Applying Foucault?
Putting theory to work in an
educational research project
Phil Cormack
Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures
University of South Australia
Framing the research problem
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The problem and research questions
Applying Foucault? Why, where, how?
Discourse
Subjectivity
Governmentality
Selecting, managing and analysing the
data
2
The problem and research
questions
The work of both teachers and students in the middle
and later years of schooling is made significantly more
difficult when students have not picked up literacy and
numeracy skills in their early years of schooling. A
student who is struggling to read along with the class,
or unable to spell, quickly loses concentration and self
esteem. It is frequently the students with literacy
problems who 'play the fool', which not only further
impedes their own learning, but disrupts the rest of the
class as well. A downward spiral of behavioural
problems leading to the early abandonment of formal
schooling is the result. (Kemp, 1996, emphasis added).
3
Figure 1.2: Middle school advertisement (1999, Oct 16 The Advertiser,
p.19)
4
The problematisation
Problematization is not the representation
of a preexisting object, or the creation
through discourse of an object that does
not exist. It is the totality of discursive
and non-discursive practices that brings
something into the play of truth and
falsehood, and sets it up as an object for
the mind. (Foucault, quoted in Castel,
1994, pp.237-238)
5
Problematisation
This development of a given into a
question, this transformation of a group
of obstacles and difficulties into problems
to which diverse solutions will attempt to
produce a response, this is what
constitutes the point of a
problematization and the specific work of
thought. (Foucault, 2000, p.118)
6
My problem
My study began with a problem in the
present—the tying together of
adolescence, schooling and English/
literacy as a source of anxiety and as a
site for programs of rescue—and
examined the way that this problem was
assembled historically
7
Discourse
The concept of discourse, in the Foucaultian
sense, refers to the ‘controlling, positioning, and
productive capacities of signifying practices’
(Threadgold, 1997, p.58). In this sense, a
discourse is a ‘group of statements which
provide a language for talking about—a way of
representing the knowledge about—a particular
topic at a particular historical moment’ (Hall,
2001, p.72).
8
The order of discourse
Discursive practices are characterized by a
‘delimitation of a field of objects’, the definition
of a legitimate perspective for the agent of
knowledge, and the fixing of norms of the
elaboration of concepts and theories. Their
effect is to make it virtually impossible to think
outside them. To think outside them is, by
definition, to be mad, to be beyond
comprehension and therefore reason.
Young, R. (1981). Introduction to 'The order of discourse' by Michel
Foucault. In R. Young (Ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist
Reader (pp. 48-51). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
9
The order of discourse
It in this way that we can see how discursive
rules are linked to the exercise of power; how
the forms of discourse are both constituted by,
and ensure reproduction of the social system,
through forms of selection, exclusion and
domination. ‘In every society’, Foucault writes,
‘the production of discourse is controlled,
organised, redistributed, by a certain number of
procedures whose role is to ward off its powers
and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance
events, to evade its materiality.
Young, R. (1981). Introduction to 'The order of discourse' by Michel
Foucault. In R. Young (Ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist
Reader (pp. 48-51). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
10
Discursive practices
Discourses are not just systems of representation, but
the basis of actions—discursive practices—that shape
the world and what is possible to do within it:
Discursive practices are characterized by the
delimitation of a field of objects, the definition of a
legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and
the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and
theories. Thus each discursive practice implies a play of
prescriptions that designate exclusions and choices.
(Foucault, 1977, p.199)
11
How did discourse help me
think about my problem?



challenging previous theories about the
‘discovery’ of adolescence (biological)
challenging previous theories about the
‘invention’ of adolescence (criticalreconceptualist)
challenging meta-narratives of
‘progress’, ‘redemption’ or ‘apocalypse’
12
Explaining change
…first, bracketing all the old forms of strained
continuity which ordinarily serve to attenuate
the raw fact of change (tradition, influence,
habits of thought, broad mental forms,
constraints of the human mind), and insistently
making plain instead all the intensity of
difference, establishing a painstaking record of
deviation; second, bracketing all psychological
explanations of change (the genius of great
inventors, crises of conscience, the appearance
of a new cast of mind), and turning instead to
define as carefully as possible the
transformation which, I do not say provoked,
but constituted change. (Foucault, 1991b, p.56)
13
Activating the theory of
discourse
One way of analysing a discourse is to consider
it as a process of ‘formation of objects’.
Foucault says this involves:
1.
mapping the surfaces of emergence of the
object
2.
describing the authorities of delimitation
defining show can speak about the object
3.
analysing the grids of specification used to
classify, group and hierarchise the object
(Foucault 1972)
14
Subjectivity
The human being is not the eternal basis
of human history and human culture but
a historical and cultural artifact. (Rose,
1998, p.22)
15
How human beings are made
‘subjects’ (Foucault 1986, p.208)
1.
2.
3.
through being made into objects by
disciplines
through being objectivised by ‘dividing
practices’
through turning himself or herself into
a subject
16
Discourses speak us
[I]ndividuals come to speak as particular
kinds of subjects—to speak themselves
into being—through speaking the
discourses that enable the particular
institution. (Lee & Poynton, 2000, p.5)
17
Foucault 1977
18
Activating the theory of
subjectivity
1.
2.
3.
What labels, metaphors and titles were given to the
older child as a subject in the discourses of
schooling and the English curriculum?
What dividing practices and grids of specification
were used to group, differentiate or otherwise
identify the older child as a subject in the
discourses of schooling and the English curriculum?
What invitations and practices were made available
to the older child for making themselves subject to
the discourses of schooling and the English
curriculum?
19
Governmentality
The ensemble formed by institutions,
procedures, analyses and reflections, the
calculations and tactics that allow the
exercise of this very specific albeit
complex form of power, which has as its
target population, as its principal form of
knowledge political economy, and as its
essential technical means apparatuses of
security. (Foucault, 1991a, p.102)
20
Population
[F]rom the eighteenth century, new intellectual
techniques (political arithmetic, statistical survey)
operating within new governmental institutions
(bureaus of economic management, public health,
social assistance, public education) began to transform
government into a series of domain-specific ‘problems’
open to expert analysis. ... it was in this sphere of
‘governmentality’ that a pastoral school system could
present itself as an appropriate instrument for
transforming the capacities of the population into a
problem and object of government. (Hunter, 1994,
p.28)
21
Populational reasoning
By defining groups in particular ways and maintaining
records that gave material qualities to the construction
of groups, populational reasoning “normalized” certain
characteristics. What were socially constructed criteria
appeared in time as “natural attributes” (e.g., “racial
characteristics”). The historical and cultural specificity of
the reasoning became submerged, and the appearance
of the criteria as “natural” became reinforced through
scientific techniques that were built around gathering
data about the attributes. (Baker, 1998, p.131)
22
Foucault 1977
23
Human technologies
Human technologies involve the calculated organization
of human forces and capacities, together with other
forces - natural, biological, mechanical – and artefacts –
machines, weapons – into functioning networks of
power. Within such a composition, elements are brought
together that might appear, at first sight, to belong to
different orders of reality: architectural designs,
equipment and technical devices, professionals,
bureaucracies, methods of calculation, inscriptions,
reformatory procedures and the like. (Rose, 1999, p.8)
24
Activating governmentality
Networks of:
 human capacities
 other forces (natural, biological,
mechanical etc)
 artefacts
25
Analytic questions deriving
from the theories
A genealogy of subjectivity along five pathways:

Problematisations—where how and by whom aspects of the
human are rendered problematic?

Technologies—the means and programs developed to govern,
shape humans

Authorities—those who can speak the truth about human
problems

Teleologies (the forms of life which are the ideals, exemplars
or aims for practices and programs for working on humans

Strategies—procedures for regulating humans that are linked
to wider political, moral, social objectives and domains
(adapted from Rose, 1998, pp.25-28).
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Beyond progress, redemption and the
apocalypse—the concept of the dispositif
[P]rogrammes don’t take effect in the institutions in an
integral manner; they are simplified, or some are
chosen and not others; and things never work out as
planned. But what I wanted to show is that this
difference is not one between the purity of an ideal and
the disorderly impurity of the real, but that in fact there
are different strategies which are mutually opposed,
composed and superposed so as to produce permanent
and solid effects which can perfectly well be understood
in terms of their rationality, even though they don’t
conform to the initial programming: this is what gives
the resulting apparatus (dispositif) its solidity and
suppleness. (Foucault, 1991c, p.81)
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Data set




The Education Gazette (EG) published monthly by the
Education Department (1900-1929)
Curriculum documents including the Course of
Instruction for Primary Schools (CI), post-primary
school courses, and the public examinations’ syllabi.
(1874-1929)
Parliamentary Papers (PP) of the South Australian
Parliament (1874-1929)
Educational reports which were influential in South
Australia in the planning of state education for the
older child (1880-1920)
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Chapter 1 Introduction
Section 1 Framing the ‘problem’
Chapter 2 Framing an historical study of the ‘problem’ of the older
child, English/literacy, and schooling
Section 2
Tracking the discourses of adolescence, schooling and the
English/literacy curriculum
Chapter 3 Historical constructions of adolescence and childhood
Chapter 4 Schooling and English/literacy as sites for shaping the
student subject
Section 3 Schooling the older child in South Australia 1900-1929
Chapter 5 ‘The children in after life’: the late nineteenth century child
after primary school in South Australia
Chapter 6 The older child in the early twentieth century: three
(inter)national reports
Chapter 7 Changing shape: the older child in the Education Gazette
Section 4 The older child and the English subjects
Chapter 8 Subject to English Part 1: Formations of the English
subjects and English as access to culture
Chapter 9 Subject to English Part 2 – English as an expression of the
self
Chapter 10 Conclusions
29
Figure 7: Discursive fields constituting the older child as
a subject of education in South Australia 1900-1929
30
Teleologies
A parable
The Froebelian metaphor of education as a
form of gardening was linked to wider romantic
beliefs in the naturalness of children that can be
traced to Rousseau and Froebel. In the New
Education the teacher became a kind of
gardener of souls through sympathy and
optimism. This parable was reproduced without
preamble or editorial content in the 1920
Education Gazette (p.211)
31
Human technologies - drill
32
Human technologies – drill
33
Human technologies – drill
Figure 3: Writing lesson (1911 EG, p.49)
To teach drill
successfully, the closest
attention to every
minute detail is as
necessary as in
conducting a writing
lesson. (1885 SAGG,
p.120)
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Past(s)
Present(s)
Future(s)
Discourses
Programs
Effects
Green (2003)
35
References
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