Category: Foucault
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By Gordon Hull I want here to tie together the preceding several posts (one, two, three, four, five) and finish the case for a Deleuzian undercurrent (perhaps better to say, Deleuzian and Althusserian undercurrents) to Foucault’s 1969 “What is an Author” seminar. Recall the specific point of interest: in a somewhat odd moment near the…
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By Gordon Hull The last couple of times (first, second), I have been setting up Althusser’s Marx as the background to Focuault’s invocation of Marx as an “instaurateur” in his “What is an Author.” Today, I want to finish that project by noting three additional moments in Althusser’s reading that indicate that he is not…
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By Gordon Hull Last time, I set up the context for reading Foucault’s remarks on Marx in “Author” in the context of Althusser, as well as some of the basic contours of the Althusserian anti-humanist Marx. Here, I want to pursue that line further. Althusser writes against the growing popularity of a humanist Marx, which…
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By Gordon Hull Back in Before Times, I wrote a couple of posts beginning to make the case for a Deleuzian influence behind Foucault’s “What is an Author” (part 1, part 2). This post resumes that series… Recall that Foucault’s narrative in “Author” distinguishes between those who found a science, like Galileo, and those who…
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By Gordon Hull In a follow-up to a controversial piece in which he argued (in late February) that the social distancing and quarantining in Italy presented the temptation to universalize the state of exception, Agamben says this: “Fear is a bad counsellor, but it makes us see many things we pretended not to see. The…
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Last time, I began the to make the case that there is evidence of an engagement with Deleuze in Foucault’s “What is an Author.” Specifically, I made the case that there is an implict Platonism behind the concept of authorship as Foucault articulates it. This time, I will look at the way that Barthes overturns…
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By Gordon Hull Toward the end of “What is an Author,” Foucault distinguishes between the “founder” and “initiator [instaurateur]” of a discourse. Galileo is the paradigmatic example of the former, and Marx of the latter. This is a puzzling distinction, to say the least. Let’s begin with the terminology: Although “founder [fondateur]” is common enough,…
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By Gordon Hull Consider the following, too brief summary: following Foucault, one can say that biopolitics is about optimizing populations, or something to that effect. This involves a lot of work on the part of the administrative state, which sets itself up to provide services, everything from sewers and other infrastructure to social safety nets. …
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I'm very pleased to announce that my new book, The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property, is now out in print/electronically on Cambridge UP. Here's a blurb: "Intellectual property is power, but what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, this study examines different ways of understanding…
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There is an interesting copyright case before the Supreme Court this term, Georgia v. Public Resource.org. It is settled law that official edicts of the government – statutory texts, judicial opinions, agency rules – are not copyrightable. More about that in a moment. In this case, Georgia entered into a contract with Lexis to produce…
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