Chris Philo discusses the Foucault lecture courses, and their potential for human geography, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (requires subscription).

This paper argues that we may now speak of a ‘new Foucault’ with more to say to contemporary human geography than might at first be suspected. A number of recent publications – notably the collected and translated Collège de France lecture series – paint a picture of Foucault that arguably departs from presumptions of him as the chronicler-theorist of discursively constituted, totalising power. The paper has two objectives: first, to offer a synoptic introduction to the lecture series, spotlighting the geographical resonances; and secondly, to thread an interpretative line through these materials demonstrating Foucault’s concern for the vital problematics of lively bodies and unpredictable populations, always threatening to over-spill different forms of power (sovereign, disciplinary, biopolitical, governmental, pastoral, psychiatric). An attempt is made to address Nigel Thrift’s non-representationalist critique of Foucault, and to propose that the gulf between Thrift and Foucault is not as great as the former may imply – a finding of value when identifying future possibilities for critical-geographical inquiry.