Michel Foucault and Literature: History, Life, Politics

The conference “Michel Foucault and Literature: History, Life, Politics” will explore Foucault’s relationship with literature in his newly published early works. In so doing, it will trace a genealogy of key concepts, namely history, life, and politics, which are articulated together with the notion of literature from his first writings. Thus, starting from Foucault’s texts on literary notions such as fiction, the outside or transgression, we propose an analysis of some of Foucault’s later key concepts, such as parrhesia, care of the self, and truth-telling, which belong to the genealogies which had already been traced in his works on literary notions. As a result, the concept of literature is presented as an amalgamation of different theoretical, historical, political and vital strata.
In addition, we welcome proposals on the relationship between Foucault and contemporary (M. Blanchot, G. Bataille, R. Barthes, L. Althusser, J. Rancière, E. Said) and earlier thinkers (F. Nietzsche, M. Merleau-Ponty, H. Bergson).
Finally, this conference aims to re-situate Foucault’s concept of literature both in the history of literary ideas in the twenty-first century and in Foucault's thinking.
Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:
-The politics of literature
-Foucault’s library: Borges, Sade, Nerval, etc.
-Gender, difference, identity
-Subjectivation processes
-Archeology, genealogy, and philology
-Literature and biopolitics
-Biopoetics
-Biopolitics, thanatopolitics, ecopolitics
-Foucault in the twenty-first century
-Infamy, literary fame
-The aesthetics of existence
-Foucault and romanticism
-Nietzsche, Foucault, and literature
-The history of truth and literary representation
-The literary outside and the political outside: Blanchot and Foucault
-Forms of thought: literary discourse and philosophical discourse

Keynote speakers: Frédéric Gros, Fabienne Brugère, Orazio Irrera, Philippe Sabot, Miguel Morey, Ariadna Sforzini, José Luis Moreno Pestaña, Martin Mees, Isabelle Galichon, Judith Revel.
Proposals: Please email abstracts (150-200 words and 5 keywords) for 15-20-minute presentations to [email protected] and [email protected] by 31 January 2024.
Conference languages: English, French, Spanish
Registration fee: EUR 70
Registration fee (non-presenting attendees): EUR 35