Foucault’s New Materialism: An Extended Review Essay of Thomas Lemke’s The Government of Things

This article constitutes an extended review essay of Thomas Lemke’s book Foucault and the Government of Things: Foucault and the New Materialisms published by New York University Press in 2021. A shorter version of this article was published as a book review in Social Forces (http://doi.org/10.1093/soac037, 22nd April 2022). This longer extended version is being published here with the permission of Oxford University Press, who publish Social Forces. In performing this review, the article seeks to outline and assess Lemke’s thesis to incorporate Foucault as a part of the new materialist approach to the social and physical sciences. As my own work has located Foucault as a materialist since the 1990s, I relate Lemke’s endeavour to my own and conclude that my approach has distinct advantages that his lacks. At the same time, however, his account presents some novel and insightful dimensions which can profitably be added to mine, strengthening the case for Foucault’s materialism overall

Foucault as educator

Review of Stephen Ball's "Foucault as educator

Marx, education and the possibilities of a fairer world: Reviving radical political economy through foucault

Although this paper constitutes a revision of a paper originally published in 2007 [see note 1), the editors are pleased to republish this paper due to its theoretical importance for the critique of Marxism as well the interest it creates for establishing the possibility of a new political economy based upon the work of Michel Foucault. The paper documents and interrogates the contradictions between postmodernism and poststructuralism with Marxism. Starting by documenting the crisis of the Left at the start of the twenty-first century, an attempt is made to radically critique and reappraise Marxism in a direction set out by Foucault. The paper is not so much an attempt to meld Marxism and poststructuralism but rather to generate a new poststructuralist historical materialism which still has equality and fairness as its central concerns, but which goes beyond the traditional problems of Marxism based on its adherence to outmoded methodologies and theoretical modes of analysis. Echoing well known critiques of Marxist historical materialism, the paper focuses on forms of articulation drawn from the revolution in language influenced by post-modernism and by historically more recent post-quantum complexity theories

'Excellence' and exclusion:the individual costs of institutional competitiveness

A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom’s ‘Research Excellence Framework’ (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities’ response to government demands for research auditability. In this paper, we consider the casualties of what Henry Giroux (2014) calls “neoliberalism’s war on higher education” or more precisely the deleterious consequences of non-participation in the REF. We also discuss the ways with which higher education’s competition fetish, embodied within the REF, affects the instrumentalization of academic research and the diminution of academic freedom, autonomy and criticality

Honneth, Butler and the Ambivalent Effects of Recognition

This paper examines the ambivalent effects of recognition by critically examining Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition cause him to misrepresent or overlook significant connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated by (1) drawing from Butler’s theory of gender performativity, power and recognition; and (2) exploring issues arising from the socio-institutional recognition of trans identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I claim that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects

Education Policy

In contrast to traditional pluralist or functionalist analyses, the last thirty years has seen the emergence of what is now referred to as a critical policy analysis. While much of the early work in this tradition took its impetus from radical versions of sociology, in the last decade a growing number have utilised the works of the French post-structuralist writer Michel Foucault. My own work in policy analysis, as well as my recent book with John Codd and Anne Marie O’Neill (Olssen, et al., 2004, Sage) presents the outlines of a Foucauldian to the analysis of educational policy and the politics of education. Although there are some aspects of Foucault’s work that are not accepted. – his neutralism over ends and values - there is within Foucault’s work the basis for a broad commitment to a democratic and ethical vision of a new welfare community. Rather than employ him in a one-sided negative way that can be found in some readings of his work, Education Policy seeks to utilise Foucault as an ally, sometimes going beyond the literal canon of his texts, but keeping within his general conception of critique in order to re-articulate and re-theorise a new understanding of a social-democratic polity

Ascertaining the Normative Implications of Complexity Thinking for Politics

Central to representing the world as a complex dynamical system is understanding it as pertaining to an interdisciplinary approach to nonlinear processes of change in both nature and society. Although complexity research takes its origins from its applications in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and the “hard” sciences, undergoing its formative development in the 1970s, during the last two decades it has exerted an effect on the social sciences as well. Today complexity research is generating what Stuart Kauffman (2008, Preface) calls a “quiet revolution” in both the physical and social sciences

Ascertaining the Normative Implications of Complexity Thinking for Politics

Central to representing the world as a complex dynamical system is understanding it as pertaining to an interdisciplinary approach to nonlinear processes of change in both nature and society. Although complexity research takes its origins from its applications in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and the “hard” sciences, undergoing its formative development in the 1970s, during the last two decades it has exerted an effect on the social sciences as well. Today complexity research is generating what Stuart Kauffman (2008, Preface) calls a “quiet revolution” in both the physical and social sciences