FFOOUUCCAAUULLTT:: 2255 YYEEAARRSS OONN A CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE CENTRE FOR POST-COLONIAL AND GLOBALISATION STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA 25 JUNE 2009 ________ SPONSORED BY CONTACT: [email protected] Foucault: 25 years on The Centre for Post-Colonial and Globalisation Studies is marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault with a conference to reflect on the influence of his work. Provocation: Twenty five years after his death, reflecting on Foucault is an enormous task. His influence permeates disparate and innumerable fields and informs so much of our thinking, along with that of many great theorists who have followed him. Foucault’s influence is one of ramifying and far reaching interdisciplinary complexity, but he draws us together too, providing a common theoretical baseline to diverse disciplinary endeavours. He shows us the connections between things. Just as his life and his work connects up theoretical pursuits as diverse as queer theory and postcolonial studies, so his influence draws together and draws bridges between theorists. In so doing, Foucault’s legacy muddies the theoretical waters, forcing strange synergies and theoretical configurations such as the antifoundational humanist. Growing from the murky ferment of French colonial history, the father of poststructuralism’s story is as complex as that encounter, and his legacy is as mutating, unsettling and transformative. A reflection on Foucault needs to accommodate a consideration of the enormity of the shadow which such a legacy casts over continuing intellectual production. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8:45 REGISTRATION, ARRIVAL, TEA AND COFFEE Room:C1-79 (foyer) 9:00 WELCOME, INTRODUCTION AND HOUSEKEEPING – Benito Cao (Chair) 9:10 WELCOME TO COUNTRY – Uncle Lewis O’Brien 9:15 OPENING ADDRESS – IAN GOODWIN-SMITH Foucault: 25 Years on PLENARY #1 OPENING KEYNOTE BARRY HINDESS Liberalism and History Room: C1-79 BEN GOLDER Foucault, Anti-Humanism and Human Rights Chair: Benito JIM JOSE Of ‘Strange Synergies’ and ‘Murky Ferments’: Governance Discourse and the Taming of the Foucault Effect. Cao 10:15 QUESTION TIME 10:35 MORNING TEA 11:05 BRURIA BERGMAN & THOMAS NORDGREN Disambiguating the Prague Trial PLENARY #2 DAVID MCINERNEY Oriental Despotism and the Political Monsters of Michel Foucault's ‘Les Anormaux’ Room: C1-79 KATRINA JAWORSKI Deliberate Taking: The Author, Agency and Suicide Chair: Benito Cao MARTIN HARDIE From Barthes to Foucault and beyond – Cycling in the Age of Empire 12:05 QUESTION TIME 12:30 LUNCH 1:30 KEYNOTE MICHAEL DUTTON 911 and the Afterlives of Colonial Governmentality PLENARY #3 ALEXANDER LAMBEVSKI Foucault, Gay Subjectivity and the Microsociology of Emotions Room: C1-79 STEPHEN KERRY Are You a Boy or a Girl? Foucault and the Intersex Movement Chair: Benito KATE SEYMOUR Problematisations: Violence Intervention and the Construction of Expertise Cao DEIRDRE TEDMANSON & DINESH WADIWEL The Governmentality of New Race / Pleasure Wars? Foucault, ‘Neoptolemus’ and the NT Emergency Response KEYNOTE RYAN BISHOP ‘The Huntsman's Funeral’: Foucault, Technology, Aesthetics and the Sensorium 3:00 QUESTION TIME 3:30 AFTERNOON TEA 4:00 Room: C1-79 Chair: Benito Cao Room: C1-60 Chair: Ian Goodwin-Smith CONCURRENT HELEN MCLAREN The Challenge with Foucauldian-Informed Feminist MATTHEW BALL Policing the Use of ‘Foucault’: Three Case Studies from Legal Education SESSIONS Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis Scholarship TERRY EYSSENS Exception? What Exception? Foucault’s State of Convention LEONIE MCKEON Learning to Speak Mandarin and Understanding Chinese culture is Different not Difficult JACK ROBERTS A Genealogy of Public Relations in the Context of War STEVEN HODGE A Foucauldian Strategy for Vocational Education and Training Research GILBERT CALUYA Foucault and Everyday Security: Re-Reading Bentham's Panopticon TONY FLETCHER The War Against Aboriginal Australia: Foucault, Racism and Social Work Education RATNAM ALAGIAH & JANEK RATNATUNGA Theories About Theories: Accounting CHRIS HORSELL Foucault, Social Policy and Homelessness Theories After Foucault 5:15 – 5:30 QUESTION TIME 5:35 CLOSING KEYNOTE PAL AHLUWALIA The Poststructural and the Post-colonial (Room: C1-79) 5:50 CLOSE – Pro Vice Chancellor 6:30 SPEAKERS’ DINNER ABSTRACTS & BIOS IAN GOODWIN-SMITH Foucault: 25 Years on Twenty five years after his death, reflecting on Foucault is an enormous task. His influence permeates disparate and innumerable fields and informs so much of our thinking, along with that of many great theorists who have followed him. Foucault’s influence is one of ramifying and far reaching interdisciplinary complexity, but he draws us together too, providing a common theoretical baseline to diverse disciplinary endeavours. He shows us the connections between things. Just as his life and his work connects up theoretical pursuits as diverse as queer theory and postcolonial studies, so his influence draws together and draws bridges between theorists. In so doing, Foucault’s legacy muddies the theoretical waters, forcing strange synergies and theoretical configurations such as the antifoundational humanist. Growing from the murky ferment of French colonial history, the father of poststructuralism’s story is as complex as that encounter, and his legacy is as mutating, unsettling and transformative. A reflection on Foucault needs to accommodate a consideration of the enormity of the shadow which such a legacy casts over continuing intellectual production. Ian Goodwin-Smith is a lecturer in social theory and social policy at the University of South Australia. His research interests orbit around an intersection of postcolonial theory and social policy. He has a particular interest in new theoretical directions for progressive politics with a focus on culture, social identity, subjectivity and social democratic citizenship, as well as an interest in critiques of expertise and professionalism. BARRY HINDESS KEYNOTE: Liberalism and History Barry Hindess is Professor of Political Science in the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU. He has published widely in the areas of social and political theory. His most recent works are Discourses of power: from Hobbes to Foucault, Governing Australia: studies in contemporary rationalities of government (with Mitchell Dean), Corruption and democracy in Australia and Us and them: anti-elitism in Australia (with Marian Sawer). He has published numerous papers on democracy, liberalism and empire, and neo-liberalism. BEN GOLDER Foucault, Anti-Humanism and Human Rights Responding to recent engagements with Foucault, and in part to the provocation of this conference, this paper argues that in his late work Foucault does not submit to the ‘moral superiority’ of humanism and introduce a liberal humanist subject. Rather, Foucault’s late investigations of subjectivity constitute a continuation and not a radical departure from his earlier positions on the subject. Such a reading helps us to assess Foucault’s late supposed ‘embrace’ of, or return to, human rights, which is here re-interpreted as a critical anti-humanist engagement with human rights, conducted in the name of an unfinished humanity. In this way, the paper engages not only with the way in which mainstream accounts of human rights tend to assimilate anti-foundational and post-structural challenges, but also with the quality of Foucault’s own political legacy and future in the age of human rights, 25 years on. Ben Golder is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, UNSW, with an interest in legal theory and post-structuralist philosophy. He has written several articles on Foucault and is, with Professor Peter Fitzpatrick, the author and editor, respectively, of Foucault’s Law (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009) and Foucault and Law (under contract with Ashgate, to come out in 2010). JIM JOSE Of ‘Strange Synergies’ and ‘Murky Ferments’: Governance Discourse and the Taming of the Foucault Effect The paper explores the alleged links between contemporary understandings and uses of ‘governance’ and Foucault’s ideas. Scholars working in quite diverse disciplines have asserted, with increasing frequency, their debt to Foucault for the idea of ‘governance’. However, it is doubtful that Foucault ever used the word ‘governance’, or that he would have accepted having his ideas grouped under that term. This paper argues that positing Foucault as an intellectual progenitor of the concept of ‘governance’ conflates two quite different and incompatible discourses. The political effect is to undermine the emancipatory impulse embedded within Foucault’s political philosophy. In effect, this serves to reposition him within a framework that de-radicalises his intellectual legacy and renders him safe for mainstream scholarship. Jim Jose is Associate Professor in Politics at the University of Newcastle. He is the author of Biopolitics of the Subject: an Introduction to the Ideas of Michel Foucault (1998) and articles on political theory, feminist theory, and Australian politics. His research interests include political theory, governance and post-colonialism. BRURIA BERGMAN & THOMAS NORDGREN Disambiguating the Prague Trial Through his genealogy-based research, Michel Foucault has liberated retrenched viewpoints, showing how the assumptions underlying specific systemic structures open those structures to manipulation for purposes of influence, subjugation, punishment (cf.