Writing Genealogies: an exploration of Foucault's strategies for doing research

In following Foucault, I think that I have become passionately interested in a wider shift in the European intellectual landscape: the return of ethics as a primary issue in the philosophical agenda, after so many years of the primary position of politics. I think that far from abandoning politics, this shift has been working towards redefining the subject(s) of politics and the very notion of P/politics itself. Following Foucault's intellectual paths, and especially his suggestion for writing genealogies, turned out to be an exciting adventure. There were a lot of things to be discovered. Foucault had used the term 'genealogy' to describe his work, but he insisted on not following any certain methodology to do that. On the contrary he was against all closed types of methodologies and instead he was continually slipping away from being committed to any of them. His intellectual work has been rather a move to go 'beyond' any existing theories and/or methodologies, yet he kept on referring again and again to his works as genealogies. This paper is therefore focusing on the very ontology of the Foucauldian genealogy, being aware of the vanity of any attempt to frame the Foucauldian genealogy as a closed method for research, but at the same time acknowledging the need to map the Foucauldian genealogy in a cartography of contemporary problematics upon social and historical research

Ideações e tentativas de suicídio em adolescentes com práticas sexuais hetero e homoeróticas

Esta pesquisa, que teve como população-alvo adolescentes com idade entre 12 e 20 anos, residentes em três municípios do interior Paulista, buscou conhecer as associações entre orientação sexual e ideações e tentativas de suicídio. Corroborando com as pesquisas internacionais, evidenciou-se que os não heterossexuais têm mais chances de pensarem e tentarem suicídio, comparativamente aos heterossexuais. Todavia, encontrou-se que, dentre o grupo de adolescentes que se assumiram não heterossexuais, os que estão mais vulneráveis são aqueles que se autodefiniram bissexuais e "outros", os quais constituem o grupo de pessoas menos assumidas, dentre os não heterossexuais. Do mesmo modo, constatou-se que os respondentes apresentam diversas opiniões e valores homofóbicos, sexistas e heterocentrados, o que revela ser o espaço escolar, onde se encontram esses jovens não heterossexuais, bastante carregado de posicionamentos discursivos discriminatórios. Conclui-se que a questão do suicídio é uma problemática de saúde pública e que a população de jovens não heterossexuais necessita de abordagens específicas para a prevenção e de atenção relativas a essa conduta.This survey, which had as the target population adolescents aged between 12 and 20 years living in three municipalities in São Paulo, sought to investigate the associations between sexual orientation and ideation and suicide attempts. Confirming international research findings, it is showed that non-heterosexuals are more likely to attempt and think about suicide, compared to heterosexuals. However, we found that among the group of teenagers who assumed to be non-heterosexuals, the most vulnerable are those who define themselves as bisexual and "other", which constitute the group of people less assumed, among non-heterosexuals. Similarly, it was found that the respondents have different homophobic, sexist and heterocentric opinions and values, which turn out to be the school environment, where these young non-heterosexual study, loaded with enough discriminatory discursive positions. We conclude that the issue of suicide is a public health problem and that the population of young non-heterosexual needs specific approaches for prevention and care in respect to this conduct

Calibrating queer in the work of Didier Eribon

The first aim of this article is to provide an overview of Didier Eribon’s unique input to lesbian and gay politics and studies in France. The second aim is to examine the contours of his engagement with and critique of queer, bearing in mind that queer is, at least theoretically, opposed to the very predicate of fixed identity (such as lesbian and gay) and identity politics. In pursuing the second aim, the article will ‘calibrate’ to what extent Eribon’s thought is queer and/or resists queer, measuring it against a hypothetical norm of queer, and also determining the calibre of that thought. In its conclusion, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity, the article considers two issues raised by Eribon’s work: first, the desirability or otherwise of queer politics embracing the agendas of minorities other than the sexual, such as ethnic minorities whose religious beliefs may be hostile to non-heteronormative sexualities; and the relationship of queer to the binary oppositions of universalism/particularism, sameness/difference that structure debate within the context of French Republicanism

Didier Eribon, restive rationalist : the limits of sociological self-understanding in Retour a Reims

This article suggests that Eribon’s autobiography is most engaging (as literature) and valuable (as social document) in those moments when the author loses his interpretative grip on the meaning of his own experience. Although a concerted attempt is made by Eribon to account for his problematic relationship to his working-class family background, in particular his father, in purely sociological terms, a restive textual indeterminacy at key junctures unwittingly exposes the limitations of this approach. By allowing us to glimpse the limits of its author’s sociological rationalism, the autobiography calls into question Eribon’s strategic rejection of psychoanalytic forms of understanding and a number of his other longstanding theoretical and political commitments. This is just as it should be: its restive moments and the critical consequences which follow from them make Eribon’s autobiography much more than a mere exercise in self-validation