Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to examine the way the education system operates to constitute the subject.The thesis forges an understanding of this mechanism by utilising Foucauldian theoretical tools to facilitate an examination of how in different historical periods the subject has been constituted in different ways for different ends.This thesis is then a history of the relationship between governmental ontology and education.It is not a philosophy of education which seeks to create abstract aims; nor is it a history of education detached from the subject.Rather the thesis seeks to develop a historicised account of how the subject has been, and still is being, constituted by and through education.Set within a genealogical methodological framework and utilising Foucauldian concepts such as relations, division and technologies of power, the thesis analyses the relationship between education and the constitution of the subject in a number of historical periods.This historical analysis forms the basis for 'a history of the present': a history which reveals the historical origins of some of the unquestioned assumptions on which our own modern understanding of education has been erected and , by so doing, destabilises them, makes them more transparent and open to critical questioning.To this end, the thesis takes as its point of departure the end of the sixth century AD, when the constitution of the Christian subject dominated the shape of early English education.Persisting through until the Enlightenment, an understanding is developed of the way in which the arrival of modernity destabilised this position by challenging established knowledge and traditional forms of authority, giving rise to disagreement, argument and contestation about what, in a modern and 'enlightened' society, the aims of education should be.The thesis explores how the Enlightenment promoted the expansion of the idea of education as a primary means for emancipating the subject from the past.But what it also reveals is how, whilst enlightenment ideals flourished, it was only the Church which had the infrastructure to develop mass schooling, something it used to reinforce the dogma of the past.The thesis then describes how, when state education eventually emerged during the nineteenth century it was both as a reaction to the threat of revolution, and a project to release the educational subject from the Church.To achieve this, state education cast the subject in new forms: the orderly and responsible citizen.The thesis then explores how the contemporary rhetoric of aspiration in education seeks to produce the responsible citizen by now obliging subjects to "produce the ends of government by fulfilling themselves rather than being merely obedient" (Rose, O'Malley, & Valverde, 2006, p. 89).The thesis draws on Foucauldian scepticism of progress throughout, arguing that not only is the modern concept of 'progress' inherently suspect, but also that fundamental changes to the constitution of the subject produced and enacted through education have more often been the result of political decay than the product of planned and progressive 'reforms'.In its final conclusion the thesis argues for greater recognition of the role education plays in constituting the subject, advocating further work to moderate, overthrow and transcend its effects.Or in other words: What are we? as Aufkliirer, as part of the Enlightenment?Compare this with the Cartesian question: Who am I? I, as a unique but universal and unhistorical subject?I, for Descartes is every-one, anywhere at any moment?But Kant asks something else: What are we? in a very precise moment of history.Kant's question appears as an analysis of both us and our present.(Foucault M. , 1982, p. 785) Foucault identifies this moment, the Enlightenment, as the moment when we can ask ourselves "What are we today?"."What are we in our actuality" (Foucault M. , 1988, p. 145).It is this moment that sets up and facilitates his work throughout his career.It is this moment which enables him to take on the historical analyses which characterize his work and through this approach to examine how the subject is constituted.It is therefore this moment which causes me to situate Foucault firmly and squarely at the centre of my thesis' methodology.Foucault describes the importance of this moment to his work: I would like to say, first of all what has been the goal of my work during the last twenty years.It has not been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis.My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects … subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge.(Foucault M. , 1982) (Foucault M. , 1988, p. 145) Prior to this moment, with Descartes, Foucault's analysis of the subject would have been ahistorical and would have led to a structural theorisation of the subject.However through Kant, Foucault is now able to take on a project which aims to show the differences in the ways in which human beings are made subject, and to demonstrate the contingent nature of the changes that occur.Foucault's project, is then, dependent on the ushering in of modernism that came with the Enlightenment.According to Foucault, knowledge prior to this was based upon similitudes and resemblance.He identifies Don Quixote by Cervantes (1605) as marking the beginning of the end of this period by showing countless times the falsehood of similitudes and resemblances as a basis for knowledge.In its place measurement and order were marshalled by thinkers
Author: Peter Harrison
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1557105381