Foucault News

Bannikov, K.V., Radina, N.K. Biopolitical media discourse in France in the COVID-19 pandemics (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

8 June 2024

Bannikov, K.V., Radina, N.K.
Biopolitical media discourse in France in the COVID-19 pandemics
(2023) RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism, 28 (3), pp. 553-565.

DOI: 10.22363/2312-9220-2023-28-3-553-565

Abstract
The publication activities of the French media during the COVID-19 pandemic in a biopolitical way are analyzed. The theoretical frame of the study is set by Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, as well as the propaganda model of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. To collect and analyze empirical data, the methods of computational linguistics and the method of identifying contextual ideologemes were applied. The research materials were the texts of independent media (Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Parisien), identified using the keywords “pandemic” and “COVID-19” during the four waves of the pandemic (from January 2020 to March 2022). A total of 29,584 Le Figaro articles, 22,446 Le Monde articles, and 6,402 Le Parisien articles were used in the research. The purpose of the research is to analyze the strategies for including the French media in the biopolitical practices of propaganda and public education on the example of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result of the research, it turned out that the studied media during the pandemic were integrated both into general information campaigns and into biopolitical education and propaganda campaigns. Two scenarios for organizing media discourse during the pandemic of COVID-19 were identified, determined by target groups and media tasks. The first scenario actively involves educational and propaganda tools to promote state biopolitical goals. The second scenario integrates informing readers about the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures used by the authorities for biopolitical control, with the presentation of the hierarchies of responsible persons/ institutions (within the state biopolitics). It is concluded that the participation of French independent media in the active promotion of biopolitical programs indicates their close connection with the actors and subjects of biopolitics – the state or business representatives. Copyright by the Author(s), 2023.

Author Keywords
biopolitics; ideologeme; Le Figaro; Le Monde; Le Parisien; propaganda

Martin Stokes, Music and Citizenship (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 June 2024

Martin Stokes, Music and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, 2023

Critical citizenship practices and the language of today’s populism have never been more sharply opposed. Today’s insistent efforts to anchor citizenship narratives in national belonging now confront a variety of ‘flexible’ or ‘differentiated’ citizenships – plural, performative, and decentered practices of rights claiming mutually defining ‘the political’, its subjects, and its others on a variety of scales. They confront, too, critiques of citizenship in totalitarian or neoliberal governmentality that derive from Foucault, Agamben, and Arendt and have become pressing today in proliferating states of emergency and exception and the growing ranks of non-citizens. How should these debates be configured now? And what place does music have in them?

In Music and Citizenship, author Martin Stokes argues that music has for a long time been entangled with debates about citizenship and citizenly identities, though for various reasons this entanglement has been insufficiently recognized. Citizenship and citizenly identity debates, for their part, have important implications for the way we think about music in relation to politics, identity, and scholarly practice. Stokes’s particular claim is that ethnomusicology has for too long configured relationships between music, society, and reflective and critical practice in terms of identity paradigms. The rejection of these identity paradigms in recent years has taken the form of a post- or anti-humanism that is equally problematic. This book challenges the conventional understanding of citizenship in terms of nationalism and national identity though the examination of case studies from across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

In this way, this volume departs from an earlier ethnomusicology preoccupied with belonging and cultural participation in the nation-state. Citizenship-the fantasy, according to some definitions, of political community without outsiders-suggests, in this book, a different space in which one might configure such relations, one more satisfactorily, and energetically, oriented to questions about musical ecology, sustainability, democracy, and inclusivity.

Offers the first comprehensive review of the relationship between citizenship and ethnomusicology
Presents a new understanding of music and politics in the context of today’s debates about political belonging in an age of authoritarianism, failed states, and climate emergency
Features case studies based on new research of music and political crises in Egypt, Turkey, and United Kingdom

Paul Allen Miller (ed), Truth in the Late Foucault Antiquity, Sexuality, and Psychoanalysis (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

3 June 2024

Truth in the Late Foucault. Antiquity, Sexuality, and Psychoanalysis
Paul Allen Miller (Anthology Editor), Bloomsbury, 2024

Description

The first full treatment of truth as a core philosophical concept in the late Foucault, this volume examines his work on the ancient world and the early church. Each essay features a deep examination as to how the topics of truth and sexuality intersect with and focus on Foucault’s engagement with ancient philosophy and thought. Truth in the Late Foucault offers readings on Plato, Artemidorus, Cicero, Sophocles and the Stoics, and pays close attention to Cassian, Paulinus of Nola, and early Christian practices of confession.

With the publication of the long-awaited volume 4 of the History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh, the shape of the final Foucault is now brought into stark relief. As well as looking at ancient thought, the contributors explore Foucault’s work in relation to philosophers such as Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Descartes. Foucault’s long-running and often contentious dialogue with psychoanalysis, on the relation between truth and the subject, is also examined. Each essay not only makes an important statement, but also is part of an interconnected arc of topics and understanding, covering both the ancient and modern periods. This book reveals that Foucault’s concern with antiquity raises questions deeply pertinent to the present moment.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Truth, Dreams, and Psychoanalysis in the Late Foucault, Paul Allen Miller (University of South Carolina, USA)

1. On Dreams, Truth, and the Aesthetics of Existence, Edward McGushin (Stonehill College, USA)

2. Foucault in the Cave with Gadamer: On Truth, Understanding, and Experience, Arash Shokrisarari (Cornell University, USA)

3. Nothing to Do with the Truth? New Reflections on Foucault’s Reading of Artemidorus, Sandra Boehringer (University of Strasbourg, France)

4. To Dream the Impossible Dream: Parrhesia and Rhetoric, (De Oratore 3), Paul Allen Miller (University of South Carolina, USA)

5. From True Confessions to True Discourse in the Late Foucault, Niki Kasumi Clements (Rice University, USA)

6. Confessing in Communities: The Genealogical Exclusion of Joy from Late Antique Christianity, Alex Dressler (University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA)

7. Artemidorus as Symptom: Freud and Foucault, Richard H. Armstrong (University of Houston, USA)

8. The Desiring Subject Seeks Pleasure in History: Li Yinhe’s Sadomasochistic Fictions and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leihua Weng (Kalamazoo College, USA)

9. Foucault’s Herculine Barbin: A Step in the Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, Laurie Laufer (Université de Paris, France)

10. The Foucault Effect: Queer Theory and Its Discontents, David Greven (University of South Carolina, USA)

Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Cours, conférences et travaux (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 June 2024

Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Cours, conférences et travaux, EHSS Gallimard Seuil, 2024
Édition établie, sous la responsabilité de François Ewald, par Bernard E. Harcourt

« Nietzsche et Heidegger, ça a été le choc philosophique ! Mais je n’ai jamais rien écrit sur Heidegger et je n’ai écrit sur Nietzsche qu’un tout petit article ; ce sont pourtant les deux auteurs que j’ai le plus lus », dira Michel Foucault à la fin de sa vie. Puis, il précise : « Je crois que c’est important d’avoir un petit nombre d’auteurs avec lesquels on pense, avec lesquels on travaille, mais sur lesquels on n’écrit pas. »

Les Cours, conférences et travaux sont des témoignages inédits du « travail » de Foucault avec Nietzsche. Ces textes datent des deux grandes périodes de sa vie intellectuelle : d’abord le début des années 1950, quand il s’intéresse à Hegel et à la phénoménologie, ainsi qu’au marxisme. Le jeune Foucault expérimente alors de nouvelles approches pour développer une philosophie fondée sur l’expérience et l’analyse du discours. Ensuite, après la publication des Mots et les Choses en 1966, lorsque Foucault revient avec élan à Nietzsche pour élaborer sa propre méthode généalogique, relançant ainsi son projet d’une histoire de la vérité et du dire vrai.

C’est à travers la confrontation avec Nietzsche que Foucault aura construit sa propre manière de philosopher. Ces Cours, conférences et travaux sont indispensables pour comprendre comment Foucault a lu Nietzsche, en particulier au moment décisif où il le découvre. Ils sont essentiels pour saisir le Nietzsche de Foucault.

Roberto Esposito: “Oltre la biopolítica” / “Beyond Biopolitics” (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 June 2024

Symposium Global Foucault: Divergences and Agreements in Italian Thought

7 de Junho 2024 / 7th June 2024
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian | Auditorium 3
Simpósio Temático com Roberto Esposito

16h: Roberto Esposito: “Oltre la biopolítica” / “Beyond Biopolitics”
Introduz e modera / Introduction and moderation by: Gianfranco Ferraro (CEG – Universidade Aberta de Lisboa)

Comentário crítico / critical commentary by: Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins (Administrador Executivo da Fundação Gulbenkian / Executive Trustee of the Gulbenkian Foundation)

GLOBAL FOUCAULT: Divergences and Agreements in Italian Thought (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

2 June 2024

GLOBAL FOUCAULT Divergences and Agreements in Italian Thought

Lisbon, 6-7 June 2024 (in person & online)

Orgs.: Gianfranco FERRARO, Greg BIRD, Giovanbattista TUSA

Universidade Aberta, Centro de Estudos Globais – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Zoom: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/91692099038

More info: https://foucault40.info/lisboa | https://globalfoucault.wordpress.com/
Contact: globalfoucault@gmail.com

n the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Foucault’s death, the Differenças italianas Research Group of the Open University of Lisbon will host a symposium on the relationship between Foucault and Italian Thought. It is undisputed that Foucault had a decisive impact on Italian Thought, but the central role of Italian Thought in the worldwide reception of Foucault since his death has not been sufficiently acknowledged. Books by prominent Italian philosophers such as Homo Sacer, Technologies of Gender, Empire, and Bíos have highlighted certain currents in Foucault’s scholarship and shaped its interpretation worldwide. For example, where would biopolitical Thought, gender theory, or dispositif theory be today without Italian interlocutors?

Our event invites contemporary Italian thinkers to reflect on the role Italian Thought has played not only in the emergence of new Foucauldian scholarship, but also in shaping the global reception of his scholarship. Our participants will be selected from the Italian Thought Network. We ask our participants to go beyond the typical scholarly exegetical accounts of how a particular theorist has interpreted Foucault. Instead, we ask our participants to explore how Italian Theory has produced new global lines of Foucauldian scholarship. What is the impact of contemporary Italian philosophy on the global reception of Foucault?

PROGRAMME

6 de Junho 2024 / 6 June 2024
Salão Nobre da Universidade Aberta

9h30: Acolhimento institucional do Centro de Estudos Globais e da Universidade Aberta / Institutional welcome from the Center for Global Studies and the Open University: Gianfranco Ferraro

Saudações do Diretor do Instituto italiano de Cultura / Greetings from the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute: dr. Stefano Scaramuzzino

Saudações do co-coordenador do Laboratório “Diferenças italianas” do CEG / Greetings from the co-coordinator of the “Italian Differences” Laboratory of the CEG: Gabriele De Angelis
Abertura oficial do Colóquio da parte do comité organizativo / Official opening of the Colloquium by the organizing committee: Gianfranco Ferraro, Greg Bird e Giovanbattista Tusa

9h50 – 11h50: Biopolítica e pensamento italiano / Biopolitics and Italian Thought
Alfonso Galindo Hervás, Biopolitica. Istituzione. Variazioni foucaultiane di Roberto Esposito / Biopolitics. Institution. Foucaultian Variations by Roberto Esposito

Elettra Stimilli, Biopolitica e pensiero italiano / Biopolitics and Italian Thought

Ernani Chaves, Pasolini, pensador da biopolitica / Pasolini, thinker of Biopolitics

Chair: Marta Faustino

11h50: Coffee break

12h00 – 13h30: À volta do Foucault italiano / About the Italian Foucault

Daniela Calabrò, Le “vite infami” e le “attenzioni del potere”. Il rapporto tra politica e vita in Foucault ed Esposito / The “infamous lives” and the “attentions of power”. The relationship between politics and life in Foucault and Esposito

Sebastián Rodriguez Cardenas, El otro, el mismo: Foucault y Agamben entre dispositif y dispositivo / The other, the same: Foucault and Agamben between dispositif and dispositivo

Chair: Gabriele De Angelis

15h30 – 17h00: Polaridades foucaultianas / Foucauldian polarities

Costanza Serratore, Nietzsche in Foucault. La bipolarità della biopolitica nella ricezione italiana / Nietzsche in Foucault. The bipolarity of biopolitics in Italian reception

Oswaldo Giacoia jr., Exceptio e Bando: Alcance e Limites da Biopolítica / Exceptio and Bando: Scope and Limits of Biopolitics

Chair: Irene Viparelli

7 de Junho 2024 / 7 June 2024
Salão Nobre da Universidade Aberta

9h30 – 11h30: Arqueologias foucaultianas / Foucauldian Archaeologies
Sajjad Lohi, Foucault, l’Iran, l’Italia /Foucault, Iran, Italy

Giulio Goria, The Atlas of Knowledge: Archaeology from an Italian Debate at the End of the Sixties

Gianfranco Ferraro, Conversioni italiane: per un’archeologia del “pensiero vivente” / Italian conversions: Towards an archaeology of the “living Thought”

Chair: Enrica Lisciani Petrini

11h30: Coffee break

11h30 – 13h30: Pensamento dispositivo / Dispositive Thought
Dario Gentili, Governamentalità socialista: sviluppi e differenze nell’Italian Thought a partire da uno spunto di Foucault / Socialist governmentality: developments and differences in Italian Thought starting from Foucault’s remark

Giovanbattista Tusa, I mostri di Foucault. Riflessioni sul dispositif / Foucault’s monsters. Reflections on the dispositif

Greg Bird, What is a dispositif, according to Esposito?
Chair: Arianna Mencaroni

7 de Junho 2024 / 7th June 2024
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian | Auditorium 3
Simpósio Temático com Roberto Esposito

16h: Roberto Esposito: “Oltre la biopolítica” / “Beyond he Biopolitics”
Introduz e modera / Introduction and moderation by: Gianfranco Ferraro (CEG – Universidade Aberta de Lisboa)

Comentário crítico / critical commentary by: Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins (Administrador Executivo da Fundação Gulbenkian / Executive Trustee of the Gulbenkian Foundation)

Paul Muldoon, The Penitent State Exposure, Mourning and the Biopolitics of National Healing (2023)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

2 June 2024

Paul Muldoon, The Penitent State Exposure, Mourning and the Biopolitics of National Healing, Oxford University Press, 2023

This book asks a deceptively simple question: what are states actually doing when they do penance for past injustices? Why are these penitential gestures – especially the gesture of apology – becoming so ubiquitous and what implications do they carry for the way power is exercised? Drawing on the work of Schmitt, Foucault and Agamben, the book argues that there is more at stake in sovereign acts of repentance and redress than either the recognition of the victims or the legitimacy of the state. Driven, it suggests, by an interest in ‘healing’, such acts testify to a new biopolitical raison d’état in which the management of trauma emerges as a critical expression of attempts to regulate the life of the population. The Penitent State seeks to show that the key issue created by the ‘age of apology’ is not whether sovereign acts of repentance and redress are sincere or insincere, but whether the political measures licensed in the name of healing deserve to be regarded as either restorative or just.

Challenges conventional interpretations of sovereign acts of repentance and redress as ethical gestures
Situates the ‘age of apology’ within a broader societal movement towards the biopolitical regulation of psychic trauma
Provides a forensic examination of the way three of the key institutions of restorative justice – public memorials, political apologies, truth commissions – function as instruments of trauma management and national healing
Explores the political institution of Greek tragedy as an alternative, more critical, vehicle for social catharsis and political truth telling

Hofmeyr, A.B. A critical consideration of Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 May 2024

Hofmeyr, A.B.
A critical consideration of Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality
(2024) Verbum et Ecclesia, 45 (1), art. no. a2830, .

DOI: 10.4102/ve.v45i1.2830

Abstract
The background of this research is the status and significance of an ethics of care of the self in the history of morality. I followed the following methodology: I attempted to come to nuanced, critical understanding of the Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality. In the ‘Ancients’, Foucault uncovered an ‘ethics-oriented’ as opposed to a ‘code-oriented’ morality in which the emphasis shifted to how an individual was supposed to constitute himself as an ethical subject of his own action without denying the importance of either the moral code or the actual behaviour of people. The main question was whether care of the self-sufficiently regulated an individual’s conduct towards others to prevent the self from lapsing into narcissism, substituting a generous responsiveness towards the other for a means-end rationale. I put this line of critique to test by confronting Foucault’s care of the self with Levinas’s primordial responsibility towards the other and put forward a case for the indispensability of aesthetics for ethics. In conclusion, I defended the claim that care of the self does indeed foster other responsiveness. Intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications: Foucault’s ethics, understood as an ‘aesthetics of existence’ has profound intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications, as it challenges traditional ethical normative ethical theories and engages with various fields of philosophy, social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinary fields greatly influenced by Foucault’s ethics include: psychology, literary, cultural, gender and sexuality studies, medical ethics, anthropology and history, among others. © 2024. The Author. Licensee: AOSIS.

Author Keywords
aesthetics of existence; care of the self; ethics; Foucault; Levinas; morality; responsibility for the other

Foucault et le christianisme | Au Collège des Bernardins (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 May 2024

Carlo, Andrea di, The Problem of Toleration: Tacitus, Foucault and Governmentality (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 May 2024

Carlo, Andrea di. “The Problem of Toleration: Tacitus, Foucault and Governmentality.” History of European Ideas, (2024), 1–16.
doi:10.1080/01916599.2024.2346031

ABSTRACT
This article proposes a novel interpretation of Montaigne’s and Bayle’s comments on Tacitus. My contention is that their Tacitism is a Foucauldian discourse on toleration. Toleration is an example of governmentality, a strategy to govern a population, not a genuine call for religious diversity. This novel reading applies to Michel de Montaigne’s Essays and Pierre Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet and his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Montaigne’s essay On the Useful and the Honourable, he shows that there is a difference between his public and private persona. The author discusses ideas of toleration in a Tacitist style. This happens in his essay Something Lacking in Our Civil Administrations, where the author laments the death of Sebastian Castalio and, indirectly, he supports his commitment to religious pluralism. As I will show, Montaigne embraces a Gallican belief system, which is more conciliatory. Bayle a century later, discusses the same issues. In his Various Thoughts, he makes a case for toleration as a tool to manage a population. Ultimately, it will be clear how this plea for toleration is not a product of the Enlightenment, but it is rather a discourse to achieve societal compliance.

KEYWORDS:
Tacitus Tacitism Montaigne Bayle Foucault