Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) thought is widely used in the humanities and social sciences for investigating experiences of madness, illness, marginalization and social conflicts. However, the meaning of the word “experience” is not always clearly defined, and the French word expérience has a whole variety of meanings. In this article I explicate Foucault’s most relevant concepts of experience and their theoretical functions. He refers to experience throughout his career, especially in his early texts on existential psychiatry from the 1950s and 1960s (...) and in his late work from the 1980s. Texts such as Mental Illness and Psychology and Dire vrai sur soi-même have received less attention than Foucault’s most famous books, but they show that references to experience form significant theoretical and thematic links between his earlier investigations of mental distress and his late work on ethics. When Foucault reorganizes his work in the 1980s, he looks back to his early work in his search for a new concept of experience. I argue that in these contexts, experience cannot be understood as an outcome of activity that organizes perceptions and leads to objective knowledge, but experiences are not defined as events produced by discourses, either. I demonstrate in this article how Foucault uses the concept of experience to structure his research on ethical subjectivity and cultural practices of care. At the same time the article questions some standard interpretations of his work. (shrink)

This essay contributes to critical reflection on the extensive role that medicine has played, and continues to play, in establishing and maintaining the uniquely modern form of social order that Foucault described as “governmentality.” It does so by linking Foucault’s later work on governmentality and biopower, from his courses at the Collège de France in the late-1970s, with his early work on the crucial role that pathological anatomy played in founding modern medicine, which was presented in one of his first (...) books, The Birth of the Clinic (1963). The link between these two stages of Foucault’s work is the central role that death has played in the development of both modern medicine and the art of governing populations. After establishing this connection, I extend Foucault’s analysis by examining the anatomical practices of the three centuries prior to the period upon which he focused in The Birth of the Clinic. This examination of anatomical practices from the sixteenth through the turn of the nineteenth century not only expands the temporal framework through which Foucault examined modern medicine, but also provides a clear and instructive example of the historical development of governmentality. This expansion of Foucault's analysis further illuminates the unique historical configuration of death, medicine, and power upon which modernity is grounded, and suggests ways in which many recent bio-ethical dilemmas, such as the right to die movement, may disrupt this configuration. (shrink)

Big Data are increasingly used in machine learning in order to create predictive models. How are predictive practices that use such models to be situated? In the field of surveillance studies many of its practitioners assert that “governance by discipline” has given way to “governance by risk”. The individual is dissolved into his/her constituent data and no longer addressed. I argue that, on the contrary, in most of the contexts where predictive modelling is used, it constitutes Foucauldian discipline. Compliance (...) to a norm occupies centre stage; suspected deviants are subjected to close attention—as the precursor of possible sanctions. The predictive modelling involved uses personal data from both the focal institution and elsewhere. As a result, the individual re-emerges as the focus of scrutiny. Subsequently, small excursions into Foucauldian texts discuss his discourses on the creation of the “delinquent”, and on the governmental approach to smallpox epidemics. It is shown that his insights only mildly resemble prediction as based on machine learning; several conceptual steps had to be taken for modern machine learning to evolve. Finally, the options available to those subjected to predictive disciplining are discussed: to what extent can they comply, question, or resist? Through a discussion of the concepts of transparency and “gaming the system” I conclude that our predicament is gloomy, in a Kafkaesque fashion. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility is a complex discipline that not only demands responsible behavior in production processes but also includes the concepts of communicative transparency and dialogue. Stakeholder dialogue is therefore expected to be an integrated part of the CSR strategy :323–338, 2006). However, only few studies have addressed the practice of CSR stakeholder dialogue and the challenges related hereto. This article adopts a postmodern perspective on CSR stakeholder dialogue. Based on a comprehensive single case study on stakeholder dialogue in (...) a global dairy company, we focus on the complexity of CSR dialogue with multiple stakeholders. Drawing on a critical reflexive methodology :1265–1281, 2007), we develop the research question: How is CSR multi-stakeholder dialogue practiced, experienced, and articulated in an empirical context? The purpose is to understand the underlying assumptions, expectations, and principles guiding CSR multi-stakeholder dialogue in an empirical setting, as we focus on how key stakeholders articulate and anticipate the values of stakeholder dialogue and how the actual stakeholder dialogues are enacted. The findings of the study differ significantly from the ideals of transparent and agenda-free stakeholder dialogue. Rather, the study shows an overall tension between ideal and practice, supporting the progressive importance of the dialogue process in itself as an essential part of the end goal. The implication of this is a growing pressure on creating transparency about the positioning and negotiation of roles throughout the dialogue process. (shrink)

This paper analyses the development of the specialism of adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer care via a Foucauldian lens to consider how knowledge and awareness have grown since questions were first raised about unmet needs of AYAs with cancer. The AYA specialism has gathered momentum over the last 30 years in the United Kingdom (UK) and is fast gathering pace internationally. Fundamental to this process has been the combined contribution from nursing and other health professionals, researchers, policy‐makers and (...) philanthropists. From an initial process of problematisation, through a gradual growth in empirical knowledge and resultant shifts in health policy, a new nexus of expertise has emerged that enabled AYA cancer care to become recognised as distinct from either child or adult oncology. Different stakeholders contributed to the discourses that have underpinned this development—a process likely to continue as it expands further. This paper draws on examples from the growth of the AYA specialism, the emergence of new professional roles and a growth in research. It illustrates how the coalescing of multiple perspectives allowed new discourses and, ultimately, new practices to be established that now have global impact. (shrink)

This paper aims to open up high-level waste management practices to a political philosophical questioning, beyond the enclosure implied by the normative ethics approaches that prevail in the literature. Building on previous insights derived from mediation theory, Foucault and science and technology studies, mediation theory’s appropriation of Foucauldian insights is shown to be in need of modification and further extension. In particular, we modify Dorrestijn’s figure of “technical determination of power relations” to better take into account the aspects of (...) imagination, and complement Dorrestijn’s work with the figures of techno-scientific mediation, and the inherently political figures of socio-technical and state-technical mediation, both based on Foucault’s notion of governmentality. Our analysis implies that the practical implementation of a high-level nuclear waste management strategy will require the “stitching together” of these different mediations, which is an inherently political task. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacterial infections is a growing threat to humanity and a challenge to healthcare systems worldwide. Healthcare professionals have an important role in preventing AMR and the spreading of infections. This article focuses on trade union financed journals for nurses in Scandinavia studying how the journals articulate AMR to its readership. A systematic literature search over an eleven‐year period was conducted, using web‐based national trade union financed journals, searching for ‘bacteria’ and ‘resistance’. A thematic analysis, inspired by (...) Foucault's concepts of power and governmentality, was made of 131 texts to understand, which kind of practices, strategies and policies the journals frame regarding AMR. The time period studied resulted in the recognition of four separate themes: the horror scenario, the ‘dangerous’ other, healthcare professionals as a source of resistance development and AMR as a field of research and producer of research qualifications. The study concludes that the journals tend: to present AMR in apocalyptic terms with more research and pharmaceutical industries needed for avoidance; to point out problems in other countries, populations, and sometimes nurses’ working conditions, but primarily with other professionals’ behaviour; and lastly, to present the nurse as a good fairy and disciplinator of doctors. (shrink)

This paper is a review essay of Ottavio Marzocca, Biopolitics for Beginners. Knowledge of Life and Government of People, Milan/Udine: Mimesis International, 2020. Pp. 457. ISBN: 9788869771781 (paperback). It focuses on Marzocca's investigations into biopolitics, a topic of which the author offers an original ecological reconfiguration. The proposed reflections, which address the recent pandemic crisis of COVID-19, are developed from the work of Foucault but are not limited to this thinker. In fact, they offer an articulate examination of the issue (...) by also taking into broad consideration the thought of authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito, Jacques Donzelot, Robert Castel, Pierre Rosanvallon, Nikolas Rose, Melinda Cooper and Gregory Bateson. (shrink)

The present research paper approaches homosexuality from a Foucauldian perspective. Foucault's place and standing in a postmodern historical and cultural context will be explained. The paper outlines how homosexuality has been historically constructed and socially constituted. How sexuality became understood as a particular form of discourse, that is as a science, will be explored particularly with regard to the strategic use of confession as a producer of knowledge. I will present how homosexuality, as a medicalized, ontological identity was (...) implanted in bodies and an entire pathological population was created. To reverse an excessive medicalized discourse of homosexuality, Foucault's prescription of moving to the care of self and predicating sexuality on the pleasure of bodies as opposed to scientific or clinical ideology will be discussed. Such critical analysis facilitates new imaginative spaces that can enable educators to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue around the various discourses surrounding homosexuality in a postmodern historical and cultural context. (shrink)

This book presents humiliation as a key harm of sexual violence against women, showing that humiliation manifests within the relation of self to itself, and that Foucault's critique of subjectivity provides resources for feminist conceptualization and countering of sexual violence and humiliation. Within feminist philosophy and theory, rape and sexual assault are often described as humiliating to victims, yet relatively few in-depth feminist philosophical accounts and analyses exist of humiliation as a harm of sexual violence against women. This book provides (...) such an account and analysis of both humiliation generally and sexual humiliation resulting from sexual violence more specifically. The book's elucidation of possibilities for countering sexual violence and humiliation, moreover, breaks with standard feminist approaches by critiquing rather than appealing to subjectivity. Through analysing specific instances of anti-sexual violence protest, it shows that cultivation of alternative modes of self-relation furthers rather than undermines feminist efforts to combat sexual violence. Throughout, the book draws upon concrete, recent and contemporary instance of sexual violence against women and feminist anti-sexual violence protest to illustrate and support its arguments. This will become a key text for feminist scholars and Foucault scholars in the humanities and social sciences, and for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. It will also be of interest to feminist anti-sexual violence activists. (shrink)

Scholarship on the early modern practice of animal trials in Europe has grown substantially in the last few decades. After a critical literature review pointing at the shortcomings of positivist approaches and of the interpretation of the phenomenon as a purely religious practice, I present Foucauldian genealogy as a more rigorous framework for understanding the purpose this peculiar practice may have served. The benefits of adopting a Foucauldian perspective are twofold. First, it allows for a subtle functionalism (...) that does not treat this tradition as a homogeneous block. Second, it gives an opportunity to introduce the animal body into Foucault’s genealogy of power, which rather focuses on the human body and interhuman relationships. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with the ways in which disability is governed within the Millennium Development Goals. Using a Foucauldian perspective on the governing of populations in modern states, I problematise this politics of disability and development by interrogating the ways in which biopower, through the constructions of modern development frameworks, has shaped our understanding of disability and impairment. I pursue this historical trajectory by tracing the emergence of the Global Burden of Diseases, a global study developed (...) by the World Health Organization and the World Bank in the 1990s. The forms of knowledge emerging in these global frameworks shed light on genealogies of disability in the twenty-first century. By re-visiting a postcolonial critique of Foucault’s conception of power in the context of Third World’s struggles for liberation, I suggest that a Foucauldian critique in disability and development could be deepened through its engagement with postcolonial studies. A critical and genealogical perspective on disability and development, I argue, is useful for understanding the government of disability and impairment in the intersections of global and local histories. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to foreground the importance of context in discourse analysis by drawing on a study of online gender talk on Facebook in India. Design/methodology/approach Using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), this study explored participants’ use of language to construct and perform various identities in online gender talk. This study discusses the methods used and challenges in analyzing digital spaces through FDA, focusing specifically on the importance of an ethnographic perspective to contextualize online talk. (...) Findings Engagement with the larger socio-cultural context of the subject of study through various data collection methods enhanced our understanding of the contexts behind text. It helped the authors to explore the data from multiple directions from a Foucauldian framework. This study found that people constructed a “progressive” identity when talking about gender on Facebook. Originality/value There are very few studies combining discourse analysis and digital ethnography and this paper seeks to do that. Digital ethnography helps to look beyond the text and locate text in the larger socio-cultural context. To emphasize the importance of context in discourse analysis, this study engages with both online and offline data as online talk is connected with offline contexts in many significant ways. In this paper, the authors provide a description on various methodological steps used to collect and analyze online data using FDA. (shrink)

Pagpectrpes on power, communication and the medical encounter: implications for nursing theory and practice Over the past few decades there has been an increasing push towards ‘nhancing’ communication in the medical encounter, with a focus on moving towards a ‘mutuality’ of patient and health care professional that reduces a perceived ‘power imbalance’ between the two. Doctors in particular have been consmcted as dominating and coercive, either consciously or unconsciously repressing patient's capacity for autonomy. Nurses have typically been represented as less (...) authoritarian in their dealings with patients in their idealized role as caring, kindly and empathetic health professionals. It is therefore often argued that the nurse‐patient relationship is more ‘equal’ and less repressive than the doctor‐patient relationship. This article explores critically these assertions in the context of the Foucauldian perspective on the role of power in the medical encounter, and draws out implications for nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

This article introduces Tofā’a’anolasi, a novel Samoan research framework created by drawing on the work of other Samoan and Pacific education researchers, in combination with adapting the ‘Foucauldian tool box’ to use for research carried out from a Samoan perspective. The article starts with an account and explanation of the process of developing and of naming Tofā’a’anolasi as a Samoan form of Critical Discourse Analysis. Following this is a discussion of the features of Tofā’a’anolasi and the theoretical underpinnings (...) that explain the understandings and processes of this research framework. The article concludes with a story from assessment practice that acts as an example of applying this approach to educational research centred on Samoan students in Auckland, New Zealand. (shrink)

In this article, I reflect back on the period since the publication of the first edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability in order to argue that the intervening years have seen the increasing advance of neoliberal politics that impact on the lives of disabled people. Beginning from an overview of Foucault’s 1978-9 lectures on neoliberalism, I seek to demonstrate that a range of policy developments that affect disabled people can be read against the background of Foucault’s analyses of (...) neoliberal rationalities and practices of government. The impact of these developments has been economically harsh for many; hence, the article considers the potential for effective critique of these issues starting from a Foucauldian analytics. I argue that Foucault’s works, whilst useful in unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about subjectivity and autonomy given by neoliberal governmental rationalities, do not, in and of themselves, suggest a form of critique that is capable of mounting an effective challenge to the neoliberal consensus. My argument ends with a challenge to Foucault-inspired social scientists to ally the valuable insights available from Foucauldian analyses to a critical perspective that can, in addition, diagnose and respond to problems of economic marginalisation, the concentration of wealth, and the marketisation of the social. (shrink)

The production of genetic knowledge -- Scientific and economic strength of genetic reductionism -- Policy implications : discourses of genetic enlightenment as new disciplinary devices -- Genetic conceptualizations of normality and the idea of genetic justice -- Beyond genetic universality and authenticity, the lure of the genetic underclass -- Previews of the future as background -- Economic and actuarial perspective on genetics and insurance -- Practical and normative arguments against genetic exceptionalist legislation -- The changing social role of private (...) insurance : risk as a new representational regime. (shrink)

This article contributes to governmentality studies and state theory by discussing how to understand the centrality and importance of the state from a governmentality perspective. It uses Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Michel Foucault’s governmentality approach as a point of departure for re-investigating Foucault as a thinker of the state. It focuses on Foucault’s notion of the state as a process of ‘statification’ which emphasizes the state as something constantly produced and reproduced by processes and practices of government, administration and (...) acclamation. As a result of this, the state appears as a given entity which is necessary for the multiplicity of governmental technologies and practices in modern society to function. Only by reference to the state can governmental practices be effective and legitimized. Finally, the article conceptualizes the centrality of the state through Foucault’s notions of the state as a ‘practico-reflexive prism’ and a ‘principle of intelligibility’. (shrink)

This essay discusses Korean Neo-Confucian conceptions of the self and the important practice of self-cultivation in Neo-Confucian culture. Although approaching the question and practice from different perspectives, these conceptions reflect a foundation in reverence for knowledge, righteousness, propriety, and benevolence. Basic comparisons are then drawn between Neo-Confucian and Western conceptions of the self and self-cultivation. In particular, Michel Foucault's work on self-cultivation as embedded in social discourses or practices suggests that Neo-Confucian self-cultivation also can be described through a microphysics of (...) reverence. Two examples from modern Korean culture are considered in order to demonstrate how a microphysics of reverence reveals replication and reinforcement of existing social practices in the guise of self-cultivation. (shrink)

This article uncovers the current discursive practices concerning socially vulnerable people in Danish society. A discourse analytical approach inspired by Michel Foucault, along with contributions from Erving Goffmann's work ‘Stigma’, is utilized throughout the analysis. First, the dominant discursive formations are described across the data material, consisting of sociopolitical and health policy documents. Second, we uncover how problematizations and mechanisms of power along with the emergence of the competition state push socially vulnerable people out into the periphery of society. Finally, (...) we discuss responsibility regarding social vulnerability and the structural injustice that follows. Our aim is to facilitate critical awareness of how socially vulnerable people are constructed and contribute to destabilizing accepted meanings and perceptions of social vulnerability. This study shows that being categorized as socially vulnerable is associated with poor health behavior and perceived as being in a dependent relationship with superior systems. The analysis points to a focus on strengthening and developing the work capacity of socially vulnerable people. Thus, the objective of the analyzed documents revolves around securing socially vulnerable people's contribution to society's economy. This article contributes with a perspective on how society, and therefore also healthcare professionals, perceive and interact with socially vulnerable people. (shrink)

This essay discusses Korean Neo-Confucian conceptions of the self and the important practice of self-cultivation in Neo-Confucian culture. Although approaching the question and practice from different perspectives, these conceptions reflect a foundation in reverence for knowledge, righteousness, propriety, and benevolence. Basic comparisons are then drawn between Neo-Confucian and Western conceptions of the self and self-cultivation. In particular, Michel Foucault’s work on self-cultivation as embedded in social discourses or practices suggests that Neo-Confucian self-cultivation also can be described through a microphysics of (...) reverence. Two examples from modern Korean culture are considered in order to demonstrate how a microphysics of reverence reveals replication and reinforcement of existing social practices in the guise of self-cultivation. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore in detail many of the ways power structures our daily personal, political and intellectual lives, and evaluate the workings of power using a variety of theoretical paradigms, from Hobbesian liberalism to Foucauldian feminist postmodernism. Taken as a whole, the book aims towards an end to unjust and destructive uses of power and the flowering of an encouraging, educated empowerment for all human beings in a pluralistic world. Section I offers a progressive chain of (...) arguments that moves from the acceptance of domination, through the rejection of domination and, finally, to a new vision of power based on equality and mutual respect. Section II explores the questions, how is the philosophical self, that is, our very understanding of who we are, implicated in the web of power and domination? Section III responds to political realism as it explores morally ideal solutions to the global problems of poverty, war and hunger. Section IV discusses ways in which our thought and practice in both public and private life are bound up in hierarchies of domination. (shrink)

Highly concentrated intensive confinement systems have become the norm in agriculture concerning nonhuman animals. These systems have provoked a lively debate from an animal welfare perspective. Sociologists can contribute to this debate by drawing parallels between the institutional regulation of human beings and of animals under confinement. Results of research on the transformation of Canadian hog production from the 1950s to the present—based on the evolution of plans for sow housing produced by the Canada Plan Service—showed a much tighter (...) compression of hog bodies and reproduction in space and time. The prevalence of behavioral stereotypes, however, indicates imperfect animal socialization and reconfiguration. The concept of discipline is a useful perspective that could bridge the gap between the regulations of humans in industrial societies and of pigs in intensive confinement. This concept derived from elements of labor process and Foucauldian and post-humanist theories. (shrink)

This article considers a noted trend by teacher educators at a South African University where student teachers seem to have very little connection with children they teach on their teaching practicals. This lack of engagement and ability to see individual children that are being taught and respond to them is the focus of the paper. The paper considers how such a circumstance may come into being by looking at socio-historical practices in education through a Foucauldian lens using the notions (...) of government and governmentality. Ways in which people were managed and dominant forms of knowledge and being are in tension with curricular shift that construct children as competent and able. It then proposes that within teacher education a shift of perspective is needed in enabling students to ‘look’ at the children in their classrooms in a deeper, more engaged way. This draws from research methods that use observation as for researchers to understand participants through their eyes. Three examples are given from classroom observations as a way of exploring what close observations of children can teach us about children’s needs and interests. The paper concludes with a general framework students might draw on that places children as the focus in the classroom. (shrink)

This chapter explores the anti-colonial narrative potential of certain works of cinema taking Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Caché as a case in point. To do so, this chapter first and mainly draws upon the theoretical and normative lens put forward by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the representation of the colonized other and her resulting political and intellectual call for self-reflection on one's privileged Western intellectual positioning. This lens has many normative implications for the ways in which the colonized (...) subject and colonial history are discussed and represented. The partial lack of representation of the colonized other in Aguirre, the Wrath of God leaves the subjectivity of the colonizer in crisis and madness. Second, the narrative of Caché is explored and it is suggested that it resembles the rhetoric of Foucauldian disciplinary power of surveillance turned upside-down thus enforcing the complicit of colonialism to question her privilege. (shrink)

This article focuses on problematizing the harmonisation of higher education in Europe today. The overall aim is to analyse the construction of the European citizen and the rationality of governing related to such a construction. The specific focus will be on the rules and standards of reason in higher education reforms which inscribe continuums of values that exclude as they include. Who is and who is not constructed as a European citizen? Documents on the Bologna process produced in Europe and (...) in Sweden are analysed drawing on the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, showing a neoliberal rationality of governing. The European citizen needs to become flexible, autonomous and self‐regulating as a way of facing the threats of the constantly changing future. The technique of diversity is a condition of possibility for constructing such a citizen and for harmonising higher education in Europe. Further, the current power relations in the discourse define what is and what is not European, thus constructing ‘the other’, the one who is excluded. (shrink)

The 19th-century missionary literary genre provides us with a window into how the missionaries viewed African cultural systems, such as polygamy. In their minds, polygamy was one of the obstacles to converting Africans to Christianity. Baptism functioned as a theatre of power and submission. To access baptism, a convert had to abandon and strip themselves of that which made them Africans and adopt Western colonial Christian norms and principles. In this article, we argue that the condemnation of polygamy by missionaries (...) was a wielding of power within the colonial matrix of power. We further maintain that the decolonisation of Christianity cannot be achieved without a critical analysis of the impact of the missionaries in the deformation and labelling of African cultural identities as heathen and uncivilised. Contribution: The cultural transfer that was achieved through Christianisation, civilisation and colonisation has led to what Biko referred to as the flight from the black self and what Du Bois referred to as double consciousness. The article applies the intersectionality of theoretical lenses of Africana critical thought, Foucauldian notion of power, negritude and decoloniality. (shrink)

The lack of consistency between people’s engagement in ethical issues and their food choices has received considerable attention. Consumption as “choice” dominates this discourse, understood as decision-making at the point of purchase. But ideas concentrating on individual choice are problematic when trying to understand how social and ethical issues emerge and are dealt with in the practices of buying and eating food. I argue in this paper that “consumer choice” is better understood as a political ideology addressing a particular way (...) in which everyday practices can be directed so as to solve social problems. It is a way that makes questions of power particularly challenging. Some assume consumer sovereignty, emphasizing consumer choice as a reflection of neoliberal deregulation and commercialization. Others worry that ongoing changes increase consumers’ powerlessness. None of these seem to capture that there is active regulation, where public as well as commercial and civil actors are making strong efforts to make people do the right thing—voluntarily. Labeling is the key measure. In practice, the individualized and rationalized model of responsibility depends not only on market opportunities, but even political and social expectations and trust. People may lack concrete capabilities and power to follow up on moral calls, but they may also have a different understanding of who is responsible and what is a “good deed,” or their actions may, in a Foucauldian sense, represent resistance. The paper will, with examples from European empirical studies, discuss how mobilization as well as inertia and disinterest emerge within specific political constellations and practical contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of the May 68 Movement throughout France and the Great Cultural Revolution sweeping China, the avant-garde of Tel Quel pinned their hopes of fighting against academic institutionalization in France on ‘‘China’s university revolution.” Tel Quel avant-garde once believed that China’s “open-door university” movement had not only successfully “burned down” the university institution, but also created the vanguard culture of the proletariat. Their imagination of “China’s university revolution" is helpful to the impact on the rigid system of (...) French universities and the creation of French vanguard culture. However, after visiting China, they did not find the expected revolutionary vanguard culture in Chinese universities, but completely bankrupted their own cultural politics. The experience of Tel Quel avant-garde made us reflect on the role of intellectuals, and also encouraged us to discuss how to get rid of the dichotomy between the “universal intellectuals" and the academic institution established in the Enlightenment era. The Foucauldian "specific intellectuals" inspired us that intellectuals should criticize reality based on their professional knowledge and construct reasonable university institution according to the actual situation. (shrink)

This article provides a Foucauldian perspective on the racialised biopolitics of Islamophobia in the global north. It is argued that a pervasive, wide-ranging racialised logos is being used to unde...

In this paper I discuss some thoughts Judith Butler presents regarding corporeal vulnerability. This might help to elucidate the problem of whether critical education is still possible today. I first explain why precisely the possibility of critique within education is a problem for us today. This is because the traditional means of enhancing a critical attitude in pupils, stimulating their self-reflective capacities, contributes to the continued existence and strengthening of the current societal and political regime. A way out of this (...) deadlock is offered from within a Foucauldian perspective. Criticality here refers to an experience of exposure and expropriation of the self. This kind of limit-experience is also of a central importance in the most recent work of Judith Butler. She links this experience to the corporeal condition of susceptibility. Our bodies have a public dimension as we are inescapably exposed to one another. The main argument of my paper has to do with whether this appeal to corporeal vulnerability might offer a new way of thinking about the public realm and about the possibility of critique, especially within the field of education. I conclude the paper by showing the originality of Butler’s thought in this respect and the possibilities it opens for thinking in a radically new way about critical pedagogy. (shrink)

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and history of education is delved into. First, it is noted that both disciplines have diverged from each other over the last few decades to become relatively autonomous subsectors within the pedagogical sciences, each with its own discourses, its own expositional characteristics, its own channels of communication, and its own networks. From the perspective of the history of education, it seems as though more affiliation has been sought with the science of history. (...) The history of education, in any event, has in the past few years become more historicizing and less ‘educationalizing’. According to the author, there are signs that indicate that such an analogous line of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, also applies for the philosophy of education. Does this mean that there are no longer any bridges from the one area to the other or that none are possible? Probably not. In the second portion, it is shown that the modern or even postmodern ‘new cultural history of education’, with its often ironical and demythologizing traits uses or can use a considerable amount of ‘grand theory’. Indeed, the development of an adequate conceptual apparatus that also has to cope with the problem of ‘presentism’ assumes a constant dialogue with the past and for this a philosophical‐interpretative approach is still the best situated. Inversely, the Foucauldian perspective shows that philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular equally hardly do without history. Within the reflection on pedagogical praxis, the historical and the philosophical thus probably will continue to rely on each other—if only as allies against the dominance of short‐winded empirical‐quantitative research. Still, it would be naive to think that, from this possible alliance, the fragmentation of historically developed knowledge systems with their own sociological and institutional foundation of scientific activities can be rectified in a trice. (shrink)

This article focuses on patients' participation in decision‐making in meetings with healthcare professionals in a healthcare system, based on neoliberal regulations and ideas. Drawing on two constructed empirical cases, primarily from the perspective of patients, this article analyses and discusses the clinical practice around decision‐making meetings within a Foucauldian perspective. Patients' participation in decision‐making can be seen as an offshoot of respect for patient autonomy. A treatment must be chosen, when patients consult physicians. From the perspective (...) of patients, there is a tendency for healthcare professionals to supply the patients with the information that they think are necessary for them to make their own decision. But patients do not always want to be a ‘customer’ in the healthcare system; they want to be a patient, consulting an expert for help and advice, which creates resistance to some parts of the decision‐making process. Both professionals and patients are subject to the structural frame of the medical field, formed of both neoliberal framework and medical logic. The decision‐making competence in relation to the choice of treatment is placed away from the professionals and seen as belonging to the patient. A ‘projectification’ of the patient occurs, whereby the patient becomes responsible for his/her choices in treatment and care and the professionals support him/her with knowledge, preferences, and alternative views, out of which he/she must make his/her own choices, and the responsibility for those choices now and in the future. At the same time, there is a tendency towards de‐professionalization. In that light, participation of patients in decision‐making can be regarded as a tacit governmentality strategy that shapes the location of responsibility between individual and society, and independent patients and healthcare professionals, despite the basically desirable, appropriate, and necessary idea of involving patients in their own situations from a humanistic perspective. (shrink)

This article takes up the problematic of the ‘new normal’ and its necessary twin, the ‘will to religion’. The notion of the ‘new normal’ describes the shift to the persistent presence, indeed requirement, for religious assessment in all manner of public and institutional life. The idea of the will to religion reflects a broadly Foucauldian perspective on the care of the self and the requirement to confess—in this instance to confess one’s belonging to a religious category. The article (...) calls for a robust attention to the discursive construction of a normal in which we are all religious, and to which values are constituted as ‘universal’ or that we owe our moral and intellectual condition to religion. The article points to four consequences of this shift to a ‘new normal’ in which we are all religious, including the essentialization of religious identities, the overemphasis on religion, the infiltration of particular measures of religiosity, and the spread of religious freedom protectionism. (shrink)

This paper will critique the values embedded in the Western classical tradition from a Foucauldian perspective. It will identify issues of power as a central problem for Western culture which is developing into a monoculture in which many people are disempowered. It identifies the role of the dialogic imagination in challenging the dominant culture and how this might inform work with children. It will see a way forward as the valuing of difference, drawing on the work of Martin (...) Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. It will examine the origins of the hierarchy of the Western classical music tradition in the development of patriarchal values in early Christianity. It will analyze the use of the arts as cultural intervention for personal and cultural re-empowerment, drawing examples from Improvisation Theatre, Carnival, heteroglossia in contemporary poetry and Victor Turner's notion of liminality. It will draw on examples from a variety of art forms and then look at how music might be re-envisioned. It will interrogate a musical event drawing on these strands to encourage children to think outside the cultural conventions and to value difference. (shrink)

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and history of education is delved into. First, it is noted that both disciplines have diverged from each other over the last few decades to become relatively autonomous subsectors within the pedagogical sciences, each with its own discourses, its own expositional characteristics, its own channels of communication, and its own networks. From the perspective of the history of education, it seems as though more affiliation has been sought with the science of history. (...) The history of education, in any event, has in the past few years become more historicizing and less ‘educationalizing’. According to the author, (who is not a philosopher of education) there are signs that indicate that such an analogous line of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, also applies for the philosophy of education. Does this mean that there are no longer any bridges from the one area to the other or that none are possible? Probably not. In the second portion, it is shown that the modern or even postmodern ‘new cultural history of education’, with its often ironical and demythologizing traits uses or can use a considerable amount of ‘grand theory’ (à la Foucault). Indeed, the development of an adequate conceptual apparatus that also has to cope with the problem of ‘presentism’ assumes a constant dialogue with the past and for this a philosophical‐interpretative (casu quo, hermeneutic) approach is still the best situated. Inversely, the Foucauldian perspective shows that philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular equally hardly do without history. Within the reflection on pedagogical praxis, the historical and the philosophical thus probably will continue to rely on each other—if only as allies against the dominance of short‐winded empirical‐quantitative research. Still, it would be naive to think that, from this possible alliance, the fragmentation of historically developed knowledge systems with their own sociological and institutional foundation of scientific activities can be rectified in a trice. (shrink)

PERRON A and HOLMES D. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 191–204Constructing mentally ill inmates: nurses’ discursive practices in correctionsThe concepts of discourse, subjectivity and power allow for innovative explorations in nursing research. Discourse take many different forms and may be maintained, transmitted, even imposed, in various ways. Nursing practice makes possible many discursive spaces where discourses intersect. Using a Foucauldian perspective, were explored the ways in which forensic psychiatric nurses construct the subjectivity of mentally ill inmates. Progress notes and (...) individual interviews constitute discursive spaces within which nurses construct patients’ subjectivities. Progress notes provide a written (and permanent) form of discourse, while interviews set the space for a more fluid and contextual form of discourse. We identified five types of subjectivities – the (in)visible patient, the patient as risk, the deviant patient, the disturbed patient and the disciplined patient. These subjectivities were rooted in various types of discourses circulating in the selected setting. Despite the multiple discursive dimensions of forensic psychiatric nursing, progress notes remain the main formal source of information regarding nursing care even though it is not representative of the care provided nor is it representative of nurses’ complex discursive practices in corrections. (shrink)

Although overarching if not foundational conceptualizations of digital governance in the field of critical data studies aptly account for and explain subjection, calculated resistance is left conceptually unattended despite case studies that document instances of resistance. I ask at the outset why conceptualizations of digital governance are so bleak, and I argue that all are underscored implicitly by a Deleuzian theory of desire that overlooks agency, defined here in Foucauldian terms. I subsequently conceptualize digital governance as encompassing subjection as (...) well as resistance, and I cast the two in relational perspective by making use of the concepts “affordance” and “assemblage” in conjunction with multiple subjectivities and Foucault's view of power as productive as well as his view of resistance as an “antagonism of strategies” in his late scholarship on resistance, ethics, and subjectivity. I offer examples of salient modes of what I call “productive” resistance, and from a Foucauldian perspective I explain how each mode targets and subverts technologies of repressive power to produce new elements of the digital environment and construct new truths. I conclude by recognizing the agency embodied in resistance as an end in itself, but I also consider that modes of productive resistance can have extrinsic value as they affect the fluid interaction among elements of the digital environment, potentially disrupting the presumed structure of dominance and dependence, and opening our conceptualization of algorithmic life to hopeful possibilities for change. (shrink)

Police and pastoral power: governmentality and correctional forensic psychiatric nursing Since 1978, the federal inmates of Canada have had access to a full range of psychiatric care within the penitentiary system. Several psychiatric units are now integrated into the correctional services of Canada. This paper presents the results of a grounded theory doctoral study undertaken in a multilevel secured psychiatric ward within the Canadian federal penitentiary system. The author describes and discusses the results of qualitative data that emerged from his (...) fieldwork. The concept of governmentality, as defined by the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, constitutes one of the major theoretical tools that were helpful in analyzing these data. Police and pastoral power, two dimensions of the security apparatus of governmentality, were found to be useful in understanding and characterizing nursing practice caught between the penal and the psychiatric dispositifs. A Foucauldian perspective allows one to understand the manner in which forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill inmates through three forms of power — sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral — which have posited nursing practice as a strategic tool of the correctional services. This research consists of a study of nursing practice in an extreme setting that deserves a radical analysis. (shrink)

The leadership development industry regularly claims to aid in developing effective, ethical leaders, using 360-degree psychometric assessments as key tools for so doing. This paper analyses the effects of such tools on those subjected to and subjectivised by them from a Foucauldian perspective. We argue that instead of encouraging ethical leadership such instruments inculcate practices and belief systems that perpetuate falsehoods, misrepresentations and inequalities. ‘Followers’ are presumed compliant, malleable beings needing leaders to determine what is in their interests. (...) Such techniques pursue productivity and profitability, rather than ethical leadership. We examine the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, a widely used 360-degree tool that measures transformational leadership, as an illustrative case study to substantiate these criticisms. (shrink)

This article briefly outlines some of the key problems with the way in which the moral realm has traditionally been understood and analysed. I propose two alternative views of what is morally interesting and applicable to nursing practice and I indicate that instability has its upsides. I begin with a moral tale – a 'Good Samaritan' story – which raises fairly usual questions about the nature of morality but also the more philosophically fundamental question about the relationship between subjectivity and (...) moral agency. I then consider this relationship from the perspectives of two twentieth century philosophers: Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Foucault. Levinas' basic point is that the experience of ethical subjectivity is made possible through others: the demand to respond to the existence of others is the basic social structure that precedes individual freedom. If Levinas posits intersubjectivity as a fundamental or primitive feature of the moral realm, Foucault poses an even more basic question: how have moral subjects and relations of obligation been constituted? The aim of ethical inquiry, for Foucault, is to describe the network of discourses, institutions, relations, and practices through which certain kinds of subjects are constituted and constitute themselves, e.g. as a kind of person who can act morally. Finally, I consider some recent research in philosophy of nursing which illustrates how Levinasian and/or Foucauldian perspectives can deepen understanding of nurses' moral practices, specifically, the work of Norwegian public health nurses, Canadian pediatric nurses, and Irish midwives. I suggest that in spite of the instability of morality in general and the particular ethical challenges that face nurses, there are grounds for hope and possible strategies for living in unstable times. (shrink)