Papers Session Annual Meeting 2023

The Politics of Discourse: Foucault, Social Death, and Anti-State Materialities

Sunday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM | San Antonio Convention Center-Room 217C… Session ID: A19-312
Full Papers Available
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

“The disciplines of the body and the regulations of the population constituted the two poles around which the organization of power over life was deployed.” (HS1, 139) The subject and power; surveillance and discipline; the anatamo-politics of the human body and the bio-politics of the population; institutional subjection and subjectivation in the “care of the self.” But which bodies and why? Under what conditions? Through which techniques, applied by whom? This panel reaches into Foucault’s textual origins in his early work in phenomenology; works through questions of the subject, power, and resistance in ancient Christian practice; and into our own present (and future) to chart, describe, and warn us of the deployment of the “power over life”--or rather, the govenmental power to shape life--yesterday and today.

Papers

In this paper I discuss *Phénoménologie et psychologie* (2021), Michel Foucault’s book-length study of Husserlian phenomenology from 1953-54. I first situate the book in the wake of a contemporaneous course on philosophical anthropology, where phenomenology appears as a science that emerges in the shadow of the death of God. Next, I distinguish Foucault’s emphasis on the notion of world in Husserlian phenomenology from the then-dominant interpretations of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricoeur. Finally, I ask to what extent the concept of history afforded by this notion of world allows for renewed conversations between phenomenology and archaeology as practices of freedom. I conclude by suggesting, against Elisabetta Basso and Stuart Elden, that Foucault’s provocative pairing of critique and mythology in this text offers a new articulation of the importance of the study of religion for philosophical reflection about modernity and for thinking about the irrepressibility of myth in contemporary critique.

This paper examines the relationship between philosophy, religion and race in Michel Foucault’s lectures on governmentality, and the specter of the “philosophical state"--represented by Stalinism--against which his genealogy is deployed. Approaching Foucault through the question of whether his political critique participates in a tradition of anti-Semitism, this paper suggests that nineteenth century French anti-Semitic socialism was formative for Foucault's understanding of how race can shift from a discourse of resistance to a disturbing discourse of power, and influential for his critique of the communism as a philosophical totalitarianism. Following Foucault's turn to Christianity as the origin of biopolitics, it suggests that he draws on religious conceptions of bodily purity as the root of governmentality and resistance in response to his concern about the intractable violence of a philosophy emerging from race.  

The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of martyrdom as Foucault presents it in his various courses. In my opinion, martyrdom contains some of the main paradoxes of the last stage of Foucault's work. On the one hand, in his various courses on Patristics (especially On the government of the living and Wrong-doing, Truth-telling), Foucault links exomologesis with martyrdom, but on the other hand, in his last course at the Collège de France, the reading of martyrdom appears as a form of parrhesia. This paper will try to analyse this phenomenon from a double perspective, although connected in Foucault: the history of subjectivity and the history of governmentality, showing the paradoxes in the martyrdom phenomenon, which are also the paradoxes of the Christian confession as posed by the Foucauldian reading.

By using a critical-genealogical approach informed by grassroots LGBTQ+ perspectives to explore how disciplinary power operates in and through contemporary queer materiality as a regulatory process of identity formation, different underlying power dynamics across society can be revealed along with ways normative constructions of subjectivity reinforce and reproduce other dominant ideologies and structures such as Christian sexual ethics, the colonial gaze, and capitalism. Queerness may also provide a praxis-oriented framework to subvert these operations of power contributing to justice throughout individual, social, and religious arenas.

To understand the impact of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, one must uncover the competing biopolitical trends within the abortion law milieu.  On one hand, in the decades prior to Roe v. Wade and picking up steam immediately after, the American Evangelical movement utilized abortion law not only as a means for regulating conduct, but simultaneously as a totalizing anchor for an entire ideology centered around conservatism that created a unique political identity that continually motivates Christian voters.  On the other hand, appeals to “liberty,” “privacy,” and “equality” from the American Civil Religion structured a political terrain vulnerable to the diminishment of rights.  Following Foucault’s lead from The History of Sexuality, this paper shows how in tandem these juridical streams created an environment where neither abortion is repressed, nor is liberty actualized, but instead a socio-juridical framework is maintained that reifies and reinscribes this continuous biopolitical development.

Audiovisual Requirements
LCD Projector and Screen
Comments
If at all possible, we would like to request a moveable microphone, or a table with a few microphones set up so that we can have a conversation between panelists and audience, in the spirit of the seminar format that is our charge. It would be ideal if we could be in a room with a large table where we could better engage discussion as well. The format of seats versus table might be inevitable given the venue, but if it is possible to have a more dynamic setting that would be so helpful. Thank you very much for considering this.
Tags
#Martyrdom
#Patristics
#foucault
#queer
#identity
#political philosophy
#LGBTQ
#France
#Liberation
#power
#Foucault
#law
#surveillance
#judaism
#postcolonialism
#antisemitism
#biopolitics
#social justice
#Abortion
#Evangelicism
#AmericanCivilReligion
#Panopticon
#Foucault; phenomenology; Husserl; mythology; critique; world; freedom
#Foucault; phenomenology; Husserl; mythology; critique; world; freedom; martyrdom