Foucault News

Dimitri M’Bama and William Tilleczek (2026). The Asceticism of the Oppressed: Anticolonial Ethics and the Politics of Collective Self-Transformation. Political Theory.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917251398786

Abstract
Asceticism has a bad reputation in political and social theory—insofar as it has any reputation at all. If it is not ignored entirely, it tends to be aligned with either political elitism or political quietism. On the one hand, asceticism is often considered a special privilege of the aristocracy, which alone has the leisure to turn away from worldly affairs and cultivate the self as an aesthetic object, and thus to reproduce its dominant position in a social hierarchy that it has a strong interest in maintaining. On the other hand, theorists from Hegel to Arendt and beyond have dismissed asceticism and practices of self-transformation as a mere retreat from politics into the “inner citadel.” This article seeks to excavate and theorize a counter-tradition of political asceticism in order to demonstrate that practices of the self are not the property of the elite and indeed have been the conditions of possibility for anticolonial and anti-racist resistance struggles in highly diverse contexts. With comparative attention paid especially to MK Gandhi and Frederick Douglass, we argue that traditional dismissals of asceticism in political theory have missed (a) the extent to which the “inner citadel” is often the prime location for struggle left to the colonized; (b) how this inner citadel is weaponized in endeavors to train oneself into capacities of political agency; and (c) how this training-into-agency—which we call liberation asceticism—is not merely an individual but a truly collective practice.

Steven Maynard, Michel and Mathurin: Finding Foucault in the Archives, Archivaria 100 (Fall/Winter 2025): 44-73
https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/14061

Abstract
In this article, we follow Foucault into the archives. Foucault spent much of his working life reading and researching in libraries and archives, and yet he most often figures in the archival literature as the creator of the rarified concept of “the archive.” As a counterpoint, this article explores Foucault’s work in archives, his use of archives in his work, and the significance he attached to archival research. Ultimately, I contend that it is impossible to understand the abstract archive as concept without first grounding it in the experiential, epistemological, methodological, and political dimensions of finding Foucault in the archives.

RÉSUMÉ
Cet article nous invite à suivre Foucault dans les archives. Foucault a passé une bonne partie de sa vie professionnelle en tant que lecteur et chercheur dans les bibliothèques et les archives; toutefois, dans la littérature archivistique, il apparaît le plus souvent comme le créateur du concept ésotérique de “l’archive”. En contrepartie, cet article explore le travail de Foucault dans les archives, l’emploi qu’il fait des archives dans son oeuvre, et la signification qu’il attribue à la recherche dans les archives. Finalement, je propose qu’il soit impossible de comprendre l’archive abstraite en tant que concept sans l’ancrer d’abord dans les dimensions expérientielle, épistémologique, méthodologique et politique de la rencontre avec Foucault dans les archives.

Steven Maynard is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of History at Queen’s University, where he teaches the history of sexuality. His article “Queer Parrhesiast,” in “Devotion: Today’s Future Becomes Tomorrow’s Archive,” a special issue of PUBLIC: Art/Culture/Ideas 33, no. 65 (2022), is a study of the personal archives of gay-left thinker Alexander Wilson, who interviewed Foucault during his stay in Toronto in the spring of 1982. The article, which reproduces the manuscript of the interview with Foucault found in Wilson’s papers, is part of a book Steven is writing on Foucault’s visits to Canada/Québec and his impact on local activist-intellectuals. A previous article, “Police/Archives,” in Archivaria, no. 68 (Fall 2009), won the Association of Canadian Archivists’ W. Kaye Lamb Prize for the article that most advances archival thinking in Canada.