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)
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)