Foucault News

Villadsen, K.
Goodbye Foucault’s ‘missing human agent’? Self-formation, capability and the dispositifs (2022) European Journal of Social Theory

DOI: 10.1177/13684310221125350

Abstract
A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault’s ‘agentless position’ for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault’s writings, which allows space for ‘human agency’, including individuals’ pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. The revised analytical framework, ‘dispositional analytics’, integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault’s work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals’ capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the sociopolitical conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of ‘voice-hearers’ who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis. © The Author(s) 2022.

Author Keywords
Agency; capability; dispositif; Foucault; self-techniques

Michael C. Behrent (2022) A Case for the Young Foucault, Critical Review,

DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2152253

ABSTRACT
Between 1949 and 1961 (or, arguably, 1966), three interconnected dimensions of Foucault’s early thought emerged. First, the young Foucault offered a Hegelian perspective on Kant’s notion of the transcendental. The a priori conditions of thought, Foucault suggested, both shape and arise from historical experience. Second, Foucault drew on Heidegger’s study of Kant to argue that modern thought rests on the premise of human finitude and embraces a problematic epistemology rooted in philosophical anthropology. Foucault argued that anthropology enabled a vast extension of the scope of possible knowledge predicated on the falsely modest pretense that human understanding is inherently limited, even as it embraced a diminished conception of human existence. Third, Foucault developed a pointed critique of contemporary psychology and psychiatry, maintaining that they fallaciously seek to acquire positive knowledge of human beings, despite the fact the latter are inherently defined by what Foucault called “negativity.” This three-pronged interpretation of the young Foucault allows us to better situate Foucault’s work in intellectual history, to clarify his key arguments, and to grasp the articulation of his youthful and his mature thought.

Keywords: FoucaultvFreudvHegelvHeideggervNietzschevtranscendentalvyoung Foucault

Piasentier, M.
Foucault, Sellars, and the “conditions of possibility” of science
(2022) Philosophy and Social Criticism

DOI: 10.1177/01914537221131944

Abstract
Foucault and Sellars are representatives of conflicting philosophical traditions: whereas Foucault famously insisted that “power is everywhere,” Sellars proposed the well-known scientia mensura dictum. The tension between the two perspectives seems to be so strong that each of them ends up reducing the other to an epiphenomenal illusion. In this article, I shall attempt to show that the works of Sellars and Foucault are not necessarily irreconcilable. The common ground for this dialogue is what I shall define as a historico-practical conception of science. I will build this concept by tracing a connection between the Foucauldian notion of “conditions of possibility” of science and Sellars’s thesis about the “indispensability” of the manifest image. Finally, I will argue that this conception of science problematizes the clash between the scientific and manifest images of the world, paving the way for a different relationship between naturalism and critical theory. © The Author(s) 2022.

Author Keywords
critical theory; Foucault; naturalism; science; Sellars

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).