Remembering/Forgetting Foucault
Nearly forty years after the death of Michel Foucault, the time may be ripe for a critical reassessment of his place in contemporary thought. Few thinkers have left such a deep imprint on the formation of critical theory, political sociology, and the history of ideas across disciplines. Yet today, Foucault’s legacy appears increasingly unsettled.
Critiques of Foucault have long pointed to his ontological flattening, methodological ambivalence, and a tendency to obscure structural domination in favour of dispersed power. Others have questioned the conceptual limits of his treatment of resistance. More recently, scholarship across political economy, Black studies, queer of colour critique, Indigenous theory, disability studies, and decolonial thought has not only highlighted the silences within Foucauldian frameworks, but also raised the question of whether it is time to move beyond them. Yet, many of these same approaches have built on or been shaped by Foucauldian tools, creating a layered and often ambivalent intellectual inheritance.
This workshop seeks to open a space for reassessing Foucault’s place in the academy–not to reject or defend his thought as such–but to develop (new) practices of forgetting/remembering him. What does it mean to treat Foucault not only as a thinker, but as a conceptual industry? What are the long-lasting effects of his influence on practices of critique, modes of teaching, and intellectual languages? And what might this re-reading make possible: intellectually, politically, affectively, and institutionally?
Workshop Format
This will be an interactive workshop, with an emphasis on open discussion and collective exchange. We’ve intentionally kept the format small to allow for conversation between speakers and participants. Several papers will be pre-circulated in advance, and we warmly encourage attendees to engage with them and join the discussion.
Programme:
9:30–10:00 – Welcome & Introductions
10:00–11:30 – Panel 1: Tracing Foucault and his Canon through the Archive
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Prof. Dr. Stuart Elden (University of Warwick) : “tbc”
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Prof. Dr. Jimmy Hernandez Marcelo (International University of La Rioja): “The young Foucault in the school of Phenomenology”
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Maya Gavin (DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford) : “Reading Foucault Through Said: On Critique and its Canonisation”
11:30–11:45 – Coffee Break
11:45–13:15 – Panel 2: Reading Foucault through the Silences
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Prof. Dr. Jeremy Carrette (University of Edinburgh): “tbc”
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Aymeric Leroy (PhD Candidate, Sciences Po): “Foucault’s Silence on Ressentiment: Reading It as a Strategic Refusal”
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Dr. Lucile Richard (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford): “Pastoral Power, Sovereign Carelessness, and the Social Divisions of Care Work or: What Foucault Can Teach Us about the “Crisis of Care”"
13:15–14:45 – Sandwich Lunch (at La Maison Française d’Oxford)
14:45–16:15 – Panel 3: Foucault Beyond his 'Fields': Technologies, Crisis, Power
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Dr. Amelie Berger-Soraruff (Associate Researcher, MFO): « Foucault’s Legacy in Philosophy of Technology: From Power to Control”
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Associate Prof. Dr. Emma Foster (University of Birmingham): “Reflection Paper: Foucault and Political Ecology”
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Claudia Buder (PhD Candidate, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): “Resistance to technologies and technologies of resistance. Reflections on the usefulness of less central Foucauldian concepts in empirical social science research”
16:15–16:30 – Coffee Break
16:30–18:00 – Roundtable: Foucault’s Legacy in Questions with Prof Moya Lloyd (University of Essex), Associate Prof. Dr. Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford), and Associate Prof. Dr. Musab Younis (University of Oxford)
Organisers: Maya Gavin, DPhil Candidate, DPIR, Christ Church College ; Lucile Richard, OxPo Postdoctoral Fellow, DPIR, Nuffield College
With the generous support of the OxPo Program (Sciences Po/University of Oxford) and La Maison Française d’Oxford
Contacts: lucile.richard@sciencespo.fr; maya.gavin@politics.ox.ac.uk
