Progressive Geographies

Tonight. Below I go over the debate between Foucault and Derrida after a whole semester in which I taught their texts on crime and punishment, but not this particular debate. It’s been a great class. And obviously, anything below is a trying out of certain ideas.

Final Lecture: Differences of Method

This will have been an act of madness: to wait until the last class, in its final hours, to redescribe the relation between Foucault and Derrida in terms of their quite critical debates across 30 years of a limited number of writings. To have read them thus far, side by side, not even concerning the very issues confronting them in those debates (most particularly a few short passages in the opening paragraphs of Descartes Meditations), but instead spending a semester on crime and punishment and the abyssal relation between the two. All then to pass it off to…

A brief update. As anticipated in Part II, UCU’s higher education committee voted to suspend the industrial action over pensions until 15 January and enter into negotiations with employers, despite opposition from UCU Left members. Having voted down UCU Left amendments to their negotiating position, the HEC has authorised its representatives to pursue an outcome that implicitly accepts much of the employers’ agenda and envisages sacrificing the 75% of USS members on a final salary pension for a weakly improved career-average scheme for all. It now appears that these proposals were initially discussed at a USS conference with branch delegates in October, but no mandate was given then to pursue the far-reaching changes envisaged, and attendees were actively instructed not to discuss the proposals within their branches. This only confirms my earlier impression that the individuals running UCU have no respect for internal union democracy. They wanted to keep…

Th. Voeltzel, M. Foucault, Vingt ans et après. Suivi de Letzlove, l’anagramme d’une rencontre
DATE DE PARUTION : 09/10/14 EDITEUR : Verticales ISBN : 978-2-07-014665-9 EAN : 9782070146659 PRÉSENTATION : Broché NB. DE PAGES : 213 p.

En 1978 paraît aux éditions Grasset, dans la collection ” Enjeux ” de Claude Mauriac, Vingt ans et après, un livre d’entretiens – enregistrés sur cassettes et retranscrits par Mireille Davidovici – entre un parfait inconnu d’un peu plus de vingt ans, Thierry Voeltzel, et un grand philosophe qui avait alors tenu à garder l’anonymat : Michel Foucault – passer son nom sous silence était alors un geste éditorial audacieux.

Le dialogue, organisé de façon thématique, est une conversation informée et vivante. Il révèle la richesse de paroles et de vie des années 70, dix ans après Mai 68, moment intense de mutation de la jeunesse, notamment concernant la sexualité, les drogues, la…