The Labyrinth of Genealogy: Poetry of Mehmet Karahüseyinov (1980-1990)

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Sylwia Siedlecka
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Body ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
Self Immolation

The article analyzes poems written by Mehmet Karahüseyinov (1945-1990) in the context of socio-political phenomena in Bulgaria of the 19980s and 1990s. In Karahüseyinov’s poetry, echoes are found of both the “Revival Process” and the “Big Excursion”, as well as of the fall of communism in Bulgaria as a point in history. Autobiographical perspective is of equal importance in the poems: in 1985, in the wake of the last stage of the “Revival Process”, the poet attempted self-immolation. This liminal experience, set in a wider context of what it means to be a representative of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in the late socialist period, permeates all of Karahüseyinov’s poetry at the time. The article’s methodological axis is a genealogical approach as formulated by Michel Foucault, who, informed by Nietzsche’s thought, wrote of an image of the body utterly marked by history. The body is thus an area which – also in the non-figurative, material dimension – enters the gears of history and where history leaves its marks, and the scarred bodily area becomes a map of a personal and entangled genealogy.

To Extract the Essence from this Essenceless Body

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiko Ohnuma
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Self Immolation

While ordinary suicide and ascetic self-torture are both condemned outright, and martyrdom seems irrelevant as a category, there are nevertheless several forms of elective death that are legitimated in Buddhist narrative sources from India, including self-sacrifice on behalf of others, and self-immolation as a religious offering. Both of these acts are generally attributed to the bodhisattva, or the being who is working to attain full buddhahood. Even so, while elective death in the form of either self-sacrifice or self-immolation can be rationalized and even celebrated, it is surrounded by ambivalence and anxiety, and accepted only with difficulty. This chapter focuses on the ambivalence surrounding self-sacrifice and self-immolation, an ambivalence that is particularly evident in these stories’ discourse of self and other, and in their discourse of the body that is sacrificed and the body one hopes to achieve.

Discipline

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 183-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan S. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Medical Regimen ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Or Economics ◽  
The Mind

There are broadly five interconnected meanings of the noun ‘discipline’. Disciplinawere instructions to disciples, and hence a branch of instruction or department of knowledge. This religious context provided the modern educational notion of a ‘body of knowledge’, or a discipline such as sociology or economics. We can define discipline as a body of knowledge and knowledge for the body, because the training of the mind has inevitably involved a training of the body. Second, it signified a method of training or instruction in a body of knowledge. Discipline had an important military connection involving drill, practice in the use of weapons. Third, there is an ecclesiastical meaning referring to a system of rules by which order is maintained in a church. It included the use of penal methods to achieve obedience. To discipline is to chastise. Fourth, to discipline is to bring about obedience through various forms of punishment; it is a means of correction. Finally there is a rare use of the term to describe a medical regimen in which ‘doctor's orders’ brings about a discipline of the patient. In contemporary society, there is, following the work of Michel Foucault, the notion of increasing personal regulation resulting in a ‘disciplinary society’ or a society based upon carceral institutions.

scholarly journals Vile Sovereigns in Bioethical Debate

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Hall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Lecture Series ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Bioethical Debate ◽  
Do So

<p>In this paper, I critically assess transhumanist philosophy and its influence in bioethics by turning to resources in the work of Michel Foucault. I begin by outlining transhumanism and drawing out some of the primary goals of transhumanist philosophy. In order to do so, I focus on the work of Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, two prominent contributors to this thinking. I then move to explicate Foucault&rsquo;s work, in the early iterations of the <em>Abnormal</em> lecture series, on the concept of vile sovereignty. Foucault used the concept of vile sovereignty to critique psychiatric witnesses that had been utilized in mid twentieth-century French courts of law. Turning back to transhumanism, I analyze transhumanist discourse on the basis of Foucault&rsquo;s vile sovereignty. Transhumanists promote human enhancement in a way that rejects the body&mdash;especially the disabled body&mdash;and pose the question of what lives are worth living, as well as attempt to answer it. I conclude that because of the undeserved influence and ableism of transhumanism, it is important for feminist philosophers, philosophers of disability, and other disability scholars, who collide at the nexus of bioethical debate (especially with regard to reproductive technology and the body), to work together to intervene upon transhumanist discourse.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p>Keywords: bioethics; enhancement; Foucault; transhumanism; ableism</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

‘The Party with God’: Michel Foucault, the Gay Left and the Work of Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Maynard
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Socialist Feminism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sexual Theory ◽  
The City

Revisiting Foucault's month-long stay in Toronto in June 1982, this article explores the reception and appropriation of the first volume of The History of Sexuality by activist-intellectuals associated with the Toronto-based publication, The Body Politic, and some of their fellow travelers. Reading Foucault's introductory volume through the intersecting frameworks of social constructionism, historical materialism, and socialist feminism, gay-left activists forged a distinctive relationship between sexual theory and political practice. If Foucault had a significant impact on activists in the city, Toronto also left its mark on Foucault. Based on the recently rediscovered and unedited transcript of a well-known interview with Foucault in Toronto, along with an interview with one of Foucault's interlocutors, the article concludes with Foucault's forays into Toronto's sexual and political scenes, particularly in relation to ‘bodies and pleasures’ and resistance to the sex police.

Censorship and Its Changing Taboos on the Egyptian Stage—From Politics and Religion to Sexual Frustration

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-184
Author(s):  
Dina Amin
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gain Access

When asked about “political control of a population,” Michel Foucault responded, “[P]ower had to gain access to the bodies of individual, to their acts, attitudes, and modes of everyday behavior . . .I believe that the political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.” This insight is often reflected in the relationship between literature that deals with the body and the discipline imposed on it by various institutions (whether religious or social) in the form of censorship. One good example of that “ethical” exercise of power versus dramatic literature emerged when Sameh Mahran, a professor at the Cairo Academy of Arts, wrote Al-Marakbi (The Boatman), a play in two acts with an epilogue.

Power, Space, and the Body: A Critical Assessment of Foucault's Discipline and Punish

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
F Driver
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body

The work of Michel Foucault has recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny. This paper is an examination of his book, Discipline and Punish, which describes an historical transformation in the exercise of power. The themes (section 2) and the significance (section 3) of the book are discussed in terms of Foucault's conception of history and power. In the rest of the paper, its implications are examined more closely, through four categories: ‘institutions’, ‘the economy’, ‘law and the state’, and ‘struggle and strategy’. Under these headings are discussed the connections and contradictions between Foucault's analysis and more conventional Marxist or Weberian approaches. Although Foucault's perspectives cannot be ‘incorporated’ within such theories of power, they are far from being completely incompatible with them.

scholarly journals New Poetics of the Film Body: Docility, Molecular Fundamentalism and Twenty First Century Destiny

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Twenty first century film evokes a new topology of the body. Science and technology are the new century’s ‘sovereign power’ which enforces biopolitics through bodies which, by virtue of being seen at their most fundamental level, have become docile surfaces. The film body is at once manipulated and coerced into an ethos of optimization; a thoroughly scientific and ‘molecular’ optimization which proffers ‘normalization’ and intimately regulated bodies. In the film bodies of this millennium, bodily intervention results in surveillance becoming internalized. Now the body is both a means and an end of social control. This essay applies the philosophies Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose to twenty first century Hollywood film, elucidating a new tropos, a new film body/body of film.

Somatechnologies

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Lettow ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Body Technologies

Until now, the body has played only a minor role in the philosophy of technology. However, more elaborate reflections on the relation between technology and the body are needed because of the advent of somatechnologies – technologies intentionally geared toward modifying bodies and that use bodily substances as technological means. The article discusses some approaches within the philosophy of technology that prove to be fruitful in this context. The article argues thatsomatechnical modifications of bodies should be understood as elements of ‘body technologies’ and body politics in a broader sense. In such a perspective, concepts of the body developed by Judith Butler and Michel Foucault should be adopted by a praxeological philosophy of technology.

scholarly journals Performatywne rozpoznania medialności polityki w myśli Judith Butler

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (55) ◽  
pp. 212-225
Author(s):  
Marcin Sanakiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Visibility Politics ◽  
A Performance

Judith Butler, an American philosopher and performance theorist, sees the transformations of public sphere and democracy in the possibilities of making visible the human bodies. Butler interprets a performance as a setting boundary for belonging to a community. Public appearance requires the existence of the body and media technologies. In this way, the performative nature of political activities acquires the characteristics of biopower, according to Michel Foucault: control over the coupling of social and biological existence of man, taking into account his public visibility. Politics, by merging with what is media, obtains a performative (discursive/event) character.

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