New Foucault: A Symposium

Friday, 9 November 2012

Rooms 2.G.04, 3.G.55, Bankstown Campus
The University of Western Sydney

The influence of Michel Foucault’s work through the Humanities and social sciences has been sustained across more than three decades, but earlier orthodox understandings and glosses, focused on major texts and central concepts have now given way to careful analysis of less obvious but important contemporary implications. The recent publication and translation of Foucault’s lecture series, and closer examination of various shorter texts has opened up new interpretive directions. This seminar brings together scholars working in three new directions drawing on Foucault’s texts: theorizing law and neo-liberalism, renovating bio-political perspectives, and mobilizing critical concepts of experience and self-transformation.

Room 2.G.04
11.00 – 12.30 Session 1: Thinking Biopolitics beyond the Human

Matthew Chrulew (Macquarie University) - "Animals as Biopolitical Subjects"
Dinesh Wadiwel (University of Sydney) - "Thrasymachus' Objection: Examining Pastoral Power as a Mode of Sovereignty"
Paul Alberts (UWS) – “A Foucault for the Anthropocene”
Respondent: Melinda Cooper (University of Sydney)

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch: Light Lunch provided
1.30 – 3.00 Session 2: Foucault and Neo-liberalism

Paul Patton (UNSW) “Foucault’s ‘critique’ of Neo-liberalism Revisited”
Miguel Vatter, (UNSW) - "Foucault and Hayek on the Nomos of Civil Society"
Respondent: Charles Barbour (UWS)

3.00 – 3.30 Afternoon Tea
3.30 – 5.00 Session 3: Foucault and Critical Thought of Experience

Timothy O’Leary, (Hong Kong) – “New Tools, New Foucault? The Critique of Ethical Experience”
Jana Sawicki, (Williams, Mass.) – “Foucault, Feminism, and Queering Critical Thought”
Respondent: Allison Weir (UWS)

All Welcome - RSVP to philosophy@uws.edu.au