The ubiquity of the interview as a naturalized form across multiple domains of everyday life – journalism and media, politics, education, etc. – stages an opportunity for critical intervention and invention. Magnolia Pauker's Colloquium presentation takes its cue from Democracy Now! to pursue the question(s) of our present through an explicit commitment to social justice. She traces genealogies of philosophical journalism in which the intellectual interview, and its resistant form – which she terms the philosophical interview – are central elements and actors. Taking as its focus Michel Foucault’s substantial body of interview work, this talk reads his engagement of "the philosophical interview" as distinct and integral to his larger oeuvre. A self-identified “philosopher-journalist,” Foucault describes his method as “a kind of radical journalism” and his work overall as a mode of “philosophical journalism.” Avowedly embedded in the contemporary moment, philosophical journalism engages critically with “the question of the present,” a practice that Foucault not only aligns with but calls on others to engage, declaring that “philosophers must become journalists.” This is the work of philosophical journalism.
