On understanding power and the subject of educational research
pp. 233-235
in: Alan , E. Paul Hart, Michael A. Peters (eds), A companion to research in education, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
I take up Mark Olssen's assertion that the radicalness of Foucault's thought is not grasped in educational research and question whether Foucault's adoption in to the field has effected the shift away from previous paradigms, and in particular Marxist theory, as claimed. The use of Foucault is often restricted to analyses concerned with power, and his own understanding is often misread, and thus the state-individual binary remains in place. Furthermore, it can be said that the failure to grasp the implications of Foucault's displacing of the state and the subject means that educational research fails to account for the conditions in which education, and the subject of education, are constituted today. A brief outline of Foucault's understanding of critique then indicates the more radical questioning his thought invites.
