Rethinking Foucault, Rethinking Political Economy

March 17–18, 2005, University of Leicester, UK

Workshop Theme:

Foucault was clearly concerned with rethinking political economy. This
concern ranged from his direct engagement in The Order of Things with the
formation of the economic subject in relation to political economy, and
also involved him in all manner of debates throughout his life about how
one might understand the political economy. After his death these debates
continued as his work has been extended in a variety of different attempts
to rethink political economy both in general terms and also in terms of
the analysis of specific politico-economic micro-practices and related
technologies of subjectification.Foucault's work however, has not gone uncontested. Disagreements have
surrounded his work from the beginning, and in recent years the
publication of, for example, his lectures at the Collège de France in the
1970s and his late writings and lectures on parrhesia open up
possibilities for further rethinking Foucault's work. At the same time, a
generation which has grown up with Foucault has proposed new readings that
extend Foucault beyond Foucault, taking his work into new territories and
inventing new concepts in so doing.

In addition to Foucault's rethinking of political economy and efforts to
rethink Foucault's work, there is a third task of rethinking, relating to
the ways that Foucault and political economy have been connected. Here
are questions about the scholarship and politics of the first attempts to
think political economy with Foucault, which have more than once produced
statements that would certainly have invited Foucault's famous laugh. So
we propose to rethink these first thinkings of Foucault and political
economy, and to show how we can move beyond them.

We will therefore gather for two days of discussions which seek to rethink
Foucault and to rethink political economy. Foucault once said in relation
to Deleuze: 'new thought is possible; thought is again possible'. We
propose to say the same of both Foucault and of political economy. New
thinking is possible. Thinking again is possible.

Speakers

Confirmed speakers include:

Ruud Kaulingfreks, University of Humanistics, the Netherlands

Alan McKinlay, University of St Andrews, UK

Rolland Munro, Keele University, UK

Damian O'Doherty, University of Manchester, UK

Bent Meier Sørensen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Akseli Virtanen, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland

Attendance will be strictly limited, and will close on 28 February 2005.