Foucault

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: In this book, Robert Leib worries that our trust in artificial intelligence could backfire on us. 'Sophie' is a collective consciousness, one 'among many'.

ESSAY: The Golden Age of French philosophy (1945–1989) created something great. An atmosphere, a new way of thinking, a new way of being. A freedom-hungry life experiment. So what then went wrong?

AFRICA: Disruption opens up for the capitalists a new display of power and new income: People, society and nature are reduced to raw material. The author Achille Mbembe's horizon is always the widest possible – the cosmic, earth-historical and planetary. Africa, despite all harrowing problems, is being called forth as a vibrant world center that still has powers in reserve, a teeming wildlife and a wealth of cultures.

WOKE: The crime community is pushing people over to the right, which is growing because people feel alienated by woke and identity politics. Moreover, the left has become more interested in monitoring each other than forming a common front against the right. Is solidarity and compassion for the suffering of others a limited resource?

SUBJECTS: How should art stand out in a time when artistic work has come to resemble modern working life with its constant demands for communication, networking and visibility? Appearance and staging have become more important than content. Can we today actually rediscover our relationship with time, the experience of duration, practice doing less? Not being a means to an end?

Normality: Mark GE Kelly examines how norms affect important parts of life and our understanding of normality – with regard to sexuality, orientation, body image, identity, illness, death, individualism, hedonism, racism and white privilege.

WOMEN: On the occasion of Women's Day on March 8, MODERN TIMES prints here, in reflection on the changing times, an excerpt from Eivind Tjønneland's new book «Abnormal» women – Henrik Ibsen and the decadence. Ibsen's dramas were described in 1893 as written for hysterical women, male masochists and the mentally retarded.

PHILOSOPHY: Perhaps the example is better for innovation than the question. Like Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek likes to bypass more traditional academic sources.

PHILOSOPHY: Shortly after Agora's magnificent publication on populism, the magazine follows up with an even thicker publication. This time it is about Michel Foucault and his groundbreaking series of lectures on neoliberalism.

KNOWLEDGE: Where is it that, according to author Alexander Hooke, "does not fit into a familiar cultural epic pattern, opera, tragedy, romance, ballet, comedy, vaudeville, sitcom, or farce"?

Is it possible that traits from anarchism still have great validity for some of us today?

NECROPOLITICS: To leave millions of people to hunger, epidemics, war and escape.

CONTROL: Today, millions of racialized bodies have become redundant in relation to capital's metabolism and enrolled in a digitally mediated nexus of exclusion, control, and destruction technologies. MODERN TIMES here goes into the theme via author Achille Mbembe in three articles.

Flame Forlag's new book shows that the worst aspects of postmodernism live well.

Foucault's concepts are a brilliant overview for Foucault enthusiasts.

Three touches in the audio-visual waters online.