Sami Moisio, Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy – now out with Routledge

9781138821996Sami Moisio, Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy – now out with Routledge. Only a very expensive hardback or e-book at this stage, unfortunately. If you buy via Routledge, code FLR40 will give a 20% discount (Flyer – Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy).

We live in the era of the knowledge-based economy, and this has major implications for the ways in which states, cities and even supranational political units are spatially planned, governed and developed. In this book, Sami Moisio delves deeply into the links between the knowledge-based economy and geopolitics, examining a wide range of themes, including city geopolitics and the university as a geopolitical site. Overall, this work shows that knowledge-based “economization” can be understood as a geopolitical process that produces territories of wealth, security, power and belonging.

This book will prove enlightening to students, researchers and policymakers in the fields of human geography, urban studies, spatial planning, political science and international relations.

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Territory Beyond Terra – reflections on the Rowman International blog

593b8b09f5ba741adc68db03.jpgTerritory Beyond Terra was published earlier this month. Edited by Kimberley Peters, Philip Steinberg and Elaine Stratford, the book has a series of essays which look at elements, environments and edges to challenge and extend our understanding of territory.

There are a series of reflections on the Rowman International blog from the book’s contributors. I wrote a preface to the book.

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Review essay of Foucault, Les Aveux de la chair in Theory, Culture and Society (open access)

BHI_Foucault_Le_souci_Plat.inddMy review essay of the fourth volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Les aveux de la chair is now available in Theory, Culture and SocietyThe essay will appear in the annual review of the journal later this year, but this version is open access.

Almost thirty-four years after his death, the book Foucault was working on even in hospital is finally published. Histoire de la sexualité 4: Les aveux de la chair, edited by Frédéric Gros, appeared on 8 February 2018 with Gallimard, in the Bibliothèque des Histoires series in which the first three volumes had appeared. The back cover simply has the line of René Char that also appeared on volumes II and III. “The history of men is the long succession of synonyms of the same term [vocable]. To contradict them is a duty”. Can we read this book in straight-forward continuity with those other volumes, completing the sequence of studies? How finished a book was it, and should it have been published despite Foucault’s stipulation of ‘no posthumous publications’? What does the book contain, and how does it help resolve previously unanswered questions about Foucault’s work? How might it be received and discussed? I will try to address these questions in this essay. [continues here]

 

Posted in Michel Foucault, My Publications, Theory, Culture and Society, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Barbarism of Alabama’s Botched Execution”

Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Barbarism of Alabama’s Botched Execution” in The New York Review of Books.

A powerful and disturbing piece about the attempted execution of Doyle Lee Hamm earlier this month.

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Hayden White (1928-2018)

A tribute to Hayden White, who died recently

Clare O'Farrell's avatarFoucault News

Essay on the death of Hayden White
Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, March 9, 2018.

The author of Metahistory, one of the most influential books in the humanities over the past four decades, died Monday. Scott McLemee takes him out of the poststructuralist pigeonhole.

Pursuing such a line of thought meant turning to sources outside history as a profession. The usual shorthand here is to say that White’s thinking converged with the work of structuralist and poststructuralist theorists in Europe — and indeed, White published one of the earliest papers on Michel Foucault to appear in an Anglophone journal. But emphasizing the French connection seriously understates the distinctiveness of the conceptual tool kit he put together. To analyze the modes of storytelling historians found themselves using to narrate the past, he borrowed from Northrop Frye’s The Anatomy of Criticism. For insights into historians’ rhetorical patterns, he turned to Kenneth Burke’s…

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LSE Impact Blog – “Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity” (plus other links)

LSE Impact Blog – “Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity

I’m not sure by the notion of ‘productivity’, but there is some good advice here. Here are the headlines:

  1. They “time-block” their writing in advance
  2. They set themselves artificial deadlines
  3. They deliberately seek “flow” (but don’t push themselves if they can’t find it)
  4. They design accountability structures around themselves
  5. They use small steps and short deadlines to tackle large projects
  6. They “write their way” out of their blocks

On the last point, see this useful post at Explorations of Style. Jo van Every continues to provide useful advice. See, for example, Is this Real Writing or procrastination? and Incorporating writing into your workload: The Research Day (an excerpt from her next book).

This Twitter thread also has some useful suggestions:

For an extensive set of links and discussions see the archive of posts from this site on this page.

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing | 4 Comments

Foucault: The Birth of Power reviewed by Audrey Borowski in Politics, Religion & Ideology

Foucault-The-Birth-of-Power-coverMy 2017 book Foucault: The Birth of Power is generously reviewed by Audrey Borowski in Politics, Religion & Ideology (requires subscription).

Links to other reviews and discussions of this book, and its companion Foucault’s Last Decade are archived here.

 

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney, The Wire and the World

Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney, The Wire and the World

Very interesting piece in Jacobin about the TV series, ten years after the final episode. Contains spoilers, of course, if you’ve not yet got through all the seasons…

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“Up in smoke: should an author’s dying wishes be obeyed?” – The Guardian

Piece in The Guardian – Up in smoke: should an author’s dying wishes be obeyed?

Includes some discussion of Foucault, including a link to their recent piece about History of Sexuality volume IV being published. But the main purpose is to discuss a number of literary figures – Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, and so on.

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Books received – Dumézil, Canguilhem, Nail, Irrera & Vaccaro, Villacañas & Castro, Foucault, Kotowicz, Braunstein et al, Bleiker

A pile of recently received books – Georges Dumézil, Entretiens avec Didier Eribon; Georges Canguilhem, Études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences; Thomas Nail, Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion; Orazio Irrera & Salvo Vaccaro, La pensée politique de Foucault, José Luis Villacañas & Rodrigo Castro (eds.), Foucault y la Historia de la Filosofía; Michel Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth; Zbigniew Kotowicz, Gaston Bachelard: A Philosophy of the Surreal; Jean-François Braunstein; Daniele Lorenzini; Ariane Revel; Judith Revel and Arianna Sforzini (eds.), Foucault(s) and Roland Bleiker (eds.), Visual Global Politics.

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Roland Bleiker’s edited collection and Thomas Nail’s ambitious study were sent by the publishers, Subjectivity and Truth is a review copy (review forthcoming in Foucault Studies), the book on Bachelard was pre-ordered in recompense for review work, and the Spanish collection was a gift from Rodrigo Castro. The Canguilhem book I had already in an earlier edition, but this one has an additional essay in it. Most connect to the current work on Foucault and Canguilhem.

Posted in Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | Leave a comment