Michel Foucault, a contemporary
French philosopher born in Poitiers in 1926, is regarded
as a strong continental influence on present day
cultural criticism - and perhaps the strongest influence
on American cultural criticism. His work has been taken
up or has impacted upon a wide range of disciplines -
sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, politics,
linguistics, cultural studies, literary theory, and
education. At the center of his work has been a series
of attempts to analyze particular ideas or models of
humanity which have developed as the result of very
precise historical changes, and the ways in which these
ideas have become normative or universal. In an
interview he explained: My role - and that is too
emphatic a word - is to show people that they are much
freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as
evidence, some themes which have been built up at a
certain movement during history, and that this so-called
evidence can be criticized and destroyed. To change
something in the minds of people - that’s the role of
an intellectual. (Martin et al. 1988:10)
Foucault’s theory of discourse is a central concept in
his analytical framework. Discourses are about what can
be said and thought, but also about who can speak, when
, and with what authority. Discourses embody meaning and
social relationships, they constitute both subjectivity
and power relations. Discourses are ‘practices that
systematically form the objects of which they speak. . .
Discourses are not about objects; they do not identify
objects, they constitute them and in the practice of
doing so conceal their own invention’ (Foucault 1974:
49). Thus the possibilities for meaning and for
definition are preempted through the social and
institutional position held by those who use them.
Meanings thus arise not from language but from
institutional practices, from power relations. According
to Foucault, discourse lies between the level of pure a
temporal linguistic ‘structure’ (langue) and the
level of surface speaking (parole): it expresses the
historical specificity of what is said and what remains
unsaid.
This theme is adopted by radical educational theorists
in the development of Critical Pedagogy, wherein the
development of the student’s subjectivity is analyzed
through the discourses of the school and the power
relations within the structures of education.
What is analyzed is why, at a given time, out of all the
possible things that could be said, only certain things
are said. Critical theory is concerned with how schools,
as generators of an historically specific (modern)
discourse, that is, as sites in which certain modern
validations of, and exclusions from, the ‘right to
speak’ are generated. According to Ball, educational
institutions control the access of individuals to
various kinds of discourse.
Foucault is concerned with the different modes by which,
in our culture, human beings are made subjects. That is
the objectification of the subject by processes of
classification and division.
As a Postmodernist, Foucault attempted to develop a new
theory of society through the study of the development
of the “Subject” - that is, how a person becomes who
and what they are. The key concepts in Foucault’s
exploration of the problem of the Subject are those of
power and knowledge, or more accurately, that of
power-knowledge, which Foucault believes to be a single,
inseparable configuration of ideas and practices that
constitute a discourse. Discourses are constituted by
exclusions as well as inclusions, by what cannot as well
as what can be said. These exclusions and inclusions
stand in antagonistic relationship to other discourses,
other possible meanings, other claims, rights, and
positions. This is Foucault’s principle of
discontinuity: “We must make allowance for the complex
and unstable powers whereby discourse can be both an
instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance,
a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting
point for an opposing strategy” (Foucault 1982: 101)
Power and knowledge are two sides of a single process.
Knowledge does not reflect power relations but is
immanent in them.
In a postmodern world view, there can be no universal
truth or universal reason. (Lyotard, 1984; Lyotard,
1993). Often, questions arising out of postmodernism are
as follows: Whose world view is it we are trying to
understand? How is singular and group cultural identity
constructed? How is knowledge transmitted? How many ways
do people learn? Can there be any form of knowledge? How
many realities are there? In its most conservative
sense, postmodernism only tries to understand multiple
forms of difference, multiple interpretations, multiple
ways of knowing or constructing knowledge. This could be
called the phenomenology or hermeneutics of knowledge.
Postmodernism strives to deconstruct or unravel social,
cultural, and human differences. The locus of power
shifts to the underprivileged, the marginalized, and the
oppressed. Critical postmodernism is about real people
struggling in the everyday world within their
multishaped identities and subjectivities. What the
relations of race, class and gender may be to any
individual will always be different and changing.
As a Postmodernist, Foucault vehemently disagrees with
the “Enlightenment”, its positivistic
scientific-management, and its pronouncement of
absolutes and universals. Foucault believed that a true
critique of society, of reality, of truth, could never
be absolute, but was constantly in flux as changes
occurred through the progress of history. He disagreed
with the Enlightenment’s belief in the ability to
locate any permanent foundation of reality or absolute
truth. To the Modernist of the Enlightenment, the
scientist, human nature was human nature, was universal
and absolute, and who a person became was attributable
to his status as a human being. To Foucault, the
Enlightenment had set up false categories; these
included those of the “normal” and those who were
not normal. This process can be perceived as the
exercise of power over knowledge, of those who are in
power in the society making the decisions as to what
truth is, what normal is, and based on that
“knowledge” and “truth” some people were
accepted as part of the dominant class while others were
not. Foucault argued that our conception of what we are
like as individuals or “subjects” depends
essentially on expelling and controlling whole classes
of people who do not fit the categories of normal as
established by the Enlightenment. He believed that the
same mechanisms used to understand and to control
marginalized and ostracized groups were also essential
to the understanding and the control - indeed, to the
constitution of “normal individuals”. Thus,
the constant surveillance of prisoners that replaced
physical torture as a result of penal reform came to be
applied also to schoolchildren, to factory workers, to
whole populations (and, we might add, to average
citizens, whose police records, medical reports and
credit ratings are even today becoming more available
and more detailed). Who we are, in Foucault’s account,
is a function of certain practices in society. What
counts as a “subject”, is defined by such
information and knowledge, and is the result of the
exercise of power. In this sense power is
“productive” and is the flip side of knowledge:
Power produces knowledge . . .power and knowledge
directly imply one another . . . there is no power
relation without the correlative constitutions of a
field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not
presuppose and constitute at the same time power
relations.
Foucault’s work includes the concept of hegemony
through consent, a wide range of institutions, and the
media and culture. To develop his theories of knowledge
and power, Foucault studied the institutions of society
- the prison, the mental hospital, the school and the
classroom. He believed the prison was the model for the
carceral society. Foucault reveals how this power is
administered within these institutions through the
process of surveillance - to watch, observe, supervise
and discipline. Power, knowledge, institutions,
practices and discourse are all interrelated. Everything
is embedded in power.
In hegemony, the oppressed class literally “gives”
to the oppressors the permission to oppress them. Much
of the hegemony occurs through social practices and
beliefs which neither the oppressors nor the oppressed
are aware of, thus the necessity for the raising of the
consciousness of the people as a prerequisite for true
freedom. Although Foucault sought to develop a new
theory of society, through most of his career he doubted
that this freedom could actually be achieved.
Later in his career, Foucault’s opinion of the
possibility for liberation began to change. According to
Foucault, power maintains the status quo, keeps things
going. Foucault sees power as decentralized - not
wielded by someone “up there”, but internalized; we
suppress and punish ourselves. This internalization is
our domination which can be thrown off after
self-awareness develops and the domination is
identified. We can observe his changing attitude as his
critique begins to focus on the possibilities:
the real political task in a society such as ours is to
criticize the working of institutions which appear to be
both neutral and independent; violence which has always
exercised itself obscurely through them will be
unmasked, so that we can fight fear.
(Foucault 1974: 171)
According to Critical Pedagogy the structure of the
education system perpetuates, recreates, the unequal
social stratification of our society which is based upon
race, class and gender. This is accomplished mainly
through discourses within the schools - what can be
said, what cannot be said, who may speak and who may not
speak, when they may speak, how they may speak, whose
voice are heard and whose voices are silenced. Thus,
discourse is interwoven with power and knowledge to
constitute the oppression of those “others” in our
society, serving to marginalize, silence and oppress
them. They are oppressed not only by being denied access
to certain knowledges, but by the demands of the
dominant group within the society that the “other”
shed their differences (in essence, their being, their
voices, their cultures) to become “one of us”. This
is evidenced in the demands for students in our schools
to speak English only, in the demand that the heritage
and culture of the great Western tradition be taught as
the “right” tradition and culture, by asking
children who come to school who are not white or
middle-class to drop their experiences and cultures at
the door and become acculturated into the mainstream of
dominant society. Critical Pedagogy, then, not only
strives to make judgments concerning the status of what
things are, but seeks ways to create change for the
better, striving to create what could be, conditions
which are more fair and just to all.
Control of knowledge is a form of oppression - only
certain groups have access to certain knowledge. Those
in positions of power are responsible for the
assumptions that underlie the selection and organization
of knowledge in society. The task for the educator is to
discover the patterns and distributions of power that
influence the way in which a society selects,
classifies, transmits, and evaluates the knowledge it
considers to be public. Critical Pedagogists ask such
questions as - What constitutes really useful knowledge?
Whose knowledge will be taught? Which knowledge will not
be taught? Whose interests does it serve? What kinds of
social relations does it structure and at what price?
How does school knowledge enable those who have been
generally excluded from schools to speak and act with
dignity? More than that, though, Michael Apple argues
that the study of educational knowledge is a study in
ideology, the investigation of what is considered
legitimate knowledge by specific social groups and
classes, in specific institutions, at specific
historical moments.
Surveillance is another important concept in
Foucault’s theory which contributes to the use of
power in schools. Foucault conducted intense studies of
the structures of schools; he studied how the building
is constructed and arranged, the routines which were
taken for granted, the testing and discipline of
students. We can see in all of these that the school
environment is one of total control and surveillance.
Both teachers and students are under constant
surveillance. Students are watched at all times by the
teachers, not only in the classrooms but in the halls
and other areas of school property; their every movement
and their speech is controlled - being told when they
have permission to speak and when to remain silent,
having to raise their hand for permission to move from
their seat in many classrooms. Teachers are watched by
the administration and the state: having to turn in
lesson plans to be checked by the principal each week,
having intercoms in their rooms which principals could
use to “listen in” at any time, edicts from the
legislature on what curriculum to teach, how to teach it
and when, pop-in walk-through inspections by the
principal, teacher evaluation instruments, students’
scores on standardized tests, as well as the grades on
students’ report cards are all examples of ways in
which teachers experience the constant surveillance;
teachers who believe that they are autonomous because
they walk into their classroom and shut the door are
fooling themselves by believing that they are not being
watched and controlled at all times.
As Critical Pedagogists study the discourses through
which power, knowledge, surveillance and control in
schools are created and carried out, perhaps we can
begin to unravel, or deconstruct, those power structures
which serve to maintain the unhappy conditions in
schools, and we can begin to create a society and an
educational system which is more just, fair and
democratic.
Stephen Ball offers the hope that the application of
Foucauldian analysis to education will unmask the
politics that underlie some of the apparent neutrality
of educational reform, and reminds us of Foucault’s
statement: “I’m proud that some people think
that I’m a danger for the intellectual health of
students” (Martin et al. 1988: 13)
Please join the
Critical Pedagogy Forum:
Critical Pedagogy
Philosophical Foundations
Critical Media
Literacies
Contributors:
Douglas Kellner UCLA
Peter McLaren UCLA
Henry Giroux Penn
State
Carlos Torres UCLA
Kris Guiterrez UCLA
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Michel
Foucault