Foucault News

Mark Haugaard, Foucault and Power: A Critique and Retheorization (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

6 November 2022

Mark Haugaard (2022): Foucault and Power: A Critique and Retheorization,
Critical Review,
DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2133803

Abstract
From the perspective of sociological theory, Foucault’s concepts of power, power-knowledge, and discipline are one-sided. While Foucault contends that there is no center of power, his account of power remains top-down or structural, missing the interactive and enabling aspects of power. A more balanced view would suggest that all exercises of power include meaningful agency (the ability to do something); social structures (not simply as constraints but as interactive creations); social knowledge (including both reifying truth claims and enabling truth or knowledge); and social-ontological being-in-the-social-world (both as enabling and dominating).

Keywords:
Foucault agency domination power structure

Anton Lee, Photography, Multiplicity, Promiscuity: Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 November 2022

Anton Lee, “Photography, Multiplicity, Promiscuity: Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin,” Published in 2022 in a backdated volume (2020) of Materiali Foucaultiani, volume IX, numero 17-18 (gennaio-dicembre 2020)

This paper investigates the multiplicity of the photographic image theorized by Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin in their respective writings on photography. To do so entails a set of comparisons and contrasts between the two thinkers with regard to their approaches to the historical, epistemological, and cultural specificities of photography. By putting Foucault and Benjamin side by side for the first time in regard to photography, the paper sheds light on the often-overlooked writings on the medium by Foucault, on the one hand, and puts forward a Foucauldian counterpart to Benjamin’s well-known treatise on the photographic reproducibility, on the other. In order to discuss their theories of photography on an equal footing, I first introduce and elucidate Foucault’s two essays on photography: “Photogenic Painting” (1975) and “Thought and Emotion” (1982). The synthesis of the two writings delineates a provocative understanding of photography, which argues for the transmedial, transformative, and transgressive potentials of the photographic image. Subsequently, I bring this Foucauldian theory of photography in conversation with the widely read essays on the medium by Benjamin, whose thoughts exhibit unmistakable differences from Foucault’s, even as they both agree on the significance of the photographic multiplicity. The paper locates three fronts of conflict between their approaches to photography: the specificity of the photographic medium, the relationship between photography and language, and lastly, the centrality of vision to the photographic experience.

Keywords: Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Photography, Multiplicity, Reproducibility

Christensen, G. Ethical Reflections On Ethnographic Exposure Of Exclusion in PBL-Group Learning (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 November 2022

Christensen, G.
Ethical Reflections On Ethnographic Exposure Of Exclusion in PBL-Group Learning
(2021) in Fox, A., Busher, H., & Capewell, C. (Eds.). (2021). Thinking Critically and Ethically About Research for Education: Engaging with Voice and Empowerment in International Contexts (1st ed.). Routledge., pp. 107-119.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003094722-9

Abstract
This chapter will address ethnographic exposure of exclusion in group learning: problem-based learning at Danish universities. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews in groups and individually with students, teachers and administrators, a qualitative questionnaire, an ethnographic field study of students working in groups and a number of texts about small-group learning. The research project was founded on, firstly, a curiosity in what is actually going on when students are left to themselves in the PBL groups. Secondly, the project was inspired by Michel Foucault’s concepts of power, subjectification and critique in this case of the way groups are naturalised in the Danish pedagogical discourse as fundamentally good and unproblematic – which is far from the student’s experiences. Thus, the values were attached to doing critical research in a Foucauldian sense. Although conventional ethical principles and practices of informed consent, opportunities to withdraw and anonymisation were followed, on reflection the author is uncertain if the participants were directly empowered by the research. This chapter uses the concept of ethos, i.e. an obligation for the researcher to rethink the researcher role and, to paraphrase Foucault, what they are doing with what they are doing, which may be equivalent with giving the participants a voice. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Alison Fox, Hugh Busher, Carmel Capewell; individual chapters, the contributors.

Jonasson and Eriksonn, Sovereign Surfing in the Society of Control: The Parkour Chase in Casino Royale as a Staging of Social Change (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 November 2022

Jonasson, K., Eriksson, J.
Sovereign Surfing in the Society of Control: The Parkour Chase in Casino Royale as a Staging of Social Change
(2022) Social Sciences, 11 (8), art. no. 357

DOI: 10.3390/socsci11080357

Abstract
In “Postscript on Societies of Control”, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze proclaimed that “Everywhere surfing has replaced the older sports”. By this, he alluded to Foucault’s thoughts on older societal regimes and power diagrams of sovereignty and discipline, and that now such models have been supplemented with governance through control and allegations of increased freedom. This article has as its point of departure the potential of sports to reflect social change. Contemporaneously to the coining of Deleuze’s surfing sentence, a new sport emerges: parkour, in which practitioners “surf” the urban realm. This practice gained attention globally when it was featured in the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. The analysis in this article revolves around the different ways of moving in and through the environment in the renowned parkour chase in the beginning of the movie. How do different kinds of displacement in the parkour chase of Casino Royale relate to the transition between the societies described by Deleuze, and what new adaptations emerge and what old logics and models return? It is concluded that the older forms of power prevail and that the ideal of the society of control cannot be realised. © 2022 by the authors.

Author Keywords
control; discipline; Gilles Deleuze; James Bond; Michel Foucault; movement; parkour; social change; sovereignty; surfing

Herculine Barbin. Archéologie d’une révolution -15 novembre au 03 décembre 2022

Clare O'Farrell

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3 November 2022

Herculine Barbin. Archéologie d’une révolution
Du 15 novembre au 03 décembre 2022
D’après Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B. publié et préfacé par Michel Foucault
Théâtre 14
20 avenue Marc Sangnier 75014 Paris

Adaptation Catherine Marnas et Procuste Oblomov
Mise en scène Catherine Marnas
Avec Yuming Hey et Nicolas Martel

Le projet
1868. Dans une mansarde sous les toits de Paris, le médecin légiste découvre le corps inanimé d’Abel Barbin, vingt‑huit ans, une lettre expliquant son suicide, et un manuscrit intitulé Mes souvenirs. C’est ce livre, aujourd’hui disparu, rarissime récit d’une personne intersexe, exhumé par Michel Foucault et identifié par certains chercheurs comme l’acte de naissance des gender studies, que Catherine Marnas adapte. Avec douceur, tendresse et empathie, elle redonne vie aux souvenirs d’abord heureux d’Herculine, et comme un album photo que l’on feuillette à l’envers, remonte le temps : une enfance pauvre, l’éducation des pensionnats religieux comme ascenseur social, la découverte du désir et la recherche de liberté dans une société qui en offre si peu aux femmes. Jusqu’au point où tout bascule. Brutalement déclarée de sexe masculin, elle est exclue de l’univers dans lequel elle a jusque-là évolué, puis lancée sans ménagement dans le monde des hommes.

La metteuse en scène s’appuie sur la fluidité de l’envoûtant acteur-performeur Yuming Hey pour incarner Herculine. À ses côtés, fondu dans les voiles légers et flous, qui sont comme autant de surfaces de projections mémorielles, Nicolas Martel joue les entremetteurs d’époques entre le xixe siècle et aujourd’hui. Entre les deux, le masculin vacille.

Archive: Garðar Árnason, Foucault and the Human Subject of Science (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 November 2022

Garðar Árnason, Foucault and the Human Subject of Science, Springer, 2018
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Ethics

Analyses Foucault’s work on scientific discourses and their interplay with individuals and society
Outlines a Foucauldian approach to science criticism and ethical issues regarding research with human subjects
Discusses the ethical controversy over plans to construct a genetic database encompassing the entire Icelandic nation

About the author
Garðar Árnason, Ph.D., studied philosophy at the University of Iceland and the University of Toronto. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen. His main research interests include applied ethics (human and non-human research ethics, neuroethics, bioethics), free will, and the philosophy of science.

Hampton, Alexander J. B., and Douglas Hedley, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 November 2022

Hampton, Alexander J. B., and Douglas Hedley, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment, Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Description
Christianity has understood the environment as a gift to nurture and steward, a book of divine revelation disclosing the divine mind, a wild garden in need of cultivation and betterment, and as a resource for the creation of a new Eden. This Cambridge Companion details how Christianity, one of the world’s most important religions, has shaped one of the existential issues of our age, the environment. Engaging with contemporary issues, including gender, traditional knowledge, and enchantment, it brings together the work of international scholars on the subject of Christianity and the Environment from a diversity of fields. Together, their work offers a comprehensive guide to the complex relationship between Christianity and the environment that moves beyond disciplinary boundaries. To do this, the volume explains the key concepts concerning Christianity and the environment, outlines the historical development of this relationship from antiquity to the present, and explores important contemporary issues.

Introduces the key concepts that have shaped the relationship between Christianity and the Environment
Offers a history of the relationship between Christianity and the Environment, with each period treated by an expert in the field
Engages with numerous key issues, such as gender, traditional knowledge, and enchantment

Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps, Heterotopic World Fiction. Thinking Beyond Biopolitics with Woolf, Foucault, Ondaatje (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 November 2022

Heterotopic World Fiction. Thinking Beyond Biopolitics with Woolf, Foucault, Ondaatje
Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps
In the series Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History, Academic Studies Press, 2022. De Gruyter
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781644699966

Interview with the authors on the New Books Network, 6 January 2023

About this book
This book demonstrates how world fiction by Woolf, Foucault, and Ondaatje counters biopolitics with aesthetic and political—biopoetic—strategies producing transhistorical, transnational experiences offered to the reader for collective responsibility. It defines and explores heterotopic processes fostering a slant perspective that is feminist, materialist, anti-racist, and anti-war.

Author information
Lesley Higgins, Professor of English at York University, specializes in late Victorian and modernist studies. Author of The Cult of Ugliness: Aesthetic and Gender Politics, she has also edited three volumes of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s prose. Research interests include world literature, feminist studies of modernism, textual studies, and poetry.

Marie-Christine Leps, Associate Professor of English at York University, is founding coordinator of the Graduate Diploma in World Literature. Author of Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance, she specializes in literary and cultural theory, world literature, and discourse analysis. Her current project focuses on world fictions of friendship.

Gullette, M. M. Reflections on the Turn to Ageism in Contemporary Cultural Discourse (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 October 2022

Gullette, M. M. (2022). Reflections on the Turn to Ageism in Contemporary Cultural Discourse. Theory, Culture & Society
https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221113732

Abstract
Distinguished gerontologists, ‘guardians of later life’ who had long kept age and ageism at the heart of their work, were asked by the author why the turn to ageism had not been able to raise age consciousness more effectively in the media or the public. Their frank responses constitute a valuable archive of reflections about how intersectional concepts and activist passions develop in an emerging and contentious multi-disciplinary field. The essay further situates their learned critiques in the history of age studies over the last 30 years. Among the sorrowful and galvanizing revelations provoked by the Eldercide of the COVID-19 era is this: ‘ageism’ has become widely recognized as a keyword not only good to think with but necessary to act on.

Extract
“Major intellectual and theoretical weaknesses got in the way of discovering ageisms wherever they lurked. Stuart Hall wrote that, thanks to Foucault and Gramsci, ‘the sense of the concrete historical instance . . . has always been one of culturalism’s principal strengths’ (2019: 67). But were enough people who considered themselves gerontologists or age critics well trained as ‘culturalists’ (in a broad sense that could include symbolic and material factors and power relations)?”

Foucault, M. (2022). Linguistics and Social Sciences.

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 October 2022

Foucault, M. (2022). Linguistics and Social Sciences. Theory, Culture & Society, First published online June 20, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221091549

Abstract
Written with the suppression of the Tunisian students by their own government in view, Michel Foucault’s March 1968 ‘Linguistics and Social Sciences’ opens up a new horizon of historical inquiry and epitomises Foucault’s abiding interest in formulating new methods for studying the interaction of language and power. Translated into English for the first time by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder and Chantal Wright, this remarkable lecture constitutes Foucault’s most explicit and sustained statement of his project to revolutionise history by transposing the analysis of logical relations into the history of knowledge.

Introduction to Michel Foucault’s ‘Linguistics and Social Sciences’
Translator’s note, Jonathan D.S. Schroeder

Shortly after the publication of The Order of Things (1966), Michel Foucault obtained a leave of absence from the University of Clermont-Ferrand to teach philosophy at the University of Tunis. He moved to Sidi Bou Saïd in September 1966, and he stayed in post until October 1968. This brief period proved wildly transformative: Foucault shaved his head and drafted The Archaeology of Knowledge; at the same time, he was radicalised by a series of anti-colonial and anti-imperial student protests, which began as a response to the Six-Day War of 1967, were exacerbated by Hubert Humphrey’s visit to Tunisia in early 1968 and culminated on 15 March 1968 when thousands of Tunisian students gathered outside of the University of Tunis. They accused the Tunisian government of supporting US imperialism, called for the end of the Vietnam War, condemned Zionism and called on the Tunisian government to investigate torture and corruption. Authorities responded with violence, arresting over 200 students, torturing many and holding all without trial until September of that year (Medien, 2020: 495–6). During these months, Foucault allowed students to use his apartment as an organising space, hid a printing press in his garden so activists could print posters detailing the names of imprisoned Tunisians, gave sanctuary to student leader Ahmed ben Othmani, donated money for his legal defence and provided deposition testimony at Othmani’s September hearing (Hendrickson, 2013: 89–90). At the same time, he read texts by Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg, and the American Black Panthers. ‘It wasn’t May of ‘68 that changed me’, Foucault recalled. ‘It was March of ‘68, in a Third World country’ (1991 [1981]: 136).
[…]