Foucault, Marxism and the Cuban Revolution: Historical and Contemporary Reflections

This article relates central themes of Marxist and Foucauldian thought to the intellectual and political legacy of the Cuban Revolution. Against the backdrop of a reading of Foucault’s relationship to the revolutionary left, it is argued that Marxist theoretical discourse on guerrilla struggle (as articulated by Mao, Guevara and others) provide an intriguing case for bio-political struggle. In the case of the Cuban revolution, an ethics of self-transformation appears in which new ways of living and practicing life are cultivated in opposition to sedimentations of state power. Moreover, in addition to this historical case, a discussion is offered of the reception of Foucault’s work in contemporary Cuba, through an analysis of the published proceedings of a conference on Foucault held at the University of Havana in 1999. Here, Foucault’s thought is appropriated as part of an effort to revitalize Cuban socialism itself

The Work of Neoliberal Governmentality: Temporality and Ethical Substance in the Tale of Two Dads

This paper considers debates around the neoliberal governmentality, and argues for the need to better theorize the specific ethical practices through which such programs of governmentality are carried out. Arguing that much theoretical and empirical work in this area is prone to a “top down” approach, in which governmentality is reduced to an imposing apparatus through which subjectivities are produced, it argues instead for the need to understand the self-production of subjectivities by considering the ethical practices that make up neoliberal governmentality. Moreover, taking Robert T. Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad/Poor Dad as an illustrative case, the point is made that the work of neoliberal governmentality specifically targets the temporalities of conduct, in an attempt to shape temporal orientations in a more entrepreneurial form. Drawing on Foucault’s lecture courses on liberalism and neoliberalism, and Jacques Donzelot’s work on the social, the case is made that neoliberal governmentality exhorts individuals to act upon the residual social temporalities that persist as a trace in the dispositions of neoliberal subjects. Moreover, the paper concludes with a discussion of the potentials for resistance in this relation, understood as temporal counter-conducts within neoliberalism

The Planned and the Unplanned: A Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias

When one considers the proximity of their concerns, it is perhaps surprising that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault have not been more systematically compared and discussed. However, the differentiation of disciplinary knowledge (particularly the boundary that separates philosophy from social theory), com-pounded by parochialisms fostered by the cult of the intellectual, have delayed this process far past its due. This conversation, which began in 2008 at a conference on the works of Elias and Foucault at the University of Hamburg, is, in this regard, an effort to make up for lost time. Fashioned from hours of discussion recorded on an afternoon at the University of Amsterdam in June 2009, (enriched and clarified by the editor and participants in several rounds of polishing and revision), the discus-sion that follows seeks to draw out conflicts and convergences between the trajecto-ries of thought we know as Eliasian and Foucauldian

Of Discipline and Civilization: a Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault

When one considers the proximity of their concerns, it is perhaps surprising that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault have not been more systematically compared and discussed. However, the differentiation of disciplinary knowledge (particularly the boundary that separates philosophy from social theory), com-pounded by parochialisms fostered by the cult of the intellectual, have delayed this process far past its due. This conversation, which began in 2008 at a conference on the works of Elias and Foucault at the University of Hamburg, is, in this regard, an effort to make up for lost time. Fashioned from hours of discussion recorded on an afternoon at the University of Amsterdam in June 2009, (enriched and clarified by the editor and participants in several rounds of polishing and revision), the discus-sion that follows seeks to draw out conflicts and convergences between the trajecto-ries of thought we know as Eliasian and Foucauldian

The Planned and the Unplanned: A Roundtable Discussion on the Legacies of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias

When one considers the proximity of their concerns, it is perhaps surprising that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault have not been more systematically compared and discussed. However, the differentiation of disciplinary knowledge (particularly the boundary that separates philosophy from social theory), com-pounded by parochialisms fostered by the cult of the intellectual, have delayed this process far past its due. This conversation, which began in 2008 at a conference on the works of Elias and Foucault at the University of Hamburg, is, in this regard, an effort to make up for lost time. Fashioned from hours of discussion recorded on an afternoon at the University of Amsterdam in June 2009, (enriched and clarified by the editor and participants in several rounds of polishing and revision), the discus-sion that follows seeks to draw out conflicts and convergences between the trajecto-ries of thought we know as Eliasian and Foucauldian