NYC reading group on Birth of Biopolitics

The Foucault Society is pleased to announce our new Seminar Series on Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), to be held November 2008 through June 2009 in New York City.
The first two meetings will be facilitated by Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook [...]

Foucault and Deleuze conversation online

“Intellectuals and Power” a 1972 conversation between Foucault and Deleuze is available online. It was previously published in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (ed. Donald Bouchard, 1977), and in Foucault Live ( ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 1996).
This is the conversation where Foucault famously discusses the role of the intellectual:
FOUCAULT: The intellectual’s role is no longer to place himself [...]

Review of Government of the self and others

Review of Government of the Self and Others. By Dinah Ribard.
Reviewed : Michel Foucault, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France, 1982-1983, (The Government of Self and Others. Lectures from the Collège de France, 1982-1983. Not yet published in English)
Editors François Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, by Frédéric Gros, Paris, Gallimard / [...]

Conference: History of Madness

The University of Buffalo (SUNY) is holding a Humanities conference devoted to the topic of the history of madness (the book but also the theme).
The keynote speaker will be Marjorie Garber, Ph.D., of Harvard, a scholar and nimble-footed cultural detective who delights in pointing out the often weird connections that weave us into the web [...]

New paper: Brian Leiter

As John points out in comments, there’s a new paper by Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago law School  posted to SSRN entitled “The Epistemic Status of the Human Sciences: Critical Reflections on Foucault.”
Abstract:
Any reader of Foucault’s corpus recognizes fairly quickly that it is animated by an ethical impulse, namely, to liberate [...]

Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting

The Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy just had its meeting (.pdf) in Pittsburgh. Among the interesting-looking sessions were the following. Would be nice if these could be posted up somewhere.
Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984
Marquis A (Stanford University Press)
Moderator: Edward McGushin, Saint Anselm College
Speaker: Todd May, Clemson University
Speaker: Johanna Oksala, University [...]

Halloween Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary

Once more, it’s that time of year when thousands of Philadelphians and New Jersey-ites take the Halloween haunted house tour of Eastern State Penitentiary!

Click here for more information.
Ob. Foucault: he wrote about ESP in Discipline & Punish.

Madness and Civilization

Review of Madness and Civilization from a blogger, Andrew Minh, at Unnatural Habitat, who observes:
Madness and Civilization is one of those must-read texts of 20th century continental philosophy. In it, Michel Foucault argues that reason is based on the exclusion of the mentally ill, who are placed in institutions where society attempts to forget them. [...]

Foucault’s birthday

Today is Foucault’s birthday. He would have been 82 years old.
Update. Skinny Malinky sez:
It is hard not to regret all the pages he never got to write, but I also think his early departure lucked the rest of us into a special task — to keep revising his work in relation to the world of [...]

John Searle on Derrida

Does anyone know which article Searle refers to here:
Searle:With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel [...]