Foucault and the use of critique: breaching the self-evidence of educational practices

Abstract

This paper poses methodological questions about the role and limits of Foucault's concept of governmentality in education research. Firstly, it argues for the utility of governmentality as a means of exploring questions of power regardless of domain or scale. Secondly, it explores the boundary between the tasks of formulating critique and articulating reform agendas while working within the Foucauldian ethos. It does this via the examination of a research project which used Foucault’s concept of governmentality to observe the ways young people are regulated and shaped through education and training at a senior college in Australia. The goal of the examination is to shift the focus from the original findings, which highlighted the powerful effects of governing agendas, to a closer examination of their points of failure in local contexts. This shift takes up Foucault’s idea that government is unpredictable and that within the complexity of the assemblages which make government possible, the possibility for unanticipated outcomes and indeed points of failure, is always present. The paper argues that the change of focus is productive and provides a more complex understanding of the interplay between government and resistance. A focus on points of failure of the regulatory and normative aspects of government is taken up with a view to considering the possible links between this aspect of governmentality critique and the development of emergent rather than imposed reform agendas, inspired by local examples of resistance and transgressive practices.