Call for Participants: Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Governmentality, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism
Type: Summer Program
Date: June 25, 2016
Location: United States
Subject Fields: Communication, French History / Studies, Philosophy, Government and Public Service, Cultural History / Studies
Graduate Student Summer Institute in Rhetoric and Public Culture
July 19-23 (Tuesday-Saturday), 2016 at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
This
year’s institute theme is: “Michel Foucault’s Lectures on
Governmentality, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism”. We will focus on three
volumes of Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France: Society Must Be Defended (1975-76); Security, Territory, Population (1977-78); and The Birth of Biopolitics
(1978-79). In these volumes, Foucault provides a complex analysis of
two complimentary forms of power that circulate and shape conduct in
modern societies: the disciplinary power directed at governing
individual bodies and the biopower directed at governing the population.
He explains how the shift towards the prominence of the biopower occurs
gradually over several centuries to the present in Western societies by
giving an account of changing and accumulating techniques and arts of
governing (and systematic reflection about those techniques and arts)
from the Christian pastorate through raison d’Etat to liberal govermentality. This
shift in focus (without erasure or supplanting) from the
“anatomo-politics of the human body” to “the bio-politics of
populations” in these three volumes of Foucault’s lectures will be one
of the main themes of this summer institute.
The
institute will consist of five days of presentations and discussions led
by Verena Erlenbusch (Philosophy, University of Memphis), Johanna
Oksala (Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of
Helsinki), Keith Topper (Political Science, University of
California-Irvine), and Penelope Deutscher (Philosophy, CLS, and
Critical Theory, Northwestern). Each faculty member will deliver an
afternoon lecture, lead a seminar discussion on selected readings
(assigned in advance) the following morning, and attend a colleague’s
presentation that afternoon. The overlapping format enables student and
faculty participants to continue informal scholarly discussion during
group lunches and dinners.
The institute is sponsored by the
Center for Global Culture and Communication, an interdisciplinary
initiative of Northwestern University School of Communication. The
Center will subsidize transportation (up to $250), lodging
(double-occupancy), and some meals (breakfast and lunch every day and
two group dinners) for admitted students. Applicants should send a brief
letter of nomination from their academic advisor, along with a one-page
statement explaining their interest in participating in this year’s
institute, to the summer institute coordinator LaCharles Ward LacharlesWard2017@u.northwestern.edu.
We will adopt a policy of rolling admissions. Priority will therefore
be granted to strong applications that are submitted in a timely
fashion, preferably by June 25th. All inquiries should be directed to LaCharles Ward.
This summer institute is convened by Center for Global Culture and Communication (CGCC), an
interdisciplinary initiative of Northwestern University School of
Communication. Dilip Gaonkar (Rhetoric and Public Culture) is the
Director of CGCC.