Faux Connaître: Getting It and Not Getting It

Abstract

Borders not only limit contact and exchange but they often connect and create ways of communication and interaction. To establish and maintain both limits and contact, power must come into play. Thus borders act as a “technology of power,” to use Foucault’s terminology. While the Foucauldian decentralization of power from institutionalized centres does not directly comment on ethics of power, it helps us to understand better the complexity of ethical relationships that emerge from the workings of power through a myriad of borders. This panel will consider Foucauldian perspectives on how power might operate within a proposal of education with/out borders, especially as it might pertain to our Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Panellists will be asked to discuss the following questions: 1) Might Foucault’s works ever suggest a possibility of living without borders and limits? What is the implication of this question for an educational institution like ours? 2) What could a notion of ‘without’ imply in terms of a utopian dream and an epistemological negation that posits and positions power relations?