Foucault News

Rossi, A.
Techniques of Finitude: On the Pastoral Matrix of Economic Care
(2023) Theory, Culture and Society

DOI: 10.1177/02632764231203567

Abstract
Building and expanding on Foucault’s work, this essay interprets pastoral power as a turning point within the long-term history of the care of the self. Through an analysis of early Christian monasticism, it claims that the pastorate emerged out of a re-conceptualization of ancient understandings of human finitude and a correlative transformation of the techniques revolving around it. Pastoral power instantiates a specific way of framing institutionally the subject’s opening to the limits. The argument thus suggests how, and to what extent, this matrix of government still determines, albeit under a different guise, the current political phase, especially in as far as economic governmentality and its call to the indefinite self-enhancement of subjectivity are concerned. © The Author(s) 2023.

Author Keywords
economic theology; finitude; Michel Foucault; pastoral power

Mahadevan, J.
What connects positivism and interpretivism in cross-cultural management studies: Genealogy as a method for re-ordering disciplinary knowledge
(2023) International Journal of Cross Cultural Management

DOI: 10.1177/14705958231223874

Abstract
Cross-cultural management (CCM) studies is the discipline that investigates the interrelations between culture, management and organization, and ensuing implications. Like all disciplines, it is built upon certain presumed ‘disciplinary truths’, such as paradigmatic delineations, and assumptions of how culture should be studied differently within different paradigms. Such presumed truths easily become ‘trends’, potentially even disciplinary closures. In this article, I show how the concept of genealogy (Foucault), can help challenge prevalent ideas of how the disciplinary knowledge of CCM studies is ordered, in particular the idea that positivism and interpretivism are opposing CCM paradigms which study culture in distinct ways. It then becomes apparent how positivism and interpretivism, as selectively understood and delineated by CCM studies, are characterized by a shared focus on stable and immaterial selected aspects of culture and, consequently, suffer from the same limitations. Genealogy thus ‘un-fixes’ disciplinary knowledge and, via widening the scope of the analysis, enables CCM scholars to make choices beyond presently taken-for-granted disciplinary delineations. © The Author(s) 2023.

Author Keywords
closure; culture; disciplinary knowledge; foucault; geertz; genealogy; hofstede; interpretivism; paradigm; positivism

Fazilleau, K.
L’Indien atemporel d’Edward S. Curtis et le mythe de la race en voie de disparition
(2023) Etudes Anglaises, 76 (2), pp. 157-179.

DOI: 10.3917/etan.762.0157

Abstract
This article aims at highlighting the dynamic link between the photographs of Native Americans taken by Edward S. Curtis between 1898 and 1927, published in his work The North American Indian, and the colonial discourse about the figure of the Indian, particularly the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.”Indeed, Curtis’s primary objective was to “preserve”the culture of an “Indian”whom he considered to be “authentic,””primitive,”and “intact,”which is to say spared from the effects of colonization and Americanization. In this manner, he hoped to portray an Indian from the past, a product of colonial imagery. The study conducted in this article borrows from Michel Foucault’s concept of networks of knowledge and power, to examine how Curtis’s undertaking was fed by colonial discourse and then in turn fed it, thus popularizing the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.”At the intersection between colonial studies and photographic studies, we will see how Curtis’s photographs are plagued with inherent contradictions, similarly to the discourse on the colonized Other. © Klincksieck.

Leonard D’Cruz,
Foucault’s naturalism: The importance of scientific epistemology for the genealogical method, Philosophy & Social Criticism, March 16, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537241235571

Abstract:
This article offers a novel reconstruction of Foucault’s methodology that emphasises his respect for the natural sciences. Foucault’s work has long been suspected of reducing knowledge to power, and thus collapsing into unconstrained relativism and methodological incoherence. These concerns are predicated on a misunderstanding of Foucault’s overall approach, which takes the form of a historico-critical project rather than a normative epistemology. However, Foucault does sometimes make normative epistemological judgements, especially about the human sciences. Furthermore, there are outstanding questions about what secures the descriptive rigour of the genealogical method. To address these issues, I develop two claims that will significantly enrich our understanding of Foucault’s methodology. The first is that Foucault’s respect for the natural sciences is crucial in making sense of his normative epistemological judgements. The second is that the descriptive rigour of his genealogical method derives from the fact it is modelled on empirical inquiry.