BY SARAH KNOWLTON '26

In April 2024, Rice held a conference honoring the 40th anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault. But according to Niki Kasumi Clements, the architect of the conference, the philosopher still makes an impact from beyond the grave.

“This dude is still one of, if not the most cited person in any field,” said Clements, the Watt and Lilly Jackson Associate Professor of Religion. “He has an outsized cultural impact in terms of how his work has been used to mobilize for LGBTQ rights. In the words of David Halperin, we have St. Foucault — basically the patron saint of gayness.”

Under Clements’ stewardship, Rice has become a hotspot for research on Foucault across a variety of disciplines, despite its distance from his native France.

“It is funny that Rice has become a hub for Foucault studies, in part because it’s not in France, but also because there aren’t a lot of hubs in France either,” Clements said. “Foucault is really excluded from departments of philosophy in France, and it was in the United States that Foucault became really popular and prominent.”

Clements cited cultural opposition as a reason for the dearth of Foucault study in his home country. His analyses of power and subjectivity in society, as well as his identity as a gay man, made him a controversial figure.

“In the U.S., the emergence of different kinds of area studies were shaped through Foucauldian analysis of power, and that’s part of what allowed me to bring people together at Rice, because we do have the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality here,” Clements said. “We’re dealing with a much more complex and progressive way of thinking about sexual politics, queer politics and identity.”

Rice is not just in Houston. Rice is globally relevant when it comes to Foucault, which is amazing.

—Niki Kasumi Clements

Clements began work on Rice’s first Foucault conference with James “Jim” Faubion, the Radoslav A. Tsanoff Professor Emeritus.

“Originally, Jim and I were trying to do this conference with 10 people of different disciplines on Foucault’s book ‘Confessions of the Flesh,’ because it was the secret volume on early Christianity that wasn’t published when he died,” Clements said. “It was released in 2018 and then published in 2021 in English translation, so the occasion then was that book.”

The first conference was scheduled for April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it was held virtually — which actually boosted Rice’s prominence in Foucauldian studies.

“That virtual platform increased the international scope of who we are able to invite, and people are now watching these videos all over the world, citing them,” Clements said.

The most recent conference was held in honor of Foucault’s death in 1984. It not only commemorated the philosopher’s work, it also examined ways in which his ideas relate to the present moment.

“How do we think about Foucault’s influence 40 years out?” Clements said. “How do we use his tools while also critiquing his own epistemic limitations as a white, bourgeois man coming of age in France— which was a notable colonizer country? He’s not talking about race in a robust way, so how do we engage his work while also moving beyond where he was 40 years ago?”

The event featured a variety of perspectives on Foucault’s work from around the world, hosting speakers from the U.S., France, Brazil and England. Clements said she often works with international scholars on conferences.

“I have colleagues who write to me from all over the world, and they invite me to go give talks,” said Clements, who’s recently been doing so in Morelia, Mexico, at the University of California, Berkeley, and in Paris. She also trains fellow researchers in using Foucault’s archives, housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, which is one of Clements’ areas of expertise.

“I’ve become, bizarrely, a world specialist in his archives — this strange little American who’s just obsessively transcribing,” Clements said. “I have over 5,000 pages of transcriptions of his books over the last 10 years [of his life] that never got published, but that he was working through.”

“There are six different collections in the Foucault archives, and the biggest one has 105 boxes. Inventory is not. organized chronologically or conceptually, and it’s full of inaccuracies,” Clements continued. “It’s only by literally going in and doing this research, transcribing at a rapid pace whenever I could over the last five years, that I was able to not only figure out what he was up to for his last decade, but also find books that he said he destroyed.”

Clements is devoted to sharing her archival knowledge and transcriptions with other Foucault scholars worldwide.

“I don’t feel protective about it,” Clements said. “I want more people to be doing it, and especially when they’re bringing this back to their countries. Imagine how this is reshaping research all around the world — how this is happening in so many different academic conversations that wouldn’t have necessarily intersected.”

With this international reach, Clements said she hopes to further expand Rice’s work as a center of Foucault research, particularly through the Rice Global Paris Center. She’s currently in talks with Vice President for Global Caroline Levander about creating a Foucault event in France.

“I want to bring graduate students from all over the world to train them in the archives, bring these other specialists into the Rice Paris Center to give seminars and training, and use that as a proof of concept for how Rice is not just in Houston— Rice really is global in this way,” Clements said. “Rice is globally relevant when it comes to Foucault, which is amazing.”
Clements attributes Rice’s global relevance to the assistance of her graduate students in the Department of Religion. These students are crucial in helping create conferences to maintain and grow Rice’s connections to Foucault scholars.

“They’re the ones who took up my call when I asked for volunteers,” Clements said. “It was graduate students who, over the last month before the conference and especially on-site for those days, were doing all the work so I could be intellectually present — guiding and hosting and also running around. But they made sure to save me a sandwich and tell me to eat.”

Rice’s global presence is also impactful for these students, Clements said.

“They’re deeply brilliant intellectual creators and contributors,” she said. “It was amazing for them to know that this is a world stage they can feel proud to be a part of.”