Foucault's Thinking Research Articles

Preliminary Thoughts on Left Governmentality

Abstract In the manufactured politics of crisis that we see increasingly in many societies around the world, the question of what politics can overcome the impasse of so-called democratic rule, which serves as a cover for the domination of liberal oligarchies, has become urgent. Mining the most radical elements in Foucault's thinking about governmentality, this essay seeks to imagine a politics of left governmentality that would evade the pitfalls of left populism.

CULTURA DE AVALIAÇÃO E EFEITOS DE SUBJETIVAÇÃO NA SAÚDE

O objetivo deste artigo é discutir a relação entre cultura da avaliação e processos de subjetivação, no campo da saúde. Trata-se de um estudo teórico sobre o tema, que trabalha aspectos históricos e conceituais da ascensão da cultura de avaliação nas sociedades contemporâneas, particularmente no setor saúde; e faz uma revisão analítica dos argumentos que circunscrevem as controvérsias que os temas da avaliação e subjetividade têm suscitado na saúde pública e fora dela, em diálogo com as contribuições de Foucault. A literatura nacional do setor da saúde é mais receptiva do que a literatura internacional nas ciências humanas. A interpretação mais corrente, em geral, é que a avaliação é um dos instrumentos de governo ou de gestão. A maior crítica é que levaria os trabalhadores a se preocuparem apenas com o que está colocado pelos indicadores, abdicando de uma interpretação mais ampliada da própria atividade. Há uma compreensão comum de que as práticas avaliativas têm por objetivo produzir mudanças subjetivas, mas também produzem efeitos subjetivos não previstos. Quanto ao desenho desses efeitos de subjetivação, há largo espectro de pontos de vista, que vão desde o fomento a subjetivações comprometidas com a mudança permanente, ao constrangimento da subjetividade e à produção dos “eus calculáveis”. Acompanhando o pensamento de Foucault, podemos reconhecer tanto efeitos de submetimento, quanto efeitos de protagonismo no uso da avaliação. O segundo caso pode levar ao aperfeiçoamento autogerido dos processos de trabalho ou à criação de espaços estratégicos nas relações de poder.

Beyond Surveillance: How Do Markets and Algorithms 'Think'?

<p class="p1">This paper draws on Foucault's work to inspire and inform a conceptual investigation into the relationship between economic thinking, in particular concerning markets, and contemporary computing. This investigation takes the form of three intellectual probes. The first of these probes applies to the computer's capacity to lower transaction costs, the second proceeds through the framing of markets (and algorithms) as places of truth, and the third draws on Deleuze's reading of Foucault to inquire into the notion of order and ordering. Together, the three lines of inquiry attempt to outline an encounter between Foucault's thinking and computing that moves beyond the question of surveillance in favor of an emphasis on questions of epistemology.

LIFE: BIOGRAPHY AS CONFLICTUAL COHERENCE

In the early 1970s, when I was a graduate student, biography was considered “an unloved stepchild” of the historical discipline. The naive empiricism of its soup-to-nuts narratives seemed deaf to any theory that might call the biographer's craft into question. In 2009, the American Historical Review honored the genre of biography with a roundtable on its creative renewal. Oddly (and regrettably) there was no mention of the work of Jerrold Seigel in any of the roundtable essays, though he had published three innovative biographical works over the previous thirty years. Characterizing Seigel as a biographer by trade would, to be sure, seriously diminish the scope of his scholarship. But two of his seven books have been full biographies, and in two others a biographical approach has been central to his modus operandi. A leading figure in refashioning the genre, he has been quite conscious of the implications of that commitment. In 1987 he ended an article on Durkheim with a challenge: “our knowledge of the human world must be able to survive the recognition of its personal sources.” Three years later he concluded an article on “the personal roots of Foucault's thinking” with another provocation to recent preoccupations in the discipline: “the proclaimed death of the subject is not some newly discovered set of relations that produce the illusion of human will and intentions as residues of their silent operation, but the action of a subjectivity that will not speak its name.”

The Contemporary Dance Economy: Problems and Potentials in the Contemporary Neoliberal Moment

Michel Foucault suggests that ‘conduct’ is not only something we do, but something that is done to us, as well as a behaviour or practice that is an effect of other forms of conduct. How is the conduct of the dance field – in the different ways that Foucault is referring to it – affected by, and affecting neoliberalism? What is dance's role in the contemporary neoliberal moment? These are the questions I unpick in this article. I do so, first, by using Foucault's thinking on neoliberalism and the relationship between conduct, biopolitics, and neoliberal governmentality in order to illustrate how bodies of individuals and that of society are affected by the neoliberal economy. Wendy Brown's work on neoliberalism, which builds on Foucault's thinking, is interweaved in this discussion to allow me to address neoliberalism's function and effects in the contemporary moment. Second, I examine some of the problems of the contemporary dance economy as I, and other scholar-practitioners, have identified them, and address their relationship to neoliberalism, conduct, governmentality, and biopolitics – how they result from conducts suggested by neoliberalism or helping it do its work by becoming conducts of the field. I propose ways we might address them, suggesting that it is urgent that we do so if we are to advance the field and resist neoliberalism. For this, I use examples from conversations that recently took place in the field, such as at PAF London (2015), Sadler's Wells Summer University (2015), and Resilience: Articulating Dance Knowledges in the 21st Century and Post Dance conferences (2015). I argue that dance has an important role to play in changing today's world, but needs to come to terms with what I refer to as its ‘fears’, assert itself, and take action. In many ways, this article constitutes a critique of the contemporary dance economy; a critique that, by showing the relation of our conduct to conducts imposed by larger economies, aspires at articulating our role as central to both advancing the field and effecting social change.

Representation, archaeology and genealogy: Three "spatial metaphors" for inquiring into nursing phenomena withFoucauldian discourse analysis.

Foucault used the "Quadrilateral of Language" metaphor to describe how language functioned in what the French called the Classic Age, roughly 1650 to 1800, the period from Descartes to Kant. His purpose was to show how the functions of language changed radically with the arrival of the Modern Age (~1800). Foucault developed his archaeological methods to investigate the impact of this change, but later revised his methods to introduce genealogical strategies to conduct "histories of the present". Our purpose in this paper is to clarify Foucault's thinking about ruptures in the functions of language and to show their implications for analyzing nursing discourse. Our account provides an overview of radical changes in both the functions of language and in Foucault's analytical methods. Drawing on Foucault's "Quadrilateral of Language", his anthropological quadrilateral, and our spatialized conception of his genealogical methods, we critique advanced nursing practice (APN) discourse and invite others to inquire into nursing phenomena with spatialized thinking.

Räume der Existenz / Buchstaben des Begehrens: Foucault, Lacan und das Subjekt des Diskurses

Space and spatiality play a pivotal role in Michel Foucault's thinking that is also marked by a continuous ambivalence towards psychoanalysis. Both topics have their roots in his earliest and still not very well known writings. By examining those early texts aimed at the nascent structural psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, the author demonstrates that Foucault's philosophical preference for space is deeply entangled with his ambiguous relationship to psychoanalysis. Going beyond such reevaluation of Foucault's early works, the paper finally shows how this positioning influenced the later developments of his philosophy.

The Will to Enclose: Foucault's Archive in the Era of Cold War Big Data

This article explores Foucault's concept of the archive within the context of archival practices emanating during the early Cold War. This period witnessed the feverish acquisition of "big data" (cross-cultural surveys, databases, etc.) as well as the technological innovations to facilitate it (computer punch cards, cybernetic networks), in service of revealing key factors and drivers that would lead all so-called "backwards peoples" through universal phases of modernization. As Foucault's thinking on the archive was taking shape, the global behavioral sciences were compiling the archives that would produce compelling understanding of human's true nature, considering everything from competitiveness to creativity to economic outlook. How can Foucault's concerns about the archive be read within the context of the early Cold War and the globalizing behavioral sciences?

Prison liberation by association: Michel Foucault and the George Jackson Atlantic

ABSTRACTThis article documents how Michel Foucault used his status as a prestigiously chaired French intellectual to relay the speech of prisoners as part of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP) at the turn of the seventies. While discussions of the GIP's oppositional work have helped to explain some of the strategic resistances that the group mounted to combat the carceral system in France, one cannot overemphasize the ways in which relays and networks informed and animated the work of the GIP. This article develops the concept of “relay,” and demonstrates how relay networks were mobilized in GIP activism. Foucault and the GIP's prison activism is contrasted with Jean-Paul Sartre's status as a committed, universal intellectual, and particular attention is given to the transnational and group dynamic of the GIP's activist work. Of particular significance is the GIP's inclusion of the assassination of George Jackson and the Attica prison uprisings in its work on the French prison system. The purpose of this inclusion, this article argues, was to relay revolt. Considered in the context of the prison liberation struggle, Foucault's corpus – a compound of concepts like power, knowledge, discourse, subject, truth, and the universal and specific intellectual – is given to immediate and urgent application in an informational project whose operation provides pertinent lessons about the utility of Foucault's thinking on the role of the intellectual and the production of discourse. Central to the political practice of the GIP was its functioning as a group: it was not the work of a morally inspired, engaged intellectual, it was a product – and process – of its associations.

O cuidado de si e os perigos de uma ontologia ainda sem cabimento: o legado ético-espiritual de Foucault

O texto discute a noção de cuidado de si, no pensamento tardio de Foucault, desdobrando uma ontologia ainda sem cabimento em nossas reflexões pedagógicas: uma ontologia do si mesmo - uma noção-chave do pensamento ocidental que está na base de questões importantes como a relação entre o sujeito e a verdade. Discutimos os motivos pelos quais a tematização do si mesmo permanece como uma questão ausente dos estudos foucaultianos. Inicialmente apresentamos uma breve discussão da recepção recente do pensamento foucaultiano no campo educacional brasileiro, admitindo um novo movimento de apropriação das suas ideias, que, ao mesmo tempo, supera e amplifica as imagens cristalizadas de Foucault como um teórico do poder, um anti-humanista e um niilista nocivo à teorização educacional crítica. No segundo momento, analisamos sua analítica do cuidado, focalizando a noção de si mesmo, com o fim de extrair implicações para o debate pedagógico em torno da formação humana.

Illiberal or Incorrigible? Identifying Public Enemies in the Twenty-First Century

The UN Security Council is deadlocked over action to ease the humanitarian crisis in Syria. This paper suggests that one of the reasons lies in the foreign policy strategy of the Russian Federation. A pillar of Russia's strategy is to essentially contest essentially contestable liberal concepts such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law which it feels have been unjustly appropriated by Western nations in order to mask 'airstrike democracy'. The tendency of Western proponents of action on Syria to frame their proposals in the language of liberalism makes it more not less likely that they will be vetoed by Russia.On this basis, this paper offers an alternative strategy for proponents of action to ease the humanitarian crisis in Syria: Instead of branding the 'Syrian regime' an illiberal and authoritarian state, proponents should focus on whether the parties to the conflict have corrected their behaviour on the basis of obligations laid down by the UN Security Council. Following Michel Foucault's thinking about disciplinary power, these obligations should be phrased in very specific terms which should echo the advice and findings of UN bodies on the ground in Syria. Above all, progress in implementing the obligations must be demonstrable and measurable. The threshold for action would then refer to whether the measurements of progress taken demonstrated the parties to be willing to correct their behaviour. This is a threshold of incorrigibility that avoids the current Russian objections to action.

Exploring the Discourse on Communication Modality After Cochlear Implantation: A Foucauldian Analysis of Parents' Narratives

After pediatric cochlear implantation, parents have to make decisions concerning which communication modality the child and the child's family will use. The choice has to be made against a background of opposing views on communication modality in follow-up after pediatric cochlear implantation. The opposing views form a discourse that has been a core issue in the international body of literature for a long time. For hearing parents caught up in this ongoing controversy, the choice can be a difficult one. The study reported in this article explores the discourse on communication modality and is based on 27 written parental accounts on experiences with follow-up. From the perspective of Foucault's thinking, discourses exert knowledge and power. Drawing on Foucault, the study explores how the discourse on communication modality is constructed, how it operates, and how it governs thinking and acting. The Foucauldian analysis brings to the fore the complex nature of the discourse and states that follow-up, which is intended to be helpful for parents, may induce insecurity and frustration. The study brings into conversation a broader understanding of the discourse on communication modality and addresses a need for increased awareness on how the discourse governs thinking and acting in follow-up.

Michel Foucault e a Escola de Frankfurt: reflexões a partir da obra crítica do poder, de Axel Honneth

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar os elementos centrais da crítica realizada por Axel Honneth ao pensamento de Michel Foucault, em Crítica do Poder, articulando-a com sua análise da obra do chamado "círculo interno" da Escola de Frankfurt, principalmente Adorno e Horkheimer. Dessa maneira, entende-se que Honneth opera uma aproximação do pensamento foucaultiano à tradição crítica frankfurtiana, com ênfase em deficiências comuns que apontam para uma filiação entre os autores e, ao mesmo tempo, para sua insuficiência na análise da sociedade contemporânea. Tal leitura, contudo, em que pese sua inovação em pôr lado a lado Foucault e Habermas enquanto desenvolvimentos rivais da Teoria Crítica, é limitada tanto cronologicamente, por não levar em consideração a reorientação realizada por Foucault, a partir de 1978, quanto por identificar problematicamente as noções de poder e dominação. Essa limitação não inviabiliza, entretanto, manter o gesto de convergência entre o pensamento foucaultiano e a Escola de Frankfurt, pensando-o através de uma via positiva, que não se restrinja às limitações das suas ferramentas críticas, mas que, ao contrário, ao focalizar a radicalidade de tal crítica, torne possível destacar a sua atualidade.

Escola e sociedade de consumidores: um estudo com crianças "catadoras"

O artigo apresenta resultados de uma pesquisa cujo objetivo foi analisar os significados atribuídos à "catação" de resíduos sólidos recicláveis por um grupo de alunos de uma escola municipal de São Leopoldo que tinham sua existência vinculada a essa atividade. O material de pesquisa foi composto por entrevistas, feitas com oito crianças, desencadeadas por seus desenhos e registros em diário de campo. O estudo tem como referencial teórico o pensamento de Michel Foucault, as ideias do "Segundo" Wittgenstein e a obra de Zygmunt Bauman. A análise possibilitou inferir que aquelas crianças: a) participavam da catação, sobretudo, porque desejavam consumir, estando integrados à sociedade de consumo via uma "inclusão diferenciada"; e b) praticavam jogos de linguagem matemáticos que possuíam especificidades, mesmo que guardassem semelhanças de família com aqueles que constituem a matemática escolar.

‘Pleasure has no passport’: re-visiting the potential of pleasure in sexuality education

The idea that pleasure might form a part of sexuality education is no longer a ‘new’ idea in the field of sexuality studies. In this paper we examine how originally conceived notions of pleasure have been ‘put to work’ and theoretically ‘taken up’ in relation to sexuality and education. It is our contention that because of the nature of discourse and varying cultural and political contexts, pleasure has been operationalised in ways we did not intend or foresee. Throughout this discussion we seek to discern the discursive limits of visions of pleasure to illuminate their normalising potential. Drawing on Foucault's thoughts about pleasure as having ‘no passport’ and queer theoretical understandings of this concept, we argue for a re-conceptualisation of the potential of pleasure in sexuality education. In particular we identify the need for wedging open spaces for the possibility of ethical pleasures, in forms that are not heteronormatively pre-conceived or mandatory.

Foucault, Philosophy, and Literature

This article focuses on Foucault's “archeological” books: Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things. It addresses two issues in particular: first, Foucault's criticism of modern philosophical and scientific knowledge about man, showing how this knowledge is based on Nietzsche's criticism of humanism in modernity; second, Foucault's thoughts about modern literary language, contending that it is an affirmative counterpoint to the historic-philosophical analyses of knowledge about man he carried out during this archeological phase. In addition, the objective is to situate Foucault's views on literature during this period of genealogies of power and subjectivity.

Machiavelli contra governmentality

Although Machiavelli would appear to be only a minor figure in Foucault's genealogy of modernity, this article examines his 1977–1978 lectures at the College de France and argues that the author of The Prince plays a pivotal role in the development of ‘governmental reason’ and its critique. These lectures indicate how The Prince serves as the negative touchstone for the emergence of an extensive and evolving discourse on government, confirming that Machiavelli was more than a passing interest for Foucault. I consider two ‘Anti-Machiavellian’ episodes in Foucault's genealogy as especially significant: the sixteenth-century discourses of the state and the eighteenth-century discourses of political economy. These moments are significant both in showing how the idea of government hinges on a repudiation of the political lessons of The Prince and in establishing the link between governmentality and another term so important for Foucault's thinking in this period – biopower. Finally, I show how the art of critique – or, what Foucault describes as ‘the art of not being governed quite so much’ – finds a timely resource in the (still live) figure of Machiavelli.

The Identity Game: Michel Foucault's Discourse-Mediated Identity as an Effective Tool for Achieving a Narrative-Based Ethic

This article examines in hermeneutic fashion the philosophy of Michel Foucault and isolates an identity matrix that can assist humans in navigating the often numerous and conflicting narratives facing us in the 21 st century and empower us to move toward a more narrative-based ethic that is beneficial to multiple stakeholders. Of particular interest is Foucault's assertion that our identities are not fixed in a traditional sense but mediated by the many rich, dialogical discourses we encounter each day. This identity scheme is suggested in much of Foucault's philosophy, particularly in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, and its application to ethics has never been more important. As highly developed countries, particularly the United States, become more egocentric, ethical decision-making too often is defined via an emotivistic framework. Foucault's thoughts on identity can enlighten us to the power each person has in determining and taking ethical action that can positively inform what this article terms a narrative-based ethic. This portion of the article is informed by philosopher Walter R. Fisher, who sees humans as storytellers who view the world based on an awareness of what Fisher terms narrative probability - or what constitutes a coherent story - and their constant habit of testing that story's narrative fidelity, whether the experience rings true with other stories they know to be true in their lives.

Exploring the Foucauldian interpretation of power and subject in organizations

AbstractThis paper assesses the recent contribution of Michel Foucault to the study of power and subject in organizations. First, we theoretically examine Foucault's thinking by dividing his works into archaeological, genealogical and aesthetic/ethical phases. We then conduct a review of 113 international journal articles from between the years 2000 and 2009. We do this in order to obtain an overview of the phases of Foucault's thinking that are prevalent in recent organization studies. We find that recent academic studies drawing on Foucault are increasingly leaning towards Foucault's writings on governmentality, as well as on his genealogical works, which have sustained their popularity. Reflecting the growing interest in governmentality and genealogy, we end by pointing out some avenues for future research.

Exploring the Foucauldian interpretation of power and subject in organizations

This paper assesses the recent contribution of Michel Foucault to the study of power and subject in organizations. First, we theoretically examine Foucault's thinking by dividing his works into archaeological, genealogical and aesthetic/ethical phases. We then conduct a review of 113 international journal articles from between the years 2000 and 2009. We do this in order to obtain an overview of the phases of Foucault's thinking that are prevalent in recent organization studies. We find that recent academic studies drawing on Foucault are increasingly leaning towards Foucault's writings on governmentality, as well as on his genealogical works, which have sustained their popularity. Reflecting the growing interest in governmentality and genealogy, we end by pointing out some avenues for future research.