Who's Afraid of Foucault? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjects

Abstract

According to historian-philosopher Michel Foucault, “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.” If each society has a regime of truth, it can be inferred that each scholarly discipline or field of study has its own general politics of truth which regulates its intellectual conditions, boundaries, and memberships. Consequently, Foucault's assertion leads me to ask: What regime of truth operates in the field of history of education? What types of discourse does it accept as true and deem as false? How does it distinguish between and sanction true and false statements? What value and status are conferred upon those charged with saying what counts as true and those considered saying what counts as false or unacceptable? What are the effects of such a regime on the field's analytical and methodological development as well as on its practitioners?

Giftedness as Property: Troubling Whiteness, Wealth, and Gifted Education in the US

“…Indeed, conducting historical analyses draws attention to how the past, present, and future are interconnected and how understanding any context is to know the fundamental ways the past and future are implicated in the present (Hirsch & Stewart, 2005). Furthermore, a critical examination of historical discourse enables an excavation of power relationships and cultural change in social settings, while concurrently locating ourselves as possible co-conspirators of knowledge creation and circulation and potential agents for the advancement of democratic projects committed to social justice (Coloma, 2011;Blount, 2008;Peräkylä, 2005). For example, textual analyses that examine power relations and historically constituted definitions and practices have potential to reveal how we have come to understand social phenomena, such as gifted education, the way that we do and conceivably can inspire us to ask important questions.…”

“…The purposes of this research required approaching the project from an historical methodology that enables researchers to become aware of our regimes of truth and put to the test our assumptive innocence (Coloma, 2011) and reveal "the motion and forces at work in our social reality" (Blount, 2008, p. 21). Indeed, conducting historical analyses draws attention to how the past, present, and future are interconnected and how understanding any context is to know the fundamental ways the past and future are implicated in the present (Hirsch & Stewart, 2005).…”

The promise of the new: genealogies of youth, nation and educational reform in Australia

“…Despite there now being a body of clearly identifiable Foucauldian research in education, many of the challenges raised in this earlier issue remain pertinent, with some inadequately realised, even in research which purports to be Foucauldian (Butchart 2011, Coloma 2011. Over the last two decades, the marked enthusiasm for Foucauldian concepts and approaches in educational research has been most evident in more sociologically oriented rather than historical research (Baker 2007, McLeod 2009).…”

Liberating teachers from the dominant theories and the unquestioned mission: Towards ‘disruptive theories’ in technology enhanced learning research

“…Discourse is not truth just as theory is not; however, both concepts serve to make certain ideas come to be judged as trustworthy while others not. In other words, they are neither neutral representations of teachers as subjects nor general communications in a more linguistic sense -but 'rather' they both have political, regulative, and ideological force (see Coloma, 2011). In the meantime, the statements constituting dominant discourse (or theory) tend to be viewed as being common-sense (recall 'tacit theory') during which teachers are likely to be inscribed in a certain way as subjects of the dominant discourse.…”