Foucault News

Friedman, A.C., Mills, J.P., Gearity, B.
Natural science and culture grapple on the mat: an autoethnography of a wrestler’s rapid weight loss
(2022) Sports Coaching Review

DOI: 10.1080/21640629.2022.2111491

Abstract
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s iconic essay, The Post-modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1978) detailed the shifting nature of knowledge in post-industrial society that meant sciences had to find new ways to justify their claims, and education had to bring disciplinary knowledges together. Yet sport sciences and coach education retain a siloed disciplinary nature, and as a result have been criticised for lacking theoretical, critical and practical thought. Rapid weight loss (RWL) in combat and weight class sports is one example of a coach knowledge and practice that retains disciplinary boundaries. Despite a wealth of natural sport science research and recommendations evidencing numerous negative health and performance consequences, RWL remains as common as ever. Not mentioned in the natural scientific literature however, are any deeper social-cultural examinations of how RWL endures. Using a Foucauldian analysis of power relations in an auto-ethnography of one collegiate wrestler’s experiences, we examine the social forces surrounding RWL to demonstrate the importance of Lyotard’s post-modern call to bringing disciplines together for sports science and coach education. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Autoethnography; Foucault; natural and social science; rapid weight loss

Gaughwin, M.
“The Apple Way”: Foucault, Design, Consumerism, and the Shaping of Apple Subjects
(2022) Design and Culture

DOI: 10.1080/17547075.2022.2122115

Abstract
The contribution Michel Foucault’s thoughts on power, in particular his ideas of subjectivity, freedom, and action, might have to the study of design’s ontological shaping of people is an emerging field of inquiry in the academy. Using a Foucauldian lens, this paper presents findings from semi-structured interviews with iPhone® users that speak to the ways Apple consumers are constituted into Apple subjects by what I refer to as “the Apple Way.” The ineradicable relationship between discourses of design and consumerism and their imperative to “better” human life is presented as a starting point. The iPhone as a technological device that “makes life better” for Apple consumers is critiqued; data reveals an uneasy reliance people have on the iPhone for their everyday life.

Author Keywords
Apple Inc; consumerism; design; Foucault; iPhone; power

Herzog, B., Lance Porfillio, A.
Talking with racists: insights from discourse and communication studies on the containment of far-right movements
(2022) Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9 (1)

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01406-y

Abstract
The rise of the far right is threatening the antifascist consensus that helped rebuild Europe and the world following World War II. Discourse studies have done much to further the understanding of the success as well as the fallacies of the discourses of far-right movements and have provided the means by which to comprehend right-wing communicative strategies. However, it has also been said that the reactions of the democratic majority and the mainstream media have contributed—mainly involuntarily—to the success of right-wing politics. The role of the reactions of society, the democratic majority and the mainstream media in trying to counter right-wing discourses is widely underexplored. The aim of this contribution is to understand the diverse material and symbolic effects of certain practices of political contestation. It aims to help elaborate counterstrategies against the threat of the far right and to present communicative strategies against hate. With the help of such diverse authors as Foucault, Goffman or Habermas, we will show how democratic positions seem to be in an ideological dilemma in which the speech acts that try to counter far-right discourses very often produce the opposite effect. The article can help to overcome the pitfalls and performative contradictions of some discursive practices especially in public communications. © 2022, The Author(s).

Beyribey, T.
Terrorism as a conceptual site for power struggles: problematization of terrorism in Turkey in the 1970s
(2022) European Journal of International Relations

DOI: 10.1177/13540661221131432

Abstract
In critical terrorism analysis, (counter-)terrorism is thought to be a discursive formation of power/knowledge comprised of some security experts from governments, the media, and academics. However, this one-sided articulation ignores the struggles in the concept of terrorism between historical narratives and counter-narratives, and it may be understood as a conceptual site where different political actors interpret it universally to strengthen or resist preexisting power relations. This article proposes that the problematization of terrorism can be studied by evaluating opposing narratives produced by political actors aiming to assert their power positions, drawing on Foucault’s analysis of problematization. From this theoretical perspective, this article examines how terrorism was problematized in relation to political violence in Turkey between 1971 and 1977, and how political actors used the concept of terrorism as a site for power struggle to gain dominant positions or weaken others, insofar as discrete ideological attitudes (communism and neo-fascism/racism, respectively) were abnormalized by universalizing them as a part of “international” terrorism. In this sense, the article contends that examining terrorism as a “universalized” site of power struggle can improve the analytical framework of critical terrorism studies by integrating the possibility of counter-narratives and, as a result, contradictions in the terrorism discourse. © The Author(s) 2022.

Author Keywords
1970s; Critical terrorism studies; political violence; problematization; Turkey