Michel Foucault : historian or philosopher? : the debate in French and English

In the last few years, the ideas of the French thinker Michel Foucault have become the subject of much discussion in both French and English. Foucault's first book appeared in 1954 and his last in 1984, and during this time his writings covered a broad range of subjects and disciplines. When examining and comparing writings in French and English on Foucault, two things become immediately apparent: first of all, the marked differences between the two bodies of writings, and secondly, the recurrence of certain questions, which using Foucault's work as a central point of reference, can be summed up generally in the opposition between a world view based on the belief that we are discontinuous historical beings, and a world view which posits certain eternal essences and general principles true for all time and every society. These questions emerge in the discussions over whether Foucault can be labelled a historian or a philosopher, and whether Foucault is creating his own philosophical system or working for the downfall of philosophical systems in general. The difference between the French and English language discussions can be seen in the interest of the latter for empirical classifications: which label describes Foucault best? Philosopher, historian, structuralist? His attacks on "totality" have also, in some cases, been used to support the validity of the empirical approach. French discussions, however, very quickly turn to broad philosophical, epistemoligical and indeed metaphysical issues, with each author being ultimately less concerned with finding a category for Foucault than with stating the originality (however slight) of his own position and views. Foucault's own work can be seen as a "thought of the limits'', the attempt to analyse that philosophical and social edge between the Same and the Other, between history and that which is beyond or outside its order. His approach to this project changed, and during the 1960s, he proposed a number of different limits which each time he thought finally explained the relation of the Same and the Other. During the 1970s, perhaps disappointed with his failure to find the final limit, he proposed a system in which the Same and the Other were mutually coextensive, locked in an endless power struggle. This vision changed again in 1982, when power disappeared from his analysis to be replaced by the idea that as "free beings" living in history, we must continue to work on the limits and ourselves. Is Foucault a historian or a philosopher, a creator or a destroyer of systems? These questions continue to be asked and generate many useful ideas in a number of disciplines besides history and philosophy. The conclusion here, is that Foucault became a historian in order to remain a philosopher, and that his works represent a coherent philosophical attitude towards the world. Rather than positing any essential explanation, he suggests that people should constantly search for the limits of existing systems and ideas and seek to go beyond them

Superman Returns I: Superheroes For The New Millenium

Essay review of the film Superman Returns which argues that it displays the remergence of themes of Empire and hypermasculinity at the expense of the feminine and women

Foucault And Post Modernism

The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. This talk will situate his work in the context of recent media debates on postmodernism and give an account of his work, life and times and the critical reception of his work. Particular reference will be made to his controversial discussions on truth and power

Editorial

Introduction to the new online open access peer reveiwed interantional journal:Foucault Studie

Credit where it's due - but who deserves top billing?

What I want to do here is offer a few reflections on the idea of the author in the current university context. Authorship is perhaps one of the most highly prized commodities in the academic world. It is used as a measure of reputation and a measure by which individuals are judged worthy of promotion through the ranks of what remains an intricately feudal hierarchy. Being an author who has produced numerous works published by prestigious publishing houses and journals and which are cited and otherwise referred to by many others (‘impact’) is the nirvana of academic achievement. Authorship does not function in the same way across all academic disciplines. The sciences, social sciences and the humanities all have different rules which govern what it means to be an author. In the sciences, the rules are complex. A paper often has numerous co-authors. This can reflect the notion that the paper or journal article tends to function more as a report or a write up of findings than a piece of argued writing and that everybody involved in conducting the experiments and theorising the empirical research should therefore be acknowledged as an author. Thus authorship becomes a category which is used to recognise the generation and ownership of certain research practices and theories rather than simply writing. The authors listed on a scientific paper might not always necessarily be the actual writers of that paper.In the humanities however, the link between author and writing cannot be attenuated in this fashion. Humanities output is defined by the writing and argumentation itself: it is not simply a report on some other exterior ‘research’ activity. The problem of how others should be recognised in the production of this kind of writing, has usually been solved by the practice of acknowledgements, rather than by granting co-authorship.What is not in doubt in any of this, however, is that the notion of the author is, and has always been, shot through and through with complex relations of power. These need to be the subject of constant vigilance and critical consideration within the academic economy if the integrity of the research process and the value of its contribution to the wider social body is going to be maintained.<br/

Foucault: The Legacy

This book is a collection of papers delivered at an international conference held at the Gold Coast in 199

Foucault and the Foucauldians

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Unacceptable Imaginings: Artaud's Medieval Revolution

In many ways, Antonin Artaud's work is perhaps less interesting in itself than for the possibilities and the visions which it opens up. This paper addresses two controversies arising from his work. The first of these is the pamphlet war between Artaud and the surrealists following his expulsion from the movement in November 1926. The second concerns Foucault's controversial statements about the status of Artaud's writings as a 'work' and the relation between madness, literature and philosophy. At issue in both discussions is the status of a particular area of human experience which has received bad press particularly since the Enlightenment, but also long before that with the end of the Middle Ages. This general area includes those systems not directly governed by the rules of physical, social and historical existence: an area which has been variously and vaguely characterised as mystical, visionary, imaginary, fantastic or as just plain madness. What is at stake could be very generally defined as the problem of 'representation', the question of just how the rules governing language, the rules governing imagination and thought and the rules governing material existence interrelate. Artaud's production in writing, cinema and theatre has the effect of showing first, that it is very much a question of the existence of separate sets of rules and second, that the relations between these sets of rules is by no means fixed or obvious. This disjunction between words and things became the subject of particular focus in French thought and literature during the 1960s, but it is not an easy intuition to retain. Indeed, one could argue that much work today that claims to be done in the wake of the thought of the 1960s has forgotten this appreciation of finitude and the limits of human thought and language and has simply sunk back into an easy materialism (all is determined by and contained within material and social 'practices') or an equally facile idealism (everything is a 'discourse' which can be 'read')