Beyond epistemic exodus in educational studies: a response to Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a response to recent work by Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball who have argued that modern schools are intolerable and irredeemable and therefore must be abandoned. Basing their project in Foucault, they have advocated for an alternative project of commoning a new episteme in education based in self-formation. I argue that this represents a more general problem in educational studies, particularly in new materialism and post theories, which I refer to as epistemic exodus, or the idea that by simply thinking different thoughts we can escape an image of modernity framed as totalizing domination. My argument is that the problems with Collet-Sabé and Ball’s approach mirror the limitations of Foucault’s project, particularly his inability to articulate what Antonio Negri calls constituent power and what Harney and Moten refer to as the general antagonism. These concepts do not move from above, rather they move from below. They encompass not only epistemic shifts but also material and political ones.