Foucault News

Milena Tekeste, Mustafa F. Özbilgin (2026), Misrecognition and Responsibilisation in Extreme Events: Towards Recognition-based Accountability in Academia (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

10 March 2026

Milena Tekeste, Mustafa F. Özbilgin (2026), Misrecognition and Responsibilisation in Extreme Events: Towards Recognition-based Accountability in Academia. British Journal of Management, 37: e70032.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.70032

Abstract
This essay interrogates how extreme events including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate disasters, and political conflict, amplify structural inequalities in academia. Drawing on critical autoethnographic material from an Early Career Researcher with intersecting marginalisations, we show how crises expose and intensify two mutually reinforcing dynamics: misrecognition (institutional neglect of care responsibilities, political vulnerability, and embodied identity) and responsibilisation (the shifting of crisis management onto individuals). We demonstrate how these processes operate through institutional silence and performativity mechanisms that simultaneously erase vulnerability and demand uninterrupted performance, making individual adaptability appear both natural and necessary. By situating these lived experiences within Honneth’s theory of recognition and Foucault’s concept of responsibilisation, we theorise how their interaction deepens disadvantage for vulnerable groups during and after crises. In response, we propose Recognition-based Accountability (RbA) as a framework for institutional reform. RbA shifts the emphasis from individual resilience to structural responsibility, outlining actionable, care-oriented pathways for embedding equity and recognition into crisis governance in management education. This essay thus contributes to debates on academic inequality and the future of work by revealing the embodied costs of institutional neglect and offering a model for reorienting crisis response toward justice, care, and accountability.

Giorgi Vachnadze, Our Machines Podcast, Interview with Riccardo Molin (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 March 2026

Giorgi Vachnadze, Our Machines Podcast, Interview with Riccardo Molin, Soundcloud, March 2026

Discussion of Giorgi Vachnadze, (2024) Christian Eschatology of Artificial Intelligence: Pastoral Technologies of Cybernetic Flesh. Berlin/Nicosia: Becoming Press. 978-9925-8118-8-5.

Pirkko Markula, Jim Denison, Poststructuralist Methodologies for Physical Activity Research Theory and Practice of Foucault, Deleuze, and Latour (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 March 2026

Pirkko Markula, Jim Denison, Poststructuralist Methodologies for Physical Activity Research Theory and Practice of Foucault, Deleuze, and Latour, Routledge, 2026

Drawing on the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Latour, this book opens up a poststructuralist approach to sport, exercise, and dance research. It examines how to incorporate both articulable expression and visible material elements – theoretically and methodologically – to study the force of the moving body in practice.

This book employs critical concepts including the dispositive, assemblage, and actor network to interrogate and advance our understanding of theory and method in research of physical activity practice. It asks what a poststructuralist approach might mean, especially as it concerns themes such as the body in motion, physical activity practice, network of relations, knowledge, and power for physical cultural studies scholars. Presenting in-depth case studies of adult ballet, Barre, Pilates, coaching, ice-hockey, and cross-country running, this book also examines how researchers and practitioners can begin to collaborate to create innovative instruction, training, and coaching practices.

This is a fascinating reading for advanced students and researchers working in the physical cultural studies, sociology of sport and exercise, sociology of the body, sports coaching, physical education, or social theory.

Contents

PART 1

Theorizing Poststructuralism

1 What Is Poststructuralism?

2 The Dispositive: Foucault’s Articulable and Visible Elements in Power Diagrams

3 Assemblage Analysis: Deleuze’s Semiotic System, Pragmatic System, and Territoriality

4 The Actor‑Network Theory: Latour’s Methodological Moves

5 The Ethical Formation of the Self

PART 2

Practicing Poststructuralism

6 Foucault in Practice: Ethical Practices for a Recreational Ballet Class

PIRKKO MARKULA AND JODIE VANDEKERKHOVE

7 Practicing Foucault in a BarrePilates Class

PIRKKO MARKULA AND JOY CHIKINDA

8 Movement of Learning: Thinking Differently about Physical Activity Research Practice

9 The “Post” Project: What Else Can Women’s Naked Bodies Do?

PIRKKO MARKULA AND ALLISON JEFFREY

10 Poststructuralist Vision for Practice Design in Sport

11 Concussion Return to Play Policies and Protocols: An Actor‑Network Theory Approach

JIM DENISON AND DALLAS ANSELL

12 Running Fast: A Socio‑Material Perspective

13 The Air We Breathe

Finale: Concluding Moves

Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Kybernetik und Kritik. Eine Theorie digitaler Regierungskunst (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 March 2026

Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Kybernetik und Kritik. Eine Theorie digitaler Regierungskunst, Suhrkamp, 2026.

Elon Musk bezeichnet die Plattform X als »kybernetische Superintelligenz«, Mark Zuckerberg denkt Unternehmen als »lernende Organismen«, und der Erfinder der Datenbrille Google Glass sagt: »Die Kybernetik ist überall, wie Luft.« Diese Aussagen kommen nicht von ungefähr. Wer die Digitalisierung verstehen will, muss auf ihre kybernetischen Ursprünge schauen. In ihrem grundlegenden Buch zeichnet Anna-Verena Nosthoff ein umfassendes Panorama der Kybernetisierung der datafizierten Gegenwartsgesellschaft – von den ersten Prämissen der »Wissenschaft von Kommunikation und Kontrolle« über die Emergenz des Cyberspace bis hin zum aktuellen KI-Hype und zu technikautoritären Strömungen. Es zeigt sich: Die Kybernetisierung erfasst auch die Kritik – die sich daher neu erfinden muss, um zu überleben.

Anna-Verena Nosthoff ist Juniorprofessorin für Ethik der Digitalisierung an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg und Ko-Direktorin des Critical Data Lab (Humboldt-Universität/Universität Oldenburg).

Rainer Mühlhoff, The Ethics of AI. Power, Critique, Responsibility (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 March 2026

Rainer Mühlhoff, The Ethics of AI. Power, Critique, Responsibility, Bristol University Press, 2025

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

In a world where artificial intelligence increasingly influences the fabric of our daily lives, this accessible book offers a critical examination of AI and its deep entanglement with power structures. Rather than focusing on doomsday scenarios, it emphasises how AI impacts our everyday interactions and social norms in ways that fundamentally reshape society. By examining the different forms of exploitation and manipulation in the relationship between humans and AI, the book advocates for collective responsibility, better regulation and systemic change.

This is a resounding manifesto for rethinking AI ethics through a power-aware lens. With detailed analysis of real-world examples and technological insights, it is essential reading for anyone invested in the future of AI policy, scholarly critique and societal integration.

Contents
Introduction: What Does It Mean to ‘Do’ a Power-Aware Ethics of AI? – A Note to Readers

Part I: The Power of AI
Chapter One: What AI Are We Talking About?
Chapter Two: Human-Aided AI
Chapter Three: Digital Counter-Enlightenment and the Power of Design
Chapter Four: Subjectivity and Power in the Ethics of AI

Part II: The Power of Prediction
Chapter Five: AI Systems as Prediction Machines
Chapter Six: Predictive Privacy
Chapter Seven: The Culture of Prediction – Ethics and Epistemology

Part III: The Power of Control
Chapter Eight: AI Cybernetics
Chapter Nine: Opacity in Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics
Chapter Ten: Bias in Cybernetic AI Systems
Chapter Eleven: Collective Responsibility in the Ethics of AI
Conclusion: Manifesto for a Power-Aware Ethics of AI

Author
Rainer Mühlhoff is Professor of Ethics and Critical Theories of Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Cognitive Science and Institute of Philosophy at the University of Osnabrück.

Jan-Philipp Siebold, Annemarie Witschas, Rainer Mühlhoff, When the Future Feels Foreclosed: AI Resignation and the Power to Act (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 March 2026

Jan-Philipp Siebold, Annemarie Witschas, Rainer Mühlhoff, 2026. “ When the Future Feels Foreclosed: AI Resignation and the Power to Act.” Future Humanities 4: e70026.
https://doi.org/10.1002/fhu2.70026.

ABSTRACT
This article develops the concept of ‘AI resignation’ to capture how young people encounter AI not only as a helpful or flawed tool, but as an overpowering and seemingly inevitable force that can foreclose their sense of political and personal power to act in relation to the future. Building on qualitative work with high school students in Germany (ages 15–18), we conceptualize AI resignation as a future-oriented sensibility that emerges at the intersection of pervasive data-driven infrastructures and hegemonic narratives of AI inevitability. Drawing on Foucault’s late work on subjectivation and subjectivity, as well as extensions in media and affect theory, we identify four contradictory pulls that structure adolescents’ everyday engagements with AI—between enthusiasm and dependency, effortless access and eroded learning, self-governance and repeated failure, aspiration and foreclosed futures—and show how these double binds gradually hollow out experiences of self-efficacy. We further argue that AI resignation fulfils a strategic affective function within digital capitalism: by naturalizing dependence on predictive AI infrastructures and normalizing diminished expectations of the power to act, it stabilizes the very sociotechnical structures that produce it. The article concludes by outlining implications for re-politicizing AI and education, emphasizing power-critical curricula and collective spaces of reflection that enable young people to meaningfully participate in shaping sociotechnical futures.

Alex Midlen, Rethinking environmental governance for development: the blue œconomy dispositif (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 March 2026

Alex Midlen, Rethinking environmental governance for development: the blue œconomy dispositif, Political Geography, Volume 126, 2026
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2026.103494

Abstract:
The Blue Economy is a recent development paradigm, created in response to a refocusing of sustainable development during preparations for the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 2012 in which the ‘green economy’ was proposed. Coastal and island states called for a ‘blue’ equivalent in recognition of the importance of oceans to their economic futures. In the years since, the ‘blue economy’ has been enthusiastically received by many, but its exact nature remains uncertain and contested. In this paper I examine in more detail the practices, the technologies, and the materialities of the BE ‘dispositif’ to address the question of ‘place’, as it is only in the context of place, I argue, that we can really understand how the Blue Economy is enacted. In doing so, I make the argument that the Blue Economy is a ‘security dispositif’ (referencing Michel Foucault) and that to govern Blue Economy places well we need to pay attention to the emergent space-time relations of the dispositif ‘in place’. Finally, I argue for a rethinking of economy and of blue economy governance, drawing on relational analysis of empirical cases in Kenya to call for a blue economy that is more sensitive to communities and the places they inhabit – a blue œconomy.

Keywords:
Blue economy; Dispositif; Place; Ocean governance; Sustainable economy; Development practice

James I. Porter, Foucault, Kant, and Antiquity (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 March 2026

James I. Porter, Foucault, Kant, and Antiquity. Representations, 1 February 2024; 165 (1): 120–143.
https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2024.165.5.120

Abstract
Michel Foucault’s return to classical antiquity at the end of his career coincides with a turn away from institutional critique and a return to Kant. This is no coincidence. Foucault’s Introduction to Kant’s “Anthropology” (1961) completely anticipates his approach to ancient subject formations, which reflects Kant’s theory of the liberal, self-enterprising, and enlightened subject as this is outlined in Foucault’s “What Is Enlightenment?” (1984) and elsewhere. Foucault’s final studies surface isolated, private, and autonomous subjects who are at once premodern, proto-Christian, and uncannily modern. Fashioned by ascetic and aesthetic models of self-care, they testify to “a genealogy of the modern subject.”

Shelza Jalan, The Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Dam and the shifting grounds of resistance (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 February 2026

Shelza Jalan, The Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Dam and the shifting grounds of resistance, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Volume 12, 2025,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.102118

Abstract:
The Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project (LSHEP), India’s largest hydropower initiative in Northeast India, exemplifies the tensions between state-led developmentalism and civil society resistance in ecologically fragile regions. While envisioned as a cornerstone of modernization and regional integration, the project has triggered decades of contestation over ecological risks, cultural disruption, and political exclusion. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Gerukamukh, Lakhimpur, and Dhemaji in 2024, supplemented with secondary sources, this article examines the evolving dynamics between the Indian state, civil society organizations (CSOs), and local communities.

Using Arturo Escobar’s critique of development discourse, Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality, and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and passive revolution, the analysis demonstrates how the state’s strategies have shifted from coercion to persuasion, employing livelihood schemes, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, and infrastructural “gifts” to cultivate manufactured consent. At the same time, CSOs have navigated a trajectory from conditional engagement to open dissent, while communities oscillated between symbolic resistance and gradual accommodation. The findings highlight how persuasive politics and fragmented resistance reconfigure the politics of legitimacy in large dam projects, producing uneven consent while leaving core ecological and social contradictions unresolved. This case contributes to broader debates on development, power, and resistance in South Asia’s borderlands, underscoring both the resilience of democratic protest and the subtle recalibration of statecraft in contested ecologies.

Keywords:
Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project (LSHEP); Civil Society Organizations (CSOs); Anti-dam movement; Hydropower development; Northeast India; Development Politics

Antti Saari, Nelli Piattoeva, and Katja Brøgger. Introduction: Critical times? Conditions, constraints, and cooptions in contemporary educational critique (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 February 2026

Antti Saari, Nelli Piattoeva, and Katja Brøgger. (2026). Introduction: Critical times? Conditions, constraints, and cooptions in contemporary educational critique. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–12.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2025.2611004

Extract
In educational research, various conceptions of critique and criticality serve as markers for distinct genres of scholarship and writing, as well as for particular types of journals and monographs (Molla, 2021; Savage et al., 2021). Critique operates as a means of delineating disciplinary boundaries and signaling theoretical allegiances, each shaped by specific historical, political, and cultural contexts. Despite its widespread use as a signifier of certain scholarly orientations, the meaning of critique remains a persistent subject of debate. There is no singular or universally accepted definition of the term, nor a fixed way to practice critique.
[…]

In Christianity, building on classical Greek and Hellenic philosophy, critique also developed avant la lettre in the form of an attitude and an ethico-political virtue—a way of thinking, speaking, and acting that reflects one’s relationship to knowledge, power, society, and others. It became a mode of governing and knowing oneself, as well as a means of being subjected to detailed governance (Foucault, 2024). Foucault traces the genealogy of this critical attitude to medieval Christian monasticism, where individuals were governed, and governed themselves, through intricate forms of spiritual oversight. This variety of pastoral power involved practices of examining the contents of one’s soul and exposing them to scrutiny through confession. Here, even the most innocuous inner movements were interpreted as potential signs of moral or spiritual failure (Foucault, 2021, 2024). This deep suspicion toward appearances laid the groundwork for modern forms of critical inquiry and what later became the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (Ricoeur, 2008), an interpretive approach that assumes the presence of underlying power structures, ideologies, or hidden meanings beneath surface texts or social practices. In this sense, philological and spiritual critique converged in cultivating a disposition of vigilance, toward oneself, others, and the world, that continues to inform contemporary critical traditions.