New Italian website

I’ve had a nice note from Daniele Lorenzini about a new Italian Foucault website at Materiali Foucaultiani. The site is available in French, Italian and English. They also want to start a new journal. Here is part of their manifesto:

More precisely, we wish to build up a framework to investigate and to highlight the essential link between the Foucaultian “boîte à outils” and the search of a sense to give to our actualité. To this purpose we shall firstly outline a cartography of the receptions and applications of the concepts elaborated by Foucault, to show that his “boîte à outils” is still fundamental if we want to put into question our present and take a clear stand in front of the issues emerging from our actualité. Then, we have to explore the ensemble of appropriations and interpretations which has made Foucault’s theory a “travelling theory”, i.e. a perspective of analysis and, at the same time, a critical posture capable of crossing disciplinary limits, sifting archives different from those opened by Foucault himself, and offering tools and materials to reflect soundly on events belonging to our multi-spatial and multi-temporal global present. In short, the aim of our project is to broaden the spectrum of problematizations proposed by Foucault, using the instruments provided by his work. For instance, it is an undeniable fact that in the postcolonial or gender studies the Foucault legacy has generated several theoretical and political evolutions that it is now impossible to put aside – even when the Foucaultian method has been forced or adopted only partially.

It looks interesting and I wish them well.

Two new books from Blackwell

First is Foucault and Philosophy which is already out, edited by Chris Falzon and Timothy O’Leary (2010).

Second is a Blackwell “Companion” to Foucault, which Falzon will edit with O’Leary and Jana Sawicki.

The Companion books tend to be hefty and significant books (I’m familiar with the ones for Heidegger and Political Geography) and it’s good to see one being devoted to Foucault.

Why soccer/football is “leftist”

Is this an Onion story? No, it’s real! Football is apparently “leftist.” American exceptionalism is alive and well. Could it be that the US doesn’t go in and win 85% of medals that therefore the sport is worthless? Or is it just contrarianism:

Beck blustered, “It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it. … They continually try to jam it down our throat.” By this logic, one of the major leftist socialists who is pushing soccer is Beck’s employer, Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox Soccer Channel and Fox Soccer Plus show more soccer than any other networks. Furthermore, ESPN, which is broadcasting the World Cup, is devoting previously unseen amount of resources to their coverage for an American network. These networks, and big corporations like Budweiser and Coca-Cola, are not investing in soccer because of some leftist motivations, but because doing so is increasingly lucrative.

Remember when the right were delighted that Chicago didn’t get the Olympics because Obama was from there?

IMMI resolution passes

The Wikileaks Twitter feed reports that the IMMI resolution passed in Iceland today. For why this is important, see my previous post here. This is the text of the resolution.

Object-oriented ontology

I wouldn’t mind getting a perspective on computer/GI Science “ontologies” from some of the OOO people. Maybe I’m being distracted by the word ontology in there, but at the least there is potential overlap and room for confusion as this word is thrown around. Especially as the GIScience people see themselves creating ontologies of objects.

Larval subjects has some key sketches of the OOO position here, while Stuart continues to engage, following the ontology sessions at AAG in April.

Government of Self and Others released

I’m just about to go and pick up my copy of Foucault’s 82-3 lectures, The Government of self and others, which has been published in English translation.

While it might seem that there is little in here that we don’t already know (or have read in the original French version published in January 2008) frankly speaking you know very well that there’s always something of interest, or some longer development of an argument only incompletely discussed elsewhere!

This is volume 1 and if the schedule is the same as the French, then we can expect the second volume on this subject (and Foucault’s last lectures) in about a year.

Update on the Middlesex situation

John Protevi provides an update on the Middlesex situation, with some (partial) good news at last.

The campaign to save our philosophy programmes has just won a partial but significant victory: Kingston University in south-west London announced today that it will re-establish our Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston, by employing the four senior staff in Philosophy at Middlesex (Eric Alliez, Peter Hallward, Peter Osborne and Stella Sandford). Our MA and PhD programmes (full-time and part-time) will be re-launched at Kingston this September, and all current post-graduate students will be invited to move along with the staff.

(Quoting from here.)

The Middlesex campaigners explicitly credit the groundswell of support they have received in helping make this possible. There are still many worrying issues this event has raised that remain a problem, not least of course university governance. From an international perspective as well, anyone looking to pursue a career in the UK (whether as a returning citizen such as myself or not) must surely now be given pause due to the financial situation in the country as a whole, and the likely cuts to higher education.

Wikileaks leaker allegedly arrested

Update: The military have confirmed the arrest, and that it is for leaking, so it is alleged no longer.

Update II: CJR has done a bit of digging regarding the the WaPo sitting on this video, and hints strongly that while the paper didn’t have the video, one of its journalists, who was on book leave, did.

The person who leaked the so-called “Collateral Murder” video of the US Apache helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in Baghdad, resulting in their deaths (including two Reuters journalists) has been arrested, according to a report in Wired.

The Wired report, which contains lots of details and information from friends of the man arrested, SPC Bradley Manning, says that Manning was arrested after he told a former hacker of his leaks. It also contains the news that Manning leaked other material, including 260,000 diplomatic cables from the US which has not been previously reported, as far as I know.

Wikileaks has denounced the news in its Twitter feed this morning, saying about the Wired reporters:

Adrian Lamo&Kevin Poulson are notorious felons,informers&manipulators. Journalists should take care.

Statement: Washington Post had Collateral murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT it to the public.

Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.

However, they have not yet denied the story, and claim in fact that their security protocols prevent them from even knowing the source of their leakers.

I’ve tried to follow this case, and spoke about it at the AAG in a panel organized by the US State Department Office of the Geographer on intellectuals and foreign policy. The reason is not so much in the details of any one particular leak (and the Pentagon has verified the authenticity of the “collateral murder” video) but in the reaction of Iceland, and the emergence of a group or initiative called Iceland Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), which has a cross-party proposal before the Icelandic parliament this month for protection of journalism and freedom of expression.

Basically, Iceland learned from its financial meltdown, which arose from secret bank dealings and unreported trading, that open government is better. Hence, a group of Icelandic MPs, led by Birgitta Jónsdóttir who has appeared alongside Assange, are pushing for more open government, including oversight. This is one of the few positive outcomes of the financial meltdown, and a lesson that sadly the UK and US have not learned.*

Here is some video of Julian Assange, the acknowledged founder of Wikileaks. There is also a long article in last week’s New Yorker.

*An anecdote. At the AAG panel the Chair,  State Department geographer Lee Schwartz, joked after my presentation that the volcano then erupting on Iceland must be some kind of retribution for its actions! Sad, huh.

Obama as son of the Enlightenment

This piece in the Daily Kos is essentially correct. Interesting that it appears in DK, which after all is a fairly mainstream liberal site, which supports the capitalist model (albeit constrained capitalism or “embedded liberalism”) and goes after the markets per se as being inimical to quality of life:

“where I was wrong was my belief that oil companies had their act together for worst case scenarios…Those assumptions proved to be incorrect.”

President Barack Obama, White House Press Conference, May 27, 2010

In progressive circles, various opinions have been forming about what type of President Barack Obama is. There are still some who believe that he can do no wrong and everything that he has done has resulted in the best achievable outcome. And there are those who believe that he is an unabashed corporate sellout and just a step away from being a Democrat in name only. And there are those who believe that Obama isn’t really in control after all and Rahm Emanuel is pulling the puppet strings.

But the biggest problem with Obama isn’t what he wants or doesn’t want. It’s what he thinks others want.

Obama really is a consensus-builder at heart. While he may have his preferences, his ultimate goal has been to put into practice his belief that our politics are not as divided as they suggest. The ability to find consensus, however, is contingent on a fundamental premise: that all interested parties with a seat at the table actually want to see the best possible outcome for all people and are working in the best of faith to that objective.

…

And those struggles have been between two sides that supposedly have the same ultimate objectives of good governance and promoting the general welfare of the American people. But what if the entity at the other side of the table doesn’t even have those objectives in mind? That’s precisely the situation we find ourselves in with transnational oil companies. And that is precisely what makes Obama’s admission about his own assumptions so frustrating.

The entire structure of Keynesian economics relies on government’s healthy distrust of the excesses of the private sector. A corporation’s job is to make money for its shareholders.

As I’ve noted before, Obama’s consensus-building model is based on a kind of Enlightenment rationality that pure knowledge can solve problems. As Foucault often pointed out however, there is no such thing as pure knowledge, rather there is power-knowledge.

Put another way, knowledge does not exist outside of politics. It’s politics all the way down.