Foucault News

Sassatelli, Roberta. (2011). “Interview with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture”. Theory, culture & society (0263-2764), 28 (5), pp. 123-43.

Further details

Abstract
This conversation between Laura Mulvey and Roberta Sassatelli offers a historical reconstruction of Mulvey’s work, from her famous essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ to her most recent reflections on male gaze, film technology and visual culture. The conversation initially deals with the socio-cultural context in which the ‘Visual Pleasure…’ essay was produced by outlining a number of possible theoretical parallelisms with other scholars, from Foucault to Barthes to Goffman. Then, on the basis of Mulvey’s latest book, Death 24× a Second, and of a variety of contemporary examples, the emphasis is on the relative shift in Mulvey’s work from gender to time and visual technology. Finally, the conversation focuses on the concept of ‘gendered scopic regime’ and the potential re-articulation of the male gaze through the technological re-direction and control of the visual.

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Farquhar, Sandy and Fitzsimons, Peter (2011). “Lost in Translation: The power of language”. Educational philosophy and theory, 43 (6), p. 652-662.

Abstract
The paper examines some philosophical aspects of translation as a metaphor for education-a metaphor that avoids the closure of final definitions, in favour of an ongoing and tentative process of interpretation and revision. Translation, it is argued, is a complex process involving language, within and among cultures, and in the exercise of power. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of power, Nietzschean contingency, and the inversion of meaning that characterises the work of Heidegger and Derrida, the paper points towards Ricoeur’s notion of linguistic hospitality as the ethical dimension to the inevitably inadequate representation of the ‘other’. In this exploration, translation is posited as a creative and interpretive act-involving neither image nor copy, but poetic transposition.
The power of language emerges in the close association between power and knowledge, in which the ability to define what is real generates the realm of future possibilities. From a Foucauldian perspective, language functions as a creative strategic relation-a form of power that structures the field of other possible actions. It is through the mediation of translation, the paper argues, that language communicates, leaving us with a world of difference (i.e. ‘lost in translation’), as both our curse and our blessing as part of the human condition and as part of our ethical endeavour as educators. The contingent and arbitrary nature of language problematises what appears natural and necessary, generating the possibility of creative dialogue.

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Barder, A. D. (2011). “Agonal sovereignty: Rethinking war and politics with Schmitt, Arendt and Foucault”. Philosophy & social criticism, 37 (7), p. 775-93

Abstract
The notion of biopolitical sovereignty and the theory of the state of exception are perspectives derived from Carl Schmitt’s thought and Michel Foucault’s writings that have been popularized by critical political theorists like Giorgio Agamben and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri of late. This article argues that these perspectives are not sufficient analytical points of departure for a critique of the contemporary politics of terror, violence and war marked by a growing global exploitation of bodies, tightened management of life, and endless and unpredictable abusive force. To better capture the singularity of our present condition of violence, war and terror, a supplementation of Schmitt’s and Foucault’s approaches by way of Hannah Arendt’s language of political action and agonistic engagement is useful. By bringing Arendt’s language of political agony to bear on contemporary biopolitical debates and discourses, we wish to revisit common practices of war and terror as matters of ‘agonal sovereignty’. ‘Agonal sovereignty’ allows us to peer into the ‘abyss of total violence’ that manifests itself after sovereign decisionism and biopolitical modalities of power have taken over the everyday conduct of political affairs.

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Dent, C. (2011). “‘Gray, meticulous and patently documentary’: Foucaultian historical methods and the patent system”. Journal of sociology , 47 (3), p. 297-312.

Abstract
Patents are seen as a key part of the modern economy and operate as a mode of regulation of technology and innovation. The histories of the system, to date, have not explored the role that patents have in the governance of our society. This article suggests that the historical methods of Michel Foucault are broad enough to undertake this task. The article, then, explores both the archaeological and the genealogical methods in order to assess the benefits, and limitations, that arise from the use of each of them in the context of a history of the laws, and practices, as they relate to patents of invention.

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Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, A. (2011). “Organizations as Discursive Constructions: A Foucauldian Approach”. Organization studies, 32 (9), p. 1247-1271.

Abstract
A growing body of literature suggests that communication constitutes organizations, but this argument requires refinement to address its remaining flaws. This essay suggests the tremendous potential of using Michel Foucault’s work to grasp the underlying meaning of this argument and to respond to its shortcomings. The proposed Foucauldian-based process model highlights links across Foucault’s main lines of thought, applied to the relationships among technology, discourse, discipline, control, subject, and identity in an organization. By reframing the concept of technology as a discursive and nondiscursive practice that constrains and enables everyday life, this approach offers better understanding of the argument that communication constitutes organizations. The conceptual model also serves as a backdrop for exploring a problematic field situation with a case study. Technology appears part of processes by which technology, organizations, and subjects get redefined. The organization is dynamically constituted as an evolving, political, negotiated order through power-knowledge relationships.

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Tarver, Erin C. (2011). “New Forms of Subjectivity: Theorizing the Relational Self with Foucault and Alcoff”. Hypatia, 26 (4), pp. 804-825

Abstract
Taking seriously Linda Martin Alcoff’s suggestion that we reevaluate the extent to which poststructuralist articulations of the subject are truly socially constituted, as well as the centrality of Latina identity to her own account of such constitution, I argue that the discussion Alcoff and other Latina feminists offer of the experience of being Latina in North America is illustrative of the extent to which the relational and globally situated constitution of subjects needs further development in many social-constructionist accounts of selfhood. I argue, however-contra Alcoff-that Michel Foucault’s mode of investigating subjectivation, particularly as it is articulated in his later work, has room for just such an account, especially when it is supplemented by postcolonial theory. With this end in mind, I take as a case study the public discourse surrounding Sonia Sotomayor prior to her confirmation as the first Latina woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, suggesting that an analysis of this discourse (including its position within and contribution to wider discourses of ethnicity, race, gender, and class) shows why the accounts of relational subject-constitution offered by both Foucault and Alcoff are indispensable.

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