Interview with Philippe Bonditti on Foucault and the Modern International

couv_bondi_0.jpgInterview with Philippe Bonditti, one of the co-editors of the new book Foucault and the Modern International. Silences and Legacies for the Study of World Politics published in the CERI Sciences Po Series on International Relations and Political Economy, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.

– What is the modern international? 

– This is, at least in part, the question that the contributors of this volume have engaged with – not to answer the question in a definitive way, rather, to build the international as an “object for thought” (objet pour la pensée), from and/or using Michel Foucault’s work and within a larger process of problematization that questions four of the main and largely unchallenged characteristics of our contemporary world: (neo)-liberal, biopolitical, global, and international. [continues here]

The book is currently only in expensive hardback and e-book, but a paperback is forthcoming. A preprint of my essay ‘Foucault and Geometrics‘ is available on this site.

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Geraldine Pratt to Give the Society and Space Lecture at the 2017 AAG

Geraldine Pratt to Give the Society & Space Lecture at the 2017 AAG – from Society and Space.

We are delighted to announce that Geraldine Pratt, Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, will give the Society and Space lecture at the 2017 AAG meeting in Boston.

The talk is titled “Tlingipino Bingo! Ethnographic Performance and Games of Chance in the Decolonizing Present,” and is scheduled for Thursday April 6th from 3:20pm to 5pm in Room 312, Hynes Convention Centre, Third Level.

As ethnography of performance and performative ethnography, Pratt will present on her collaborative research with Caleb Johnston on Filipino migrant workers as it has traveled in the form of a testimonial play. A script reading of their play in the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian north in 2015 led to a collaboration between Filipino and Tlingit performance artists, and the gift of Tlingipino Bingo, an interactive performance that took place in summer 2016. Tlingipino Bingo brings into conversation distinct but related forms of biopolitical violence and disposability enacted through settler colonial dispossession and racialized exploitation of migrant labour. The talk will thus sit squarely within emerging debates between indigenous, critical race and migration studies.

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8 Critical Theory books that came out in February 2017

Another useful roundup – Eagleton, Oliver, Negri, Connolly, Ciccariello-Maher, Bown, Althusser, Bell. As Eugene Wolters says, “If you’re an author or publisher with a forthcoming book, send us a line at tips@critical-theory.comfebruary-2017-critical-theory-books-672x372

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Goldsmiths talk on early Foucault postponed

In my updates on my work on the early Foucault, I’ve mentioned that I was going to be speaking on 10 March at Goldsmiths. This talk is now going to be rescheduled for later in the year.

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Back from Oslo and the ‘Technologies of Space: Verticality, Volume, Infrastructure’ symposium

I’m now back after a good trip to Oslo for the Technologies of Space: Verticality, Volume, Infrastructure symposium

I spoke on the topic of “Terrain’s Volume”, which was a version of a talk I’ve now given in Gießen, Durham, and London. It’s nearing a written form that I’m happy with. Unusually, this talk has been filmed in all the places I’ve delivered it, and I will share any links when I have them. I’ll also be giving a version of this talk in Maynooth later this month, but I’m hoping any talks after that on this theme will include new material.

Lisa Parks and Mark Dorrian were the other speakers at the Oslo event, neither of whom I’d met before, and I enjoyed our conversations. We also took part in a reading seminar the previous day, where we discussed works by Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Lefebvre… Parks, Dorrian and Elden. It was my first time in Norway, and I was grateful for the welcome and the hospitality from Liv Hausken, Susanne Østby Sather, Adam Sindre Johnson, and their colleagues.

Posted in Conferences, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, terrain, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

CFP 2017 Annual Millennium Conference – The Politics of Time in International Relations

CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline 15 June, 2017

2017 Annual Millennium Conference

The Politics of Time in International Relations

Keynote Address: Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
Opening Address: Kimberly Hutchings (Queen Mary, University of London)

Full details:  https://millenniumjournal.org/annual-conference/

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Books received – Canguilhem, Foucault and the Modern International, Kantorowicz

img_0141A contributor copy of Foucault and the Modern International, the two published volumes of Canguilhem’s Oeuvres and his work on the reflex, and a copy of Ernst Kantorowicz’s biography of Friedrich II – the second volume is the later supplementary text, with copious references.

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Geography Books

Clive Barnett on old books and the history of geography

Admin's avatarPop Theory

screen-shot-2017-02-27-at-10-15-28It’s sad, I know, but one of my favourite places is the Bookbarn, in Somerset on the road from Bristol to Wells. It is, as the name suggests, a big barn full of old books (my partner refuses to ever come along with me, because the smell of second-hand books repulses her just a little). The books here seem to consist mainly of discontinued library stock, from everywhere from the Cleveland County Library and the former Bath College of Higher Education (precursor to Bath Spa) to the Seeley Historical Library in Cambridge. If you were so inclined, you could acquire pretty much any book written about the Royal Family in the last 60 years here, or, alternatively, construct your own personal archive of every single Open University social science course from The Dimensions of Society (1975) onwards.

The Bookbarn even has a whole Geography section, which is more than you can…

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‘The Bibliothèque Nationale is no doubt the one place in which Foucault spent the most years of his life’

As I renew my British Library card for another three years, and think all the years I’ve been working here – initially in the old reading room in the British Museum, and then for almost twenty years at the St Pancras site, I’m reminded of this comment about Foucault in the early 1950s:

This was when he developed the habit of going to the Bibliothèque Nationale every day—a habit he maintained for years, until he left for Sweden, and one he resumed upon his return to France. The BN is no doubt the one place in which Foucault spent the most years of his life.

Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, p. 73 (French)/p. 40 (English).

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A roundup of posts on time management etc.

And following that last post, a bit of a round-up of a number of posts by others on time management etc. While some of the things here are not for everyone, part of the overall motivation is to help to prioritise, to create time and space to do what is important to you, and to breathe a bit, rather than rush ‘to be productive’ or to ‘achieve more’.

Jo VanEvery has some good posts – on keeping a ‘done’ list alongside a ‘to do’ one, and balancing writing and student demands.

For longer projects, see her post on how to plan a research semester with a book under contract; or Karen Kelsky on ‘My Top Five Tips for Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book‘.

On the mechanics of doing research, Raul Pacheco-Vega is good. See, for example ‘taking notes effectively‘, ‘Processing a paper protocol‘ and ‘Starting up and maintaining an Everything Notebook‘. Also see his ‘On slow scholarship, time investments and good research‘; and ‘Strategies to sustain your research during heavy-teaching semesters‘. It was also his blog that led me to this older post on making a weekly template.

And finally, yet another one on email – Don’t Let Email Zombies Eat Up Your Day

 

There are lots more posts and links about writing and publishing here.

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