History of the Human Sciences - October 2011, 24 (4)

Colin Koopman

Foucault across the disciplines: introductory notes on contingency in critical inquiry

           Abstract:Foucault is one of the most widely cited thinkers across social sciences and humanities disciplines today. Foucault’s appeal, and ongoing value, across the disciplines has much to do with the power of his thought and his method to help us see the contingency of practices we take to be inevitable. It is argued in this introductory article that Foucault’s emphasis on contingency is as misunderstood as it is influential. I distinguish two senses of contingency in Foucault. A first sense, widely acknowledged, concerns Foucault’s facility at showing that a taken-for-natural practice is in fact contingently produced. A second sense, widely neglected, concerns the facility of Foucauldian methods for grasping how a given practice was contingently produced. The second sense of contingency opens up possibilities for practical transformation that the former sense of contingency largely leaves to the side.

Ian Hacking

Déraison

Arnold I. Davidson

In praise of counter-conduct

Amy Allen

Foucault and the politics of our selves

James Ferguson

Toward a left art of government: from ‘Foucauldian critique’ to

 Foucauldian politics

Hans Sluga

“‘Could you define the sense you give the word “political”’? Michel

 Foucault as a political philosopher

Mark Bevir

Political science after Foucault

Mark Franko

Archaeological choreographic practices: Foucault and Forsythe

Catherine M. Soussloff

Foucault on painting