Foucault’s Matter: Education, Subjectivity, and Political Ecology

• In Event: Everybody but Foucault: How Alternative Poststructuralisms Operate in Educational Theory, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

This paper ponders the question ‘where to next’ with Foucauldian thought (Peters, Tesar, & Locke, 2013). One objective in this paper is to consider reading Foucault’s (1998; 1990; 2003 etc.) work through the prism of the new materialism of a political ecology of place/space (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010), this paper contributes to thought about the production of political subjectivities in education. While Foucault’s work is heralded as an essential part of the 'post' traditions in education, this paper analyses the connections and contradictions of political ecology with Foucauldian thought as it focuses on deconstructing educational 'post' thought. The mode of inquiry for this paper uses Barad’s and Bennett’s (2010) seminal work, the notions of ‘vibrant’ and ‘matter’ are subjected to an extensive analysis within the production of political subjectivities in education. To elaborate, Barad and Bennett’s notion of “materialism” is utilized to explore a new way of looking at the matter: re-thinking and reshaping it as matter - subjects instead of subject-matter. The three sections of the paper playfully analyze why Foucault matters through the idea of matter, drawing on Barad and Bennett’s notion of matter. Second, the philosophical inquiry yields a shift from think power to thing power, engaging in material spaces. Third, the paper considers how we might think of the matters of social and educational spaces into specific teaching and learning practices of the early childhood education setting. The substantiated conclusions suggest that the Bennett's vibrant matter of the street is transposed into the vibrant matter of the classroom, with a shift from the think-power to the thing-power. The scholarly significance of the study or work is that it argues that the work of Foucault can be seen itself as ‘vibrant’ and ‘matter,’ and as the political ecology of tracing histories of the present educational place/space.

Author

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland