Foucault, prison, and human rights: A dialectic of theory and criminal justice reform

Michel Foucault’s advocacy toward penal reform in France differed from his theories. Although Foucault is associated with the prison abolition movement, he also proposed more humane prisons. The article reframes Foucauldian theory through a dialectic with the theories of Marc Ancel, a prominent figure in the emergence of liberal sentencing norms in France. Ancel and Foucault were contemporaries whose legacies are intertwined. Ancel defended more benevolent prisons where experts would rehabilitate offenders. This evokes exactly what Discipline and Punish cast as an insidious strategy of social control. In reality, Foucault and Ancel converged in intriguing ways. The dialectic offers another perspective on Foucault, whose theories have fostered skepticism about the possibility of progress. While mass incarceration’s rise in the United States may evoke a Foucauldian dystopia, the relative development of human rights and dignity in European punishment reflects aspirations that Foucault embraced as an activist concerned about fatalistic interpretations of his theories.

Digital Self-Monitoring, Bodied Realities: Re-Casting App-Based Technologies in First Episode Psychosis

Smartphone technology has seen expanding interest across nearly all areas of medicine, including psychiatry. This paper discusses the burgeoning use of digital technologies for symptom monitoring in the field of first episode psychosis. Drawing on Foucauldian theory as well as intersectional feminist materialist and critical disabilities scholarship in science and technology studies (STS), we trace a novel landscape of technologies of the self. We explore the discursive strategies that position first episode psychosis and digital technology as progressive, curative paradigms and utilize our own ethnographic work within the field of first episode psychosis to consider how lived experience is transformed within and through digital technologies. We trouble the unfettered enthusiasm for digital technologies in first episode psychosis in light of how these transformations can be understood within a larger neoliberal political rationality and demarcate the importance of having intersectional feminist STS scholarship attend to this burgeoning field.

Masculinities and School Gun Violence in the United States

Schools are sites of personal, political, and symbolic violence. In the United States acts of rampage school gun violence, themselves symbolic, are connected to acts of personal violence via the inscription of social gender norms. Carried out by White teenage boys rampage school shootings call us to grapple with the ways in which schools form and discipline gendered subjectivities. Central to the field of masculinity studies is R. W. Connell’s theory of masculinity which draws on a Gramscian theory of hegemony rather than a Foucauldian theory of power. Whereas Gramsci focuses the ways in which power moves down, Foucault studies the impact of small interaction on our subjective sense of self. When addressing the phenomena of rampage school gun violence where White teenage boys target their schools in acts of gendered rage, a Foucauldian theory of power helps us to take seriously the significance of everyday interaction in legitimating gendered ontologies. Jointly Foucault and the contemporary works of Jane Roland Martin, Amy Shuffelton, and Michel Kimmel point towards an avenue that may afford us the opportunity to root out practices and environments wedded to hegemonic masculinity (and thus rampage school gun violence): the everyday celebration of gender-inclusive and egalitarian ways of learning and living.

A Critical Narrative of Employee Well-Being and Control Paradox in Higher Education

The case presents a detailed snapshot of a staff employee well-being initiative developed and implemented by the Human Resources (HR) department in August 2014 at the Online Learning Unit (OLU) of J.M. College located in southwestern Georgia. The case is an auto-ethnographic account of how implementation of an employee quality of life (QOL) initiative combined with surveillance techniques resulted in a negative toxic culture of employee resentment, hostility, and poor performance. Using modern surveillance theories of synoptican, actor-network theory (ANT), and surveillance capitalism, the case shows how the original Foucauldian theory of panopticon has re-invented itself into a panopticon of technology dominated by a culture of capitalism and profit-maximization. The case uses pseudo names to protect privacy and maintain confidentiality of the institution and characters. The case accurately details events in a chronological manner focusing on the main character's thoughts and actions.

Health-related nudging

The aim of this paper is to present a methodological approach that provides analytical, critical and normative purchase on nudges’ bypassing of reflection, using a combination of multimodal analysis, Foucauldian theory, and Habermas’s (1996) concept of deliberative democracy. The approach is demonstrated using an example of a health-related nudge from the Danish context: healthy product placement in a supermaket. Multimodal analysis highlights how various modes (colour, symbol, front and back, positioning and discourse) contribute meanings to the nudge. A Foucauldian perspective provides critical perspectives on nudges as shaping practices, as short of epistemic content and thus potentially difficult to resist, and as representing a politicisation of public space. Nudges’ lack of transparency is discussed in relation to Habermas’s normative framework of deliberative democracy where recognising public perspectives and ensuring consensus are key. Limitations of the article include a smaller data set; however, the data are used to illustrate the methodological approach. On the basis of the findings, I argue for the importance of furthering critical public discourse on nudging. That way, nudgees may be better positioned to spot nudges, and the implications of policymakers using this technique of governance can be more effectively scrutinised.

[Review] Paula Acari. Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals: A Critical Exploration of the Persistence of Meat. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 356 pp.

[Review] Paula Acari. Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals: A Critical Exploration of the Persistence of Meat. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 356 pp. There are many audiences for Paula Acari’s new book on the persistence of meat as edible matter, Making Sense of Food Animals, and not all of them academic. One of the striking facets of this well-researched, clearly argued and empirical analysis, drawing on 41 interviews with Australian meat eaters and meat producers, is the lessons for animal advocacy organisations for rethinking their messaging strategies. Central to the book’s argument is Acari’s challenge to narratives of transparency and visibility, often employed by such groups, made famous by activist Linda McCartney’s claim that ‘if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian’ (often wrongly attributed to her husband, Paul). Acari demonstrates, drawing on interview data and a robust interpretation of Foucauldian theory, that both looking and knowing are easily absorbed into the ‘already encoded eye’ of a human gaze that comes pre-trained by the ‘normalised entitlement’ of animal exploitation (263); as such, without a ‘de- or re-coding’ of that human gaze, calls for more transparency of slaughtering merely reinforce rather than disrupt the sense of animals’ edibility. As the cognitive linguist George Lakoff advises those advocating for change, it is unwise to utilise the stories of those whose power you wish to disrupt. Recirculating such stories strengthens the existing cognitive models and the beliefs which rest upon them. To challenge such cognitive codification, which, in relation to the edibility of animals, has ‘been socially, culturally and economically normalised over centuries’ (274), requires a more radical approach that highlights existing mechanisms of power, and has ‘rigorous, comprehensive strategies ready to challenge and refute them, not simply piecemeal responses as part of an apparently balanced discussion or debate’ (291). Acari’s book is a useful tool in helping animal advocacy groups rethink their campaigns to construct (and test) new messages that might ‘land’ with meat eaters, whose cognitive models continue to ‘make sense’ of animals as edible. What Acari hopes is that we reach a ‘heterotopia’ where it makes ‘no sense’ that animals are edible. As she readily admits, this is a ‘big nut to crack’. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, nor try to be more effective in our efforts.

Discipline and puppies: the powers of pet keeping

PurposeThis article adopts Foucault's notion of a bipolar technology of disciplinary power and regulatory biopower to address the tension between discipline and freedom in domestic relationships between human and nonhuman animals commonly referred to as “pets.” In doing so, the article examines the promises and pitfalls of thinking through pet keeping as a form of lived, posthumanist critique.Design/methodology/approachThe argument relies on an interview study with 20 pet owners—most of the interviews conducted in their homes together with their pets—to conceptualize how they organize their lives in relation to their pets.FindingsThe analysis shows that the boundaries of the home, the play of power between bodies, and the “conditions of an unconditional love” are central to producing the pet relationship as inherently meaningful and as an indispensable part of the lives of both pet keepers and pets. A balance between discipline and freedom enables the construction of both human and other identities: pet owners produce their pets' subjectivity by speaking of them as autonomous persons, while pets' presence in the home also enables their owners' subjectivity.Social implicationsThe article critically examines interspecies relationships, which by extension can benefit nonhuman animals. It argues that pet keeping can challenge anthropocentrism and unsustainable consumption lifestyles, but it may also reinforce prevailing biopolitical logics, if it remains maintained within a secluded domestic or cultural sphere.Originality/valueThe article draws on original data. While Foucauldian theory has been used to discuss pet keeping, empirical studies of pet keeping that rely on this theoretical framework are scarce.

Truth worth dying for: parrhesia in Lauren Oliver's novel “Before I Fall”

The post-truth ideology seems to question the possibility of credibility in present-day society; however, the very idea of truth remains potent. In this paper, we adopt the notion of parrhesia, or the mode of telling the uncomfortable truth without deceit and concealment, to analyze how the discourse of truth is presented in contemporary fiction. Avoiding its political aspects, we limit our study to the interpersonal level of parrhesia that shapes individuals as moral subjects and belongs to the domain of ethos. We select Lauren Oliver's novel “Before I Fall” for analysis because it resembles a confession that involves the characters and readers in the practice of truth-telling. Drawing from Foucauldian theory, we examine how the protagonist participates in the parrhesiastic game and how the truth transforms her after she completes the stages of search for the truth, test of the character, and care for oneself and others. We argue that in the novel truth-telling is related to the problems of school bullying, social separateness, and suicide. Through the rhetorical approach to narrative we show how narration reflects psychological and moral changes of the protagonist and examine how narrative judgments reveal the ethical values of the author and the readers. We analyse how the novel describes the problem of violence demonstrating that its source lies within the family and school where abusive adolescent conduct is caused by the inability of adults to create a healthy climate for children. Individuals deprived of emotional support and guidance tend to direct their rage and frustration towards others to reduce inner strain. Lauren Oliver demonstrates the effectiveness of the parrhesiastic practice in renewing social bonds between interlocutors and reducing violent behavior. We conclude that the novel establishes truth as the highest ethical value that includes developing a true self, leading a true life according to the principles and having courage to oppose false opinions of others.

Subject, Object, Agent, Other: Zoom, PNP and Crystal Methamphetamine

This paper advances the argument that gay men using online meeting spaces to smoke methamphetamine together are re-enacting the HIV/AIDS crisis. Using ethnographic observations of gay men smoking meth through an online meeting software called Zoom, this paper attempts to synthesise pharmaceutical insight with Freudian and Foucauldian theory. The idea of naked bodies presenting themselves before others while administering powerful pharmaceuticals – quarantined and isolated – expresses a recurrence of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The paper argues the crisis instantiated a logic of quarantine and containment which required gay men to insert themselves into an ascetic discourse and conduct, engaging only in isolated sexual practices. Gay populations were to be surveilled by medical institutions. Constant testing and monitoring of behaviour were to be used as a technique to contain the virus. Finally, powerful retroviral medications appeared in the mid-1990s and became the saviour of the AIDS infected populace, freeing queer bodies from the shackles of HIV. All of this creates new techniques for the function of power. Now, in place of quarantine, bodies isolate themselves. In place of surveillance, bodies become spectacles. In place of antiretrovirals, bodies infuse their blood with stimulants.