Foucault's Hypothesis: from the Critique of the Juridico-Discursive Concept of Power to an Analytics of Government
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The Art of 'Governing Nature': 'Green' Governmentality
THE ART OF ‘GOVERNING NATURE’: ‘GREEN’ GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE MANAGEMENT OF NATURE by KRISTAN JAMES HART A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Environmental Studies In conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Environmental Studies Queen„s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2011) Copyright ©Kristan James Hart, 2011 Abstract This thesis seeks to unpack the notions of Michael Foucault's late work on governmentality and what insights it might have for understanding the „governing of nature‟. In doing this it also operates as a critique of what is often termed 'resourcism', a way of evaluating nature which only accounts for its utility for human use and does not give any acceptance to the idea of protecting nature for its own sake, or any conception of a nature that cannot be managed. By utilizing a study of the govern-mentalities emerging throughout liberalism, welfare-liberalism and neoliberalism I argue that this form of 'knowing' nature-as-resource has always been internal to rationalities of liberal government, but that the bracketing out of other moral valuations to the logic of the market is a specific function of neoliberal rationalities of governing. I then seek to offer an analysis of the implications for this form of nature rationality, in that it is becoming increasingly globalized, and with that bringing more aspects of nature into metrics for government, bringing new justifications for intervening in „deficient‟ populations under the rubric of „sustainable development. I argue, that with this a new (global) environmental subject is being constructed; one that can rationally assess nature-as-resource in a cost-benefit logic of wise-use conservation. -
The Democratic Biopolitics of Prep Schubert, Karsten
www.ssoar.info The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP Schubert, Karsten Postprint / Postprint Sammelwerksbeitrag / collection article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Schubert, K. (2019). The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP. In H. Gerhards, & K. Braun (Eds.), Biopolitiken - Regierungen des Lebens heute (pp. 121-153). Wiesbaden: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25769-9_5 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de Diese Version ist zitierbar unter / This version is citable under: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-66194-0 Schubert, Karsten. 2019. The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP. In Biopolitiken – Regierungen des Lebens heute, ed. Helene Gerhards and Kathrin Braun, 121–153. Wiesbaden: Springer Fach- medien. Final Manuscript. Published version can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25769-9_5 The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP∗ Karsten Schubert Summary PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates contemporary literature on biopolitical theory as it applies to PrEP, by bringing it in a dialogue with a mapping of the political debate on PrEP. -
Critical Inquiry As Virtuous Truth-Telling: Implications of Phronesis and Parrhesia ______
______________________________________________________________________________ Critical Inquiry as Virtuous Truth-Telling: Implications of Phronesis and Parrhesia ______________________________________________________________________________ Austin Pickup, Aurora University Abstract This article examines critical inquiry and truth-telling from the perspective of two comple- mentary theoretical frameworks. First, Aristotelian phronesis, or practical wisdom, offers a framework for truth that is oriented toward ethical deliberation while recognizing the contingency of practical application. Second, Foucauldian parrhesia calls for an engaged sense of truth-telling that requires risk from the inquirer while grounding truth in the com- plexity of human discourse. Taken together, phronesis and parrhesia orient inquirers to- ward intentional truth-telling practices that resist simplistic renderings of criticality and overly technical understandings of research. This article argues that truly critical inquiry must spring from the perspectives of phronesis and parrhesia, providing research projects that aim at virtuous truth-telling over technical veracity with the hope of contributing to ethical discourse and social praxis. Keywords: phronesis, praxis, parrhesia, critical inquiry, truth-telling Introduction The theme of this special issue considers the nature of critical inquiry, specifically methodological work that remains committed to explicit goals of social justice and the good. One of the central concerns of this issue is that critical studies have lost much of their meaning due to a proliferation of the term critical in educational scholarship. As noted in the introduction to this issue, much contemporary work in education research that claims to be critical may be so in name only, offering but methodological techniques to engage in critical work; techniques that are incapable of inter- vening in both the epistemological and ontological formations of normative practices in education. -
Neoliberalism: a Foucauldian Perspective
IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2011, 109-124 International Review of Social Research Neoliberalism: a Foucauldian Perspective Călin COTOI• University of Bucharest Abstract: The contemporary investigations on power, politics, government and knowledge are profoundly influenced by Foucault’s work. Governmentality, as a specific way of seeing the connections between the formation of subjectivities and population politics, has been used extensively in anthropology as neoliberal governmentalities have been spreading after the 1990s all over the world. A return to Foucault can help to clarify some overtly ideological uses of ‘neoliberalism’ in nowadays social sciences. Keywords: governmentality, governance, ethnography, neoliberalism ‘The market is in human nature’ is the proposition that cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged; in my opinion, it is the most crucial terrain of ideological struggle in our time. Frederic Jameson There is no alternative. Margaret Thatcher Governmentality or ideology? some kind of vague and simplistic political alignment: anti-neoliberalism Neoliberalism has become – alongside on the left and pro-neoliberalism on or, sometimes, replacing ‘globalization’ the right. – one of the buzzwords in public and ddIn this article I propose a way academic discourses on the ‘form of out a narrow ideological meaning the world-as-a-whole’ (Robertson, of neoliberalism, by a close 1990). It is used to forge new academic reading of Foucault’s research on alliances and to identify new political, governmentality, of Nikolas Rose’s moral and epistemological enemies. governmentality studies and of some It works, many times, as an umbrella ethnographical case studies. concept or a badge that helps to create •email: [email protected]. -
Digital Parrhesia 2.0: Moving Beyond Deceptive Communications Strategies in the Digital World François Allard-Huver, Nicholas Gilewicz
Digital Parrhesia 2.0: Moving beyond deceptive communications strategies in the digital world François Allard-Huver, Nicholas Gilewicz To cite this version: François Allard-Huver, Nicholas Gilewicz. Digital Parrhesia 2.0: Moving beyond deceptive communi- cations strategies in the digital world. Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Creative Tech- nologies, pp.404-416, 2015, 978-1-4666-8205-4. 10.4018/978-1-4666-8205-4.ch017. hal-02092103 HAL Id: hal-02092103 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02092103 Submitted on 7 Apr 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Digital Parrhesia 2.0: Moving beyond Deceptive Communications Strategies in the Digital World François Allard-Huver Sorbonne University, France Nicholas Gilewicz University of Pennsylvania, USA ABSTRACT Deceptive communications strategies are further problematized in digital space. Because digitally mediated communication easily accommodates pseudonymous and anonymous speech, digital ethos depends upon finding the proper balance between the ability to create pseudonymous and anonymous online presences and the public need for transparency in public speech. Analyzing such content requires analyzing media forms and the honesty of speakers themselves. This chapter applies Michel Foucault’s articulation of parrhesia—the ability to speak freely and the concomitant public duties it requires of speakers—to digital communication. -
'The Birth of Bio-Politics': Michel Foucault's Lecture at the College De France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality
Economy and Society ISSN: 0308-5147 (Print) 1469-5766 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reso20 'The birth of bio-politics': Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality Thomas Lemke To cite this article: Thomas Lemke (2001) 'The birth of bio-politics': Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality, Economy and Society, 30:2, 190-207 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085140120042271 Published online: 09 Dec 2010. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 8456 View related articles Citing articles: 374 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=reso20 Download by: [University of Sussex Library] Date: 11 March 2016, At: 04:24 Economy and Society Volume 30 Number 2 May 2001: 190–207 ‘The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality Thomas Lemke Abstract This paper focuses on Foucault’s analysis of two forms of neo-liberalism in his lecture of 1979 at the Collège de France: German post-War liberalism and the liberalism of the Chicago School. Since the course is available only on audio-tapes at the Foucault archive in Paris, the larger part of the text presents a comprehensive reconstruction of the main line of argumentation, citing previously unpublished source material. The nal section offers a short discussion of the methodological and theoretical principles underlying the concept of governmentality and the critical political angle it provides for an analysis of contemporary neo-liberalism. -
Powers of Freedom Reframing Political Thought
Powers of Freedom Reframing Political Thought Nikolas Rose The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, United Kingdom http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Nikolas Rose 1999 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Monotype Plantin 10/12 pt [] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Rose, Nikolas S. Powers of Freedom: reframing political thought / Nikolas Rose. p. cm ‘Portions of this book draw on published and unpublished papers’ – Acknowledgements. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0 521 65075 5 (hb) ISBN 0 521 65905 1 1. Political sociology. 2. Liberty. 3. Community. 4. Foucault. Michel – Contributions in political science. I. Title. JA76.R645 1999 320′.01′1 – dc21 98–40306 CIP ISBN 0 521 65075 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 65905 1 paperback Contents Acknowledgements page ix Introduction: reframing political thought 1 1 Governing 15 2 Freedom 61 3 The social 98 4 Advanced liberalism 137 5 Community 167 6 Numbers 197 7 Control 233 Conclusion: beyond government 274 Bibliography 285 Index 307 vii 1 Governing How should one analyse political power? For much of the twentieth century in European social and political thought, answers to this ques- tion were dominated by the massive spectre of ‘the state’. -
6. Neoliberal Governmentality: Foucault on the Birth of Biopolitics
MICHAEL A. PETERS 6. NEOLIBERAL GOVERNMENTALITY: FOUCAULT ON THE BIRTH OF BIOPOLITICS The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to liberate the individual from the State and its institutions, but to liberate ourselves from the State and the type of individualisation linked to it (Foucault, 1982, p. 216). Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. (Foucault, 1982, p. 221). INTRODUCTION In his governmentality studies in the late 1970s Foucault held a course at the Collège de France the major forms of neoliberalism, examining the three theoretical schools of German ordoliberalism, the Austrian school characterised by Hayek, and American neoliberalism in the form of the Chicago school. Among Foucault’s great insights in his work on governmentality was the critical link he observed in liberalism between the governance of the self and government of the state – understood as the exercise of political sovereignty over a territory and its population. He focuses on government as a set of practices legitimated by specific rationalities and saw that these three schools of contemporary economic liberalism focused on the question of too much government – a permanent critique of the state that Foucault considers as a set of techniques for governing the self through the market. Liberal modes of governing, Foucault tells us, are distinguished in general by the ways in which they utilise the capacities of free acting subjects and, consequently, modes of government differ according to the value and definition accorded the concept of freedom. These different mentalities of rule, thus, turn on whether freedom is seen as a natural attribute as with the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, a product of rational choice making, or, as with Hayek, a civiliz- ational artefact theorised as both negative and anti-naturalist. -
Michel Foucault and Qualitative Research in Human and Social Sciences
Volume 19, No. 3, Art. 23 September 2018 Michel Foucault and Qualitative Research in Human and Social Sciences João Leite Ferreira-Neto Key words: Michel Abstract: In this article, I analyze the methodological contributions of Michel FOUCAULT, Foucault; highlighting his affinity with qualitative strategies of research in the human and social sciences. I qualitative propose a theoretical study on the subject, working with historical and conceptual aspects of Michel research; FOUCAULT's methodology and its application to qualitative research. This text is organized into humanities; three analytical axes: a discussion of the methodological questions developed by Michel ethnography; FOUCAULT; a correlation of his perspective with contemporary literature about qualitative research; philosophy and an analysis of the methodological design of his final research. I emphasize his decision to study problems from their "most singular and concrete forms." I explore the outline of his final research on the genealogy of the modern subject, analyzing the reasons for his methodological choices. Finally, I propose that the construction of relevant research problems, handled with detail and precision, and using classic research methods, contributed to the incisive impact of his work in the field of human and social sciences. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Methodological Choices in Michel FOUCAULT's Work 3. Eventualization and Ethnography 4. A Discussion of Method in Foucault's Research 5. Conclusion Author References Citation 1. Introduction Michel FOUCAULT has become a reference for research in the human and social sciences all over the world, notably in English-speaking countries. His influence has increased after his death in 1984, favored by the posthumous publication of his interviews and articles, as well as his courses at the Collége de France. -
Michel Foucault's Lecture at the Collège De France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality
1 "The Birth of Bio-Politics" – Michel Foucault's Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality From 1970 until his death in 1984, Michel Foucault held the Chair of "History of Systems of Thought" at the Collège de France.1 In his public lectures delivered each Wednesday from early January through to the end of March/beginning of April, he reported on his research goals and findings, presenting unpublished material and new conceptual and theoretical research tools. Many of the ideas developed there were later to be taken up in his various book projects. However, he was in fact never to elaborate in writing on some of the research angles he presented there. Foucault's early and unexpected death meant that two of the key series of lectures have remained largely unpublished ever since, namely the lectures held in 1978 ("Sécurité, territoire et population") and in 1979 ("La naissance de la biopolitique").2 These lectures focused on the "genealogy of the modern state" (Lect. April 5, 1978/1982b, 43). Foucault deploys the concept of government or "governmentality" as a "guideline" for the analysis he offers by way of historical reconstructions embracing a period starting from Ancient Greek through to modern neo-liberalism (Foucault 1978b, 719). I wish to emphasize two points here, as they seem important for an adequate assessment of the innovative potential of the notion of governmentality. First of all, the concept of governmentality demonstrates Foucault's working hypothesis on the reciprocal constitution of power techniques and forms of knowledge. The semantic linking of governing ("gouverner") and modes of thought ("mentalité") indicates that it is not possible to study the technologies of power without an analysis of the political rationality underpinning them. -
A Case of Parrhesia: Courage in Discourse and Its Effects
Original Article A CASE OF PARRHESIA: COURAGE IN DISCOURSE AND ITS EFFECTS Thiago Barbosa SOARES* ▪ ABSTRACT: This article aims to analyze the meanings of parrhesia and its effects in a statement by a Brazilian federal representative, that breaks with hegemonic discourse. More precisely, we describe and interpret how the production and emergence of parrhesia functions to configure meanings in a statement constituted and developed within the vote regarding the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff’s mandate in 2016, delivered by Jean Wyllys. In this way, considering the postulate of Discourse Analysis, developed by Pêcheux, in which subject and meaning are constructed simultaneously in the historical movement, we hold that parrhesia, as Foucault observes it in his final works, produces, simultaneously, certain meanings and subjects circulating in the social space. Given this conceptual framework, we employ the theoretical and methodological tools of Discourse Analysis to investigate how truth-telling is constructed and what its effects are on the treadmill of resistance against discursive hegemony. ▪ KEYWORDS: discourse analysis; parrhesia; Jean Wyllys. Introduction A ‘discourse’ is not an infrastructure; nor is it another word for ‘ideology’. In fact, it is, rather, the opposite, despite what is often claimed either in writing or by word of mouth. (VEYNE, 2008, p.28) Paul Veyne is right in saying what discourse is not, in order to dispel certain existing interpretations about discourse. Likewise, eschewing generic readings of discourse is desirable and even necessary in the scope of our object of investigation, since the exercise of parrhesia - which “implies speech equality, the right to speak”, that is, isegory -, as understood by Michel Foucault, it is more than truth-telling, it is an ethical act whose implication is the conjuration of the effects of the discourse. -
Michel Foucault, Jean Le Bitoux, and the Gay Science Lost and Found: an Introduction Author(S): David M
Michel Foucault, Jean Le Bitoux, and the Gay Science Lost and Found: An Introduction Author(s): David M. Halperin Reviewed work(s): Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011), pp. 371-380 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/659349 . Accessed: 13/01/2012 13:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry. http://www.jstor.org Michel Foucault, Jean Le Bitoux, and the Gay Science Lost and Found: An Introduction David M. Halperin About fifteen years ago I arranged to meet Jean Le Bitoux in Paris. My intent was to secure the translation rights to his legendary interview with Michel Foucault, “Le Gai Savoir” (“the gay science”). The interview had been conducted on 10 July 1978. Jean Le Bitoux was already by that date a gay activist of some renown. Born in Bordeaux in 1948, he eventually moved to Nice where in 1970 he founded the local branch of the FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Re´volutionnaire or “Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action”), a radical group that incarnated a 1960s style of Gay Liberation.