Books by Michael C Behrent
Though Michel Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, little is ... more Though Michel Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, little is known about his early life. Even Foucault’s biographers have neglected this period, preferring instead to start the story when the future philosopher arrives in Paris.
Becoming Foucault is a historical reconstruction of the world in which Foucault grew up: the small city of Poitiers, France, from the 1920s until the end of the Second World War. Beyond exploring previously unexamined aspects of Foucault’s childhood, including his wartime ordeals, it proposes an original interpretation of Foucault’s oeuvre. Michael Behrent argues that Foucault, in addition to being a theorist of power, knowledge, and selfhood, was also a philosopher of experience. He was a thinker intent on making sense of the events that he lived through. Behrent identifies four specific experiences in Foucault’s childhood that exercised a decisive influence on him and that, in various ways, he later made the subject of his philosophy: his family’s deep connections to the medical profession; his upbringing in a bourgeois household; the German Occupation during World War II; and his Catholic education.
Behrent not only reconstructs the specific nature of these experiences but also shows how reference to them surfaces in Foucault’s later work. In this way, the book both sheds light on a formative period in the philosopher’s life and offers a unique interpretation of key aspects of his thought.
Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transforma... more Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left.
However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers ? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism?
This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.
Lorsque Michel Foucault décède en 1984, c’est également le monde de l’après guerre, ses instituti... more Lorsque Michel Foucault décède en 1984, c’est également le monde de l’après guerre, ses institutions et ses espoirs de transformation sociale, qui s’éteint avec lui. Les décennies qui suivront seront indéniablement celles du triomphe du néolibéralisme et des attaques contre les droits sociaux. Si Michel Foucault n’en a pas été le témoin direct, son oeuvre dans ce domaine apparaît néanmoins visionnaire. La question du libéralisme occupe en effet une place importante dans ses derniers écrits. Depuis sa disparition, l’appareil de pensée foucaldien a, en outre, acquis une place centrale, pour ne pas dire dominante, au sein d’un large pan du monde intellectuel de gauche. Pourtant, comme le démontrent les différentes contributions qui composent cet ouvrage, l’attitude du philosophe face au néolibéralisme fut pour le moins équivoque. Loin de mener une lutte intellectuelle résolue contre la doxa du libre marché, Michel Foucault semble, sur bien des points, y adhérer. Comment en effet interpréter sa critique radicale de la sécurité sociale, qualifiée d’instrument d’accomplissement du « biopouvoir » ? Ou son soutien aux « nouveaux philosophes » ?
Foucault aurait-il été séduit par le néolibéralisme ? Cette question, loin d’incarner simplement les évolutions d’un intellectuel, interroge plus généralement les mutations d’une certaine gauche de l’après-mai 68, les désillusions à venir et les transformations profondes du champ intellectuel français au cours des trente dernières années. Comprendre les années 1980 et le triomphe néolibéral, c’est également explorer les recoins les plus ambigus de la gauche intellectuelle à travers une de ses plus importantes figures.
Papers by Michael C Behrent
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities, vol. 1, 2024
An overview of Foucault's philosophical reflection on sexuality and its impact on the field of th... more An overview of Foucault's philosophical reflection on sexuality and its impact on the field of the history of sexuality.
Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, 2024
Academic Labor: Research and Artistry, 2023
This essay draws on the author's personal experiences at a public university in North Carolina to... more This essay draws on the author's personal experiences at a public university in North Carolina to reflect on the implications of the deprofessionalization of the professorate for academic organizing. It begins by considering the evolving contexts that have undermined professors' ability to organize: a declining demand for academic labor; the rise of university administrators with a distinct set of interests and professional culture; and professors' lack of solidarity and disinclination to advocate for their collective interests. Next, drawing on Laurence Vesey's classic history of American colleges, and particularly his insight that the academic profession has flourished historically largely because of the "incoherence" of institutions of higher learning, the essay argues that the "salutary neglect" that professors long benefited from is ending. As institutions strive for greater internal coherence, faculty autonomy is threatened. This is apparent in the policy implications of budget cuts, political interference, and cutthroat competition to enroll students. Finally, the essay argues that one possible solution to the problems of de-professionalization and professors' declining ability to organize is for faculty to reclaim the language of privilege. As French labor history illustrates, "privilege" was a term that once referred to special rights that guild laborers were accorded by virtue of their skills. Embracing the idea that faculty should reasonably expect special treatment (which does not mean that they should endorse unjustified social hierarchies) could motivate faculty to resist the troubling headwinds facing their profession.
Critical Review, 2022
Between 1949 and 1961 (or, arguably, 1966), three interconnected dimensions of Foucault’s early t... more Between 1949 and 1961 (or, arguably, 1966), three interconnected dimensions of Foucault’s early thought emerged. First, the young Foucault offered a Hegelian perspective on Kant’s notion of the transcendental. The a priori conditions of thought, Foucault suggested, both shape and arise from historical experience. Second, Foucault drew on Heidegger’s study of Kant to argue that modern thought rests on the premise of human finitude and embraces a problematic epistemology rooted in philosophical anthropology. Foucault argued that anthropology enabled a vast extension of the scope of possible knowledge predicated on the falsely modest pretense that human understanding is inherently limited, even as it embraced a diminished conception of human existence. Third, Foucault developed a pointed critique of contemporary psychology and psychiatry, maintaining that they fallaciously seek to acquire positive knowledge of human beings, despite the fact the latter are inherently defined by what Foucault called “negativity.” This three-pronged interpretation of the young Foucault allows us to better situate Foucault’s work in intellectual history, to clarify his key arguments, and to grasp the articulation of his youthful and his mature thought.
Modern and Contemporary France, 2022
France’s 2022 electoral cycle suggests that the basic contours of French politics are in flux. Th... more France’s 2022 electoral cycle suggests that the basic contours of French politics are in flux. This is largely because the traditional left-right spectrum proved increasingly incapable of structuring France’s political supply through the 1990s and 2000s. The result has been a reconfiguration of the political spectrum along a new quadripolar axis, in which political actors and voters position themselves along two spectrums: neoliberal-anti-neoliberal and globalist-nationalist. This quadripolar system has changed the way French parties operate and the way political actors present themselves. It has also given rise to—and reinforced—emerging patterns of electoral sociology and geography, which became particularly evident after the 2022 legislative elections.
OUPBlog, 2022
An analysis of the French political situation in the wake of the 2022 parliamentary/legislative e... more An analysis of the French political situation in the wake of the 2022 parliamentary/legislative elections.
OUPBlog, 2022
An analysis of Emmanuel Macron's reelection in April-May 2022.
OUPBlog, 2022
An assessment of the state of French politics prior to the spring 2022 presidential election.
Foreign Policy, 2022
An examination of the limits of Marine Le Pen's electoral appeal in the context of the 2022 Frenc... more An examination of the limits of Marine Le Pen's electoral appeal in the context of the 2022 French election cycle.
H-Diplo, 2022
A review essay on the work of political analyst Ivan Krastev
H-Diplo, 2021
Analysis of the September 2021 German Federal Elections.
Expression in Contested Public Spaces: Free Speech and Civic Engagement, 2021
An examination of the tension between free speech and diversity in recent controversies on Americ... more An examination of the tension between free speech and diversity in recent controversies on American university campuses, with special reference to North Carolina.
Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism, 2021
This chapter examines critiques of liberalism advanced by the left and new left. It argues that, ... more This chapter examines critiques of liberalism advanced by the left and new left. It argues that, contrary to what one sees with conservative or right-wing attacks on liberalism, the left has frequently acknowledged that liberalism shares (at least superficially) its emancipatory concerns and critique of traditional society. Consequently, left critiques have focused on finding liberalism’s “bad seed” – that is, those aspects of liberalism that undermine the values it purports to uphold. The chapter tells the story of the left’s discontent with liberalism by identifying the successive ways in which leftists have characterized liberalism’s fatal flaw: its tendency to social disorganization; its flawed conception of human emancipation; its misunderstanding of society and social relationships; its problematic embrace of progress; its association with forms of subtle coercion and restrictive consensus politics; its promotion of apolitical individualism; and, most recently, its embodiment of racial and gendered privilege.
Dissent, 2021
An assessment of Foucault's teaching in light of the polemical interpretations surrounding it in ... more An assessment of Foucault's teaching in light of the polemical interpretations surrounding it in the contemporary United States.
Modern Intellectual History, 2021
This paper examines the career and thought of French political philosopher Blandine Kriegel (b. 1... more This paper examines the career and thought of French political philosopher Blandine Kriegel (b. 1943) from the standpoint of the most striking paradox they present: though she was a student of Michel Foucault, who was famous for his critique of central role that political thinking has traditionally accorded the state, Kriegel has, since the mid-1970s, been one of the foremost champions of the concept of état de droit—the state as the embodiment of the “rule of law”—in French political debates. At a time when post-1968 critics of Marxism and totalitarianism (notably the so-called nouveaux philosophes) were arguing that states were inherently despotic, Kriegel mounted an original defense of the state, which, she argued, had played a central role in establishing legal rights that freed individuals from the “slavery” of civil society. She was able to do this, in part, by drawing on several suggestive elements found in Foucault's work: his concept of biopolitics, the claim that individuals and subjectivity are constituted through power relations, and the insight that war and sovereignty represent alternative ways of conceptualizing power. In this way, she used aspects of Foucault's political thought to arrive at a decidedly non-Foucauldian appreciation of the modern state.
Psychologie de la connerie en politique (ed. Jean-Francois Marmion), 2020
A reflection on the history of presidential stupidity in the US, from the Founding Fathers to the... more A reflection on the history of presidential stupidity in the US, from the Founding Fathers to the present
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Books by Michael C Behrent
Becoming Foucault is a historical reconstruction of the world in which Foucault grew up: the small city of Poitiers, France, from the 1920s until the end of the Second World War. Beyond exploring previously unexamined aspects of Foucault’s childhood, including his wartime ordeals, it proposes an original interpretation of Foucault’s oeuvre. Michael Behrent argues that Foucault, in addition to being a theorist of power, knowledge, and selfhood, was also a philosopher of experience. He was a thinker intent on making sense of the events that he lived through. Behrent identifies four specific experiences in Foucault’s childhood that exercised a decisive influence on him and that, in various ways, he later made the subject of his philosophy: his family’s deep connections to the medical profession; his upbringing in a bourgeois household; the German Occupation during World War II; and his Catholic education.
Behrent not only reconstructs the specific nature of these experiences but also shows how reference to them surfaces in Foucault’s later work. In this way, the book both sheds light on a formative period in the philosopher’s life and offers a unique interpretation of key aspects of his thought.
However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers ? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism?
This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.
Foucault aurait-il été séduit par le néolibéralisme ? Cette question, loin d’incarner simplement les évolutions d’un intellectuel, interroge plus généralement les mutations d’une certaine gauche de l’après-mai 68, les désillusions à venir et les transformations profondes du champ intellectuel français au cours des trente dernières années. Comprendre les années 1980 et le triomphe néolibéral, c’est également explorer les recoins les plus ambigus de la gauche intellectuelle à travers une de ses plus importantes figures.
Papers by Michael C Behrent
It is available here:
https://logosjournal.com/article/the-people-who-are-nothing-strike-back-the-2023-retirement-age-protests-in-france/
Becoming Foucault is a historical reconstruction of the world in which Foucault grew up: the small city of Poitiers, France, from the 1920s until the end of the Second World War. Beyond exploring previously unexamined aspects of Foucault’s childhood, including his wartime ordeals, it proposes an original interpretation of Foucault’s oeuvre. Michael Behrent argues that Foucault, in addition to being a theorist of power, knowledge, and selfhood, was also a philosopher of experience. He was a thinker intent on making sense of the events that he lived through. Behrent identifies four specific experiences in Foucault’s childhood that exercised a decisive influence on him and that, in various ways, he later made the subject of his philosophy: his family’s deep connections to the medical profession; his upbringing in a bourgeois household; the German Occupation during World War II; and his Catholic education.
Behrent not only reconstructs the specific nature of these experiences but also shows how reference to them surfaces in Foucault’s later work. In this way, the book both sheds light on a formative period in the philosopher’s life and offers a unique interpretation of key aspects of his thought.
However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers ? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism?
This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.
Foucault aurait-il été séduit par le néolibéralisme ? Cette question, loin d’incarner simplement les évolutions d’un intellectuel, interroge plus généralement les mutations d’une certaine gauche de l’après-mai 68, les désillusions à venir et les transformations profondes du champ intellectuel français au cours des trente dernières années. Comprendre les années 1980 et le triomphe néolibéral, c’est également explorer les recoins les plus ambigus de la gauche intellectuelle à travers une de ses plus importantes figures.
It is available here:
https://logosjournal.com/article/the-people-who-are-nothing-strike-back-the-2023-retirement-age-protests-in-france/
Intellectual History, edited by Richard Whatmore (London
and New York: Routledge, 2015). Reviewers include Michael C. Behrent (Appalachian State University); Amy Jelacic (University of Sydney); George Klosko (University of Virginia); Tracie Matysik (University of Texas, Austin); and Knox Peden (University of Melbourne).