In various posts here on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, I have pointed out that prospective disabled graduate students who want to study philosophy of disability/critical disability theory should not expect to do so in any informed and comprehensive way in a Canadian philosophy department. Liberal bioethics has occupied the corner of what can be said about disability in philosophy departments here in Canada. Furthermore, disabled philosophers remain by and large excluded from philosophy in Canada.

But what about Foucault?

Yesterday morning I asked Daniele Lorenizini if I am the only Canadian philosopher/philosopher in Canada in The Foucauldian Mind–the incredible companion to Foucault that he has edited. His answer? “I think so.”

Perhaps you noticed that lacuna yourselves. Why does there seem to be no other Canadian philosopher in a volume on Foucault of more than forty chapters, most of which were written by philosophers?

You probably know the answer to this (rhetorical) question: because there are actually no specialists on Foucault in a philosophy department here in Canada either. In other words, don’t expect to do graduate work on Foucault in a Canadian philosophy department.

As I have underscored on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY many times, Canadian philosophy departments are homogeneous to the core–with respect to both demographics and approach. Not even a philosopher as important and influential to contemporary political thought as Foucault can burst through the monopoly (one could say, stranglehold) that liberalism and liberal thought have on the minds of philosophers employed in Canadian philosophy departments.

Yet the special issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly that I have guest edited (forthcoming in September) will go some distance to provide philosophy students in Canada (and elsewhere) with state-of-the-art, cutting-edge research materials, ideas, and insights on, about, and from Foucault that they do not get from their professors.

To remind you about what you can anticipate, I have copied below some information about the content of the issue.

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The issue will open with my editor’s introduction to the issue, which is entitled “Finally, Foucault: Re-framing Foucault from the Margins.”

My introduction will preface articles written by a stellar group of authors:

Mich Ciurria, “Old Discipline, New Medium: LLMs and the Neoliberal University”

Ying, “The Self-Formation of Sex Workers: A Foucauldian Reading of Xiaojie in Post-Socialist China”

Shelley Lynn Tremain, “Notes For a Feminist Abolitionist Genealogy of Bioethics”

Christina Lee, “Crip Zen”

Stephanie Jenkins, “On Becoming Incorrigible”

Perry Zurn, “A Foucauldian Account of Cisness”

These contributions to the issue will be followed by a wide-ranging interview with Ladelle McWhorter (author of Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization; Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy; and Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demise of the Modern Moral Self) that Kristin Rodier and Emily R. Douglas conducted. This unforgettable addition to the archive is entitled “‘We’ve Been Taught to be Dishonest About Ourselves’: Cripping Genealogy in Conversation with Ladelle McWhorter.”