scholarly journals Foucault in Tunisia: The encounter with intolerable power

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Medien
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Teaching Philosophy ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The University

In September 1966, 10 years after Tunisia officially gained independence from French colonial rule, Michel Foucault took up a three-year secondment, teaching philosophy at the University of Tunis. This article offers an account of the time that Foucault spent in Tunisia, documenting his involvement in the anti-imperial, anti-authoritarian struggles that were taking place, and detailing his organizing against the carceral Tunisian state. Through this account, it is argued that Foucault’s entrance into political activism, and his associated work in developing a new analytic of power, was fundamentally motivated by his encounter with the neocolonial operatives of power that he witnessed and resisted while in Tunisia. In tracing the anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles taking place concurrent to Foucault’s development of his analytic of power, albeit struggles that are shown to not take centre stage in his subsequent works, this article concludes by suggesting that taking seriously the scholar-activist archive presented may offer us a set of radical Foucauldian tools for resistance.

HUNGER IN NORTHERN CHAD Hunger und Herrschaft: Vorkoloniale und frühe koloniale Hungerkrisen im Nordtschad. By ASTRID MEIER. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995. Pp. 304. No price given (ISBN 3-515-06729-9).

1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-177
Author(s):  
ROBERT BUIJTENHUIJS
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Natural Factors ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
University Of Zurich ◽  
The University ◽  
Political Economic

This book, a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Zürich in 1994, takes as its starting point the modern idea that hunger and famine are not fatalities determined by nature. Basing herself on the example of Northern Chad during the final pre-colonial decades and the first decades of French colonial rule, the author argues rather that famines, although partly caused by natural factors, reflect the political, economic and social conditions of the societies in which they take place. Famines, she claims, reflect power relations and the violence that sometimes flows from them.

Form as Weapon: the Political Function of Song in Urban Zimbabwean Theatre

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Martin Rohmer
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Humboldt University ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

In Zimbabwean society, what may not be spoken sometimes becomes acceptable in song – whether to avoid social taboos and enable a wife to complain against her mother-in-law, or in broadening the boundaries of political protest. In this article, Martin Rohmer looks back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule – in times of outward compliance as well as of direct struggle – and considers how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends. Martin Rohmer spent almost two years studying Zimbabwean theatre when a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, and completed his doctorate on Theatre and Performance in Zimbabwe at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1997. Since then he has been working in the field of cultural management for the Young Artists' Festival in Bayreuth. The present paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in November 1996.

A Bridge Across the Mediterranean

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Marriage And Divorce ◽  
Divorce Laws ◽  
The Future ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Mediterranean

During the Algerian War, Nafissa Sid Cara came to public prominence in two roles. As a secretary of state, Sid Cara oversaw the reform of Muslim marriage and divorce laws pursued by Charles de Gaulle’s administration as part of its integration campaign to unite France and Algeria. As president of the Mouvement de solidarité féminine, she sought to “emancipate” Algerian women so they could enjoy the rights France offered. Though the politics of the Algerian War circumscribed both roles, Sid Cara’s work with Algerian women did not remain limited by colonial rule. As Algeria approached independence, Sid Cara rearticulated the language of women’s rights as an apolitical and universal good, regardless of the future of the French colonial state, though she—and the language of women’s rights— remained bound to the former metropole.

Sino-Algerian Strategic Cooperation:Towards a New Stage of Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 01 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850017
Author(s):  
Siham Matallah
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mutual Trust ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The One

Algeria strongly welcomed cooperation with China along with its search for an economic and political partner that respects Algeria’s sovereignty, ethnicity, religious, and cultural peculiarities, especially as Algeria suffered a bitter experience under the French colonial rule that deprived it of a window into global markets even after the achievement of independence, and China’s partnership seemed like an auspicious beginning for the Algerian economy. Indeed, China opened its arms to Algeria and became its largest trading partner, surpassing France that has traditionally been Algeria’s number one supplier. Both countries are committed to carrying forward their friendship in a spirit of equality and mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, and common gain. On the one hand, China attaches great importance to its bilateral relations with Algeria, which were raised to a comprehensive strategic partnership level in February 2014, and on the other hand, the Algerian government played a very important role in encouraging Chinese companies to invest in various fields, adding new depth to the Sino-Algerian relationship.

Secular Emergence in Senegal

2017 ◽  
pp. 84-105
Author(s):  
David T. Buckley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Leopold Sedar Senghor

How did Senegal arrive at the twin tolerations after independence from French colonial rule? This chapter the existence of benevolent secularism in Senegal’s post-World War II founding documents, and traces its impact on Senegal’s Muslim majority, Catholic minority, and secular elites. Evidence draws on communication between political and religious elites during the independence period, with special attention to communication between Léopold Sédar Senghor and Muslim and Catholic elites. The chapter closes with an examination of tensions in Senegal’s benevolent secularism manifested in the controversy over the Code de la Famille.

Slipping Out Over the Wall

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-237
Author(s):  
Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb
Keyword(s):  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Teaching Philosophy ◽  
The University

This chapter explores Mary Midgley’s unconventional career, and her contributions—through her interests in biology and animal behavior (ethology)—to her friends’ project of reimagining ethics. The connection between Midgley’s work and that of Anscombe, Foot, and Murdoch is often missed because Midgley began writing much later in life. Midgley left her academic career early to follow her husband to Newcastle, where she stayed home, raising their three boys and reviewing books for the BBC. In the mid-1960s, she began teaching philosophy at the University of Newcastle, free from the stifling atmosphere of Oxford. Linking her interest in ethology to ethics, she eventually wrote Beast and Man, raising questions about rationality, instinct, and the sorts of goods—the sort of ethics—toward which humans’ animal nature points. Sadly, Foot never regarded Midgley’s work as “proper philosophy,” though Midgley’s insights could have addressed Foot’s most pressing philosophical worries.

Foucault in Hamburg. Notes on a One-Year Stay, 1959–60

2020 ◽  
pp. 026327642095045
Author(s):  
Rainer Nicolaysen
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Guest Lecturer ◽  
One Year ◽  
The University ◽  
Red Light District ◽  
Made In

This article provides a detailed account of the year that Michel Foucault spent as Director of the Institut Français in Hamburg and as a guest lecturer at the Romance Studies Department at the University of Hamburg. It discusses the beginning of Foucault’s time in Hamburg, the courses he taught at these two institutions, his interactions with German students in his classes, and events with invited guests from the French intellectual sphere. But it also sheds light on the friendships he made in Hamburg, in particular with Rolf Italiaander; the completion of his own projects including Histoire de la folie and the translation of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View; and finally his nocturnal wanderings through Hamburg’s red light district, Sankt-Pauli.

The Vietnamese Monarchy under French Colonial Rule 1884–1945

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyên Thê Anh
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Village Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Colonial

In the epilogue to his memoirs, Bao-Dai, the last sovereign of the Nguyên Dynasty, wrote:In ancient Vietnamese society, the social system is embodied in the person of the emperor, through whom everything religious is done, down to the lowest village level. But, if he sanctifies this act by prescribing or controlling it, he does not assume it. On the contrary, the Vietnamese ideal is that of a sovereign wise enough to reign without stirring, ‘with his hands hanging and his clothes loose…’.

Urban Life in French West Africa (FWA)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Goerg
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Saint Louis ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
French Colonial

During colonial times, cities, whether ancient or modern, underwent enormous changes. Urban life can be seen as a story of continuity and change, of invention and adaptation. Multiple constraints were imposed by colonial rule (e.g., spatial framework and mobility regulations, sanitation policy, control of the use of time, and so on), but new opportunities also presented themselves, professionally or otherwise, for example, in terms of defining one’s identity. Older inhabitants, as well as newcomers flowing to the main cities, especially from the 1930s, formed the foundation for a new, urbanized society. To frame the study of “urban life” within the political context of “French West Africa” presupposes both that there is something specific to the cities in the eight colonies, which, eventually, constituted FWA (French West Africa) plus the Togo mandate, and that there is something common to all these western African cities under French colonial rule. None of this is really valid. There are as many similarities with urban life in British West Africa as there are differences between the cities. When discussing urban life within the French colonial cities, one can mention the disproportionate allocation of space and resources aimed at satisfying the needs of the colonizers, or the will to rule and control all aspects of urban life. What is common between more than one-thousand-year-old Tombouctou and Conakry, a little more than a century old? Between Saint-Louis du Sénégal, which served as a main entrepôt for international trade from the mid-17th century, and Lomé, with Bè villages in the hinterland, founded by local merchants in the 1880s to escape British customs taxes? But despite the shortcomings of this methodological framework, one can form a general idea of urban life in colonial cities, provided that it be nuanced and contextualized, always bearing in mind a broader comparative framework encompassing British and French policies elsewhere in the empires. Urban life can be understood as the ways city dwellers organize their everyday activities: work, social interactions, but also leisure activities or political involvement. All these aspects changed over time, as city dwellers asserted themselves and, gradually, obtained more legal rights.

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