Foucault News

Hofmeyr, A.B.
A critical consideration of Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality
(2024) Verbum et Ecclesia, 45 (1), art. no. a2830, .

DOI: 10.4102/ve.v45i1.2830

Abstract
The background of this research is the status and significance of an ethics of care of the self in the history of morality. I followed the following methodology: I attempted to come to nuanced, critical understanding of the Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality. In the ‘Ancients’, Foucault uncovered an ‘ethics-oriented’ as opposed to a ‘code-oriented’ morality in which the emphasis shifted to how an individual was supposed to constitute himself as an ethical subject of his own action without denying the importance of either the moral code or the actual behaviour of people. The main question was whether care of the self-sufficiently regulated an individual’s conduct towards others to prevent the self from lapsing into narcissism, substituting a generous responsiveness towards the other for a means-end rationale. I put this line of critique to test by confronting Foucault’s care of the self with Levinas’s primordial responsibility towards the other and put forward a case for the indispensability of aesthetics for ethics. In conclusion, I defended the claim that care of the self does indeed foster other responsiveness. Intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications: Foucault’s ethics, understood as an ‘aesthetics of existence’ has profound intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications, as it challenges traditional ethical normative ethical theories and engages with various fields of philosophy, social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinary fields greatly influenced by Foucault’s ethics include: psychology, literary, cultural, gender and sexuality studies, medical ethics, anthropology and history, among others. © 2024. The Author. Licensee: AOSIS.

Author Keywords
aesthetics of existence; care of the self; ethics; Foucault; Levinas; morality; responsibility for the other

Carlo, Andrea di. “The Problem of Toleration: Tacitus, Foucault and Governmentality.” History of European Ideas, (2024), 1–16.
doi:10.1080/01916599.2024.2346031

ABSTRACT
This article proposes a novel interpretation of Montaigne’s and Bayle’s comments on Tacitus. My contention is that their Tacitism is a Foucauldian discourse on toleration. Toleration is an example of governmentality, a strategy to govern a population, not a genuine call for religious diversity. This novel reading applies to Michel de Montaigne’s Essays and Pierre Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet and his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Montaigne’s essay On the Useful and the Honourable, he shows that there is a difference between his public and private persona. The author discusses ideas of toleration in a Tacitist style. This happens in his essay Something Lacking in Our Civil Administrations, where the author laments the death of Sebastian Castalio and, indirectly, he supports his commitment to religious pluralism. As I will show, Montaigne embraces a Gallican belief system, which is more conciliatory. Bayle a century later, discusses the same issues. In his Various Thoughts, he makes a case for toleration as a tool to manage a population. Ultimately, it will be clear how this plea for toleration is not a product of the Enlightenment, but it is rather a discourse to achieve societal compliance.

KEYWORDS:
Tacitus Tacitism Montaigne Bayle Foucault

Leonard, M.
The Power of Oedipus: Michel Foucault with Hannah Arendt
(2023) Arethusa, 56 (3), pp. 393-412.

DOI: 10.1353/are.2023.a917343

Abstract
It has become increasingly common to draw connections between Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt: there are strong continuities between their respective theories of power, and Foucault and Arendt share an account of modernity and of the entry of biological life into the political sphere. Both thinkers are also immersed in the texts of antiquity and place an analysis of the ancient world at the heart of their thinking about the modern condition. This article explores how their different accounts of Oedipus as a political figure reveal their preoccupations with questions of power and political subjectivity. © 2023 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Stypinska, D.
Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification
(2024) Theory, Culture and Society, .

DOI: 10.1177/02632764231216896

Abstract
Taking its cue from Michel Foucault’s analyses of the pastoral ‘conduct of conduct’, this paper considers social media as a specific dispositif that derives its mode of operation from the religious techniques of individualization. It argues that today’s preoccupation with digital performances, far from exorcizing the pastoral logic, in fact manifests its secular intensification. By examining social media practices through the lens of the sacramental paradigm of confession, the article shows how the digitalization of the pastoral directive culminates in the production of spectral subjects. These spectral subjects, it contends, function as the conduits of the dominant power, guaranteeing the persistence of capitalism by embodying the imperative to complete economization. © The Author(s) 2024.

Author Keywords
confession; Michel Foucault; pastoral power; social media; subjectification