Foucault News

Uses and abuses of historical contextualization in Critiquer Foucault. Les années 1980 et la tentation néolibérale, edited by Daniel Zamora. Part I. 

* by Emanuele Leonardi

Foucault participating in a demonstration. Source: http://www.teatrovalleoccupato.it/

Reviewing Critquer Foucaultis not an easy task, for at least two reasons. The first – which will be discussed in this post – is related to its dishomogeneity, both in terms of its argumentations and of Foucault’s texts analyzed. In the six essays included in the collection Foucault is criticized from the Left and from the Right, at times in relation to a specific problematic issue, at times because of a certain authorial posture or philosophical attitude. Similarly, the works discussed vary: from the biopolitical lectures (1976-1979) to a 1977 journalistic review for Le Nouvel Observateur, from Discipline and Punish (1975) to the Foucaultian corpus as a whole – it is curious to know…