Interrogating Michel Foucault’s counter-conduct: theorising the subjects and practices of resistance in global politics

Resistance, and its study, is on the rise: visible and politically discernible practices of dissent against sovereignty ad economic exploitation, such as protesting, agitating and occupying have received increased analytical attention in the past decade. This special issue provides much needed systematic attention to less visible practices of resistance or those not manifested in expressly political registers. It focuses on attempts to inventively modify, resist or escape the ways in which we are governed by interrogating critically the politics and ethics of resistance to ‘power that conducts’, expressed through Foucault’s notion of ‘counter- conduct.’ The contributions first, theoretically interrogate, develop, and refine the concept of ‘counter-conduct(s)’, offering a major statement its importance for both the study of resistance and also its place in Foucault’s work. Second, they provide inter/multi-disciplinary empirical investigations of counter-conduct in numerous thematic areas and spaces of global politics. Third, they explicitly reflect on variable and contingent forms of counter-conduct, examining its close relationship with conducting power. Finally, the special issue concertedly considers issues of methodology and method emerging from the study of counter-conduct and how these also recalibrate the study of governing power itself

فترة خلو كرسي الحكم : النظام اإلقليمي في الشرقاألوسط وشمال أفريقيا بعد 2011

This report contends that the Middle East regional order since 2011 has changed in several ways. This is evidenced by the decline in US power, the rise of sectarianism, the growing influence of non-state actors, the return of Arab state permeability, intensified rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the emergence of regional players such as Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and the fluidity of alliances. However, these and other changes constitute a change within order, rather than of order. Below are listed some of the main take-away points from the report. Each theme is developed in detail in the report, allowing the reader to go into more depth in the separate sections.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 693244

Be Free? The European Union's post-Arab Spring Women's Empowerment as Neoliberal Governmentality

This article analyses post-Arab Spring EU initiatives to promote women's empowerment in the Southern Mediterranean region. Inspired by Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, it investigates empowerment as a technology of biopolitics that is central to the European neoliberal model of governance. In contrast to dominant images such as normative power Europe that present the EU as a norm-guided actor promoting political liberation, the article argues that the EU deploys a concept of functional freedom meant to facilitate its vision of economic development. As a consequence, the alleged empowerment of women based on the self-optimisation of individuals and the statistical control of the female population is a form of bio-power. In this regard, empowerment works as a governmental technology of power instead of offering a measure to foster fundamental structural change in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) societies. The EU therefore fails in presenting and promoting an alternative normative political vision distinct from the incorporation of women into the hierarchy of the existing market society

Latter og glemsel i Libanon

Selv efter libanesiske standarder har det seneste år været vildt. Et økono- misk kollaps, politisk krise, corona og en ødelæggende eksplosion i Beiruts havn. Mellemøstforsker Helle Malmvig skriver et personligt essay om året i Libanon, og hvordan humoren – trods alt – hjælper

’Vores’ globale øjeblik: Fra pandemi til global identitetskamp

Midt i en pandemi fik George Floyds voldelige død racedebatten til at eksplodere. Samtidigt er cancel-culture krigene i fuld gang. Hvordan får vi skabt et offentligt rum, hvor der er reel ytringsfrihed og folk lytter til og lærer af hinanden? Det er vor tids store udfordring

Caught between cooperation and democratization

The European Union (EU) has for a decade sought to strengthen democracy and human rights in the Mediterranean/Middle East within the framework of the Barcelona Process. Yet, it has done so in a reluctant and inconsistent manner. This is often explained through references to prior distinctions and conflicts between practice and principle, security and democracy, interest and values, thereby overlooking tensions and ambiguities in the very meaning of security itself. On the basis of a Foucauldian inspired and analytically informed discourse analysis, this article shows how the Union at the same time (re)produces two conflicting versions of how security is to be achieved, what the Mediterranean is, and which types of threats the Union face. The EU is caught in a continuous and paradoxical practice of reproducing two simultaneous and conflicting versions of security. This practice does not only make prioritization between and implementation of contradictory goals difficult, but also contributes to enhance prevalent feeling of fear and mistrust in the region

Når det nationale bliver internationalt: Om vold i og imellem stater

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A new role for NATO in the Middle East? : Assessing possibilities and barriers for an enhanced Mediterranean dialogue

Helle Malvi