Progressive Geographies

Foucault and May 68: Penal Theories and Institutions (Collège de France Lectures, 1971-1972) (2015)

Posted on May 5, 2015 by stuartelden

New York tomorrow… Unfortunately I’ll still be in Berkeley.

The Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought and The Hispanic Institute for Latin American & Iberian Cultures are proud to invite you to the release of the last volume of Michel Foucault’s series of seminars at the Collège de France:

Foucault and May 68: Penal Theories and Institutions (Collège de France Lectures, 1971-1972) (Hautes Études, Gallimard and Seuil, 2015)

Participants include François Ewald (CNAM), general editor of the series, Bernard Harcourt (Columbia Law School, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought) the volume editor, and Jesús R. Velasco (LAIC Chair, Columbia University)

Casa Hispánica
Room 201
Wednesday, May 6, 7PM

Reception to follow

From the back cover:

Théories et Institutions pénales est le titre donné par Michel Foucault au cours qu’il prononce au Collège de France de novembre 1971 à mars 1972. Dans ces leçons, Michel Foucault théorise, pour la première fois, la question du pouvoir qui va l’occuper jusqu’à la…

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Day one in the Foucault archive at UC Berkeley

Posted on May 4, 2015 by stuartelden

416WWM6N5EL Today was my first day doing work on Foucault in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. Alain Beaulieu wrote a useful guide to “The Foucault Archives at Berkeley”, in Foucault Studies in 2010, and much of what they have is also available at IMEC.

But there are some surprises still, including the manuscript page of this image – the original is black on white. It’s included in a confusingly labelled file: “Preface and Introduction to ‘Genealogy of Ethics’, with notes [n.d.]” (BANC 90/136z 1:13).

Actually what is in this file is the conflation of two things. Why these two quite different materials, in form, content, provenance and destination, are in the same folder is not at all clear. The first part is a draft of the Preface and Introduction to the second volume of the History of Sexuality. As the same material is in the Bibliothèque Nationale I can date it to early 1983, probably March. It’s a fairly clean, typed text of 51 pages. Foucault gave this text to Paul Rabinow for use in The Foucault Reader. Only the ‘Preface’ was translated for that book, and the French of that part appeared in Dits et écrits. The two parts of the ‘Introduction’ proper – ‘Question’ and ‘Method’ – are not published elsewhere. This introduction went through multiple revisions and rewrites before appearing in The Use of Pleasures in 1984 (see my analysis of the various published versions here). The second material in this folder, from which the diagram sheet comes, comprises unpaginated preparatory handwritten notes for the ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics’ interview with Rabinow and Hubert Dreyfus. IMEC has the longer transcripts of the discussions which were used to produce the interview; Bancroft surprisingly does not.

The handwritten manuscript of ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (BANC 90/136z 1:15) is also interesting. Someone has annotated/deciphered Foucault’s handwriting in pencil. His writing is, at times, really difficult to read. The curator of the archive has suggested this is the translator, Catherine Porter, which is certainly possible, but there is a clean typed version in French later in the same file, which suggests that a typist did it instead. There were typist annotations on some of the manuscripts in Paris too.

There are some other interesting things here, including some tapes which I’ve not heard before, so will work through those over the next two days.

History of Cartography Vol 6 published

Posted on May 4, 2015 by stuartelden

The latest instalment in a major series – Jeremy Crampton reports on the launch event.

Open Geography

The History of Cartography Project Volume 6 Cartography in the Twentieth Centuryhas been published by the University of Chicago Press. Mark Monmonier is the Editor.

As it happens the sample content for Vol 6 includes the whole of my entry on “Race, Maps and the Social Construction of” and is available online including color reproductions!

The Volume is in two books consisting of over 2,000 pages and 805 color plates for 529 entries for a price of $500/£350. I’ve briefly examined the books and they look fabulous.

I was fortunate enough to attend the publication party at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Below are pictures of Mark Monmonier giving a short talk at the book launch, and Roz Woodward (L) & Jude Leimer (R). David Woodward and Brian Harley were the original editors, conceiving the project in 1977. Matthew Edney is now overall Editor. David was represented by…

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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (6b): audio and video (with embedded video)

Posted on May 4, 2015 by stuartelden

The Michel Serres bibliography of audio and video recordings – this time embedded.

Christopher Watkin

This instalment of the bibliography lists Serres’ film and television appearances, as well as those videos freely available on the web in which he features (see all the Serres bibliography posts together on this page).

This is the second version of this section of the bibliography. In this version, videos from Youtube, Dailymotion and Vimeo are embedded in the page, and you can view them directly within it. For that reason, the page may load slowly on some machines. To see the list without the embedded clips, please go here. I have been careful not to link to any material under copyright, but if you spot an infringement let me know and I’ll delete the link.

Tip: if you don’t speak French but want to watch the French language videos, some youtube clips can automatically translate subtitles. Click on the “CC” icon at the foot of the video (1 in…

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Spatial Humanities: Promise and Peril

Posted on May 4, 2015 by stuartelden

Gwilym Eades reviews two books on the Spatial Humanities.

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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (6a): audio and video (with links)

Posted on May 3, 2015 by stuartelden

The Serres bibliography continues…

Christopher Watkin

This part of the bibliography lists Serres’ film and television appearances, as well as those videos freely available on the web in which he features (see all the Serres bibliography posts together on this page).

This is the first of two versions of this section of the bibliography. On the other version, Youtube, Dailymotion and Vimeo clips are embedded directly into the list, so that you can access them within the page, which will make the other version take longer to load and be prohibitively slow on some machines. I have been careful not to link to any material under copyright, but if you spot an infringement let me know and I’ll delete the link.

Tip: if you don’t speak French but want to watch the French language videos, some youtube clips can automatically translate subtitles. Click on the “CC” icon at the foot of the video (1 in the…

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Titan Theatre Company’s all-female Othello in Queens

Posted on May 3, 2015 by stuartelden

Although I saw some remarkable theatre in late March and early April in the UK – Antigone, Death of a Salesman, Man and Superman and Clarence Darrow – it was good to get back to Shakespeare. First was the all-female Othello at the Queens Theatre, from Titan Theatre Company. Steve Mentz has written a very good review on his own blog, which rightly highlights the extraordinary performance of Laura Frye as Iago.

One striking thing was that the play began with a heavily compressed version of the scene where the Duke and senators are comparing letters on the size of the Turkish fleet, then moved to about half way through the scene which begins the text of the waking of Brabantio. While this set up the wider geopolitical framing of the play very effectively, most of the rest of that aspect was cut, along with much else. This led to a very fast-paced production of about two hours, including a brief intermission. Although Othello and Iago have a similar number of lines in the written text, it certainly felt that Iago dominated. That said, one key cut to Iago’s lines was the opening speech about Cassio. A shame, because those lines explain much of the reason for the hatred and plotting to come. But overall I did really enjoy this, and the gender-switch threw some intriguing light on the text.

This was the last performance of a very short run. I’ll be going to see Othello and The Merchant of Venice in Stratford when I get back to the UK in June, but next will be Peter Sarsgaard as Hamlet in New York next week. Also debating Two Gentlemen of Verona in Brooklyn – hardly one of Shakespeare’s best, and I saw a good production in Stratford just last year, but Steve Mentz has another good review here.