In this essay, I make the case for choosing to examine small subsets of Big Data datasets—making big data small. Big Data allows us to produce summaries of human behavior at a scale never before possible. But in the push to produce these summaries, we risk losing sight of a secondary but equally important advantage of Big Data—the plentiful representation of minorities. Women, minorities and statistical outliers have historically been omitted from the scientific record, with problematic consequences. Big Data affords (...) the opportunity to remedy those omissions. However, to do so, Big Data researchers must choose to examine very small subsets of otherwise large datasets. I encourage researchers to embrace an ethical, empirical and epistemological stance on Big Data that includes minorities and outliers as reference categories, rather than the exceptions to statistical norms. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s formative years included the study not only of history and philosophy but also of psychology: two years after he took license in philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1948, he took another in psychology, and then obtained, in 1952, a Diplôme de Psycho Pathologie . From his earliest years at the Ecole Normale Superieur he had taken courses on general and social psychology with one of most influential psychologists of the time, Daniel Lagache, who was attempting to integrate (...) psychoanalysis with clinical methods.(Eribon 1991, 42) Foucault’s studies included experimentation and clinical instruction in which patients were presented in an amphitheatre just as in the days of Charcot. For several years after he had received his Diplôme, Foucault continued research in psychopathology, observing practices in mental hospitals, reportedly sometimes volunteering in experiments himself. He purchased the material required to administer Roschach tests, subjecting numerous friends to the inkblots, and became, when it was founded, the honorary president of the French Rorschach organization. Foucault’s first books were on the topic of the psychological characterization of madness and the development of clinical medicine, and his last books addressed the development of psychological norms within the establishment of modern prisons as well as within an increasingly scientific approach to sex. Thus, he worked at the intersections of philosophy and psychology throughout his life. Nonetheless, Foucault reported feeling an intense aversion to psychology no less than to philosophy.(Sheridan 1980, 5) Foucault’s oeuvre is almost exclusively focused on particular knowledges in the human sciences, especially those aspects which pertained to psychological theories of human behavior, capacity, and normative functioning. His historical approach to these, and his emphasis on the role of discourse, is readily reminiscent of Thomas Kuhn’s similarly historical approach to scientific method with its emphasis on the role of paradigms and the untranslatability of paradigm dependent objects.. (shrink)

Addressing central questions in the debate about Foucault's usefulness for politics, including his rejection of universal norms, his conception of power and power-knowledge, his seemingly contradictory position on subjectivity and his ...

The provocative essays in this volume respond to Foucault's call to question what is regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating, while they ...

In January 1975, Michel Foucault contemplated the nature and formation of what in subsequent years he would come to know as governmentality. For Foucault, plague marks the rise of the invention of positive technologies of power, where these relations center around inclusion, multiplication, and security, rather than exclusion, negation, and rejection. In a point that might at first seem ancillary to his central argument, Foucault comments on stylized works about plague, such as those, according to the lecture (...) series’ editors, exemplified by Albert Camus. In footnote fifteen of the January 15, 1975 lecture, in reference to what Foucault deemed the “literary dream of” plagues, the editors list Camus’ 1947 novel La Peste, among other works, as representative of what Foucault described as “a kind of orgiastic dream in which plague is the moment when individuals come apart and when the law is forgotten.”. This article places Camus’ novel and other works in conversation with Foucault on governmentality, subjectivation, and truth to demonstrate the ways in which individualism itself can be viewed biopolitically. In so doing, it offers an urgent intervention that speaks powerfully to and is exemplified by the current global pandemic. Plague serves both as this literary dream and as a discursive mechanism engaged simultaneously with regimes of truth and the individuals constructing them. By pairing Foucault’s historical understanding of the invention of positive technologies of power with Camus’ treatment of “the absurd” in and out of the plague context, one uncovers the interrelation of governmentality, subjectivation, and truth. (shrink)

I offer a major reassessment of Foucault’s philosophico-historical account of the basic problems of modernity. I revise our understanding of Foucault by countering the influential misinterpretations proffered by his European interlocutors such as Habermas and Derrida. Central to Foucault’s account of modernity was his work on two crucial concept pairs: freedom/power and reason/madness. I argue against the view of Habermas and Derrida that Foucault understood modern power and reason as straightforwardly opposed to modern freedom and madness. (...) I show that Foucault held a much more complex view of these pairs, a view encapsulated in his term ‘reciprocal incompatibility’. By revising our interpretation of Foucault’s work on modernity in this way, we open the way to much more effective deployments of his critical apparatus. (shrink)

Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to Power/Knowledge.

This book is the first to provide a sustained, coherent analysis of Foucault's work as a whole. To demonstrate the sense in which Foucault's work is beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, the authors unfold a careful, analytical exposition of his oeuvre. They argue that during the of Foucault's work became a sustained and largely successful effort to develop a new method - "interpretative analytics" - capable of explaining both the logic of structuralism's claim to be an objective science (...) and the apparent validity of the hermeneutical counterclaim that the human sciences can proceed only by understanding the deepest meaning of the subject and his tradition. (shrink)

Tracking the development of Foucault's key concepts Lemke offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of Michel Foucault's work on power and government from 1970 until his death in 1984. He convincingly argues, using material that has only partly been translated into English, that Foucault's concern with ethics and forms of subjectivation is always already integrated into his political concerns and his analytics of power. The book also shows how the concept of government was taken up in (...) different lines of research in France before it gave rise to "governmentality studies" in the Anglophone world. A Critique of Political Reason provides a clear and well-structured exposition that is theoretically challenging but also accessible for a wider audience. Thus, the book can beread both as an original examination of Foucault's concept of government and as a general introduction to his "genealogy of power". (shrink)

Le philosophe, collègue et ami de Michel Foucault, fait le portrait de ce dernier et présente les grands thèmes de sa pensée philosophique et politique.

Examines the philosophical foundations of Foucault's writings and discusses his views on knowledge, punishment, power, and subjectivation.

Des premiers rites baptismaux à la confession moderne, les références au christianisme sont constantes dans l'œuvre de Michel Foucault. Cette constance s'inscrit dans un questionnement philosophique plus large sur notre actualité : comprendre le rapport que nous avons aujourd'hui à nous-mêmes demande de s'interroger sur les actes de vérité que l'Occident a instaurés depuis les premiers siècles chrétiens. Que faut-il dire et manifester de soi pour être transformé dans son être, pardonné, sauvé, jugé ou guéri)? Ce livre propose une (...) étude critique de l'ensemble des lectures chrétiennes de Foucault, avec une attention particulière portée au cours Du gouvernement des vivants. Ni chronologique ni thématique, le parcours suivi espère retrouver la logique d'un travail à la fois philosophique et historique : quand et comment le christianisme a-t-il été constitué par Foucault en objet de recherche, avec quelles pratiques de lecture et quelles conséquences sur l'interprétation)? (shrink)

This paper interrogates the status of the Malthusian couple and the policing and government of reproduction in the first volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality, Volume I ( HS1), and the associated Collège de France lectures. Presented by Foucault as one of the four ‘strategic ensembles’ of the 18th century through which knowledge and power became centered on sex, what Foucault calls the socialization of procreative sexuality ( HS1: 104) also constitutes a largely invisible hinge between the (...) trajectories in HS1: biopolitics (vector of governmentality, management, administration and intensification of life) and sex (vector through which the repressive hypothesis is rejected). Particularly because it is one of the least discussed figures in Foucauldian commentary, my argument is that a reading of HS1 through the prism of its Malthusian couple produces unexpected results. A text that can be interpreted from the perspective of (a) its debate with psychoanalysis, or (b) its potential debate with those for whom sexual rights belong to a sexual subject, or (c) its status as a watershed text for biopolitical theory, enters into a fourth dialogue with the history of reproduction as politicized and biopoliticized, a problematic to date taken up most directly by Ann Stoler in Race and the Education of Desire. This allows for a revisiting of the complex relationship between the vectors of ‘sex’ and ‘life’ in HS1. Although reproductive sex, and reproductive life, are not the themes of the strongest importance in HS1, they serve as the invisible hinge at the interface of biopolitics and sex in HS1. Considering the status of reproductive life from this perspective becomes a departure point for reconsidering the reproductive woman, in her historical role as part of the problematized Malthusian couple and at the intersection of biopolitics and thanatopolitics. (shrink)

This is the best overview of Foucault's work to date. A principal architect of poststructuralism, Michel Foucault reshaped the varied disciplines of history, philosophy, literary theory, and social science. David Shumway has provided, for the nonspecialist, a systematic analysis of the works of Foucault that is both thorough and accessible. Shumway connects Foucault's various conceptual and linguistic techniques to the basic critical strategies and purpose of his philosophy.

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s critical project. It is well known that Foucault’s genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the agent’s freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states (...) that critique is tasked with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault’s critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above-mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth-telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth-telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth-telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique’s methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re-evaluating Foucault’s critical project as a whole. By showing that truth-telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault’s critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. (shrink)

Who are we today? That deceptively simple question continued to be asked by the French historian and philosopher, Michel Foucault, who for the last three decades has had a profound influence on English-speaking scholars in the humanities and social sciences.; This text is designed for undergraduates and others who feel in need of some assistance when coming to grips with Foucault's voluminous and complex writings. Instead of dealing with them chronologically, however, this book concentrates on some of their (...) central concepts, primarily Foucault's rethinking of the categories of "discourse", "power", and " the subject".; Foucault's writings contribute collectively to what he himself calls "an ontology of the present". His historical research was always geared towards showing how things could have been and still could be otherwise. This is especially the case with respect to the production of human subjects. (shrink)

The second edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability considers the continued relevance of Foucault to disability studies, as well as the growing significance of disability studies to understandings of Foucault. A decade ago, this international collection provocatively responded to Foucault’s call to question what is regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating. The book’s contributors draw on Foucault to scrutinize a range of widely endorsed practices and ideas surrounding disability, including rehabilitation, community care, (...) impairment, normality and abnormality, inclusion, prevention, accommodation, and special education. In this revised and expanded edition, four new essays extend and elaborate the lines of inquiry by problematizing (to use Foucault’s term) the epistemological, political, and ethical character of the supercrip, the racialized war on autism, the performativity of intellectual disability, and the potent mixture of neoliberalism and biopolitics in the context of physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Michel Foucault gilt als einer der wichtigsten Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Marita Rainsborough untersucht die aktuelle Relevanz seiner Philosophie unter Bezug auf die post- und dekolonialen Theorien von Mbembe, Bhabha und Mignolo im globalen Kontext. Dabei bezieht sie auch die Philosophie von Judith Butler und Byung-Chul Han sowie den Neuen Realismus in ihre kritische Lektüre mit ein und macht die bislang in der Rezeption vernachlässigten philosophischen Bezüge zu Bloch und Kant stark. Mit der Betrachtung des Subjekts zwischen Wissen, Macht, (...) Ethik und Ästhetik ergeben sich so eine Gesamtschau des Foucault'schen Werkes sowie neue Aspekte für die philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit diesem französischen Klassiker. (shrink)

With special emphasis on Foucault's many recently published lecture series this book provides an updated, comprehensive presentation of his most important diagnoses, his many ground-breaking analytical concepts as well as a systematic account of his unique conception of philosophy.

This study takes up the discussion held by Philippe Sabot in Foucault, Sade and the Enlightenment when it came the Marquis de Sade's work uses in studies conducted by Michel Foucault from Madness and Civilization to The Will to Knowledge. What interests us know of this relationship? This is the main question that guided our study.

"Foucault: A Critical Introduction offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. Unlike most books on Foucault, this book offers an assessment of all Foucault's work, including his final writings on governmentality and the self. McNay argues that the later work initiates an important shift in his intellectual concerns which alters any retrospective reading of his writings as a whole." "Throughout, McNay is concerned to assess the normative (...) and political implications of Foucault's social criticism. She goes beyond the level of many commentators to look at the values from which Foucault's work springs, and reveals the implicit assumptions underlying his social critique. McNay also discusses Foucault's position in the modernity/postmodernity debate, his own ambivalence toward Enlightenment thought and his place in recent developments in feminist and cultural theory. The result is an invaluable book which clearly outlines the central themes of Foucault's work, while offering a fresh appraisal of his thought."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The present paper focuses on a specific aspect of Michel Foucault’s interest in literature, addressing his study on the French poet and novelist Raymond Roussel. Published only few days before The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (1963), Death and the Labyrinth (1963) provides a philosophical reading of some Roussel’s writings, in a constant confrontation with the posthumous essay How I Wrote Certain of My Books (1935) in which Roussel explains his peculiar process of composition. Here, (...) I propose considering that Death and the Labyrinth offers not only a critical account on the relationship between philosophy and literature, but it also displays the significance of philosophy towards the study of literature. From this perspective, I will mainly focus on three themes – the death of the language; the repetition of the language; the duality of the language –, showing also that the first source of the Foucauldian further interest on the relationship between “words” and “things” has been Roussel’s oeuvre. (shrink)

Explorando a relação entre a memória e o cinema, principalmente, em Anti-Rétro, uma entrevista que Michel Foucault concedeu, em 1974, à revista Cahiers du Cinéma, esta obra vai tratar sobre a importância da memória no pensamento desse filósofo contemporâneo que morreu em 1984, apresentando ainda uma análise sobre o corpo em filmes de horror, em produções francesas. A Biopolítica também faz parte das discussões apresentadas neste trabalho. Boa parte da obra resulta da pesquisa de doutorado que o autor empreendeu (...) na Universidade Estadual do Sudoesta da Bahia e na França, onde realizou estágio doutoral em 2014, com bolsa da CAPES no Programa de Doutorado Sanduíche no Exterior. A obra de Foucault influenciou diretamente cada escrito que compõe esta coletânea. Ela é um convite para pensar com Foucault. Em outras palavras, o autor nos convida a entrar na ordem do pensamento de Michel Foucault por meio da memória e dos corpos em filmes franceses de horror, tratando-os sob o prisma da arqueogenealogia. (shrink)

Foucault (1926-1984) et Wittgenstein (1889-1951) appartiennent, selon une présentation courante, à deux traditions de pensée différentes, pour ne pas dire rivales, dont chacun serait en quelque sorte une figure tutélaire. Au-delà des oppositions des philosophies continentale et analytique, tous deux partagent pourtant un fond commun : une critique radicale de la notion classique de subjectivité, une façon spécifique de concevoir et de pratiquer la philosophie comme manière d'être et de vivre. Tous deux, en philosophant, engagent un discours critique et (...) un exercice de transformation de soi-même, des autres et du monde. Cet ouvrage ne cherche nullement à réconcilier deux traditions adverses. Nul oecuménisme ici, mais plutôt la volonté de faire ressurgir des problèmes dont la force et l'insistance se jouent des clivages institués : le rapport à soi, la conscience et ses illusions, le rapport entre le " je " et le " nous ". Une telle confrontation possède la vertu d'arracher ces deux auteurs au statut de doctrines instituées et figées et de susciter de nouvelles interrogations à propos d'oeuvres prétendument connues et reconnues. Un questionnement contemporain. (shrink)

L'affirmation selon laquelle le pouvoir, pour Michel Foucault, serait "sans dehors", n'est pas aussi évidente qu'il y paraît. Le pouvoir a en effet un fort degré d'élaboration : il requiert pour s'exercer un minimum de continuité, de stabilité, de prévisibilité. Il laisse donc hors champ un domaine des relations humaines où la continuité est brisée, la stabilité défaite, la prévisibilité impossible. En parcourant les dits et écrits de Foucault de 1969 à 1984, cet ouvrage approche de cet autre (...) domaine, ici nommé "bataille". Cette scission entre deux objets de l'étude historique nous renvoie à une autre scission qui concerne l'écriture même de l'histoire, toujours prise entre la recherche de continuités et l'affrontement au discontinu, entre l'intelligibilité de l'événement et son irréductible singularité. Il y a là non seulement une certaine manière d'écrire l'histoire, mais également une certaine manière de se tenir devant l'histoire. (shrink)

Introduction: Foucault and political philosophy -- Marx: antinormative critique -- Lenin: the invention of party governmentality -- Althusser: the failure to denormativise Marxism -- Deleuze: denormativisation as norm -- Rorty: relativising normativity -- Honneth: the poverty of critical theory -- Geuss: the paradox of realism -- Foucault: the lure of neoliberalism -- Conclusion: What now?

This book provides a critical reading of Foucault's writings on the archaeology of political economy, analyzing some of Foucault's contributions to the methodology of economics, historiography of economic thought and studies on Adam Smith's context and writings. It reconstructs Foucault's archaeology, relating it to current debates in economics.

While regarding twentieth century French philosophy as a protracted conceptual war, Badiou has largely avoided an encounter with Foucault on the philosophical battlefield. According to Badiou, Foucault constructs a history of systems of thought starting from something other than philosophy (linguistic anthropology, postmodern sophism, democratic materialism) and, in so doing, exits the philosophical battleground. The present essay explores the prospect of rapprochement between these two thinkers, drawing attention to their shared concern with the theme of true life. For (...) Foucault and Badiou, the life in truth and for truth compels the subject to invent a new way of being at the site of exception to what there is. Although Badiou remains ambivalent about the Foucauldian notion of the philosophical subject, he ultimately endorses Foucault’s conception of the philosophical life, which calls for courage insofar as it summons the human animal to think differently and become other than what one is. (shrink)

In this concise, witty critical study, Merquior examines Foucault's work on madness, sexuality, and power and offers a provocative assessment of Foucault as a "neo-anarchist." Merquior brings an astonishing breadth of scholarship to bear on his subject as he explores Foucault using insights from a range of fields including philosophy, sociology, and history.

La verdad muda del cuerpo ofrece tanto una aproximación multidisciplinar a las herramientas y conceptos legados por Michel Foucault a los conocidos como estudios sociales de la medicina, como una visión de conjunto sobre la centralidad de la propia medicina y la psiquiatría y su influencia en la obra del pensador francés. Este compendio proporciona así una panorámica crítica sobre algunos de los temas siempre recurrentes en el corpus foucaultiano: las estrechas líneas que separan la enfermedad mental de la (...) cordura; la medicina como un agente privilegiado de control social en nuestras sociedades; las construcciones sobre lo normal y lo patológico, tantas veces emanadas de concepciones morales ocultadas por el discurso médico; la connivencia entre las ciencias del cuerpo y la mente y las estrategias capitalistas; etc. De la mano de algunos de los mejores conocedores del pensamiento de Foucault, historiadores y filósofos de la medicina, antropólogos de la salud y sociólogos médicos, este libro aspira así a achicar ese inmenso espacio, el que se refiere a Foucault y la medicina, que en lengua española no encontraba hasta hoy una obra de referencia. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically examine the change of Michel Foucault’s power theory “from war to governmentality” in the College de France lectures from 1976 to 1979. In that period, Foucault had attempted to change his own conception of power from discipline to bio-power, from bio-power to governmentality, and from neoliberal governmentality to the ethics of self. This paper focuses on the second change in order to track the change of power theory in Foucault. This change serves (...) as a very important link in the development of Foucault's power theory. It not only incorporates disciplinary power and bio-power into a more expanded problematic of security power and liberal governmentality but also serves as an important stage for shifting beyond neoliberal governmentality and technologies of self into self-care and self-cultivation. In particular, this shift reflects the changes in the intellectual and political area in France as well as in Foucault's own theoretical practices. In that time, Foucault started to be more interested in liberalism while distanced from radical leftists and Marxists, who had together participated with Foucault in the social struggles since the ’68 Revolution. Considering these changes, this paper tries to grasp the turn “from war to governmentality” in the development of Foucault’s power theory. (shrink)

Foucault débute le cours de 1983, l’avant-dernier de son enseignement au Collège de France, par la lecture de Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?, texte auquel il confère le statut que Kant attribue à l’ Aufklärung, celui de Wahlspruch, à la fois blason, précepte et marque distinctive. On se demande comment le lecteur est engagé par la lecture qu’il expose aux auditeurs du cours. S’agit-il de se reconnaître l’obligé de ce que Kant envisage en termes de sortie, une redistribution du rapport (...) du gouvernement de soi et du gouvernement des autres? S’agit-il de s’approprier d’une manière inédite le mode kantien de l’attention à ce rapport en s’appliquant à un examen théorico-pratique qui sera à la hauteur de ce que l’actualité exige de nous? (shrink)

Sinema, genel olarak tüm sanat dalları, aynı anda hem bir sanat dalı ve politik-ekonomik bir kurumdur. Bir yanda elimizde hareketli imgeleri ışıkla selüloidden geçirerek ekrana yansıtan mecra film vardır. Tek tek filmler ise biçim ve içeriklerine göre birbirlerinden ayrılan ve analiz edilen münferit estetik objelerdir. Öte yanda ise film endüstrisi yer alır - filmleri planlayan, üreten, pazarlayan ve kitlelere izleten sanatsal, teknik ve ekonomik araçların oluşturduğu komplike ağ. Doğumundan bu yana sinemanın estetik ve politik açıları farklı formlarda birçok teorik analize (...) maruz kalmış, karşılığında bu analizler de çeşitli eleştirilerle irdelenmiştir. Bu metin bu analizlerin ve onlara yöneltilen eleştirilerin kısa bir incelemesini ve ardından film teorisine farklı bir yaklaşımın ana hatlarını sunacağım. Foucault ve Deleuze'ün fikirlerinden yola çıkan bu "anarşist" film teorisi, geçerli bir eleştirel metodoloji oluşturmanın yanısıra filmin özgürleştirici potansiyeline ışık tutmayı amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

Le sujet selon Foucault est configuré suivant plusieurs pratiques discursives et non discursives et englouti dans des relations de savoir/pouvoir.

With this timely commitment, Jacques Bidet unites the theories of arguably the world's two greatest emancipatory political thinkers. In this far-reaching and decisive text, Bidet examines Marxian and Foucauldian criticisms of capitalist modernity. For Marx, the intersection between capital and the market is crucial, while for Foucault, the organizational aspects of capital are what really matter. According to Marx, the ruling class is identified with property; with Foucault, it is the managers who hold power and knowledge that rule. (...) Bidet identifies these two sides of capitalist modernity as 'market' and 'organization,' showing that each leads to specific forms of social conflict; against exploitation and austerity, over wages and pensions on the one hand, and against forms of 'medical' and work-based discipline, control of bodies and prisons on the other. Bidet's impetus and clarity however serve a greater purpose: uniting two souls of critical social theory, in order to overcome what has become an age-long separation between the 'old left' and the 'new social movements.'. (shrink)

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures (...) and elsewhere. This distinction helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

Without doubt Michel Foucault was one of the 20th century's towering intellectuals. His work on organization of knowledge, sexuality, power, discipline, medicine, madness, identity, and politics has left an idelible mark on contemporary thinking in these fields. Edited by one of the world's most distinguished Foucault scholars, Barry Smart, this collection sets Foucault's work in the the appropriate historical and intellectual context by orgaizing the material thematically with introductions that quide the reader through the complexities of the (...) essays. These volumes will be essential reading wherever the work of Foucault is debated and applied. (shrink)

There is now a considerable literature on Michel Foucault but this is the first monograph which explicitly addresses his influence and impact upon education. Personal autonomy has been seen as a major aim, if not the aim of liberal education. But if Foucault is correct that personal autonomy and the notion of the autonomous person are myths, then the pursuit of such an aim by educationalists is misguided. The author develops this critique of personal autonomy and liberal education (...) from the writings of Foucault, and also considers Foucault's own educational practices. The author, James Marshall, who lives in New Zealand, has already written several articles for academic journals on Foucault. (shrink)

Foucault nous a donne de multiples potentialites pour repenser certaines des questions classiques posees par l histoire et les sciences des religions. Cet ouvrage fait etat des nombreux excursus du philosophe vers les domaines de la spiritualite antique, de l histoire du christianisme primitif, de l ascetisme chretien, ou encore de la question des marginalites religieuses. Il est l occasion, surtout, de reflechir sur quelques uns des - outils - mis en place par le philosophe et de montrer comment (...) ceux-ci peuvent se reveler pertinents pour saisir les phenomenes religieux de notre modernite. Des phenomenes qui se comprennent a l interieur de problemes historiques, politiques et sociaux, culturels. Seule maniere, repete Foucault, de nous proteger contre les syntheses toutes faites et les decoupages familiers, mais aussi d ouvrir la reflexion a l epreuve de la realite et de l actualite. Jean-Francois Bert est Maitre d enseignement et de recherche a l Universite de Lausanne. Specialiste de l histoire des sciences humaines, il developpe une nouvelle approche qui se veut attentive aux pratiques et aux techniques savantes. Il a codirige le Cahier de l Herne sur Foucault (2011), et a participe a l edition, en Pleiade, des oeuvres du philosophe.". (shrink)