Progressive Geographies

My latest article, ‘Gramsci and Foucault in Central Park: Environmental hegemonies, pedagogical spaces and integral state formations’, is now available online on the early view webpage of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (requires subscription).

The piece draws on the conceptualizations of power and the state by these authors to develop an explicitly political understanding of landscape struggles and the governmentalization of urban environments, using Manhattan’s Central Park as a historical  illustration of such processes. In fact the article is articulated not only through the dialogue between both thinkers, but as a more open conversation that also includes Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer, architect-in-chief and superintendent of the park, as well as other figures and institutions related to its material and symbolic construction. The Greensward project and subsequent management of the park premises under Olmsted’s attention are depicted as a pioneering example of how design mediates new local state…

Michel Foucault: Discourse Theory and the Archive
Convention Center at the Historical Observatory; Geismar Landstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen
16 July 2016

See also this link.

This year marks not only Michel Foucault’s 90th birthday, but also the 50th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book Les Mots et les Choses, which made Foucault a prominent intellectual figure throughout Europe. We would like to commemorate this double anniversary with a one-day symposium organised by the Department of British Literature and Culture at Göttingen University in cooperation with the Göttingen Center for Gender studies and the Center for Theory of Culture and Society.

While Foucault has introduced many persistent concepts to the fields of critical, cultural, and literary theory, one that has increasingly attracted attention during the past ten to fifteen years is the archive.

Foucault himself employs the term ‘archive’ ambiguously (cf. Eliassen). Depending on context, the archive…

Foucault Studies
Number 21: June 2016: Counter-Conduct

Table of Contents

Editorial

Special Issue on Counter-Conduct

Articles