FOUCAULTian

Foucault Studies: No.9, Feb. 2009

2009-02-26T06:53:00.002-05:00

Foucault Studies

Number 6, February 2009: Neoliberal Governmentality

วารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ ฉบับล่าสุดออกแล้วครับ

Table of Contents

Editorial
Neoliberal Governmentality
PDF
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen, Sven Opitz, Morris Rabinowitz, Ditte Vilstrup Holm

Articles
Foucault and the Invisible Economy
Abstract PDF
Ute Tellmann
5-24
A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity
Abstract PDF
Jason Read
25-36
Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics
Abstract PDF
Trent H. Hamann
37-59
The Work of Neoliberal Governmentality: Temporality and Ethical Substance in the Tale of Two Dads
Abstract PDF
Sam Binkley

And more reviews..

The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979

2008-04-05T00:05:00.005-06:00

The Birth of Biopolitics

Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979

Description from publishing

Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France in 1979, The Birth of Biopolitics, pursue and develop further the themes of his lectures from the previous year, Security, Territory, Population. Having shown how Eighteenth century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality – seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less and in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena to be governed – Michel Foucault undertakes the detailed analysis of the forms of this liberal governmentality. This involves describing the political rationality within which the specific problems of life and population were posed: "Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics".

What are the specific features of the liberal art of government as they were outlined in the Eighteenth century? What crisis of governmentality characterises the present world and what revisions of liberal government has it given rise to? This is the diagnostic task addressed by Foucault's study of the two major twentieth century schools of neo-liberalism: German ordo-liberalism and the neo-liberalism of the Chicago School. In the years he taught at the Collège de France, this was Michel Foucault's sole foray into the field of contemporary history. This course thus raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics. A remarkable feature of these lectures is their discussion of contemporary economic theory and practice, culminating in an analysis of the model of homo oeconomicus.

Foucault’s analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by "society" in relation to government. "Society" is both that in the name of which government strives to limit itself, but it is also the target for permanent governmental intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism. Far from being opposed to the State, civil society is thus shown to be the correlate of a liberal technology of government.

Contents

Foreword: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana

Introduction: Arnold I. Davidson

10 January 1979

17 January 1979

24 January 1979

31 January 1979

7 February 1979

14 February 1979

21 February 1979

7 March 1979

14 March 1979

21 March 1979

28 March 1979

4 April 1979

Course Summary

Course Content

Index of Notions

Index of Names

Read first chapter from here

คำบรรยายของ Foucault ว่าด้วยชีวการเมือง (Biopolitics) ณ College de France เมื่อปี 1978-1979 คุณสามารถอ่านเนื้อหาบทแรกของหนังสือจากที่นี่

Foucault Studies No.5 January 2008

2008-02-29T04:08:00.006-05:00

Foucault Studies
No.5 January 2008

Table of Contents

Editorial

A New Beginning and a Continuation…
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Morris Rabinowitz, Kevin Turner

Articles

Foucault, Experience, Literature
Timothy O'Leary

The Groupe d’information sur les prisons: The voice of prisoners? Or Foucault’s?
Cecile Brich

Interviews

Governing Liberal Societies – the Foucault Effect in the English‐speaking World
Jacques Donzelot, Colin Gordon

Globalization and Power ‐ Governmentalization of Europe? An Interview with William Walters
Antti Tietäväinen, Miikka Pyykkönen, Jani Kaisto

Review essays

Michel Foucault, History of Madness, translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London/New York: Routledge, 2006)
Alain Beaulieu, Réal Fillion

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977‐78 Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.)
Thomas F. Tierney

and more review... >> read here <<

Foucault Studies เป็นวารสารออนไลน์ เนื้อหามากกว่า 150 หน้า
คุณสามารถดาน์โหลดบทความและเนื้อหาทั้งหมดได้ฟรี ในรูปแบบ pdf. files ทั้งฉบับนี้และฉบับย้อนหลังได้เลยครับ

Crisis of Medicine or Anti-Medicine?

2007-08-26T21:39:00.000-06:00

At the moment medicine assumed its modern functions, by means of a characteristic process of nationalization, medical technology was experiencing one of its rare but extremely significant advances. The discovery of antibiotics and with them the possibility of effectively fighting for the first time against infectious diseases, was in fact contemporary with the birth of the major systems of social security. It was a dazzling technological advance, at the very moment a great political, economic, social, and legal mutation of medicine was taking place.

The crisis became apparent from this moment on, with the simultaneous manifestation of two phenomena: on the one hand, technological progress signalling an essential advance in the fight against disease; on the other hand, the new economic and political functioning of medicine. These two phenomena did not lead to the improvement of health that had been hoped for, but rather to a curious stagnation in the benefits that could have arisen from medicine and public health. This is one of the earlier aspects of the crisis I am trying to analyze. I will be referring to some of its effects to show that that the recent development of medicine, including its nationalization and socialization – of which the Beveridge Plan gives a general vision – is of earlier origin.

From Michel Foucault, Crisis of Medicine or Anti-Medicine?
Translated by Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr., William J. King and Clare O’Farrell
Foucault Studies, No 1, pp. 5-19, December 2004 [Read here]

Foucault: What are we to understand by “security”?

2007-08-04T07:11:00.000-06:00

What are we to understand by “security”? I would like to devote today and maybe next week to this question, depending on how quickly or slowly I go.
I will take an example, or rather a series of examples, or rather one example modulated in three stages. It is a very simple, very childish example, but we will start from there and I think it will enable me to say certain things.
Take a completely simple penal law in the form of a prohibition like, say, “you must not kill, you must not steal,” along with its punishment, hanging, or banishment, or a fine.
In the second modulation it is still the same penal law, “you must not steal,” and it is still accompanied by certain punishments if one breaks this law, but now everything is framed by, on the one hand, a series of supervisions, checks, inspections, and varied controls that, even before the thief has stolen, make it possible to identify whether or not he is going to steal, and so on. And then, on the other hand, at the other end, punishment will not just be the spectacular, definitive moment of the hanging, fine, or banishment, but a practice like incarceration with a series of exercises and a work of transformation on the guilty person in the form of what we call penitentiary techniques: obligatory work, moralization, correction, and so forth.
The third modulation is based on the same matrix, with the same penal law, the same punishments, and the same type of framework of surveillance on one side and correction on the other, but now, the application of this penal law, the development of preventive measures, and the organization of corrective punishment will be governed by the following kind of questions.
For example: What is the average rate of criminality for this [type]? How can we can predict statistically the number of thefts at a given moment, in a given society, in a given town, in the town or in the country, in a given social stratum, and so on? Second, are there times, regions, and penal systems that will increase or reduce this average rate? Will crises, famines, or wars, severe or mild punishment, modify something in these proportions? There are other questions: Be it theft or a particular type of theft, how much does this criminality cost society, what damage does it cause, or loss of earnings, and so on?
Further questions: What is the cost of repressing these thefts? Does severe and strict repression cost more than one that is more permissive; does exemplary and discontinuous repression cost more than continuous repression? What, therefore, is the comparative cost of the theft and of its repression, and what is more worthwhile: to tolerate a bit more theft or to tolerate a bit more repression? There are further questions: When one has caught the culprit, is it worth punishing him? What will it cost to punish him? What should be done in order to punish him and, by punishing him, reeducate him? Can he really be reeducated? Independently of the act he has committed, is he a permanent danger such that he will do it again whether or not he has been reeducated?
The general question basically will be how to keep a type of criminality, theft for instance, within socially and economically acceptable limits and around an average that will be considered as optimal for a given social functioning.
These three modalities seem to me to be typical of different things that we have studied, [and of] those that I would now like to study. You are familiar with the first form, which consists in laying down a law and fixing a punishment for the person who breaks it, which is the system of the legal code with a binary division between the permitted and the prohibited, and a coupling, comprising the code, between a type of prohibited action and a type of punishment. This, then, is the legal or juridical mechanism.
I will not return to the second mechanism, the law framed by mechanisms of surveillance and correction, which is, of course, the disciplinary mechanism.
The disciplinary mechanism is characterized by the fact that a third personage, the culprit, appears within the binary system of the code, and at the same time, outside the code, and outside the legislative act that establishes the law and the judicial act that punishes the culprit, a series of adjacent, detective, medical, and psychological techniques appear which fall within the domain of surveillance, diagnosis, and the possible transformation of individuals. We have looked at all this.
The third form is not typical of the legal code or the disciplinary mechanism, but of the apparatus (dispositif ) of security, that is to say, of the set of those phenomena that I now want to study. Putting it in a still absolutely general way, the apparatus of security inserts the phenomenon in question, namely theft, within a series of probable events. Second, the reactions of power to this phenomenon are inserted in a calculation of cost.
Finally, third, instead of a binary division between the permitted and the prohibited, one establishes an average considered as optimal on the one hand, and, on the other, a bandwidth of the acceptable that must not be exceeded. In this way a completely different distribution of things and mechanisms takes shape.

Some text from "Security, Territory and Population" [Read more]
บางส่วนของเนื้อหาในบทแรกจากหนังสือ Security, Territory and Population (2007)

Security, Territory, Population

2007-06-06T00:21:00.000-06:00

Books & Articles

SECURITY, TERRITORY, POPULATION

Michael Foucault Lectures at the Collège de France

First Edition From Palgrave MacmillanPub

date: May 2007

384 pages $28.95 - Hardcover

Description from publishing

Marking a major development in Foucault's thinking, this book derives from the lecture course which he gave at the Collège de France between January and April, 1978.

Taking as his starting point the notion of "bio-power," introduced in his 1976 course Society Must be Defended, Foucault sets out to study the foundations of this new technology of power over population.

Distinct from punitive, disciplinary systems, the mechanisms of power are here finely entwined with the technologies of security, and it is to 18th century developments of these technologies with which the first chapters of the book are concerned. By the fourth lecture however Foucault's attention turns, focusing on a history of "governmentality" from the first centuries of the Christian era to the emergence of the modern nation state.

As Michel Sennelart explains in his afterword, the effect of this change of direction is to "shift the center of gravity of the lectures from the question of biopower to that of government, to such an extent that the former almost entirely eclipses the former ..."

Consequently, in light of Foucault's later work, it is tempting to see these lectures as the moment of a radical turning point at which the transition to the problematic of the "government of self and others" would begin.

_________________________

"The English translation of Security, Territory and Population is a major event not only for Anglophone readers of Foucault’s work, but for all those concerned with understanding our present social and political condition. These lectures show that the trenchant analysis of biopower, “power over life”, which Foucault had begun in the first volume of the History of Sexuality and which he pursues here in terms of technologies of security, led him to a decisively deeper and more radical formulation of his guiding problematic—what he called “the government of the self and others”—the issue that would serve as the basis for all his subsequent work. Security, Territory and Population might thus properly be called the ‘missing link’ that reveals the underlying unity of Foucault’s later thought... Burchell’s translation is meticulous, supple, and attentive to the nuances of Foucault’s fluid lecture style. We all stand in his debt."-- Kevin Thompson, Book Review Editor, Continental Philosophy Review, Department of Philosophy, DePaul University, USA

"These lectures offer the wonderful opportunity of witnessing a great mind at work. In answering the question of whether the general economy of power in our societies is becoming a domain of security Foucault is never less than erudite, insightful and challenging. Here, probably better than anywhere else, we see the nature of his thoughts on the rationality of modern government." -- Jeremy Jennings, Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London, and editor of The European Journal of Political Theory

"Security, Territory, Population' is a stunning display of Foucault's skills of historical research and theoretical insight. Exploring the emergence of 'bio-power'and the 'techniques of security' designed to shape and regulate populations from a distance, Foucault looks beyond disciplinary power to a distinctively modern form of government through freedom. Accessible and highly readable, these lectures have much to tell us about our contemporary situation." -- James Martin, Department of Politics, Goldsmiths, University of London

Contents (read here)

Foreword

Introduction

11 January 1978 (read here)

18 January 1978

25 January 1978

1 February 1978

8 February 1978

15 February 1978

22 February 1978

1 March 1978

8 March 1978

15 March 1978

22 March 1978

29 March 1978

5 April 1978

Course Summary

Course Context

Index of Notions (read here)

Index of Names (read here)

หนังสือเล่มล่าสุดที่ได้รับการแปลเป็นภาษาอังกฤษของฟูโกต์ ใน Security, Territory, Population เป็นการบรรยายถึงอำนาจแบบมหภาค กล่าวถึงวงศาวิทยาของ "ความมั่นคง ดินแดน และประชากร" ของรัฐสมัยใหม่ ซึ่งเกิดขึ้นมานับตั้งแต่ศตวรรษที่ 18 เป็นต้นมา

คุณสามารถอ่านและดาวน์โหลดไฟล์ pdf. ในส่วนสารบัญ ดัชนี และเนื้อหาของบทแรก ดาวน์โหลดฟรีที่นี่

Foucault's Archaeology

2007-06-05T23:35:00.000-06:00

Books & Articles

The use of concepts of discontinuity, rupture, threshold, limit, series, and transformation present all historical analysis not only with questions of procedure, but with theoretical problems. It is these problems that will be studied here (the questions of procedure will be examined in later empirical studies - if the opportunity, the desire, and the courage to undertake them do not desert me). These theoretical problems too will be examined only in a particular field: in those disciplines - so unsure of their frontiers, and so vague in content - that we call the history of ideas, or of thought, or of science, or of knowledge... We must also question those divisions or groupings with which we have become so familiar. Can one accept, as such, the distinction between the major types of discourse, or that between such forms or genres as science, literature, philosophy, religion, history, fiction, etc., and which tend to create certain great historical individualities?

(some text from The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969) [read more]

อ่าน 3 บทแรกของ AK ได้ที่นี่

Discipline & Punish

2007-06-05T22:37:00.000-06:00

Books & Articles

On 1 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned "to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris", where he was to be "taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds"; then, "in the said cart, to the Place de Grève, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and claves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds"... "Finally, he was quartered," recounts the Gazette d'Amsterdam of 1 April 1757. "This last operation was very long, because the horses used were not accustomed to drawing; consequently, instead of four, six were needed; and when that did not suffice, they were forced, in order to cut off the wretch's thighs, to sever the sinews and hack at the joints...

(some text from Discipline and Punish, 1975) [read more]

บางตอนจากบทว่าด้วย "ทัณฑ์ทรมาน" (Torture) ใน "วินัยและการลงทัณฑ์" (Discipline & Punish) งานที่ฟูโกต์ใช้วิธีการประวัติศาสตร์แบบวงศาวิทยา (geanelogy) มาเปิดเผยให้เห็นประวัติศาสตร์ของอำนาจที่อยู่ในรูปวินัยของสังคมสมัยใหม่ (อ่านที่นี่)

Foucault and Marxist on State Apparatuses

2007-06-05T21:22:00.000-06:00

Interview

It's true that since the late nineteenth century Marxist and 'Marxised' revolutionary movements have been given special importance to the State apparatus as the stake of their struggle.
What were the ultimate consequences of this?
In order to be able to fight a State which is more than just a government, the revolutionary movement must posses equivalent politico-military forces and hence must constitute itself as a party, organised internally in the same way as a State apparatus with the same mechanisms of hierarchies and organisation of powers. This consequence is heavy with significance.
Secondly, there is the question, much discussed within Marxism itself, of the capture of the State apparatus: should this be considered as a straight forward take-over, accompanied by appropriate modifications, or should it be the opportunity for the destruction of that apparatus?
You know how the issue was finally settled.
The State apparatus must be undermined, but not completely undermined, since the class struggle will not be brought to an immediate end without the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Hence the State apparatus must be kept sufficiently intact for it to be employed against the class enemy. So we reach a second consequence: during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the State apparatus must to some extent at least be maintained.
Finally then, as a third consequence, in order to operate these State apparatuses which have been taken over but bot destroyed, it will be necessary to have recourse to technicians and specialists. And in order to do this one has to call upon the old class which is acquainted with the apparatus, namely the borgeoisie.
This clearly is what happened in the USSR. I don't claim at all that the State apparatus is unimportant, but it seems to me that among all the conditions for avoiding a repetition of the Soviet experience and preventing the revolutionary process from running into the ground, one of the first things that has to be understood is that power isn't localised in the State apparatus and that nothing in society will be changed if the mechanisms of power that function outside, below and alongside the State apparatuses, on a much more minute and everyday level, are not also changed...

(some text from Body/Power in Power/Knowledge) [read more]

ตัดตอนจากบทสัมภาษณ์ว่าด้วย "ร่างกาย/อำนาจ" ใน "อำนาจ/ความรู้" ซึ่งฟูโกต์นำเสนอแนวคิดเกี่ยวกับการต่อต้านอำนาจในระดับร่างกายของบุคคล และโต้แย้งแนวคิดเรื่องการต่อต้านอำนาจในระดับกลไกทางอำนาจรัฐ และวาทกรรมการปฏิวัติของนักลัทธิมาร์กซ์ ด้วยการนำเสนอรูปแบบการต่อต้านอำนาจในชีวิตประจำวัน (อ่านที่นี่)

Power/Knowledge

2007-06-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

Books & Articles

Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977

Power/Knowledge: Foucault uses to highlight the fact that every description also regulates what it describes. It is not only that every description is somewhat "biased, " but also that the very terms used to describe something reflect power relations. Discourses promote specific kinds of power relations, usually favoring the "neutral" person or professional using the discourse (the lawyer, psychiatrist, professor, doctor, etc.). In other words, to know is to participate in complicated webs of power.

"อำนาจ/ความรู้" เป็นที่ Foucault ใช้ในความหมายเดียวกับวาทกรรม (discourse) เพื่ออธิบายให้เห็นว่าในสังคมสมัยใหม่นั้น อำนาจและความรู้จะเกี่ยวพันกันอย่างแนบแน่น และเป็นไปไม่ได้ที่เราจะแยกทำความเข้าใจทั้งสองสิ่งนี้ออกจากกันได้

Foucault Studies vol. 4

2007-06-05T20:50:00.000-06:00

Books & Articles

Foucault Studies
Vol. 4 (February 2007)

EDITORIAL
An End, and a New Beginning…
Stuart Elden, Clare O’Farrell, Alan Rosenberg, Sylvain Meyet

With this issue, the original editorial team of Foucault Studies steps down, and a new one takes over. The experience of
starting and running a journal has been challenging, frustrating and worthwhile – in probably about equal measure. We began this journal with considerable enthusiasm, which carried us through
the first two issues. Then the reality, enormity and perpetuity of the task began to dawn on us. When we made the decision to discontinue the journal, it was a difficult one to come to,
but perhaps inevitable given the workload and the lack of institutional or publisher support. Ultimately, all the work to be done on the journal fell to its editors –from properly editorial work such as deciding on referees, adjudicating on papers and corresponding with authors;
to the administrative work associated with this; to website design, copyediting, proofreading and production of pdfs. [read more]

วารสารอิเล็กทรอนิคส์เกี่ยวกับฟูโกต์ ฉบับที่ 4
สามารถเข้าไปอ่านและดาวน์โหลดฉบับเต็มได้ฟรีที่นี่