434

‘Process time’ describes the recursive/fluid, social and embodied temporality that characterises much ‘women’s work’. Though this concept has proven highly useful to feminist analyses of caring and other feminised labour, there has arguably been a tendency for authors in this area to naturalise and valorise this temporality – particularly in relation to the abstract, economic and disciplinary time of the clock. I argue that this naturalisation or valorisation of process time flattens our understanding of feminised labour, and that a feminist social theory of time must recognise the potentially disciplinary forms process time can take. As such, this paper contributes to feminist analyses of time, gender and labour by arguing that the embodied, caring and processual temporality that circulates within modern families can be understood as fundamentally disciplinary. Drawing primarily on Foucauldian theory, as well as Sharon Hays’ concept of ‘intensive mothering’, the paper argues that process time is central to the functioning of the family as a biopolitical institution, just as clock time is integral to the disciplinary mechanisms of the school, prison, barracks, etc. Specifically, it argues that the unique relations of power that circulate within the biopolitical family rely on a unique use of time: one that is intensive and oriented towards the rhythms of the physical body – that is, processual. Further, this disciplinary time is deeply and fundamentally feminine, as it operates (in its ideal form) primarily through the mother.

Nicolas Gane, Neoliberalism and the Defence of the Corporation (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 July 2023

Nicolas Gane, (2023). Neoliberalism and the Defence of the Corporation. Theory, Culture & Society, 40(3), 63–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221113727

Abstract
This article addresses a little-known event in the history of neoliberalism: a conference at Stanford University held in 1982 to reconsider Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’ The Modern Corporation and Private Property 50 years after its initial publication. This event is important as it is where key members of the neoliberal thought collective sought to define and defend the powers and freedoms of the corporation. First, this article outlines the political commitments of Berle and Means by considering the core arguments of The Modern Corporation and Private Property; second, it addresses key papers from the event published subsequently in the Journal of Law and Economics; and third, it analyses the neoliberal defence of the corporation that emerged from these papers, and reflects on the limitations of the work of Berle and Means for developing a response to their neoliberal critics.

Robert S. Leib, Of other histories: philosophical archaeology, historiology, and paradigmatology (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 July 2023

Robert S. Leib, Of other histories: philosophical archaeology, historiology, and paradigmatology, Parrhesia 37 · 2023 · 91-120

Open access

This article contributes to the discussion of philosophical archaeology in Foucault’s early works by reexamining its influences and recent developments using two concepts that appear in The Order of Things —a history of the Same and a history of the Other. Foucault viewed his work in The Order of Things as a departure from his earlier archival research into madness because madness is the object for a history of the Other, while order is the object for a history of the Same. A history of the Other, he says, is: “that which, for a given culture, is at once interior and foreign, therefore to be excluded (so as to exorcize the interior danger) but by being shut away (in order to reduce its otherness).” Eventually, Foucault would pursue this in his “Lives of Infamous Men” essay and Parallel Lives project. A history of the Same, by contrast, is “that which, for a given culture, is both dispersed and related, therefore to be distinguished by kinds and to be collected together into identities.” It is the history of a culture that does the Othering, deployed as a means of preserving that culture against the encroachment of “foreign” influences. I will use this distinction throughout the paper to figure various archaeological projects in relation to one another. I will reexamine philosophical archaeology through these two categories and the permutations that result when they are brought to bear on one another.
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Lorenzini, D., & Tiisala, T. The architectonic of Foucault’s critique (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 July 2023

Lorenzini, D., & Tiisala, T. (2023). The architectonic of Foucault’s critique. European Journal of Philosophy, 1– 16. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12877

Open access

Abstract
This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s critical project. It is well known that Foucault’s genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the subject’s freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states that critique is tasked with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault’s critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above-mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth-telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth-telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth-telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique’s methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re-evaluating Foucault’s critical project as a whole. By showing that truth-telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault’s critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture.