Foucault remains the single most cited scholar in quant-H-index history. Accusations and adulations fly around Foucault, whose publications over the last forty years eclipse his output while alive, with scores of lectures and interviews, and now drafts from his archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Yet when a philosopher can be posthumously mobilized for opposing ends of ideological spectra, Foucault himself would urge a critical eye to the stakes and argumentative bases for these claims. Any evaluative logic imposing normative standards of right and wrong, heroic and corrosive, should be approached critically. Foucault is neither saint nor sinner.
The papers in this panel take up and challenge readings of Foucault-the-scholar at different points of intellectual and practical pressure rethinking: genealogy as dynamic critical method that emerges in conjunction with historiography, epistemic shifts in colonialism and nationalism in Malay-Muslim populations, political spirituality and collective resistance movements in the Iranian revolution, and the excesses of postmodernism and nihilism consuming its own tail.
Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire (1971) is often cast as the moment Nietzschean genealogy truly became as a critical historical method. But that story is too clean. It erases a messier, more dynamic intellectual landscape—one where genealogy wasn’t just a Nietzschean discovery or a Foucauldian recovery but the product of fierce mid-century debates. This paper reconstructs that forgotten conversation, tracing how thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Michel Serres, Michel Henry, Jacques Derrida, and Sarah Kofman, alongside other structuralists and Marxists, were already grappling with genealogy before Foucault’s essay. At the same time, historiographical movements—Annales history, historical epistemology, surrealism—reshaped what genealogy could even mean. It wasn’t a singular rupture. It was a field of collisions, reworkings, and provocations. By placing Foucault back into that shifting terrain, this study unsettles the dominant narrative and opens new directions for genealogical inquiry in religious studies and beyond.
This paper critically reinterprets Michel Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution, challenging Janet Afary’s claim that he naively romanticized political spirituality and overlooked the rise of authoritarianism. Instead, it argues that Foucault’s interest in Iran stemmed from his broader critique of Western modernity, particularly its disciplinary power and capitalist alienation, rather than an endorsement of theocracy. The revolution was not a monolithic Islamist project but a diverse coalition that included Marxists, secular nationalists, and liberals, a complexity Afary underemphasizes. Without subscribing to pro-Western narratives that equate democracy with liberalism or demonize the revolution as religious fanaticism, this paper situates Foucault’s reflections within their historical context. By exploring his writings as part of his larger intellectual trajectory—examining resistance, alternative political subjectivities, and the role of spirituality in revolutionary movements—the paper offers a more nuanced understanding of both Foucault’s intervention and the revolution itself.
Islam has been a key feature in the history of Malaysia, and Muslims have been considered a majority community. The spread of Islam in transforming the population has been narrated as a process of Islamisation. Since the 1970s to recent times, this Islamisation narrative has gained further dominance in influencing the youths and civil society movements, educational institutions, government policies, and also legal and political decisions in the country. However, critics have perceived the Islamisation narrative as to be over-simplifying the complex inter-relations between Islam and the Malay-Muslims population. Thus, this paper aims for a critical examination, by using the Episteme as a key concept. This paper shall demonstrate how Islam is related to three different epistemic phases; under the Malay Sultanates, British Colonial rule, and the nation-state in the history of Malaysia, and its relation to knowledge and power in shaping the Muslim population in Malaysia.
In the 2014 tour de force “God’s Not Dead,” Michel Foucault is the first figure listed by the film’s antagonist—the rancorous philosophy professor—as having already accepted that God is dead. Fourteen other alleged “atheists” are written on the board, but Foucault is emphatically at the top. This paper simply asks, why?
What follows does serve to answer that basic, albeit searching question, but in understanding the scorn and vitriol levied against Foucault will also contextualize the film and make sense of the culture in which it came. Necessarily, this cannot be done with film criticism alone, so key insights from Foucault’s own works will need to be juxtaposed with/against his most audible detractors. This combative pairing uncovers that as much as Foucault symbolizes the worst excesses of postmodernism (ostensibly, that which killed God), his mere and continued existence necessitates that "[God] must be defended."
For this year, I managed to schedule my visa interview early in June 2025, so should be able to get my visa processed on time and attend the AAR meeting. | I was really proud of this proposal for one of the media and culture units from last year, but I don't think anyone else submitted anything for their proposed panel on the 10th anniversary of God's Not Dead. I'm submitting here in case a.) we need submissions, and b.) we want to make my dreams come true. Also, I initially said yes I can present this in the summer again, but I would really rather not as I will be in Africa and the logistics become kind of difficult. But, if it is crucial to move me to the summer session (assuming acceptance), I can make it work.