Poststructuralist Ideas Research Articles

John M. Fyler, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de MeunLanguage and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun. John M. Fyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii+306.

<i>John M. Fyler</i>, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun<i>Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun</i>. John M. Fyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii+306.

Caesarean section in the absence of need: a pathologising paradox for public health?

Caesarean section in the absence of need: a pathologising paradox for public health? This qualitative study explored the discourses constructing women's choice for a caesarean section, in the absence of clinical indication. The research was informed from the theoretical ideas of poststructuralism that presumes people's reality is shaped discursively through the discourses they encounter. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was undertaken of the transcripts of participant's interviews and the texts of both professional and popular media before inductively discerning the prevailing discourses that influence the choice of caesarean in the absence of need. In shaping women's choice in childbirth the discourses of autonomy, convenience and desire alongside fear and risk were identified in the talk and texts of women, childbirth professionals and popular culture. For the purposes of this article we have confined our focus to the findings related to how caesarean is represented in both professional and popular discourse and include feminist discussions around childbirth as an embodied practice. We contend that the discourses of autonomy, desire and risk unite with broader societal discourses to expose a pathologising paradox in which normal bodily performance emerges as abnormal and the abnormal as normal. The trend has implications for both future healthy populations and the equitable distribution of maternity resources.

Introduction: Strategic spatial planning in uncertainty: theory and exploratory practice

The papers in this issue develop practical and theoretical ideas about strategic spatial planning in uncertainty. This Introduction contextualises the papers in terms of spatial planning and the uncertainties that planning practitioners face as they attempt to cope with the messiness of strategy-making and implementation. The authors explain their understanding of post-structuralism and how it differs from the pragmatist theoretical foundations of other scholars. The five papers are introduced through the use of recurring themes. The Introduction concludes by proposing that post-structuralist ideas can work to improve planning practice in conditions of uncertainty, provided that key elements are in place.

From Braudel to Derrida: Mohammed Arkoun's Rethinking of Islam and Religion

AbstractThis article examines Mohammed Arkoun as one of the pioneers of a new Muslim intellectualism seeking new ways of engaging with Islam by combining intimate familiarity with the Islamic civilizational heritage (turath) and solid knowledge of recent achievements by the Western academe in the humanities and social sciences. It will show how his groundbreaking and agendasetting work in Islamic studies reflects a convergence of the spatiotemporal concerns of an intellectual historian inspired by the Annales School with an epistemological critique drawing on structuralist and poststructuralist ideas. Influenced by Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics and the deconstructionist philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Arkoun evolved from a specialist in the intellectual history of medieval Islam into a generic critic of epistemologies, advocating a concept of so-called 'emerging reason' which transcends existing forms of religious reason, Enlightenment rationalism and the tele-techno-scientific reason of the postmodern globalizing world. This article concludes that Arkoun's proposals challenge the intellectual binary of the West versus Islam and the historical dichotomy between the northern and southern Mediterranean.

Postmodern Education and the Concept of Power

This article presents a discussion of how postmodernist, poststructuralist and critical educational thinking relate to different theories of power. I argue that both Critical Theory and some poststructuralist ideas base themselves on a concept of power borrowed from a modernist tradition. I argue as well that we are better off combining a postmodern idea of education with a postmodern idea of power. To this end the concept of power presented by the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is introduced. This concept controverts a number of major educational concepts, i.e. concepts such as causality, autonomy, subjectivity and originality. In other words, it allows us to take a fresh look at old concepts. Finally, I relate the discussion to a number of recent theories of learning.

Applying Post-structuralist Ideas to Empowerment: Implications for Social Work Education

In this article we reflect on the trouble we have encountered while teaching post-structuralist ideas to students who privilege empowerment as a theoretical position. We briefly define empowerment theory and outline its modernist anchoring. We introduce Foucault's analysis of power to critique and examine the discursive practices of how power operates when some students talk about empowerment theory. This examination of power as applied to empowerment theory then supports our argument that post-structuralist ideas can be of benefit in social work education and practice and not just a slippery theoretical positioning where anything goes. The aim of this paper is to open space to see the way post-structuralist theory unsettles taken-for-granted assumptions when social work students foreground empowerment theory. We are not arguing that empowerment theory nor power are good or bad but that they are dangerous when we fail to reflect on and critique how we apply them in practice.

Texting Doppelgangers: Repetition, Signs, and Intentionalities in (Auto)biographical Alzheimer Writing

The paper offers a critical discussion of notions of self as they emerge in texts written by Alzheimer patients and their caregivers. It explores how diary-writing becomes a means of agency by which some ontological sense of 'self' gets scripted in the process of memory's slipping away. Specifically, the paper explores how two themes—namely, sure signs and repetition, and intentionality and experience—can be seen to crucially inform the patients' need to text their fading hold on language and memories into place. This need to 'fix' selves and experiences contests particular strains of poststructuralist ideas that insist that bodies are performed, fluid and changeable. Although infusing ideas about dynamism into our discourses of bodies is crucial, being aware of contexts where such discourses may not be as feasible is important as well, if only to increase our awareness of the universalizing tendencies of particular discourses. The diaries of Alzheimer patients and those who care for them give us entry in...

Enacting subjectivities in educational history: methodological reflections on the use of qualitative interviews for history writing

Two studies of the formation of pupils’ subjectivities within the Danish school and educational system in the period 1945–2005 create the framework for a methodological discussion of how subjectivities in educational history can be studied. Both studies use qualitative interviews as a way of studying subject formations in educational history. This methodological approach, however, exposes inherent methodological problems stemming from the use of sources produced in the present for studying the past. To address these problems the article will draw on poststructural ideas of subjectification and performativity developed by Judith Butler and suggest two analytical moves: A notion of time as temporality is put forward to rethink the problem of past/present in the work with memories as source material. Furthermore, the concepts of performativity and enactment are introduced to deal with the displacement of narrated subjectivities in the interviews. By this the interviewees are said to perform as memorising subjects while enacting different (memorised) subjectivities.

Feminist social work research engaging with poststructural ideas

English This article draws on two empirical studies, one with women who had experienced domestic violence and the other with children and young people in public care. It presents reflections by two feminist social workers on how poststructuralism influenced their research practices in social work. French Cet article fait appel à deux études empiriques; la première auprès de femmes victimes de violence conjugale et la seconde auprès d'enfants et d'adolescents pris en charge par les services sociaux. Il présente les réflexions de deux travailleuses sociales féministes sur la façon dont le poststructuralisme a influencé leurs recherches en travail social. Spanish Este artículo llama la atención sobre dos estudios empíricos, uno con mujeres que tuvieron experiencias de violencia doméstica y el otro con niños y gente joven con cuidados públicos. Presenta reflexiones de dos trabajadoras sociales feministas, sobre cómo el post-estructuralismo ha influenciado sus prácticas de investigación en trabajo social.

The (be)comings and goings of ‘developmental disabilities’: the cultural politics of ‘impairment’

Disability should be a concern for those interested in analysing and subverting the cultural politics of education. In this paper we address this concern through connecting critical analyses of ‘developmental disabilities’ (formerly ‘mental retardation’), disability studies and poststructuralism. We target normative constructions of ‘developmental disabilities’ – and we propose alternative dynamic possibilities – through reference to narratives from our political and personal work with people with the label of ‘developmental disabilities’. Our aim is to unveil the ways in which we might understand the cultural formations of ‘impairment’ – as they relate to ‘developmental disabilities’ – in order to propel scholars, activists and practitioners towards a cultural politics of inclusion. First, we summarise some key debates from disability studies that have engaged with ‘impairment’: social model, relational and psychosocial models. We suggest that these debates benefit from a more grounded engagement with poststructuralist ideas. Second, we bring in the work of the poststructuralist thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the poststructuralist feminist Rosi Braidotti to tackle the social, historical, cultural and political conditions of ‘developmental disabilities’ through experimentation with rhizomes and nomads. In conclusion, we appeal for the development of a cultural politics of ‘impairment’ and ‘developmental disabilities’ that draws upon a vocabulary applicable to the post-modern subject of the contemporary world: as uncertain, productive and moveable.

Reflections on Shaping the Ethics of our Teaching Practices

This article considers four strands of the authors’ teaching practice in a narrative, social constructionist, teaching program at the masters level. It explores how the ethics of teaching practice are shaped by the therapy practices, and associated ideas, that form the curriculum. These ideas include an ethic of care; shaping and being shaped by power relations; and the constitutive effects of language. The article concludes with a discussion of the place of chaos stories and humor in producing a collegial community of practice. For more than a decade now, the counselor education programs at the University of Waikato have emphasized narrative approaches in therapy, and more recently in family work and supervision. Over this time, social constructionist theory and practice has been woven into the fabric of all our courses (Monk, Winslade, Crocket, & Epston, 1997). This article focuses on the shaping of the ethics of our teaching practices, foregrounding our accounts as teachers. We write this reflection out of a belief that self-witnessing (Weingarten, 2003) further shapes us and the ethics of our practice, serving as a mode of accountability to self and other. However, keeping in mind that Bakhtin (1981, 1986) argued that no utterance occurs in isolation, we acknowledge that our choice to foreground our account holds within it the tension of the absence of others’ utterances such as our students and other colleagues. Their voices have not been amplified in this telling. This account emphasizes four linked strands that contribute to the overall fabric of our teaching practice. We explore each strand in turn. First, we show how the ethic of care we teach is enacted in the daily practices of our teaching lives. A second strand traces ways in which poststructuralist ideas about power relations

Caught between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’? Talking about ‘race’ in a post‐apartheid university classroom

This paper explores difficulties in talking about ‘race’ and difference in a post‐apartheid university classroom. The data come from classroom‐based research conducted in a first‐year undergraduate English Studies course at a historically ‘white’ and Afrikaans university in South Africa. Drawing on poststructuralist ideas on discourse and the self, discourse and society, I analyse moments from classroom discourse and argue that the ways in which the students talk and think about ‘race’ and culture echo both resonances of the past as well as discourses in current circulation. I draw on the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia in order to understand why ‘race’ is simultaneously a taboo topic and an important self‐identifier (the product of both apartheid discourses of discrimination and post‐apartheid discourses of equity and redress) and argue for the need to deconstruct essentialist notions of ‘race’ and culture in the post‐apartheid classroom.

Studying the Victorian Novel in Print: Professional Authorship and Idiosyncrasy

This article surveys recent scholarship about Victorian novels’ place in the nineteenth-century publishing system. With particular attention to criticism concerning the work of William Makepeace Thackeray, it examines how this scholarship, which reflects a renewed, discipline-wide interest in book history and media studies, adopts some of poststructuralist theory's ideas; it goes on to show the ways this adoption helps differentiate this new work from a previous generation of scholarship on Victorian book history. It contextualizes this new concern with publication, authorial professionalization, and structures of cultural prestige and legitimation in the Victorian period within the pervasive discourse about academic jobs and professionalization during the 1990s, many of the key words and concepts of which are shared by book-history criticism. Finally, it suggests directions for future study opened up by this new criticism, arguing that this criticism might help analyze the aesthetic particularity of authors’ works – a topic that has merited little attention, as the last several decades’ theoretical trends have focused on abstract linguistic, ideological, and now, publishing systems.

Counselling supervision and the production of professional selves

AbstractThe culture of supervision is produced both in wider professional contexts and in particular local supervision conversations. This paper is shaped by the post structuralist ideas of governmentality and disciplinary power. It uses these ideas to trace the detail of a supervision conversation, noticing the shaping effects of ideas familiar within the professional culture. Excerpts from the supervision conversation demonstrate a supervision process that pays attention to the politics of its own production, and thus to the culture of supervision that it produces.

What do you mean by ‘anti‐oppressive education’? Student interpretations of a high school leadership program

Although theories on anti‐oppressive education abound, few scholars have conducted empirical studies of anti‐oppressive educational curricula to test the alignment of theories—constructed largely by university scholars—and practices carried out by K–12 educators and students. While feminist poststructuralist theorists have critiqued critical pedagogy and multicultural scholars for not interrogating their universalist claims and for overemphasizing rationalist discourses, many of their calls for situated, performative pedagogy remain abstract. The following paper attempts to make some of the conceptualizations of social justice education concrete by examining student responses to two experiential activities in a high school leadership program. Comprising students from eight high schools located in a single metropolitan area, this program sought to increase student consciousness of the pervasive prejudice and discrimination in US society and, subsequently, to move these students to action. This paper analyzes the student interpretations of two awareness‐raising activities at the program’s leadership camp to argue that on‐the‐ground anti‐oppressive educational endeavors require significant time, commitment and organizational structures as well as the integration of poststructuralist, critical, multicultural and feminist ideas.

Book Review: Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies: Applying Poststructural Ideas

Book Review: Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies: Applying Poststructural Ideas

‘Whoever does not write is written’: the role of ‘nature’ in post‐post approaches to environmental education research

While McKenzie mentions in passing her concern about anthropocentrism and human oppression of the natural world, she is mostly silent about the role of ‘nature’ in post‐post approaches to environmental education research. If one takes feminist poststructuralist ideas about voice and representation seriously, surely the place of ‘nature’ in environmental education research must be interrogated? Is there space for ‘nature’ in multivocal representations of research? How might our own polyvocality include our experiences of our animality? How might we assess the legitimacy of such representations? What are the limits and possibilities of post‐post approaches to environmental education research when ‘nature’ is taken into account?

Researching trauma, the body and transformation: A situated account of creating safety in unsafe places

ABSTRACT This paper is based on a study of how childhood trauma can be experienced in the body and the resources individuals have chosen to deal with that. Ten individuals (including myself) wrote stories showing how they had made sense of those experiences and found ways to heal. In this paper, I tell the story of that research, contextualising myself as researcher and researched, against a changing societal, research and practitioner background to show how social constructionist and poststructuralist ideas have influenced the way I undertook and re-presented my study. This paper also provides me with an opportunity to focus for the first time on aspects of the stories that demonstrate how people created safe enough environments as children and as adults in order to heal.

Of Lords and (Cyber)Serfs: eGovernment and Poststructuralism in a Neomedieval Europe

The decentralisation and despatialisation of governmental architectures within the European Union (EU) that will result from the development of eGovernment under the Lisbon Strategy could have a crucial impact on political structures and identity in Europe. eGovernment projects at the European and member state levels are professed to expand citizens' access to political institutions, increase social inclusion and enhance the efficiency of pan-European government. This essay examines the possible implications of long-term digitisation of government in the EU given the current trajectory of eGovernment discourse and its place within the broader Information Society goals. It argues that eGovernment will reconfigure several political relationships within the EU, fostering the development of a neomedieval polity similar to that first described by Hedley Bull, where government is multi-layered and overlapping and mobility among certain individuals is very high. To make the neomedieval perspective more appropriate for this digital analysis, the essay draws upon poststructuralist ideas concerning political forms and the construction of knowledge and subjectivity.

Using poetic documents: An exploration of poststructuralist ideas and poetic practices in narrative therapy

ABSTRACT This paper explores the use of poetic documents in narrative therapy practice. It considers the ways in which feminist and poststructuralist ideas inform these practices and speculates about the extent to which a ‘poetic-mindedness’ might sustain the practice of double- (or multiple-) listening. The author illustrates these explorations with examples from her own therapeutic practice.