Foucault and Technology

This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) employed the terms ‘technology’ and the ‘technique’ over the course of his intellectual career. His use of these words in his mature writings, it is argued, reflects a profound ambivalence: Foucault sought to denounce the pernicious effects of what he called modern ‘technologies of power,’ but also deliberately evoked the more positive values associated with ‘technology’ to develop a philosophical standpoint shorn of the ‘humanist’ values he associated with existentialism and phenomenology. The article situates Foucault’s condemnation of power technologies within the broader skepticism towards ‘technological society’ that pervaded French intellectual circles following World War II. In the first phase of his career (1954-1960), Foucault built on these attitudes to articulate a conventional critique of technology’s alienating effects. Between 1961 and 1972, the theme of ‘technology’ fell into abeyance in his work, though he often suggested a connection between the rise of technology and the advent of the ‘human sciences.’ Between 1973 and 1979, ‘technology’ became a keyword in Foucault’s lexicon, notably when he coined the phrase ‘technologies of power’. He continued to use the term in the final stage of his career (1980-1984), when his emphasis shifted from power to ‘technologies of the self.’ The essay concludes by addressing Paul Forman’s thesis on the primacy of science in modernity and of technology in modernity, suggesting that in many respects Foucault is more of a modernist than a postmodernist.     

Foucault,deleuze, and the ontology of networks

The concept of the network has become embedded in social thought and imagery, articulating what at root is inarticulable. The network metaphor occupies an ontological space, but this space, insofar as it is posed as a philosophical question, seems to assume a network-like shape itself. It may be particularly rewarding to read the constellations studied by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze from this point of view, in light of the analysis of the preconditions of networks. This paper examines how the question of the ontology of networks is addressed by these thinkers, especially with regard to the historicity of ontology.     

Foucault,space and primary school dining rooms

This paper takes up recent debates within Children's Geographies as to the ‘usefulness’ of theory and its application to school dining rooms. The paper argues that in particular, Foucault's notions of governmentality have the potential to advance theoretical understandings of the spatiality of school dining rooms, the social relationships that occur within them and that in addition this can have relevant practical and policy implications that could impact upon the everyday lives of children that are both constituted by and constitutive of this space.     

Inventing modern Japan: Hobsbawm,Foucault and Meiji history

Takashi Fujitani. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. US$40.00, hardcover.

James Edward Ketelaar. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. US$35.00, hardcover; US$17.95, paper.     

Foucault and Radical Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy is a flourishing variant of democratic theory. John Dryzek and Iris Young are two of its more radical exponents, and here I bring some Foucaultian complications to their work. The radicalness I highlight in both thinkers owes to their different but comparable commitments to equality between different voices in deliberation. Foucault's histories are all histories of expert knowledges and the objects they usher into the world. In this sense, expert knowledges present problems for deliberative democracy, not only because they carry greater status than other knowledges but also because they have ontological effects. As I illustrate with the example of economics, although the programs of Dryzek and Young can cope quite well with the first, the second is a more serious problem, although possibly a positive one.     

Foucault,realism and the power discourse in international relations

The work of Michel Foucault highlights the need to rethink the assumptions of disciplines such as international relations which have tended to remain narrow, universalist and positivist. In particular, the key concept of power has largely escaped critical inquiry. This article seeks to open up the power discourse in international relations by exploring the limits of traditional approaches such as realism and even critical theory, arguing for a ‘post‐positivist’ approach which incorporates Foucault's insights into the nature of power. Indeed, it goes beyond much of the ‘Third Debate’ in directly focusing on power and rearticulating its form and content as a category of analysis in international relations.     

Power to the people: when culture works as a social catalyst in urban regeneration processes (and when it does not)

This article focuses upon the relationship between culture, urban regeneration schemes, and their impact on socio-cognitive assets – namely, social and human capital. It examines three major urban regeneration projects in the districts of Saint Michel (Montreal, Canada), Auburn (Sydney, Australia) and Bicocca (Milan, Italy), where culture has been invoked as a main transformational driver at the economic and socio-environmental levels, but with different approaches and results. Through comparative analysis, we develop a more general reflection on the social impact of culture-led urban transformation processes, questioning the actual role of cultural initiatives – particularly those related to the creation of new cultural facilities and the programming of big cultural flagship events – and participation as a means to improve the local social milieu. We find that a key role for social efficacy is played by projects’ capacity to elicit the commitment of residents through inclusive cultural participation, as opposed to instrumental top-down initiatives mainly addressing city and neighbourhood branding and real estate marketing purposes.     

Foucault and the politics of our selves

Exploring the apparent tension between Foucault's analyses of technologies of domination -- the ways in which the subject is constituted by power-knowledge relations -- and of technologies of the self -- the ways in which individuals constitute themselves through practices of freedom -- this article endeavors to make two points: first, the interpretive claim that Foucault's own attempts to analyse both aspects of the politics of our selves are neither contradictory nor incoherent; and second, the constructive claim that Foucault's analysis of the politics of our selves, though not entirely satisfactory as it stands, provides important resources for the project of critical social theory.     

Political imagination,sexuality and love in the Eurafrican debate

This article analyses the connections between political and economic discourses related to the reframing of the European geopolitical space and the growing relevance attached to the sphere of emotions and sexuality in the interwar period. The first part deals with the genealogy of the project of Eurafrica as a geopolitical body, as advanced in 1923 by Richard Coudenhove‐Kalergi. The second part discusses how this discourse circulated during the 1930s and was displaced within debates connected with the Europeanisation of colonies. By looking at the ambivalent and floating borders between sexuality and love, the last part of the article analyses how the stereotype that identifies ‘love’ as a ‘spiritual’ and distinctive feature of Europe was articulated by the colonial imaginary on Euro‐African loves.