Foucault's Approach Research Articles

Arqueologia e Magia

A natureza não deixa nada sem assinar. Parece haver, no gesto da emissão de sinais, um propósito ético que pouco pode ser compreendido à luz das ciências humanas. Pensando diferente do registro científico, o objetivo geral deste artigo será descrever o jogo de penumbra pela qual a arqueologia de Michel Foucault aproxima-se do paradigma da magia. A magia é uma prática espiritual consigo, com o outro e com o mundo, que não se pode reduzir à representação e à significação. A hipótese que levanto busca averiguar em que medida o paradigma da magia é presente nos escritos arqueológicos de Michel Foucault, ainda que o pensador francês pouco se refira diretamente a ele, tarefa que implica uma escavação sobre os rastros deixados nas entrelinhas de seu pensamento, como fez seu contemporâneo Giorgio Agamben. Para tanto, enfocarei a ressonância existente entre os conceitos de (a) enunciado e assinatura e (b) a priori histórico e mana. Sabemos que enunciado e a priori histórico são dois operadores centrais ao pensamento arqueológico. Minha tarefa será mostrar que eles são íntimos à assinatura e à mana, ambas noções provenientes do campo da magia. Não será difícil percebermos que a arqueologia bebe no paradigma da magia ao ponto de se embriagar, o que permite pensar com saberes e práticas que foram eclipsados desde o pensamento secularizado e o iluminismo. Dessa maneira, a Arqueologia se inscreve como um ethos ainda a ser desvendado, espécie de anticiência das assinaturas.

Wacana Pertobatan Muslim Indonesia di Media Digital

Nowadays, the phenomenon of Hijrah that occurs in digital media. This phenomenon of Hijrah is more widely covered and broadcast by artists and young people. The word “Hijrah” is more often echoed than the word repentance, especially in digital media. Therefore, the question arises of why the discourse of repentance is not used and how the position of the word repentance in digital media. This article is to study “Hijrah”, a word or language that is chosen and used and what it's content. Repentance in this writing only focuses on the scope of Indonesian Muslim circles. Method of this research using discourse media analysis with Foucault's approach. The data collection uses documentation, literature studies, and observations. The results reveal that the word repentance is still used with real understanding. Then came the word Hijrah whose meaning was almost equalized and could be confused with the meaning of the word repentance. The word Hijrah is becoming more popularly used than the word repentance. The word Hijrah appears with a load of interests and is inseparable from power. The choice of the word repentance or the word Hijrah depends on who the user is. Examples of users are from the state or government, the media, industry, the general public, and Islamic groups. Finally, the word Hijrah is more often used than the word repentance in digital media until now.

Aporte de las humanidades para repensar las prácticas hegemónicas en la educación colombiana con base en el pensamiento de Michel Foucault

A lo largo de la historia de la educación colombiana, se han sustentado una serie de mecanismos de vigilancia y castigo dentro y fuera de las aulas, sujetas a formar seres dominados por el lucro del poder y el saber. Es así que, las prácticas hegemónicas se reproducen de modo persistente a través de la escuela, como conducto regular de homogeneización. Estas prácticas de castigo y vigilancia han sido disimuladas en nombre de la supuesta valoración de la dignidad que deviene con el discurso de los derechos humanos al no castigo físico en los planteles educativos, pero se han implementado otros tipos de castigo de forma oculta. En definitiva, ciertas formas de poder han sido remplazadas por otras. Así, por ejemplo, se puede pasar a normalizar el poder bajo mecanismos de vigilancia, disciplina, control y castigo. Para este fin, se hará un análisis que oriente el proceso investigativo con base en los planteamientos presentados por Michel Foucault. En este orden de ideas nace la pregunta de investigación: ¿Cómo consolidar la labor de las humanidades para repensar las prácticas hegemónicas de vigilancia y castigo que persisten en la educación colombiana actual con base en la caja de herramientas de Michel Foucault?

유·아동기 학교폭력예방교육에 관한 엄마의 인식이 교육적 시선의 전환에 주는 시사점 고찰 : 푸코식의 담론적 접근에서

유·아동기 학교폭력예방교육에 관한 엄마의 인식이 교육적 시선의 전환에 주는 시사점 고찰 : 푸코식의 담론적 접근에서

Identidades femeninas en el contexto profesional “masculinizado” de la ingeniería civil en el Suroccidente Colombiano

Stuart Hall's and Michel Foucault's approaches to subjection and subjectification allow the analysis of female identities. This research aimed to analyze the identity construction processes of female engineers in a profession of male hegemony such as civil engineering. Using a qualitative methodology and life stories of 15 female engineers who had graduated from universities in southwestern Colombia, it was found that identities are constructed as particular discursive routes with diverse positions that carry out institutionalized practices of masculine hegemony but also of self-recognition, valuation and resignification of the contribution of women in the profession and their position in the society.

Foucault on the Marginal Revolution in Economics: Language and the Cartesian Legacy

ABSTRACTScholars have long debated the ‘revolutionary’ character of the ‘Marginal Revolution’ in economics, focusing on theoretical foundations, methodological devices, social context and political aspects. This article offers a new perspective by investigating ontological and epistemological conditions of that intellectual movement. This requires, in turn, a characterization of those conditions, for which purpose we will draw on Foucault's configurations of thought into ‘epistemes’ in The Order of Things. Although not mentioning those conditions, there have been few references in economics to Foucault's approach. They have mainly claimed that he neglected its importance because he did not see it as a ‘revolution’ in The Order of Things. It is argued here that he actually considered it a ‘revolution’ in The Archaeology of Knowledge. A revision of Foucault's account provides some ideas regarding deep philosophical conditions of the emergence of neoclassical theory and defies some usual interpretations of the circumstances that led to the mathematization of economics. The main conclusion is that its revolutionary character did not stem from a change of ontological beliefs, but—just as many historians of economics have defended—it was a methodological revolution. This study suggests a reinterpretation of that event, claiming that it resulted from a new conception of language and a crisis of Descartes's project of a mathematical unifying science. Going beyond that debate, these reflections proffer ideas that deserve an appraisal in economics.

Power Praxis at The Beginning of The Meiji Era: Tradition and Modern Discourse

This study aims to investigate how the discourse of Japanese society tradition with conservative mindset as the impact of Tokugawa power that applied sakoku (isolation politics) for more than two hundred years began questioned, criticized and disputed in Hanauzumi’s novel by Jun'ichi Watanabe. This study uses Foucault's discourse approach that is applied to express the form of discourse by external and internal exclusion. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method, the data collected is data that explains the problem of production and distribution of discourse based on Foucault's external and internal exclusion. The results of this study indicate that Jun'ichi Watanabe produces, distributes and transforms modern discourse as counter discourse against the discourse of tradition to change the way of thinking, customs and culture that harm women.

NIETZSCHE E FOUCAULT: SIMILITUDES NO ÂMBITO DO PODER E DO LABOR

The present text reviews a state of the art, aiming to verify the proximity between the concept of power will created by Nietzsche and the conception of power in Foucault. In keeping with this motto, we seek to establish a reference to the theme of work as a cross-over surface of power relations. Such a cross is taken from the points of view of specific authors of this theme in the psychological bias and in the conceptions of power, in Nietzsche and Foucault. Thus, we declare that similarities could be observed in the productive realm of power: little controlling, but inciting conducts and wills, opinions and desires. Both Nietzsche and Foucault approach, to a certain extent, power as a great system of forces in intense relations, from which all social or private events originate.

La gestión de recursos humanos y la construcción de subjetividades en las nuevas condiciones de la economía

Este documento analiza la Teoría del capital humano y sus consecuencias en la gestión humana, donde cobran relevancia los planteamientos de Foucault y sus análisis de las formas de gobernar a sujetos y poblaciones, que interesan al estudio de las organizaciones. La presente revisión surge de la preocupación por discursos convertidos en mandatos en el mundo empresarial que plantean retos y objetivos a las empresas y las áreas de gestión humana, sin que se visibilicen los aportes críticos surgidos en el ámbito académico que establecen los riesgos de seguir trabajando desde miradas reduccionistas y pragmáticas, donde los sujetos son asumidos como absolutos responsables de sus éxitos, en un ámbito donde pareciera innecesaria la construcción de sentidos de comunidad.

“Mamãe é down”: a sexualidade da pessoa com deficiência na trama discursiva da Revista Época

Este artigo analisa um artefato cultural midiático que produz narrativas sobre a pessoa com deficiência e sua sexualidade, como observado na reportagem Mamãe é Down, produzida pela revista Época. Com base na perspectiva pós-estruturalista dos Estudos Culturais e nos estudos foucaultianos, o objetivo é analisar a representação cultural da deficiência e identificar os estereótipos e as essencializações existentes no discurso sobre esses sujeitos. Os resultados indicam que as narrativas sobre a deficiência se articulam com um aparato conceitual, advindo de um saber médico, constituindo uma ideia de deficiência intimamente relacionada à questão biológica. Assim, apresentam-se as causas, o diagnóstico e os possíveis tratamentos oferecidos a esses sujeitos. Nesse jogo de forças, se por um lado os discursos produzem a ideia de uma sexualidade atrelada aos aspectos biológicos, por outro, produzem também a representação cultural de que as pessoas com deficiência podem usufruir de sua sexualidade, de uma vida a dois e da experiência da maternidade.

PEMBACAAN PRODUK HUKUM ISLAM: OTORITAS, TAQLI>

This paper outlines the theory of the development of Islamic law products that are not free from authority, taklid and ijtihad of each Muslim intellectual across the ages. Wael B. Hallaq is one of the thinkers who concentrates in the field of Islamic law which focuses on power and science. In his book entitled "Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law" Wael B. Hallaq explicitly stated that Islamic law products are not free from political power and interests; therefore the author uses Michel Foucault's approach to reading Wael B. Hallaq's thoughts in several of his works. The authors' findings in his thinking, variety and types of activities in Islamic law are quite contributive to the study of Islamic law. However, the conclusions about the claim that he is a positive element that serves to build loyalty and commitment to study the school, give rise to a defensive attitude towards other schools of thought is irrelevant when viewed from the modernist point of view. Because taklid, besides building the authority of the school, is also responsible for the integration of creativity and progressiveness in Islamic law.

Different Histories of the Present: On the Spanish Reception of Michel Foucault's <i>Surveiller et Punir</i> and the Issue of Political Prisoners

In the mid-1970s Foucault's work on the birth of the prison entered contemporary debates about the prison in Spain in various instances. Reading Foucault's writings and their Spanish reception next to each other, it becomes clear that one question central to the Spanish prison debates at the time was hardly mentioned in Surveiller et Punir: namely, the relationship between political and non-political prisoners. After a brief contextualization of Spanish prison debates in the 1970s and their reference to Foucault's work, this paper first outlines in what way the issue of political prisoners was (in the Spanish case) or was not (in Foucault's prison study) discussed and why. Based on this comparison the paper clarifies the link between past and present in Foucault's approach of a "history of the present." It then draws on an interview where Foucault did reflect on the issue of prisoner categories and concludes with a suggestion for productively using Foucault's methods as tools to analyze historically changing debates about the issue of political prisoners as a history of contingent problematizations.

Politicising the study of sustainable living practices

ABSTRACTIn studies of consumption, social theories of practice foreground the purchasing and use of resources not for intrinsic pleasure but rather in the routine accomplishment of “normal” ways of living. In this paper, we argue that a key strength of theories of practice lies in their ability to expose questions of power in the construction of normality, but that this has been largely overlooked. Since practice theories are leveraged in understanding urgent questions of climate change, we use ethnographic data of a sustainable community in England to examine the normative dimension of sustainability. Using Michel Foucault's approach to practice, we elucidate the social technologies operating in the community that govern sustainable practices in the absence of a singular cultural authority. We illustrate how shared understanding guiding normative sustainable practice was negotiated and maintained through collective ethical work, the paramount importance of interpersonal harmony, and the continual formation of ethical subjects.

Menelaah Lebih Dekat “Post Factual/Post Truth Politics, Studi Kasus Brexit” (Analsis Resensi Media)

This research further examines the video entitled “what is the truth about post-factual politics?” about the case in the United States related to Trump and in the UK related to Brexit. The phenomenon of Post truth/post factual also occurs in Indonesia as seen in the political struggle experienced by Ahok in the governor election (DKI Jakarta). Through Michel Foucault's approach to post truth with assertive logic, the mass media is constructed for the interested parties and ignores the real reality. The conclusion of this study indicates that new media was able to spread various discourses ranging from influencing the way of thoughts, behavior of society to the ideology adopted by a society.Keywords: Post factual, post truth, new media

Intimacies of global toxins: Exposure & resistance in ‘Chemical Valley’

This paper examines the geopolitics of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation's reserve, situated in a toxic petrochemical complex known as Canada's ‘Chemical Valley.’ While this reserve holds the perilous title of worst air-pollution in the country, research exploring the profound impacts that this toxic environment has on Indigenous communities remains limited and tends to resort to simplistic framings. In this paper we suggest that Michel Foucault's concept of the ‘heterotopia’ is a helpful prism through which to view Aamjiwnaang in more complex, political terms. We also suggest, however, that this prism has a limited scope when it comes to exposing intimate experiences of global toxins. Drawing on a feminist geopolitics, we seek to stretch Foucault's heterotopic approach in order to show how the reserve is intimately colonized and contaminated by Canada's chemical production. Vitally, our approach gleans insight into the everyday ways that Aamjiwnaang is governed by and also disrupts colonial configurations. Moreover, our paper illuminates how a feminist heterotopic approach can re-orient research towards a deepened understanding of Indigenous-led modes of environmental justice.

Exploring Language Teacher Identity Work as Ethical Self‐Formation

In this article, we treat language teacher identity as foundational to educational practice and see Foucault's (, ) notion of ethical self‐formation, and its adoption in teacher education research by Clarke (, , ), as providing a potential vehicle for understanding the development of teacher agency and critical identity work. We use the 4 axes of Foucault's () approach to ethical self‐formation, as captured in Clarke's () “Diagram for Doing Identity Work,” in exploring a case study of an elementary reading and language arts teacher who worked in a multilingual inclusion classroom with exceptional (i.e., learning disabled) and mainstreamed students. We consider the relevance of how this teacher's identity developed over the course of 7 interviews, spanning 9 years, for teacher identity work in language teacher education (LTE). In doing so, we foreground the critical as well as the dangerous potential of all teachers’ identity work and argue for the importance of nurturing teachers’ reflective, action‐oriented identity practices as well as fostering a self‐awareness of language teachers as ethical subjects “acting on others” (Foucault, , p. 262) even as they struggle within power relations that press upon educational practices and discourses.

Foucault and the Politics of Rights. By Ben Golder. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 246 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Foucault and Politics of Rights. By Ben Golder. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 246 pp. $24.95 cloth.Nowadays, liberal political contexts revel claims to universal rights. Their discourses tend to frame latter as bulwarks of individual freedom, preventing arbitrary coercion, detention, torture and worse. Whiggish historical accounts cast as inevitable outcomes of social progress stretching back to ancient Greece though Enlightenment to mid-20th century declarations. But as Moyn (2012: 3) notes, current understandings of depart significantly from past iterations; they emerged, in 1970s seemingly from nowhere. Other critics (Brown, Butler, Ranciere) echo contingency here implied, reframing debates to focus on how might explicitly constrain rulers.Referencing these critics, Golder explores Foucault's evocations of his later analyses of political struggles, aiming to unearth a politics of rights that is anti-foundationalist, non- anthropologically grounded and tactically oriented towards intervening into existing formations of law, state and (3). This reading clearly contests Wolin's and Paras' claim that Foucault's later foray into (ethics and subjects) contradicts his past work by belatedly appealing to neo-humanist foundations. Instead, Golder argues that Foucault merely shifted emphasis his later writing, and continued genres of critique animating his earlier historical studies of power (sovereignty, discipline and biopolitics), and indeed archeological and genealogical methodologies.But what sort of critique did Foucaul tembrace? Golderextractsa historically-situated set of critical practices that disassembled limits so as to open, the contingent present to an undetermined future (32). Thus Foucault's approach to critique did not judge contexts against transcendental yardsticks; it called for local acts that refuse limits and so affirm alternative futures. It unhinges and displaces historical limits but always from within. Golder refers to Foucault's discussions on pastoral power to show how his counter-conduct concept refined ideas about resistance while simultaneously framing a critique that, tries to isolate and mobilize particular possibilities for change and contestation disclosed within and by those practices themselves (51). Here one detects a Nietzschean affirmation of what could be, an excavation rather than a pure rejection. In other words, this kind of critique exposes, human possibilities that are forgotten when contingent social and political formations come to be naturalized and rendered commonsensical (58). It embraces a hidden margin of freedom which enables subjects to exist otherwise than they presently do (58).Foucault's critique of should thus be understood a particular way. Rather than a blanket rejection, he approached within liberal political arenas as ordnances that may be used to further particular struggles. For instance, his discussions of Iranian revolution, Polish Solidarity Movement, and piracy summoned to place limits on dangerous forms of government. But there is no inevitability here, because Foucault recognized that are ambivalent counter-conduct sense that they can be used both to govern subjects and simultaneously to contest particular governing practices. In many ways, this approach echoed his nominal approach to power relations-a right (power) comes into play only through its alwayscontestable invocation (exercise). …

Alles oder gar nichts lesen? Foucault, Moretti und die Verheißungen des Algorithmus

This paper evaluates Franco Moretti's 'distant reading' from the perspective of Foucauldian discourse analysis and basic principles of computer science. After a short account of the essential features of both Moretti's and Foucault's approaches, the author assesses their combined potential for automation or algorithmization. This is accomplished by focusing on the decompositional and operational aspects of Foucauldian archeology, which seems to provide (at least in principle) a way to realize or implement Moretti's idea of an automated distant reading. The technical feasibility of this theoretical solution is eventually criticized in the light of the constraints and limitations of computation compared to 'human interfaces'.

The Reproduction of Subjectivity and the Turnover-time of Ideology

In the wake of Michel Foucault's now-famous critique of the repressive role of the state apparatus (dispositif), (1) a central tenet of social theory, namely ideology critique, lost considerable support among scholars and activists. A constant refrain, heard from all quarters, consisted of the need to finally leave behind a model of subjection based on a sovereign, top-down conception of power, and instead employ a method that gleans the horizontal dispersions or discursive metamorphoses that are more primary in the positive constitution of subjectivity. (2) And yet, in the face of the last fifteen to twenty years, it has grown increasingly difficult to deny the persistent role of the Leviathan in contemporary life. If the explosion in the U.S. prison population were not enough, basic knowledge of the function of the surveillance state likely causes one to begin to question the ease with which approaches like that of Louis Althusser's were discarded in favor of Foucault's approach. (3) Indeed, especially after the recent bailout of international capital by the U.S. Empire, i,e., the international lender of last resort, the question of how contemporary subjectivity is formed in relation to a state apparatus that-despite the element of truth in the relative autonomy or non-economistic thesis-is indissolubly linked to the reproduction of capital, weighs down on any theorist who would try to give an adequate account of the present balance of social and political forces. Have we not, along these lines, lost something essential in wholly departing from Althusser's approach? Have we not, that is to say, missed the chance to enrich this mode of inquiry by putting it in tension with the present state of affairs? Surely, given the present constellation, we can now see that the complete dismissal of ideology critique in favor of an analysis of the transformations in discourse is itself part of a power dynamic that thwarts the possibility of grasping just how much repression, i.e., the hail of the State, the threat of external punishment, or, in short, the unparalleled power with which capital, through its various (economic, political, legal, and military) channels, demands the passive adaptation of its subjects. Surely such a position against ideology critique is also part of the mechanism that generates an incapacity to understand how the reproduction of capital simultaneously instigates positive and negative effects on the subject, affirmative and prohibitive games of power that are essential to the formation of contemporary subjectivity?* * 4 And surely, in the midst of economic disparity that has reached Gilded Age levels, it is high time that we return to a consideration of the links between the flows of capital and the manner in which its subject is schematized in and through a relationship to the socially necessary maintenance of class domination. With this background in view, there are two aspects of Althusser's ideology critique that I would like to consider in the hope of returning to and enriching this mode of investigation. (5) Firstly, there is Althusser's Lacanian insight into the specular character of the centered subject. (6) The play of anticipation with the mirror-image, the misrecognition involved in becoming the subject of wage-labor, remains a particularly pressing issue, especially in an age of finance capital, i.e., an age that has seen speculative activity in secondary markets grow to unforeseen levels. Secondly, there is Althusser's claim that the base-superstructure model of ideology requires the addition of Marx's conception of reproduction, (7) of the turnover-time (Umschlagszeit) and circulation that are socially necessary for the process of value-expansion. The continued relevance of this line of inquiry can hardly be questioned when confronted with the fact the foundations of this reproduction have been shaken to their core by the worst economic crisis in two generations. Moreover, confronting the dire consequences for subjects living not only amidst this crisis, but also in an era that has seen an unprecedented emphasis on short-term, quarterly earnings, a staggering proportion of which are completely unmoored from the actual production of goods, cannot help but conjure up questions regarding how the subject of neoliberal capital is produced. …

Agamben and the Migrations of Glory

In the American political imagination, there is a longstanding and wide-ranging discussion about the separation of church and state. Though Americans argue about whether it should be a ‘‘high wall,’’ or whether certain ‘‘breaches’’ in it might be desirable, they all take ‘‘separation’’ to describe an institutional arrangement. From Giorgio Agamben's perspective, however, ‘‘separation’’ is an image that conceals much more than it reveals about the religious character of the state and the global economy. Agamben traces ‘‘the migrations of glory’’ from church, to state, to global capitalism. For part of this task, Agamben accepts Michel Foucault's diagnostic approach to power. By one reading, certainly, governmentality has us in its grip. But now government itself is overshadowed by the power of global capitalism. While Foucault sought only to make us ‘‘a little less governed,’’ Agamben is interested in a deeper iconoclasm and a greater emancipation. According to Agamben, our less-than-free condition can be illuminated by reflection on: (1) the state of exception and the camp, which are only made possible by a form of idolatry in which the sovereign assumes to themself a power that they should not have; (2) On another of the ‘‘maps’’ drawn by Agamben, however, there is a further ‘‘migration of glory,’’ away from national sovereignty, toward postmodern global capitalism; (3) The Coming Community provides the barest sketch of Agamben's hope for a remedy, while his reading of Paul's Letter to the Romans in The Time that Remains brings a more visible kind of messianic expectation or vocation back into the discussion of political life. A concluding section discusses five sorts of questions that might be put to Agamben about the overall shape of his project.