Toward a New “Logic” of Emancipation: Foucault and Rancière

Abstract

Where one searches for the hidden beneath the apparent, a position of mastery is established. —Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics INTRODUCTION The idea of emancipation plays a central role in modern education. To the extent that education is about more than the transmission of content and culture but involves an interest in fostering independence and autonomy, education can be said to be a process that aims at the emancipation of the child or the student. This is not only true of those traditions within educational theory and practice that are informed by an explicit political agenda. It can be said of any approach that acknowledges that there is a fundamental distinction between education and indoctrination. Although there is likely to be widespread support among educators for the sentiment of emancipation, there may well be quite different views about what emancipation actually entails and how it can be achieved through educational processes and practices. My purpose in this essay is twofold. First, I wish to articulate and problematize what I see as the prevailing understanding of emancipation in modern educational thought. Against this background I will then sketch the outlines of a different conception of emancipation, one which might be able to overcome some of the problems and contradictions within the prevailing view. To develop the contours of this new logic of emancipation I will draw upon Michel Foucault's work and, to a lesser extent, that of Jacques Ranciere. This essay is an attempt to think emancipation differently and to begin to explore how and why this might matter for education.