Abstract
This chapter takes up the possibility of ‘lines of fragility’ explored in Chap. 2, in relation to education, through Foucault’s later work on subjectivity and ‘the care of the self’. It both considers subjectivity as a significant site of political struggle and education and explores some of the techniques of care that Foucault draws upon—from Greco-Roman and early Christian sources—as a pedagogy of the self. Drawing on the work of Infinito and others the outlines of a Foucauldian education are sketched. This means recognising students as ethical beings capable of reflection, decision-making and responsibility for their identity and their social relations.
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Notes
- 1.
Which of course have their place in a rounded education.
- 2.
Kant himself was opposed to the total state control of schools (and called for a regime allowing for experimentation in schooling) because it is liable to impede the educational task of enlightenment: he said ‘we are met by two difficulties—parents usually only care that their children make their way in the world, and Sovereigns look upon their subjects merely as tools for their own purposes. Parents care for the home, rulers for the state. Neither has as their aim, the universal good and the perfection to which man is destined, and for which he has also a natural disposition. But the basis of a scheme of education must be cosmopolitan’ (Kant 2012, p. 15—On Education, Dover Publications, Mineola, New York).
- 3.
Of course this begs many questions about the content of fearless speech and its relation to personal or social harmfulness and the freedom of others.
- 4.
That is, the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.
- 5.
This term of used to in the modern sense of style but the Greek meaning, as a matter of artisanship, work done to produce and refine an object using specific skills.
- 6.
Foucault suggests two forms of ‘subjugated knowledges’. One is that of erudite knowledges that have been displaced from or written out of history. The other is local, popular knowledges that are denied a hearing in the spaces of government. The knowledges to which Walter and Nigel refer have elements of both. They both draw from and find inspiration, ways of articulating a different sense of teaching and learning from educational theories that are neglected or excluded from contemporary policy discourses, but blend or intersect these with classroom experience and practice that speak against policy, that gesture to different kinds of classroom relations and different kinds of relations to curricula knowledge.
- 7.
The use of the term pedagogy will be a problem from now on, given Foucault’s distinction between pedagogy and psychagogy referred to earlier but I will stick with it.
- 8.
Infinito goes on to say: ‘How these technologies are applied and what they might look like specifically in daily life or in the classroom are important questions that call for further theoretical analysis and practical application, which is beyond the scope of this project’ (2003, p. 165).
- 9.
‘This is the possibility of “seeing and being seen”, of hearing and being heard. This means that the world as a “stage of appearance” consists of a plurality of viewpoints that, in becoming a “public space” (for the living person) also becomes a place for displaying and revealing the “who” (the actor) who makes himself visible individually with acts and words in real stories, and a theatre of public resonance for the events by means of the “who” (the spectator) who witnesses and judges from all sorts of different perspectives’ (Arendt 1958, 50–51, 170–172; Tavani 2013, p. 467).
- 10.
Arendt’s political philosophy has other affinities (and differences) with Foucault - in particular her notion of natality, the human capacity of “beginning”. This capacity of making new beginnings in the world is for her the fundamental human capacity to be free. Also plurality her other key concept, is relevant here. That is, the fact that one is born into a world populated by other people who are different from oneself and who one has to come to terms with. It is the condition in which humans are forced to reveal and communicate their uniqueness in order to facilitate living with each other. Plurality is located within public spaces—and it is only within their borders that action and speech are possible.
- 11.
Here drawing on the Greeks and Romans the curriculum would extend to include physical exercise, music, sexual habits, matters of diet as means of self-care.
- 12.
Which denotes the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing that make it a particular thing.
- 13.
(“Des Espace Autres”, published by the French journal Architecture/Mouvement/ Continuité in October, 1984: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf).
- 14.
And they go on to assert that in their own attempts to bring such an approach to bear that they ‘have learned the value of caring for the self both for practicing CP and for living a socially and politically engaged life’ (p. 458).
- 15.
Pignatelli (2002, p. 174) says that ‘The role of the leader in such schools must necessarily transcend managerial competence. The leader sets herself the task of establishing and sustaining the school as a learning community whose members systematically attend to the school’s well being’.
- 16.
In a similar but contrary vein, in a recent essay in The Boston Review, Dzur says that democracy is usually thought a political movement and participatory democracy points to public involvement in protests, plebiscites, and public action aimed at governmental change. But democracy may also be thought of as a way of life focused on individualism and respect for the power and judgment of each person. Dzur wonders whether the space of democracy is shifting from governmental to professional institutions? And there is a new kind of democratic professionalism (http://bostonreview.net/author/albert-w-dzur).
- 17.
This rests on what are sometimes tortuous and fine distinctions. How does the student recognize the master? How does he extricate himself from the relationship? I have not the space to explore these issues here but they need careful consideration at some point in relation to a Foucauldian education.
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Ball, S.J. (2017). Education as the Pedagogy of the Self. In: Foucault as Educator. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50302-8_3
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