Progressive Geographies

Also with Verso, the long overdue translation of Thomas Lemke, A Critique of Political Reason: Foucault’s Analysis of Modern Governmentality – forthcoming in January 2019.

Lemke offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of Michel Foucault’s work on power and government from 1970 until his death in 1984. He convincingly argues, using material that has only partly been translated into English, that Foucault’s concern with ethics and forms of subjectivation is always already integrated into his political concerns and his analytics of power. The book also shows how the concept of government was taken up in different lines of research in France before it gave rise to “governmentality studies” in the anglophone world. A Critique of Political Reason provides a clear and well-structured exposition that is theoretically challenging but also accessible for a wider audience. Thus, the book can be read both as an original examination of Foucault’s concept of government and as a general introduction to his “genealogy of power’.

Adorno, Foucault and the Critique of the West by Deborah Cook, forthcoming with Verso, October 2018

Adorno, Foucault, and the Critique of the West argues that critical theory continues to offer valuable resources for critique and contestation during this turbulent period in our history. To assess these resources, it examines the work of two of the twentieth century’s more prominent social theorists: Theodor W. Adorno and Michel Foucault. Although Adorno was situated squarely in the Marxist tradition that Foucault would occasionally challenge, Cook demonstrates that their critiques of our current predicament are complementary in important respects. Among other things, they converge in their focus on the historical conditions—economic in Adorno and political in Foucault—that gave rise to the racist and authoritarian tendencies that continue to blight the West. But this book will also show that as Adorno and Foucault plumb the economic and political forces that have shaped our identities, they offer remarkably similar answers to the perennial question: What is to be done?

Reviews

“Foucault’s relation to the Frankfurt School and the work of one of its key theorists was long overdue a critical reappraisal. Neither reducing one thinker to the other, not drawing artificial lines between traditions, this is bold and thoughtful contribution to this valuable work. It should be required reading and the basis of wide critical engagement.”

– Stuart Elden, University of Warwick and author of Foucault: The Birth of Power (2017) and Foucault’s Last Decade (2016)

A theme section of American Book Review has just been published. Edited by Robert T. Tally Jr., it includes reviews of a number of recent biographies of social theorists and philosophers – Freud, the Frankfurt School, Habermas, Schmitt, Deleuze, Barthes, Hall and others.

I have a piece in there entitled ‘Do we need a new biography of Michel Foucault?‘ which is in place of a review, since there have been no new biographies since Eribon, Macey and Miller in the 1990s. I reflect on those biographies, and the later editions of Eribon’s biography, in the light of the research I’ve done for my Foucault books and newly available materials.

The issue is subscription only, but I’m happy to share my piece.