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Studies in Philosophy and Education 17: 163176, 1998.

1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.163

Review Article

KENNETH WAINUniversity of Malta

James D. Marshall, Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

Foucault the Destroyer

In a review she wrote for Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinows book MichelFoucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Maxine Greene (1983, p. 105)

remarked that if we examine Foucaults work from the vantage point of institu-

tionalized education or educational research he will appear to us as the Great

Destroyer or, in the most literal of senses, a deconstructionist . By the end of

the article she had softened her attitude to the extent that she recommended Dreyfus

and Rabinows book for reading but still concluded her review tongue in cheek

with the words: Sometimes even educational researchers must allow themselves to

play (p. 110). Of course, deconstruction is not destruction, as Jacques Derrida

has observed repeatedly to his critics, mainly Anglo-saxon philosophers, over the

years. Beside, although, as Greene herself observed in his essay, Foucault has been

classified in different ways by different critics over the years, deconstructionist is

not usually one of them.Finally, her last remark reflects another criticism often made against post-

modernists (among whom Foucault is often included, courtesy of Habermas) that

they are not serious. But, again, it seems off-mark also. Although, in fact, Foucault

did cultivate an image of elusive playfulness in his early work, he seems actually,

on this matter at least, to have followed Rortys precept and kept it private, except

perhaps for when he was being interviewed when pun, irony and paradox were,

for him, the order of the day. There is certainly nothing very playful about his

narratives of the modern world nor about the way he engaged personally in politics.

I begin this critical essay with Greenes mistatements on Foucault because they

are typical of many of his Anglo-saxon critics. In this sense he shares the fate of

those who have been variously labelled as poststructuralist, postmodernist, decon-

structionist, romantic, post-Nietzechean, and so on. The more usual criticism ofthese writers is that they are irrationalist because of their attack on traditional West-

ern foundationalist epistemology and its conception of truth and reason (what

Derrida calls its logocentrism), and irresponsible because of their disinclination


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164 KENNETH WAIN

to align themselves with any of the traditional or standard political metanarratives

of hope, liberty, and emancipation that have driven reformist and revolutionary

politics in the modern age, or indeed to take up any ethical or political project or

position at all. Foucaults politics, in particular, have been described by Walzer as

a species of infantile leftism, by Merqiour as neo-anarchist and nihilist, and byCharles Taylor as simply incoherent.

Greenes essay is also rather typical of a lot of philosophers of education writ-

ing from the vantage point of institutionalized education or educational research

when confronted with Foucault. She doesnt know quite what to make of him or

his work so her review is mainly confined to a summary of what Dreyfus and

Rabinow had to say about him in their excellent book, and she practically left the

matter there. The difficulty philosophers of education encounter with Foucaults

work in two-fold; first, they find difficulty with identifying his writing and interest

as philosophical, second, he wrote very little directly about education. The latter

may explain, to some extent at least, why, although a considerable amount has been

written about the significance of Lyotards and Rortys (who are usually positioned

more or less in the same postmodern/poststructuralist camp as Foucault) work

for education, the same cannot be said for Foucault. What little has been written

about Foucault and education, or about education from a Foucauldian perspective,

usually corresponds with Greenes concession that, at least, his writings about the

internal relation between knowledge and power, particularly in the various social

sciences or sciences of man, may be of the greatest potential relevance for the

educational researcher (1983, p. 108).

This potential relevance was explored in a 1990 article by a decidedly

sympathetic James Marshall who, while describing Foucault as one of the more

interesting and controversial thinkers to have emerged in the Western world in the

twentieth century, observed that it is not easy to say exactly how he impinges

upon traditional mainstream philosophy and education (1990, p. 81). At the time,Marshall had already produced one general article on Foucault and Education in

1989. Before that his publications reveal a distinct interest in the subject of punish-

ment in education and one could conjecture that this was how he first came to take

an interest in Foucaults work. Since then he has taken up the challenge of showing,

nearly single-handedly one needs to acknowledge, how Foucault impinges upon

traditional mainstrean philosophy and education. In the process he has produced

a steady stream of further articles and essay contributions to different books on

the subject, including another article about Foucault and educational research in

Stephen Balls 1990 book, Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge.

Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education (FPAEin what follows) may,

in more senses than one, be regarded as the culmination of this work.


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Negative Genealogies

Before FPAE, Balls book was the first and, to my knowledge, the only, book dedi-

cated specifically and entirely to Foucault and education, and it was an entirely

different book from Marshalls. It consisted in a number of articles written bydifferent authors nearly all engaging in a Foucauldian genealogical analysis of

educational institutions and practices. It addressed various aspects of the history of

education and of some of the discourses and disciplinary disputes currently being

formed, developed, and reformed in the educational field (Ball 1990, p. 2). But

it was not about Foucault himself. In its preface Ball identified the more obvious

relation between Foucaults work and education. The books concern, he said, was

with the role of education and its interrelation with politics, economics and history

in the formation and constitution of human beings as subjects (1990, p. 2). The

statement illustrates perfectly the breath of scope and application of Foucaults own

writing and provides an excellent reason why educationalists should be interested

in it.

Returning to Greens comments quoted earlier on, the articles in Balls bookare the most limpid proof that her judgement of Foucault as simply the great

destroyer of educational research is far off the mark. Or, to be more precise, it

is true of the conventional human and social sciences which Foucault did, indeed,

consistently critique negatively in his work. But the book does not seem to escape

the other criticism of Foucaults genealogical writing, that it is entirely negative. (2)

This is a judgement of Foucaults work which, on the evidence, Marshall himself

shares in the writing ofFPAE, and which, in my view at least, constitutes the books

major shortcoming. With regards to the contributors to Balls book the explanation

for the criticism is simple; they drew their inspiration nearly exclusively from just

one of Foucaults works, Discipline and Punish (1979), which is a thoroughly

dystopian narrative of the rise of modernity, an utterly negative analysis of the

modern state. I suspect the same is true with Marshall, he continues to be influ-enced chiefly by the Foucault of Discipline and Punish also, despite the extensive

bibliography at the end of his book which includes also Foucaults important later

interviews and the second and third volumes of History of Sexuality.

Marshalls 1990 contribution to Balls book, entitled Foucault and Educational

Research, concludes that more than the mere potential relevance described by

Greene, Foucaults genealogical analysis offers educational research a new frame-

work not for studying the past, but for assessing the present . . . constituted by an

analytic grid of power-knowledge. In the same article, he also refers to a failure

on Foucaults part to articulate his theory of genealogy adequately, a failure which,

he continued to say, makes its application problematic so that, rather than

theorize about its limits of application, it may be better to see what can be done

in practice (1990, p. 23). This last statement is problematic in its suggestion thatone can choose between theory and practice, but there is clearly some point to

it. Genealogy is not a type of analysis or critique which can be defined in terms of

the rules of a method, to the contrary it is personal and idiosyncratic, like a literary


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166 KENNETH WAIN

work. No two genealogical analyses of a phenomenon will yield the same result or

tell the same story.

Marshall does not himself attempt a sample of genealogical writing in his article

in Balls book, instead his writing aims to open a way to Foucault for education

researchers to follow. In this connection he says that the methodological imper-ative Foucaults work imposes on us is to examine processes of modern power

in modern schools (1990, p. 23). This is conventionally perceived as the work of

the social sciences, particularly that of sociology and social psychology. But a part,

a disconcerting but important part, of what Foucault was about in his genealogies

was the unmasking of the social sciences. Laying bare their pretence towards being

objective, reliable modes of analyses, or trustworthy methods of reproducing the

truth about individuals and social practices, he shows them up as instruments of

the modern states disciplinary power, as technologies of domination, dividing

practices, or games of truth, as he called them. They are articulated through

a norm-ridden discourse in terms of which individuals are studied, judged and

categorised as normal, sane, competent, educated, or not. Foucault describes how,

concurrently with the creation of the sciences, institutions and practices were

invented for the purpose of discipline and study of the human subject, body and

mind; asylums, hospitals, military barracks, prisons and schools. His general point

is that the human and social sciences are part and parcel of the disciplinary tech-

nologies or instruments of government and policing of the modern state. They are,

therefore, to be regarded with suspicion rather than hope.

Marshall explains Foucaults alleged failure to articulate his genealogical theory

to his general, inbred opposition to all forms of systematization, his concern

throughout that genealogy should not be turned into just another game of truth.

Thus, though its concern with how questions qualifies it as a way of writing

about the past, or writing history, it differs from conventional histories in that

it is not concerned with the truth about the past through an accurate representa-tion of events. Historians of the present, as Foucault describes himself, do not

reach outwards for objective truths that capture reality or mirror facts as they

are supposed to have occurred, but inwards so that their writings are narratives,

myths, fabrications, about themselves as much as about the world they describe.

Genealogists are uninterested particularly in the humanist conception of history as

linear development or progress and emphasise discontinuity and rupture instead.

This characterization clearly establishes the subjective character of the

genealogical mode of writing. Indeed, not only did Foucault not hide under the

mantle of truth or objectivity, he always insisted on the biographical nature of his

writing; each of my works is a part of my own biography (p. 13), he claimed,

and my books have always arisen from personal problems with madness, prison,

sexuality . . . (p. 36). Foucault emphasises this subjectivenss by referring to hisgenealogies as fictions, fictions abut the modern subject and its constitution

through different technologies of power. Fictions with a purpose, however, a polit-

ical purpose: to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people


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accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain

moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and

destroyed (Martin et al., 1988, p. 10). This unmasking of power is liberating in

a negative sense and the obvious response to it is to transgress the limits of what

we are, but in the last stage of his life and work, which he termed ethical, Foucaultpassed on to a more positive account of freedom than mere transgression, this is

freedom conceived as care for the self.

To be honest, and to return to Marshalls point, I disagree that Foucault failed

to articulate the nature of his genealogical writing. Although he was, indeed,

against systematization of all kinds there are various places where he spelled out

its purposes in the most explicit fashion. Certainly Nietzsche, genealogy, history

and What is Enlightenment? are key essays in this respect. They constitute well-

articulated explanations of genealogical writing by any account even if they stop

short of describing a method. Indeed, in the first of these essays, borrowing from

Nietzsche, Foucault identifies two concepts, two bare concepts, that guide the

genealogists work; those of descent (berkunft) and emergence (enstehung).

Bare as they may be, these concepts still set up the parameters within which

the genealogist writes, and he discusses them in some detail. In the second essay

Foucault goes beyond the negative characterization of genealogy as the unmasking

of technologies of domination for the purpose of refusal and presents us with a

more positive description of genealogy as a critical ontology of ourselves . . . to

be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, not even a permanent body of

knowledge that is accumulating, it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a

philosophical life in which critique of what we are is at one and the same time the

historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the

possibility of going beyond them (Foucault 1984, p. 50). That ethos, or attitude,

or philosophical life, is the ethos of self care.

Postmodernism and Politics

Although Marshalls book covers these developments in Foucaults thought, he

fails to take up and follow this revolutionary twist in Foucaults genealogical writ-

ing with the claims that he made on its behalf to the end. The book is, therefore, in

my view, only half written. I have another problem of a different kind with it; FPAE

adds very little if anything to what Marshall has already written about Foucault

and education previously, in his earlier articles and essays. It is built around the

self-same themes though he does flesh them out with three important introduc-

tory background chapters two of which are biographical. The book also makes

the same arguments as the articles. The first two chapters discuss the formative

intellectual and political influences on Foucault, while the third is an account ofliberalism and liberal education which introduces the reader to what the books

title advertises as its central thrust; the issue of personal autonomy in education.

The book ends with a short conclusion which summarizes the content of the book


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and recalls its purposes. These Marshall describes as twofold: first to provide an

introduction to Foucault for educators and students of education and to draw out

the educational implications of some of his writings; and, second, to provide a

critique, derived from Foucault, of the notion of personal autonomy in so far as this

is conceived in liberal writings as an important aim, if not the aim, of education(1996, p. 213).

I have the feeling that it would have been a better book had he published a selec-

tion of his articles and essays in their original form instead with an introductory

preface to them which could have included in more summary form the first two of

the books chapters. Indeed, the account they contain of the intellectual influences

on Foucault, his cultural background, and the French post-war intellectual scene

within which he grew are indispensable material for the reading public Marshall

identifies, educators or students who are still coming to grips with his writings. The

short discussion of the influence on Foucault of the different thinkers and teachers

he encountered in his formative years (Bachelard, Canguilhelm, Blanchot, Bataille,

Lefebrve, Descombes etc.) is useful also for those who seek more than a mere

acquaintance with his work. In point of fact, they tell us little if anything more than

is to be found already in the Foucault biographies that have been written since his

death by Eribon (1989). Macey (1993) and Miller (1993), but Marshalls summary

is important for those have not read any of these books.

His need to include a concluding chapter, on the other hand, appears strange

since it more or less reproduces the summary of what the books purposes and

argument is about which already appears in the Introduction. There are also

two chapters which seem like odd fits within the books general scheme, these

are chapters 5 and 7 which are entitled On Education and Doing Philosophy

of Education respectively. These chapters are unconnected with the theme of the

book and their inclusion raises puzzling questions. Chapter 5, which is a discussion

of Foucaults own personal characteristics as an educator and of his connectionswith the French university reforms in the late 1960s, could easily have been

summarised into a section in Chapter 2. Instead, Marshall reproduces his full article

on Pedagogy and Apedagogy: Lyotard and Foucault at Vincennes, already printed

in Michael Peterss Education and the Postmodern Condition. Marshall closes the

chapter with a look at how educationalists have used Foucaults work, which, again,

should have come earlier, at the beginning. He distinguishes them into modern

(Sarap, 1982; Walkerdine, 1984; Jones and Williamson, 1979; Hoskin, 1990), and

postmodern (Kiziltan et al., 1990).

Marshall is out of sympathy with the latters attempt at a Foucauldean post-

modernist critique of education. He affirms that Foucault cannot be used in general

but rather his insights should be used either to problematise certain givens such

as the pursuit of personal autonomy or in more particular genealogical studies(1996, p. 164). This statement and these limitations he places on Foucaults work,

are part of the evidence I mentioned earlier of his sympathy with the standard

complaint against postmodernism which he quotes from Beyer and Liston that it


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cannot deliver and provide support for the type of political project that educational

transformation must be (1996, p. 160). Marshall clearly states that Foucaults

genealogical writings cannot inspire a positive educational project. In this case he

clearly aligns Foucault with postmodernism.

Indeed, Marshall takes up the question whether Foucault is a postmodernistin Chapter 6. Identifying Lyotard as the typical postmodernist, he concludes

that, whatever the similarities between them, Foucault both refused to side with

Lyotard, because he did not wish to be seen as any enemy of reason and enlight-

enment, and to accept the label of post-modernist (1996, p. 185), I doubt that

Lyotard wishes to be seen as an enemy of reason either (note his famous strug-

gles with the notion of justice). Marshall concludes with Hoy that Foucault is

neither modernist nor anti-modernist but leaves the question whether he was a

postmodernist open (unless he tacitly takes post-modernist to be anti-modernist

which would be a mistake) (1996, p. 187).

But is it important whether Foucault could be described as a postmodernist

or not? He himself did not think so, being against all forms of labelling. How

does the issue contribute to the books purpose to critique the liberal notion of

personal autonomy? Chapter 6, entitled Personal Autonomy Revisited, refers

to Habermass famous critique of postmodernism as neo-liberal in its political

inspiration. Marshall, rightly (and against Habermas), does not include Foucault

as postmodern in this sense. He argues, to the contrary, that the promises of choice

and freedom made by the new-right left Foucault, who had just begun to address

the neo-liberalism that was about to sweep Europe and other areas of the Western

world (1996, p. 187) when he died, unimpressed, for they merely signify changes

in the form that governmentality takes (Foucault, 1979b) (1996, p. 188). In short,

Marshall disassociates Foucault also from the recent trend (a major shift he calls

it) in the rising neo-liberal discourse to divert the notion of autonomy away from

its traditional liberal sense; to refer to the autonomous chooseras part of the widerdiscourse of a dominant consumer culture fed by a free-market economic agenda.

The main difference he notes between the two conceptions of autonomy is that in

traditional liberalism the autonomous selfs power of choice was authentic, while

the neo-liberal autonomous chooser is merely a creature of consumerism, whose

formative forces effectively constitute the states new technologies of government

with education playing its part.

This, indeed, is a crucial objection against continuing to make the liberal notion

of personal autonomy the aim of education. The situation, Marshall points out, was

well-understood by Lyotard, but where does it leave us with Foucault? A proper

Foucauldian response to neo-liberalism, in Marshalls view, is an increased vigi-

lance, and an increased imagination and inventiveness, to deal with the complex

problem it represents. But what about something more positive? Marshall suggestsa neo-social democratic approach to these crises of education (and the welfare

state) and the increasing demand for autonomy. This, however, is not, he

remarks, explicit in the extant works of Foucault (1996, p. 193). And he is right


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in this respect, Foucault, however, described care for self as having both an active

erotic and a political dimension with important pedagogical implication. True, he

remained unwilling to develop a political theory or position out of the elements of

an ethos of self-care, to tell people what to do, but they clearly point to a form of

social and political responsibility which renders the characterization of Foucaultas a mere prophet of extremity, or of the nihilistic politics of transgression for

its own sake, as inaccurate as the judgement that he is a mere destroyer. In any

case, Marshalls book cries out for a critical chapter on Foucaults politics. His tacit

assumption that Foucault is a straightforward anarchist will not do.

Liberalism, Liberal Education and Autonomy

One gets the feeling that Marshall may have felt the need for his concluding chapter

because he may have felt that, by the end, the book had lost its sense of direction.

The chapter could be read as an effort to recapture the books central thrust, to

return it to its advertised focus, the issue of liberal autonomy and education, afterthe detours of the previous chapters. But it does not solve the books problems in

this respect. For some reason or other the author seems to have been determined

to include in it the whole array of themes about Foucault explored in his earlier

articles. Either that or he did not have enough mileage on his central theme to

justify a book about it and had to resort to other themes on Foucault to beef it up.

The result is that it struggles for coherence. Somehow I also got the feeling that

Marshall had not worked his material enough into a book. It does not help either

that the book is littered with gross typographical and other errors of production

of different kind, beginning with the contents page itself, errors which certainly

should not feature in a publication of this standard. The problem in this case, of

course, is with the books production not with its writing, but production errors are

off-putting and do detract from a books overall quality.Apart from its biographical purpose, which is aimed at education students for

whom, in general, Foucault is a shadowy presence, Marshall uses Chapter 2 of

the book to introduce Foucault the genealogist. This he does by illustration, by

describing the writing of Discipline and Punish. In Chapter 7 he also illustrates

an alternative Foucauldian philosophical approach to education by drawing on

the same book, thus confirming my earlier thesis that Discipline and Punish has

remained Foucaults central work for him. In describing their impact on his work

in Chapter 2, Marshall emphasises that Foucaults readings of the writers who

influenced him, including Heidegger and Nietzsche, were never straightforward

but always subversive; all who were adopted were not merely adopted, but adapted

and then made to groan (1996, p. 21).

Having fulfilled the first purpose of his book Marshall passes on to discussliberalism and liberal education. Ignoring its notorious complexity he divides

the liberal political tradition into three strands each corresponding with different

understandings of freedom, individualism and state power. Apart from the dubious


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merit of this kind of typology, one is struck by the absence from his account

of the established superstars of liberal political philosophy today like Rawls,

Gutmann, Ackerman, Taylor, Habermas, Dworkin, Walzer. Instead of drawing on

recent liberal political theory he classifies his liberalisms around the theories of

the classical pregenitors of liberalism, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mill,Spencer, Hayek, etc. His only reference to a contemporary is to Robert Nozick

who he treats, however, as a straightforward descendant of Locke. The obvious

question that occurs to ones mind is, why classify at all? The answer in this case is

that Marshall wanted to find a manageable way of approaching liberal philosophy

of education. His preliminary classification of liberalism enables him to classify

liberal philosophy of education also into three corresponding strands.

Still, I am not sure that he needed to classify liberal philosophy of education into

strands either. All that seemed necessary for him at this stage was to establish, as

he does, that all these liberalisms and possible variations on them possess a number

of common elements which find their articulation in the notion of rational personal

autonomy which they all share. Marshalls three strands of liberal philosophy of

education are represented by the work of R.S. Peters, John Dewey and Kenneth

Strike. Peters is taken to represent the British liberal philosophical tradition. Strike

the neo-liberal in the Hayek mode (though Marshall concedes that this position-

ing is not unproblematic and would probably be challenged by Strike himself).

But where does Dewey fit in? Surely he doesnt fit within the third strand of

libertarian liberalism Marshall identifies with Locke and Nozick! At one stage he

refers in passing to Rortys fascinating thesis about similarities between Dewey and

Foucault but dismisses it on different grounds. One, more credible, option would

be to align Dewey with the communitarian liberalism of Arendt and Habermas.

Perhaps he could have taken up another suggestion of Rortys that Deweys politics

are consonant with Rawlss post-A Theory of Justice brand of liberalism which, in

Rortys view, prioritizes democracy over philosophy. At the very least, Rortyattempts to open up a strand of contemporary liberalism other than the three identi-

fied by Marshall consonant with Deweyan politics, one Foucault would have been

sympathetic with, which does not begin politics with a foundational philosophical

statement about truth or justice, or about human nature.

One thing is apparant; Dewey does not fit Marshalls three-fold typology. In

fact, Marshall is sometimes plainly wrong about Dewey. One case in point is when

he includes Dewey among those philosophers who focus on the teachers authority

in the classroom instead of on the micro-technologies of power at work in it. This

characterisation does not square with Deweys view about the regulative role of

the social environment, of living together, which led him to discuss power in

terms of control, guidance and direction rather than the personal authority of the

teacher. What is at issue for Dewey is how power can be exercised non-coercivelywithin democratic environments. His answer is that it must be internal, achieved

through that identity of interest and understanding (1916, p. 39) reached by

players participating in a game, not as a mere function of the teachers authority,


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however this authority may be justified. Indeed, if anything, Dewey has been

criticised for neglecting the importance of the teachers authority. This is not, in

my view, correct either. But the point I want to make here is that to join Dewey

with Peters as one for whom authority is the correct concept for the discussion

of social control (Marshall, 1996, p. 78), is off the mark. Moreover, Deweysdetailed discussion of control, direction and guidance inDemocracy and Education

contradicts Marshalls other claim about Dewey that for him power is emphatically

off stage. Indeed, this discussion amounts to an in-depth treatment of the different

forms of power Dewey deemed relevant to schooling.

But these are particular examples of the the more general problem with

Marshalls treatment of Dewey which is that Dewey does not really fit into his

typology of liberalism, and cannot therefore be assigned positions that are typi-

cally liberal. Indeed, Dewey does not fall easily within the liberal category at

all, not because he did not share the traditional liberal values and the liberal faith

in reform as a tool of progress, but because his emphasis on the social has often

been criticised by traditional liberals as bordering on the illiberal. This is because

it runs counter to the unconditional value liberalism places on individuality. The

charge of communitarianism which was frequently levelled against him in the

past was a sinister one for old liberals but holds less water in todays intellectual

climate. There are well-known sections of Deweys writing (including Democracy

and Education) where he defended and celebrated individuality, or at least a certain

version of individuality, and his view of community was far from collectivist

in form or spirit. But Deweys case illustrates perfectly the perils of employing

classifications such as Marshalls, and one cannot help suspecting that the reason

why he avoids the more contemporary liberal political philosophers is perhaps

because, like Dewey, they defy such easy categorisation and would hopelessly

complicate matters for him.

And, of course, these same remarks hold true also for Marshalls classifica-tion of liberal educational philosophies; it may be neat and pat and easy to work

with, but it does no justice at all to the complex phenomenon that has come to

be recognised as liberal philosophy of education over the past forty or fifty years.

Curiously again (because he does not explain it) it leaves out all the contemporary

protagonists (Strikes book dates back fifteen years) within liberal philosophy of

education. And this ommission is more serious than the ommission of the political

philosophers, because, as he claims himself The concern of this book has been to

mount a critique of liberal education, in particular the notion inherent in liberal

thought of developing personal autonomy (1996, p. 137), and one queries the

extent to which such a critique is adequately served by a discussion of Peters,

Dewey and Strike, who cannot collectively be taken as representing the differences

within liberal philosophy of education today. Marshall tries to reassure us that thisdoes not really matter because Regardless of these differences . . . within the liberal

framework there is a certain view of human beings and society, which permits a

general view of education to be articulated, formulated and put into practice, and


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that within liberalism and liberal education there is a very strongly espoused thesis

about the centrality of rational autonomy, which is reflected in liberal theories of

schooling. But why, in that case, to return to my previous point, complicate matters

with dubious typologies?

Autonomy Revisited

Marshall follows his chapter on liberalism and liberal education with a more

detailed discussion of autonomy in education arguing with Colin Lankshear (1982)

that many who wish to advance personal autonomy as an educational aim are also

prepared to argue for considerable constraint upon the young (Marshall, 1996,

p. 83). The examples of the many he cites are Dearden, Peters, Hirst, and White.

He goes on to describe several possible conflicting positions on autonomy (1996,

p. 89) and asks how Foucault would consider them. Since he considered persons

to be socially constructed beings, he would certainly reject, Marshall rightly points

out, the idea that being autonomous is part of human nature. Moreover, as socialconstructs, Foucault showed that modern individuals are not constituted as free

individuals but as docile beings, beings who are disciplined to be governable. Their

education, of course, contributes significantly to this outcome. Thus, in reality,

Marshall concludes his Foucauldian critique of the liberal ideal of cultivating

personal autonomy, what appears as an ethical and educational ideal is a masquer-

ade for the political aim of constituting selves as subjects of a certain kind (1996,

p. 111). Which, in reality, is no startling thesis since the Marxists got there before

Foucault some time ago.

The question which follows is whether Foucault, like Horkheimer and Adorno

before him (with whom he shares the joint influences of Heidegger and Weber),

represents the socially constructed individual as a totally administered being also.

Whether, in short, his account of power leaves us with any room for notions offreedom and autonomy, and, therefore, education, to be meaningful. Or whether

we should merely accept our fate as determined beings. Marshall rightly answers

no to these questions. Foucaults account of power, he says, becomes mellowed by

notions of resistance, freedom and hope (1996, p. 90). I would say that becomes

mellowed, is a mild way of putting it and, again, fails to do justice to Foucaults

account of the workings of genealogy in the final ethical stage of his intellectual

development. This phase, represented also in the last two volumes of The History

of Sexuality, turns on Foucaults perception that the replacement in priority of the

Greek maxim, to care for thyself, with the maxim, also Greek, to know thyself,

was fundamentally mistaken (p. 103). But it also rested on Foucaults radical

reassessment of the function of genealogy which I referred to earlier.

Marshall does identify an emerging liberal critique in the work of StefaanCuypers which represents care for the self as a fundamental educational aim.

Cuypers, however, does not wish to replace personal autonomy with self care, he

believes that we need both. Marshall disagrees insisting that there are too many


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problems with personal autonomy to justify retaining it as an educational aim, he

also finds Cuypers notion of caring for oneself distinctly different from Foucaults

and unacceptable on several grounds. Marshall concludes the chapter by noting

that none of the accounts of autonomy furnished by the liberal philosophers of

education he discusses would be acceptable to Foucault. But, again the questionarises by itself, what did Foucault say about freedom and self care himself? It

is not taken up in Education and Power either, the next chapter of the book.

Instead, Marshall returns to the argument already more than amply explored in

his earliest articles on Foucault and education, that power is essentially off-stage

in philosophy of education and needs to be brought to centre-stage, and that the

discourse on power is really suppressed by a liberal philosophical framework which

operates with an inadequate conception of power and shows a marked propensity

to talk about authority instead.

The chapter contains a detailed account of Foucaults twin notions of bio-

power and governmentality which are closely tied to his other complementary

notion of policing as the central characteristics in the display or power in the

modern state. Marshall also challenges Walzers view that Hobbes was Foucaults

major intellectual antagonist, arguing instead that his real opponent was Rousseau.

Though Foucaults characterisation of juridico-discursive power depends heavily

on legal models from Hobbes to Austin, Marshall argues, governance and bio-

power are Foucaults real targets and Hobbes and juridico-legal theories only

a target because they mask bio-power (p. 118). Again Marshall continues to

pursue Foucaults account of power as an oppressive instrument in the chapter. He

describes Foucaults account of bio-power, of the political technology of the body

(p. 127), and observes that its minute techniques are at work also in the school, its

practices creating a complex power/knowledge web which disciplines the bodies

and minds of children in different ways, whether in their best interests or not.

Liberal philosophers of education, he observes, have viewed power as neces-sarily negative, as always acting contrary to childrens interests. Their tendency to

focus on authority, he argues, means that they have ignored the actual mechanisms

of power which feature in the classroom, though he admits to recent important

correctives to this trend coming mainly from Burbules and White. The overall

conclusion of the chapter is again damning for liberal education which in its

pursuit of personal autonomy, masks the power relations operating, and hence the

thrust for governmentality, by its talk of authority and the development of mind

(1996, p. 215). Again, it follows from Foucaults genealogy of power/knowledge.

But what are the positive things Foucault had to say about power and freedom, how

can they be turned into classroom strategies that operate in the childrens interests?

Perhaps they cannot, but surely the question requires serious discussion!

In Chapter 7 entitled Doing Philosophy of Education. which is his finalchapter apart from the Conclusion, Marshall refers to a current impasse of

philosophy of education. Foucaults genealogical writing, he contends, shows us

a way out of it. He illustrates how by returning to the theme of the punishment


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of children, contrasting Foucaults approach to the subject with the traditional

analytic approach. What is particularly interesting in this chapter is the blending

of Wittgenstein into the Foucauldean critique, but, again, this is not new either, it

reproduces an article which Marshall had already published in 1995. His critique

of punishment, and his argument about the deficiencies of the liberal approachto power and autonomy, is where Marshalls own critique on modern education

is most interesting and persuasive. It is in this chapter that he elaborates briefly

on Foucaults notion of freedom as transgression, but he fails to pursue it for its

potential educational implications, for example in terms of cultivating the strong

poet, which Rorty, for instance identifies as the function of liberal universities in a

postmetaphysical age.

The answer to the question why occurs explicitly on page 216 of the book where

Marshall summarizes his approach to Foucault in the following way: A general

conclusion which might be drawn, he says, is that Foucault has little to offer

to practising educators in terms of a way forward or a way out. This conclusion

explains Marshalls failure to examine the positive side of Foucaults genealogical

writing, his elaboration of freedom or autonomy, the new counter-modern ethos

of responsibility, in terms of self-care which could have rendered the book, in

my view, complete. Given his dismissal of Cuyperss model Marshall could have

turned to Foucault himself for clues about how self-care could be an educational

aim teachers could work with against the humanistic definitions of autonomy.

Rortys account of how transgression could be a form of education through the

cultivation of poetic irony which edifies the individual and enables self-overcoming

could have provided a starting point. Rorty, of course, limits the cultivation of

poetic irony to ones private life, socialisation into the prevalent culture is the form

he gives public education, and this solution runs smack into Foucaults critique

of power.

But what about an account of self-care which restores unity to the educationalenterprise? This would, indeed, be a revolutionary possibility and certainly one

worth exploring in-depth in a world where education is in crisis and where the

individualism of a market mentality is constantly glorified, particularly in the

media. Foucault himself sought it in pre-modern times, in antiquity. Like so many

other philosophers discontented with modernity he goes back to classical Greek

and Roman times when the ethical project, in his view, took the wrong turn. I feel

that Marshall has surrendered too readily to the prevalent view among Foucaults

Anglo-saxon critics that Foucault has nothing politically interesting or meaningful

to say to education. Taking that judgement up critically should be the first step

towards a deeper analysis of Foucault and education which could be exceedingly

rewarding.


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176 KENNETH WAIN

Notes

1 The list could have included Cleo H. Cherryholmess (1990) Power and Criticism, Teachers

College Record, but Cherryholmess book appeared in the same year as Marshalls article.2 See, for instance, Jeffrey Roths review article Of What Help is He? A Review of Foucault and

Education, American Educational Research Journal, Winter 1992, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 683694:The problem is that Foucaults ideas about the constitution of human subjects have been transferred

almost exclusively as negative critique, emphasizing domination, silencing, and categorization

(p. 683).

References

Ball, S. (ed.): 1990, Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge, Routledge, London.

Foucault, M: 1984, What is Enlightenment?, in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, Penguin,

Harmondsworth.

Greene, M: 1983, Foucault, Structuralism, Hermeneutics, and Education: a Perspective, Compara-

tive Education Review (Fall) 2(2), 105110.

Marshall, J.D.: 1989, Foucault and Education, Australian Journal of Education 33(2), 97111.

Marshall, J.D.: 1990, Asking philosophical Questions about Education: Foucault on Punishment,Educational Philosophy and Theory 22(2), 8192.

Marshall, J.D.: 1995, Wittgenstein and Foucault: Resolving Philosophical Puzzles, Studies in

Philosophy and Education 14, 329344.

Martin, L.H., Gutman, H. and Hutton, P.H. (eds.): 1988, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with

Michel Foucault, Tavistock Publishers.

fuko, autonomija

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