The Happy Death of Michel Foucault

• In Event: 65.051 - New Theoretical Directions

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of a conversation initiated by a symposium sponsored by the Foucault SIG in 2014. According to the discussant, the most prominent theme that arose from the symposium papers was that of death: a death of the subject and ethnographer/researcher; the violent death of the Other; and a new materialism concerned with the death of discourse through the production of new subjectivities. In order to think through this analysis, our intention is to provide Foucault with “a happy death” by drawing upon a lens developed by Albert Camus, who argued that such a death is one in which one acts consciously in revolt and productively towards justice.

Authors

• David W. Kupferman, University of Hawaii West Oahu

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland

• Sophia Mae Rodriguez