Foucault News

Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Governmobility: The Powers of Mobility, Mobilities, 2012

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Abstract

Mobility is often associated with flow and freedom; nonetheless, it is also about power and government. While mobility studies have shown how interpersonal social relations are increasingly supported by mobile technologies, it seems less clear how mobilities are involved in governing societies. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality and his 1978 lectures on security, territory and population, this article suggests that societies are increasingly governed through mobility, rather than there being government of mobility. If circulation has become a producer of, rather than an obstacle to, societies, then governmobility is a meaningful concept relating to how societies are ruled through connections. In conclusion, the article asks: what are the implications of governmobility for border studies, and more broadly, what are the powers of mobility studies?

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Gane, N. The governmentalities of neoliberalism: Panopticism, post-panopticism and beyond, Sociological Review, Volume 60, Issue 4, November 2012, Pages 611-634

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Abstract
This paper draws on the writings of Michel Foucault, in particular his lectures on biopolitics at the Collège de France from 1978-79, to examine liberalism and neoliberalism as governmental forms that operate through different models of surveillance. First, this paper re-reads Foucault’s Discipline and Punish in the light of his analysis of the art of liberal government that is advanced through the course of these lectures. It is argued that the Panopticon is not just an architecture of power centred on discipline and normalization, as is commonly understood, but a normative model of the relation of the state to the market which, for Foucault, is ‘the very formula of liberal government’. Second, the limits of panopticism, and by extension liberal governance, are explored through analysis of Gilles Deleuze’s account of the shift from disciplinary to ‘control’ societies, and Zygmunt Bauman’s writings on individualization and the ‘Synopticon’. In response to Deleuze and Bauman, the final section of this paper returns to Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics to argue that contemporary capitalist society is characterized not simply by the decline of state powers (the control society) or the passing down of responsibilities from the state to the individual (the individualization thesis), but by the neoliberal marketization of the state and its institutions; a development which is underpinned by a specific form of governmentality. In conclusion, a four-fold typology of surveillance is advanced: surveillance as discipline, as control, as interactivity, and as a mechanism for promoting competition. It is argued that while these types of surveillance are not mutually exclusive, they are underpinned by different governmentalities that can be used to address different aspects of the relationship between the state and the market, and with this the social and cultural logics of contemporary forms of market capitalism more broadly. © 2012 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review.

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de Marzio, D.M. The Pedagogy of Self-Fashioning: A Foucaultian Study of Montaigne’s “On Educating Children”, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Volume 31, Issue 4, July 2012, Pages 387-405

Abstract
In this paper I interpret Montaigne’s essay, “On Educating Children”, as a pedagogical text through its performance of a distinct epistolary function, one that addresses the letter-recipient for the purpose of shaping the ideas, actions, and beliefs of that individual. At the same time, I also read “On Educating Children” within the context of the wider project of Montaigne’s Essays, which, as I suggest, is an ethical-aesthetic project of self-fashioning and self-cultivation. The net result is an interpretation of teaching as an ethical-aesthetic practice of the self, one that is in concert with the interpretation of Montaigne’s writing of the Essays as a similar practice of the self. In order to build this case, I employ Michel Foucault’s fourfold schema of ethical subjectivity, mapping that schema onto “On Educating Children”, so as to reveal a unique pedagogy of self-formation-a pedagogy that works as much upon the self of the teacher as it does the self of the student.

Author keywords
Ethical-subjectivity; Foucault; Letter-writing; Montaigne; Plutarch; Self-fashioning

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Erdinc, M. The Subject and Governmental Action: A Foucauldian Analysis of Subjectification and the 24 Year-Old Rule in Denmark, Feminist Legal Studies, Volume 20, Issue 1, April 2012, Pages 21-38

Abstract
This article discusses the effects of the 24 year-old rule in Denmark utilising Foucault’s understanding of the ‘subject’ within a governmentality framework. The 24 year-old rule is a good example of how a gendered knowledge about immigration becomes a reality that steers biopolitics, enables practices of normalisation and subjectifies immigrants in various ways. The article foregrounds the subjectivity of immigrant women through a narrative analysis of the constitution of the subject within discourses and in an asymmetrical relationship to power in governance. This analysis reveals the complexity of empirical interactions between the ideational structure of legislative measures and personal meanings expressed by immigrant subjectivities. While I illustrate certain modes of subjectification in relation to the 24 year-old rule, I emphasise the ways subjects employ certain identity strategies by resisting, reworking or contributing to the practices of normalisation.

Author keywords
Denmark; Foucault; Gender; Governmentality; Immigration; Subjectification

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Seantel, Anaïs, Genealogy and critical discourse analysis in conversation: texts, discourse, critique, Critical Discourse Studies, January 2013

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Abstract

Although genealogy is a popular methodological choice for philosophers, a number of social scientists in numerous fields have taken it up as way of studying historical texts. How one might use genealogy as a methodological approach, however, is not always clear. In this article, I argue for the combination of critical discourse analysis with a genealogical ethos of analysis, despite some differences in their respective approaches. The aim of the article is to contribute to debates around how qualitative textual research can be opened up as a site of contact, negotiation, and unification for genealogical and critical discourse analytic approaches.

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Claire Blencowe, Biopolitical authority, objectivity and the groundwork of modern citizenship
Journal of Political Power
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2013
Special Issue: Special Issue on Authority

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Authority is a powerful concept for coming to terms with the diversity of power. This article reframes the concept of ‘authority’ and articulates its continued relevance in a context of radical contingency and biopolitics. It argues that authority is essentially objectivist. Biopolitics is conceived as a historical process of constituting biological life and economic forces as objectivity. The paper addresses the question of whether biological-type relations destroy or foster capacities for politics. Arguing against Arendt’s diagnosis of the fate of authority in modernity, the article maintains that biological knowledges and economism create new groundworks of politics, citizenship and authority. This suggests that politics is instigated not simply through breaking given aesthetic orders (dissensus), but also through aesthetic productions of objectivity.

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Moore, F. Governmentality and the maternal body: Infant mortality in early twentieth-century Lancashire (2013) Journal of Historical Geography, 39, pp. 54-68.

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Abstract
In an empirical extension of and theoretical commentary on Foucault’s work on governmentality, this paper takes the liberal governance of women, specifically mothers, as its focus. In Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, high infant mortality rates sparked widespread concern. Working-class mothers were blamed for infant deaths and became the target of social intervention. Analysing the knowledge which shaped the understanding of infant death, the paper highlights the geography of the problem and traces the creation of a particular subjectivity: the bad mother. Using the case study of the Bolton School for Mothers in Lancashire, the paper excavates the political rationalities informing infant welfare work. Finding a biopolitical concern for the quality and quantity of the British race at the heart of the work of the Bolton School, the article demonstrates the ways in which the working-class maternal body was appropriated as a tool of population revitalisation. The study also interrogates the practices of control used in infant welfare work and suggests the entanglement of different types of power as characteristic of infant welfare as a regime of biopolitical governance. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Author Keywords
Biopolitics; Governmentality; Infant mortality; Lancashire; Motherhood; School for Mothers

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2012.09.003

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Vrasti, W. Universal but not truly ‘global’: Governmentality, economic liberalism, and the international (2013) Review of International Studies, 39 (1), pp. 49-69.

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Abstract
This article responds to issues raised about global governmentality studies by Jan Selby, Jonathan Joseph, and David Chandler, especially regarding the implications of ‘scaling up’ a concept originally designed to describe the politics of advanced liberal societies to the international realm. In response to these charges, I argue that critics have failed to take full stock of Foucault’s contribution to the study of global liberalism, which owes more to economic than political liberalism. Taking Foucault’s economic liberalism seriously, that is, shifting the focus from questions of natural rights, legitimate rule, and territorial security to matters of government, population management, and human betterment reveals how liberalism operates as a universal, albeit not yet global, measure of truth, best illustrated by the workings of global capital. While a lot more translation work (both empirical and conceptual) is needed before governmentality can be convincingly extended to global politics, Foucauldian approaches promise to add a historically rich and empirically grounded dimension to IR scholarship that should not be hampered by disciplinary admonitions.

DOI: 10.1017/S0260210511000568

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Aggarwal, N.K.Mental discipline, punishment and recidivism: Reading Foucault against de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror (2013) Critical Studies on Terrorism. Article in Press.

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Abstract
This article uses Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to examine how de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror transform power-knowledge relations, mental discipline and punishment by attempting to instil self-governance through non-violence. Foucault’s theories on the evolution of discipline and punishment can be applied to de-radicalisation programmes, but only after considerable revision. By asking questions on the nature of knowledge, practice, state involvement and recidivism of de-radicalisation, I contend that many programmes may be ultimately limited by a disproportionate focus on religious rehabilitation rather than political dialogue regarding the motivations for such violence.

Author Keywords
critical terrorism studies; cultural psychiatry; de-radicalisation; forensic psychiatry; psychiatric anthropology

DOI: 10.1080/17539153.2012.749059

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