Von 4. bis 5. November 2016 setzte sich die Tagung "Foucault Revisited" am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Wien mit der Frage auseinander, was das Denken Foucaults mit Blick auf gegenwärtige politische wie politik-theoretische Fragestellungen bereithält, wie es aktualisiert und für die Politische Theorie fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Angesichts eines Vormarschs rechtspopulistischer Parteien und Bewegungen wurde das Foucault'sche Werk daraufhin befragt, welche kritischen Ressource und Impulse es heute sowohl für die Analyse und Beschreibung gegenwärtiger Entwicklungen als auch für emanzipatorische politische Projekte zu liefern vermag.

The text addresses the problem that subaltern political resistance is not a central issue in Foucault's writings of the 1970s. However, the recently in German published book Ein politisches Leben (Merve 2015), an interview with Foucault's life partner Daniel Defert, shows that in their political activities and reflections upon the political role of intellectuals, the aim of bringing subalterns' voices into the public was of the highest importance. This raises the question how the voices of the subalterns could also be part of theoretical studies along Foucauldian lines.

In the coming age of urban sentience and smart things, we imagine information coursing through our cities and devices. Yet our buildings and infrastructures and mediated objects have always embodied forms of "smartness." In this lecture and public talk with Simon Ganahl, Shannon Mattern explores how design can function as epistemological inquiry. Thinking across different scales, she considers how our designed things, systems, and services can embody what we know and value.

Die Geschichte der Diskurstheorie ist längst selbst eine methodologisch reflektierte Begriffsgeschichte geworden – eine Reflexion über den Begriff des "Diskurses" und dessen Reichweite. Fokussiert man allerdings auf nur einzelne Epigonen zumal der historischen Diskursanalyse – und dazu gehörte in Frankreich der junge Foucault, parallel zu ihm der junge Reinhart Koselleck in Deutschland und in England der junge Quentin Skinner –, dann entgeht gewöhnlich, dass die "erkenntnistheoretische Verschiebung, in deren Fahrwasser die Diskurstheorie [nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Westeuropa – SH] auftaucht, […] selbst Teil der Ideengeschichte" ist.

In one of his most frequently cited arguments, Foucault described a shift that took place during the 19th century, as sexual activity between men that had previously been understood to involve merely "sodomites," individuals too weak to resist indulging in a sinful act, now appeared to reveal homosexuals, men of a different species. I propose to resituate this claim, which became widely debated after the 1976 publication of La volonté du savoir, in wide-ranging 1970s debates about sodomy, most particularly about its usual contemporary referent, anal sex.

The theme of the political party in Michel Foucault's analyses has failed to elicit the kind of elaborate attention that has been bestowed on his analyses of other core political concepts. This lack of attention no doubt reflects Foucault's lack of an elaborate analysis of the party. He never theorized the party at much length, and his discussions of it tended to occupy a place on the margins of his analyses. But the party figured as a recurrent theme in his Collège de France courses from the late 1970s to early 1980s, even as these courses addressed remarkably diverse topics across a vast expanse of time and space. What is more, Foucault announced his intention to conduct research on the party and encouraged his auditors to do likewise. Toward the end of his life, Foucault even began to read the writings of prominent French Socialist Party (PS) leaders for the purpose of producing a whole book on the PS.

During a 1975 visit to the United States, Michel Foucault was persuaded to take a road trip to a remote desert region on the eastern border of California. When Foucault's party reached Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, his host, an assistant professor at Claremont Graduate School, produced several tablets of LSD and proposed another trip – a psychedelic one. Foucault accepted this proposal, and later called this night "the greatest experience of his life." This presentation discusses the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll of Foucault's desert "trip," and examines the implications of his Death Valley epiphany.