Foucauldian Thought

Foucauldian thought in curriculum studies attends to the idea that human understanding is shaped by the systems of ideas available during a particular historical period. Central to his work, Michel Foucault offers critiques of representations of the human subject as (a) possessing a consciousness that is transparent to itself, or (b) possessing the ability to observe and evaluate historical and contemporary events from outside systems of thought characteristic of a period. The phrase has taken on contemporary significance for enabling curriculum scholars to develop theories of resistance and trouble Enlightenment notions of reason and logic. More recent, Foucauldian thought has been helpful for studying issues of control and freedom as they relate to government policy on educational research and officially sanctioned perspectives on teaching and learning. The following explores three registers of Foucauldian thought that have been influential within curriculum studies.

With his articulation of archeology, Foucault offered curriculum studies a compelling method of discourse analysis. More specifically, Foucault provides scholars with an alternate understanding of historical truth. He eschews a progressive, singular, and linear narrative of history in the search for a more expansive and disjunctive approach to historical understanding that attends to infinite microstories, each with unique relationships on multiple levels with the contingencies of their past and future. Of key importance within Foucauldian thought, each of these microstories has a tangible existence in historical and contemporary texts, which can be analyzed. Within curriculum studies, Foucault's discourse analysis challenged the possibility of a total or complete history of curriculum concepts—that is, it challenged a conception of curriculum history where it is possible to capture an essential or universal essence of prior periods. Instead, what Foucauldian thought has provided curriculum studies is a method for the study of general, but not universal, history, one where within textual analysis no continuities can be assumed. For curriculum studies, as an interdisciplinary field, Foucault's archeology has had major ramifications. Curriculum scholars might no longer posit similar histories within each of the subdo-mains of the field; rather, the emphasis is more on heterogeneous forms of relationships. Similarly, with the emphasis on discourse and documents there is less attention toward the decisions and actions of curriculum figures than to the movement of material. Moreover, with the rejection of large-scale theories about teaching and learning, Foucauldian thought sparked attention to breaks, ruptures, and shifts in the limits of curriculum thought rather than toward continuities.

In addition to archeology, Foucault's concept of biopower has been influential within the curriculum field. For Foucault, biopower contrasts with premodern modes of power, which are based in the threat of death from a rule making authority. In modern societies where authority must be grounded in reason, biopower focuses upon protecting life through the regulation of the body instead of employing intimidation or threats to secure acquiescence. Transferring the concept to [Page 378]the scene of curriculum studies, education scholars have employed biopower to study the regulatory force of government by way of education, as well as the use of state power to promote well-being and health within different populations through inculcating certain habits and customs. Most important, as Foucault developed the concept, his notion of power is neutral in contrast to negative conceptions that had come before it, ones where force was used to thwart activity or thought. Therefore, when curriculum scholars extend Foucault's explication of biopower, which is placed in the service of maximizing life, they examine its productive capacities. They also attend to its dark side, one that becomes possible because within its logic a broad range of practices might be justified. These actions include the eradication of bodies of knowledge and populations of people because they are deemed a threat toward the life of a nation or humanity as a whole.

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