Abstract
Viewing science education as a site of biopolitical engagement—intervention into forces that seek to define, control, and exploit life (biopower)—requires that science educators ask after how individuals and populations are governed by technologies of power. In this paper, I argue that microanalyses, the analysis of everyday practices and discourses, are integral to biopolitical engagement, are needed to examine practices that constitute subjectivities and maintain oppressive social conditions. As an example of a microanalysis I will discuss how repetitive close-ended lab/assessment tasks, as well as discourses surrounding careers in science, can work to constitute students as depoliticized, self-investing subjects of human capital. I also explore the relationship between science education, (bio)labor and its relation to biopolitics, which remains an underdeveloped area of science education. This paper, part of my doctoral work, began to take shape in 2011, shortly after the 2008 economic crisis achieved a tiny breached in the thick neoliberal stupor of everyday (educational) life.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus?: And other essays. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Althusser, L. (1998). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In J. Rivkin & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory, an anthology (pp. 294–304). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bazzul, J. (2012). Neoliberal ideology, global capitalism, and science education: Engaging the question of subjectivity. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7(4), 1001–1020. doi:10.1007/s11422-012-9413-3.
Bazzul, J. (2014a). Tracing “ethical subjectivities” in science education: How biology textbooks can frame ethico-political choices for students. Research in Science Education, 45(1), 23–40. doi:10.1007/s11165-014-9411-4.
Bazzul, J. (2014b). Science education as a site for biopolitical engagement and the reworking of subjectivities: Theoretical considerations and possibilities for research. In L. Bencze & S. Alsop (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (pp. 37–53). Dordrecht, NL: Springer.
Bazzul, J. (2014c). Critical discourse analysis and science education texts: Employing Foucauldian notions of discourse and subjectivity. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 36(5), 422–437.
Bencze, J. L., & Carter, L. (2011). Globalizing students acting for the common good. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48, 648–669. doi:10.1002/tea.20419.
Blake, L. (2011). McGraw-Hill Ryerson biology 12. Toronto, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). On television. New York, NY: New Press.
Bousquet, T. (2014, November 17). Floating in a most peculiar way: Morning file, Monday, November 17, 2014: Retrieved from http://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/floating-in-a-most-peculiar-way-morning-file-monday-november-17-2014/.
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Brown, W. (2005). Edgework. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34, 690–714. doi:10.1177/0090591706293016.
Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Standford, CA: Standford University Press.
Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Žižek, S. (2000). Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left. London: Verso.
Dean, J. (2010). Drive as the structure of biopolitics. Krisis, 2, 1–15. Available at SSRN 1460759. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1460759.
Deleuze, G. (1992). Post script to societies of control. October, 59, 3-7.
DiGiuseppe, M. (2003). Nelson biology 12. Toronto, ON: Nelson Thomson Learning.
DiGiuseppe, M. (2004). Nelson biology 11: College preparation. Toronto, ON: Nelson.
Dimick, A. S. (2012). Student empowerment in an environmental science classroom: Toward a framework for social justice science education. Science Education, 96(6), 990–1012. doi:10.1002/sce.21035.
Dunlop, J. (2010). McGraw-Hill Ryerson biology 11. Toronto, ON.: McGraw-Hill, Ryerson.
Eagleton, T., & Bourdieu, P. (1992). Doxa and common life. New Left Review, 191, 111–121.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge (1st American ed.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Pantheon books.
Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality: An introduction (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. doi:10.1086/448181.
Foucault, M. (1997). Sex, power and the politics of identity. In R. Hurley (trans) & P. Rabinow (Eds.) Ethics: Subjectivity and truth (pp. 163–173). New York, NY: the New York Press.
Foucault, M., & Gordon, C. (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M., & Senellart, M. (2010). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. New York, NY: Picador.
Fraser, N. (2003). From discipline to flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the shadow of globalization. Constellations, 10(2), 160–171.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London, UK: Sage Publishing.
Hadfield Talks to Students [Video file]. (2013, January 17). Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/player/Embedded-Only/News/ID/2326524845/.
Hardt, M. (2010). The militancy of theory. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 110(1), 19–35. doi:10.1215/00382876-2010-020.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Ibbitson, J. (2013, November 27). Tories’ new foreign-affairs vision shifts focus to ‘economic diplomacy’. The globe and mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-new-foreign-affairs-vision-shifts-focus-to-economic-diplomacy/article15624653/.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kafka, F. (1957). The trial (Definitive ed.). New York, NY: Knopf.
Lather, P. (2012). The ruins of neoliberalism and the construction of a new (scientific) subjectivity. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 1021–1025. doi:10.1007/s11422-012-9465-4.
Lazzarato, M. (2002). From biopower to biopolitics. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 13, 112–25. Retrieved from http://cms.gold.ac.uk/media/lazzarato_biopolitics.pdf.
Lemke, T. (2011). Biopolitics: An advanced introduction. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Lewis, T. (2007). Biopolitical utopianism in educational theory. Educational Philosophy and Theory. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00316.x.
Means, A. (2013). Creativity and the biopolitical commons in secondary and higher education. Policy Futures in Education, 11(1), 47–58. doi:10.2304/pfie.2013.11.1.47.
Means, A. J. (2014). Educational commons and the new radical democratic imaginary. Critical Studies in Education, 55(2), 122–137. doi:10.1080/17508487.2014.903502.
Pierce, C. (2015). Against neoliberal pedagogies of plants and people: Mapping actor networks of biocapital in learning gardens. Environmental Education Research, 21(3), 460–477. doi:10.1080/13504622.2014.994168.
Rabinow, P., & Rose, N. (2006). Biopower today. Biosocieties, 1, 195–217. doi:10.1017/S1745855206040014.
Rikowski, G. (1999). Nietzsche, Marx and mastery: The learning unto death. In P. Ainley & H. Rainbird (Eds.), Apprenticeship: Towards a new paradigm of learning. London: Kogan Page.
Rikowski, G. (2011). Capitorg: Education and the constitution of the human in contemporary society. In A paper prepared for the Praxis & pedagogy research seminar, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM), Dublin, Ireland, 25th May 2011, available online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’ http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Capitorg.
Rose, N. S. (2009). Politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sharma, A., & Muzaffar, I. (2012). The (non) making/becoming of inquiry practicing science teachers. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7(1), 175–191. doi:10.1007/s11422-011-9372-0.
Simons, M. (2006). Learning as investment: Notes on governmentality and biopolitics. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(4), 523–540. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2006.00209.x.
Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ziman, J. (2002). Real science: What it is and what it means. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Žižek, S. (1994). Mapping ideology. London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2009). First as tragedy, then as farce. London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2011). Living in the end times. London: Verso.
Esposito, R. (2008). Bios: Biopolitics and philosophy (Vol. 4). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Pierce, C. (2013). Education in the age of biocapitalism: Optimizing educational life for a flat world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harding, S. (2008). Sciences from below: Feminisms, postcolonialities, and modernities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Marginson, S. (1997). Markets in education. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Jameson, F. (1994). The seeds of time. New York: Columbia University Press.
Marx, K. (1858) [1973]. Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, K. (1844) [1977]. Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Guest editors: L. Carter, M. Weinstein, L. Bencze.
This manuscript is part of the special issue “Biopolitics and Science Education”.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bazzul, J. Biopolitics and the ‘subject’ of labor in science education. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 12, 873–887 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-017-9840-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-017-9840-2