Juridico-political

Two readings, a night and a morning apart: 1. The way that “monsters” (the monstrous, the abnormal) came under a politico-judicial scheme (or later, a “juridico-political” scheme). (Abnormal, p. 61) 2. A review of a book about how smuggling is increasing due to globalization, which the reviewer is skeptical about. Particularly the idea that borders [...]

New Scull essay

Joseph Kugelmass has a new essay on Scull’s review of History of Madness (unfortunately it’s x-posted which means that comments on it appear in two places–1 post is enough guys!). Anyway, Kugelmanmass entitles his piece “debunking Andrew Scull.”

Being-seeming

Just read the novel The Interpretation of Murder, which is set in New York 1909 and centers on Freud and Jung’s visit to America (in Freud’s case, his only visit). There is some discussion in the book about Hamlet, mostly because of the Oedipal aspects, but also the scene where Hamlet responds to his father’s [...]

Self-policing

Katt asks below if Foucault uses the term “self-policing” in his work. Sometimes when I have a question like this I use books.google.com to search (they have digitized many though not all Foucault books). In this case you will not find that phrase (or “self-police,” or either of those without the hyphen). But need we [...]

Curiouser and curiouser

I didn’t know this (long extract from much longer post). Objects of curiosity were often collected during the Grand Tour – the leisurely traverse of the Continent that a young gentleman undertook as a rite of passage. Often taking years, the Grand Tour was an active curiosity seeking adventure. Because of the tyranny of distance, [...]

President Carter visits GSU

President Carter gave a talk last night to the GSU community. I was unfortunately too late to get in the main auditorium and watched in the overflow room with about 50 other people (meaning there were about 650 people there). Carter discussed the situation in the Middle East and his new book Palestine Peace Not [...]

Our book

Was pleased to see this last week at the AAG! They told me they sold out by the end of the conference (I didn’t ask how many they’d brought with them!).

Key term: problematization

What is Foucault’s notion of “problematization”? This is a key term in Foucault (as indicated by the valuable discussion over it at the Biopower and the Contemporary blog). It is defined in the late interview with Francis Ewald (“The concern for truth” May 1984, DE350) and addressed in “Problematics” (OT-08 in the Lynch bibliography). Another [...]

Neil Smith, revolution and Iran

Neil Smith has an editorial in EPD: Another revolution is possible: Foucault, ethics, and politics It is time to think about revolution again. After the failures of the Russian revolution signaled by Stalin’s defensive slogan, “socialism in one country” (every bit as oxymoronic as “capitalism in one firm”), the 1960s reawakened a sense of revolution [...]

Sex offender geosurveillance

Microsoft have just proudly announced that an application of their software is being used in geosurveillance of sex offenders in North Carolina. This public facing site was designed to keep families and communities safe by allowing citizens to know when offenders move into their neighborhoods and where those offenders live. In addition to searching for [...]