Foucault Society, New Reading Group: The Courage of Truth (Feb 8)

NEW READING GROUP

Michel Foucault
The Courage of Truth

The Government of Self and Others II

Lectures at the College de France, 1983-1984

First Meeting:

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
7:00-9:00pm

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5409
New York, NY

Please join us for our new reading group on Michel Foucault’s final lecture course, recently published by Palgrave Macmillan (2011).

Our intensive, semester-long group will meet every two weeks on Wednesday evenings at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Details are below and on our website.

Open to the public. Suggested donation: $5/meeting.

Registration: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com

ABOUT THE READING GROUP: In the manuscript for The Courage of Truth, Foucault concluded by identifying a central point of contact in the complex relationship between veridiction-governmentality-subjectivation: namely, that of otherness. Taking these “last words” as a guideline, the Foucault Society’s new reading group will examine Foucault’s 1984 lecture course–which ended just before his death on June 25, 1984–as an “unfinished” problematization of truth and otherness. How may we join Foucault in re-thinking truth and government in relation to the problem of the other (l’autre)? How can the relationship to the other allow us, in various ways, to “get free of ourselves,” and to open up new possibilities and relations to truth? Our close reading of the lecture course will be supplemented by short selections from The Government of Self and Others (Palgrave 2010), as well as Foucault’s earlier works on the history of madness, abnormality, sexuality, and other figures of “otherness.“

Schedule: Meeting 1: Wednesday, February 8 Lecture: 1 February 1984, First and Second Hours Meeting 2: Wednesday, February 22 Lecture: 8 February 1984, First and Second Hours Complete calendar to be announced soon. Location and time for all meetings: 7:00-9:00pm CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5409 We will cover one entire lecture (first and second hours) at each meeting, which will be held approximately every two weeks. We expect to conclude in June. In order to develop a productive dialogue among group members, we ask that participants commit to attending most sessions. Questions? Please contact Kevin Jobe at foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com Reading Group Coordinator: Kevin S. Jobe is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His research interests lie at the intersection of political philosophy and the philosophy of race. He presented "The Biopolitics of Homelessness" at the Foucault Society's Colloquium Series in May 2011. About the Book: For table of contents and more information about The Courage of Truth from Palgrave Macmillan, click here.

About the Foucault Society:

The Foucault Society is an independent, nonprofit educational organization offering a variety of programs dedicated to the critical study of the ideas of Michel Foucault (1926-1984). All of our events are open to the public. We welcome new participants who have an interest in Foucault's work and its impact on diverse areas of inquiry, including critical social theory, philosophy, politics, history, culture, gender/sexuality studies, and the arts.

www.foucaultsociety.org
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E-mail: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com