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Home , French philosophy, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Jacques Lacan, Mark Poster, Michel Serres

POSTSTRUCTURALISM, , Philosophy and

VOLUME 12

Series Editor: Robert E. Floden, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, U.S.A. Kenneth R. Howe, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.

Editorial Board David Bridges, Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K. Jim Garrison, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, U.S.A. Nel Noddings, Stanford University, CA, U.S.A. Shirley A. Pendlebury, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Denis C. Phillips, Stanford University, CA, U.S.A. Kenneth A. Strike, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, U.S.A.

SCOPE OF THE SERIES

There are many issues in education that are highly philosophical in character. Among these issues are the nature of human cognition; the types of warrant for human beliefs; the moral and epistemological foundations of educational research; the role of education in developing effective citizens; and the nature of a just society in relation to the educational practices and policies required to foster it. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any issue in education that lacks a philosophical dimension.

The sine qua non of the volumes in the series is the identification of the expressly philosophical dimensions of problems in education coupled with an expressly philosophical approach to them. Within this boundary, the topics—as well as the audiences for which they are intended—vary over a broad range, from volumes of primary interest to to others of interest to a more general audience of scholars and students of education.

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Poststructuralism, Philosophy, Pedagogy

Edited by

JAMES D. MARSHALL School of Education, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 1-4020-1894-7 ISBN 1-4020-2602-7 (eBook)

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.

In all countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

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All Rights Reserved © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. DEDICATION

To my late wife Bridget who lived with this from 1994, but did not see the final product, and to my colleagues who have stood with the project. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction xiii

JAMES D. MARSHALL / and Education: World War II-1968 1

GERT BIESTA / Education after 27

MICHAEL PETERS / Lyotard, and Education: The Problem of Capitalism 43

MARK OLSSEN / The School as the Microscope of Conduction: 57 Doing Foucauldian Research in Education

JOHN R. MORSS / and the Space of Education: Poststructuralism, Critical , and Schooled Bodies 85

STEPHEN APPEL / Lacan, Representation, and Subjectivity: Some Implications for Education 99

LYNDA STONE / ’s ‘Mystery’ of the in Process 119

MARK OLSSEN / Erratum to: The School as the Microscope E1 of Conduction: Doing Foucauldian Research in Education

vii PREFACE

This book has been quite long in the making. In its original format, but with some different chapters, and with the then publisher, it foundered (as did other volumes in the planned series). At the in press stage, when we obviously thought it was going ahead, it was suddenly canned. Quite distraught I closed it away in a desk drawer for a year or so. But then Joy Carp of Kluwer Academic Publishers expressed an interest in it, and we were in business again. Most of the contributors to the original volume have stayed with it, only to be delayed by myself, for a variety of reasons (but see the dedication). I had been writing on for a number of years but had become concerned about mis-appropriations of his ideas and works in educational literature. I was also concerned about the increasingly intemperate babble in that literature of the notion of . Indeed at one major educational conference in North America I listened to a person expounding postmodernism in terms of ‘Destroy, Destroy, Destroy’. Like Michel Foucault I am not quite sure what postmodernism is, but following Mark Poster’s account of poststructuralism - as merely a collective term to catch a number of French thinkers – I thought that what we had to do in education was to look at what particular thinkers had said, and not become involved in vapid discussion at an abstract level on ‘-isms’. Thus the book was conceived.

Jim Marshall

ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank my colleagues who have contributed to this volume for their persistence and perseverance. I am most grateful to the original contributors, to Lynda Stone for coming on board, and of course to Kluwer Academic Publishers for their support. In the Introduction and Chapter One, I have drawn upon material previously published in 1995 and 1996, particularly upon chapters 1 and 2 of my Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996). I wish to thank Ho-Chia Cheuh, Jean Gibbons and Andrew Lavery for their assistance in formatting the text.

Jim Marshall

xi JAMES D. MARSHALL

INTRODUCTION

1. POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND POSTMODERNISM In contemporary philosophical and social thought we are being challenged by ideas and practices referred to by the terms ‘postmodern’ and ‘poststructural’. Traditional Anglo- American has been mainly hostile to these ideas. For example the recent proposal to award an honorary doctorate at the University of Cambridge was met by considerable hostility and objection (see e.g., Smith, 1992). Given that burst of outrage a comment on philosophy by George Simmel would seem to be quite appropriate: “philosophy is its own first problem”. Simmel’s point is that philosophers do not seem to agree either on what philosophy is, or on how to do philosophy, culminating in a myopic, if not paranoic tendency by them to turn their skills and methodology inwards and upon themselves to settle such disputes and arrive at the nature of philosophy. Instead Simmel described philosophy as “the temperament expressed by a certain world view” (Simmel, 1959, p. 294). But what is also at stake is the authority of philosophy and the status of academic philosophy, for if there is no grand meta-narrative such as philosophy to provide firm foundations for other forms of thought, then philosophy becomes at best but one narrative amongst others. had made this point in his approach to doing philosophy. For him philosophical puzzles arose (Wittgenstein, 1953) when language “went on holiday”. To do philosophy then was not to puzzle over some grand conceptual schema but to resolve the puzzles generated from language. Philosophy could not therefore operate from a position of authority. Because of this there was little point in philosophy as conceived by academia, according to Wittgenstein. The making of this point did not endear him to the philosophical establishment. The aim of this book is to provide an historical and a conceptual background to post-, and in part to post-, for readers entering the discussions on poststructuralism. It does not attempt to be at the cutting edge of these debates nor to be advancing research in these areas. Instead it concentrates on the historical and intellectual background whilst at the same introducing some of the key French poststructuralist thinkers. However each of the chapters also looks at the educational implications of the ideas discussed. Michel Foucault, who can be described as a poststructuralist (although he resisted all attempts to categorise him and his work [e.g., 1977, p. 114]), comes close to

xiii J.D. Marshall (ed), Poststructuralism, Philosophy, Pedagogy, xiii-xxvi. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. XIV JAMES D. MARSHALL

Simmel’s and Wittgenstein’s views on philosophy in interpreting Kant’s notion of the Enlightenment not as involving a universal world view, or as laying firm epistemological foundations for knowledge, but as representing an attitude towards the present (Foucault, 1984). Kant had posed the question concerning Man as to where we were at the present, of understanding the meaning of our own life. For Kant the improvement of mankind was to be achieved through the critical use of reason in its universal applications. While Foucault agreed with Kant on the importance of reason, that reason must be critical, and that we must have the courage to use reason, he disagreed with him on the notion of a universal reason. The failure by philosophers post-Kant to question the application of reason which had pretensions to universality in applications to human dilemmas had produced what Foucault called the post-Kantian slumbers. Foucault resisted the term ‘postmodern’ often claiming that he did not understand it. If postmodernism is a movement which is rapidly increasing in influence, both within and without education, it is far from clear what “it” is, as that term is used by writers in a number of different and often conflicting ways. Whilst it is an increasingly familiar term for describing intellectual tendencies or eras its use nevertheless remains controversial. The term ‘postmodern’ surfaces in the 1930s and 1940s mainly in relation to the arts, including history, and architecture (Rose, 1991). However to talk of modernism and post-modernism as periods or epochs, may be itself to adopt a modernist stance, namely that it is possible to delineate the characteristics of a period and, thereby, to be beyond that period. As periods are always past this may be to fall into a modern trap. It may be better to see it as a complex map of late 20th century thought and practice rather than any clear cut philosophic, political and/or aesthetic movement (Marshall and Peters, 1992). Is the distinction between the modern and the postmodern merely polemical or does it indicate major and important philosophical differences? If it is the latter philosophers have to worry about it, for something like a Kuhnian style shift may be occurring in philosophy. If so some philosophers may be left behind. The question has been formulated explicitly, and debated, by Jean François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas. Whereas Lyotard rejoices in the shift away from post-Enlightenment thought, totalising thought, and the philosophical ‘’ of meta-narratives, Habermas wishes to preserve what was important in the Enlightenment’s view of reason. begins his forward to (the [1984] translation of) Lyotard [1979]) with this observation: (postmodernism) involves a radical break, both with dominant culture and aesthetic, and with a rather different moment of socioeconomic organization against which its structural novelties and innovations are measured: a new social or economic moment (or even system). Lyotard’s (1979) well known definition is that ‘postmodern’ is an “incredulity towards meta- narratives” but in the main this position is also held by poststructuralists.

INTRODUCTION XV

In summary then we can note an antagonism towards poststructuralism and postmodernism by both Anglo-American analytic philosophers and also by social theorists, e.g., Habermas and some marxists, who hold still to the tenets of the Enlightenment message of emancipation through critical reason. To a large extent the focus of this criticism has been on French philosophy, and on those thinkers caught by the term “poststructuralist” and who are represented in this collection.

2. POSTSTRUCTURALISM The emphasis in this volume is on poststructuralism because it is easier to catch a group of thinkers with this term than with the term ‘postmodern’. It also catches a group of thinkers/philosophers who have provided alternative ways of doing philosophy and whose work has considerable implications for education. But first something more needs to be said in general about poststructuralism. If it is very difficult to define postmodernism it is also very difficult to define ‘poststructuralism’ (and indeed structuralism) in any homogeneous manner, and to classify philosophers normally caught by the notion of poststructuralism. If it were thought that poststructuralism could be defined against, or in opposition to, the called structuralism which had emerged in the 1960s, unfortunately, there is no one doctrine that can be called structuralism either, and there is no homogenous set of thinkers caught by the term ‘structuralist’. To treat structuralism and structuralists homogeneously is to make a mistake which, according to Michael Peters (1996, p. 22), “has been compounded indefinitely”. If there is no one thing called structuralism to define poststructuralism against, a search for a definition might turn then to identifying some set of characteristics, or an essence. But no definition is forthcoming from this turn either, as there is little caught by the term ‘poststructuralism’ other than a widely differing, diverse and multi-faceted group of theses and thinkers. Those caught by the term do not necessarily define themselves consciously against aspects or versions of structuralism for, in some cases, their positions had developed from structuralism (e.g., ), and for others their positions had been developed elsewhere. In July 1967 a cartoon by Maurice Henry appeared in La Quinzaine Littéraire, depicting Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, and Foucault as structuralists by their tribal costumes. But that is hardly to provide a definition (for the tribal costume depicts shared characteristics, and it is not obvious what they are), and as a definition by enumeration it was false as, arguably, Foucault had never been a structuralist and Lacan was to become a poststructuralist. Mark Poster (1988, p. 8) points out that in fact the term ‘poststructuralism’ was coined by North American academics to pull together a group of diverse thinkers. In his work on the mode of information (Poster, 1993) he draws upon , Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean François Lyotard, But also caught in the net are, amongst others, Gilles Deleuze, , Julia Kristeva, and arguably and Jacques Lacan. Most of these thinkers are discussed in the following chapters. XVI JAMES D. MARSHALL

At best we might use the terms ‘’ and ‘diversity’, as part of a putative definition, but they hardly lead to an homogeneous grouping able to provide a core definition. Perhaps in we can look at the linguistic turn taken by poststructuralists. This was not the logico-linguistic turn taken by Anglo-American twentieth century philosophy. It was more like the turn taken by the later Wittgenstein who forcefully argued that the linguistic turn, in so far as it sought to furnish meta- narratives which were foundational, was mistaken. Structuralism had taken a linguistic turn earlier in that language took on a life of its own in which meaning was not given by a conscious being but was given by its place in a total language structure. Poststructuralism departs from this. As Lyotard puts it in “Wittgenstein ‘After’”: The examination of language games, just like the critique of the faculties, identifies and reinforces the separation of language from itself. There is no unity to language; there are islands of language, each of them ruled by a different regime, untranslatable into others. This dispersion is good in itself, and ought to be respected (Lyotard, 1993, p. 20).

Lyotard uses the plurality of language to launch attacks on any conception of universal reason and the unity of the subject. In Foucault’s hands language or constitutes the subject in Discipline and Punish through what seems to be a performatve effect (Austin, 1962) though Foucault does not use this idea himself. The subject is neither unified nor an individuated substance in the later Foucault. Instead it is said to be a form which can be filled out by different linguistic descriptions, not all of which are identical (Foucault, 1984b, p. 290). However in my view it is best to look in detail at some individual poststructuralist philosophers, their approach to philosophical issues and their approach to education, and not try to encapsulate them in any broad encompassing definition. This is an implicit theme of the collection as it prevents distortion of their differences and diversity, and contributes to the preservation of their individual and unique philosophical positions. For these reasons the introduction will be brief, though I provide a considerable background to the emergence of poststructuralism in France since World War II in chapter 1. But difference and diversity have further dimensions as these poststructuralists were not particularly friendly to one another. Their personal differences were not just promoted by versions of Parisien chic, petty jealousies, and disputes of an academic kind but, rather, they were to do with how the life of the public and general intellectual in France is to be perceived and lived. As Simmel noted philosophy is a temperament exhibited as an aspect of a world view.

3. ANTI- , who was the first French to launch attacks against the social , was influential upon Merleau-Ponty who lectured upon him. Both Sartre and

INTRODUCTION XVII

Foucault reacted to Bergson, but in different ways, with Foucault taking an anti- humanist position. Poststructuralists do share at least this feature -anti-humanism - though even this was shared with others, e.g., the structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the marxist structuralist . Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism was one of the anti- humanist attacks in French philosophy which had begun in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The particular targets of these attacks were humanistic and the marxist existentialism of Sartre (Claude Lévi-Strauss launched almost a personal attack upon Sartre). Humanism, which purported to liberate human , had, according to ’s critique of humanism, only oppressed them. Heidegger had a considerable influence upon French philosophy and upon thinkers as diverse and opposed as Sartre and Foucault. This anti-humanist theme of the 1960s can be characterised as involving (see chapter 1) a theme of the end of philosophy, which was to be replaced by , its universal theses were to be replaced by the historical and the concrete, and absolute (especially the correspondence theory of truth) was to be abandoned. The basis of this rejection is well summarised by Deleuze in his very influential book , originally published in 1962 (see chapter 1). For some commentators poststructuralists are the heirs of Nietzsche, and Deleuze’s book on Nietzsche the key Nietzschean text (see e.g., chapters 3 and 5 below by Michael Peters and John Morss respectively). We should note then the importance accorded by poststructuralists to the pessimism of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the decline of Western civilisation (this pessimism is to be found also in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein), and the critiques of humanism and its promises of development, improvement and emancipation. In the Universities in the 1950s and 1960s the philosophical curriculum followed two broad paths. The first, which most students followed, was based upon a revisionism of the philosophy of Descartes and Kant through the works of Hegel, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger, and the early teaching and translations of Kojève and Hyppolite. In general terms we are talking about humanism and marxism, and existentialism and phenomenolgy in particular. In the 1950s this was to be exemplified by the writings of Sartre and the writings and teaching of Merleau-Ponty. The second general, but less fashionable strand in France, was to be developed from Nietzsche’s reading of Kant through Heidegger and, Bataille, and . It built also upon the ideas of philosophy of , developed from Jean Cavaillès, but in the work of , , and Louis Althusser. Foucault sites himself firmly in this second strand and it is this teaching which had strong influences upon the poststructuralists. Habermas (1981) notes and rues this direction of thought, seeing it as involving a return to . XVIII JAMES D. MARSHALL

4. MAY-JUNE 1968 AND AFTER The French workers’ and students’ revolution in 1968 was a key for the emergence of poststructuralism (see chapter 1). and had an enormous influence upon French intellectuals. Indeed what is called (French) poststructuralism has also been called ‘68 philosophy’. A student protest movement which had begun at the Nanterre campus of the University of , in March soon spread to the Sorbonne and to the workers at the Renault factory at Flins. France was brought to a standstill. As the authority and stability of the state were called in question, President Charles de Gaulle finally sought assurances from the military to support the breaking of the rebellion. Fortunately this was not to be needed for it withered away in a reassertion of state power, skillfully orchestrated by de Gaulle. Whilst there are considerable differences about the interpretation of these events there is little doubt that on the students’ part it was not initially a conspiracy, that it was more than an adolescent rebellion, and more than a crisis in the universities, though it was at least that. It was certainly a political crisis involving and new forms of left communitarian structures. It can also be seen as part of world wide student rebellions and in France, in particular, against the events in Algeria. There were very well trained street fighters in the student movement then. But it also involved , and might be seen as heralding neo-liberal versions of individualism. Educational reform had been a top priority for the Gaullist administration since at least 1959. But Minister of Education Christian Fouchet’s educational reforms of 1966 were seen as manifestations of the technocratic-capitalist state by some, and by others as attempts to destroy the liberal university (Posner, 1968, pp. 69-74) (See further Marshall, 1996, chapter 5). The events of May-June 1968 are important also because they pointed to inadequacies in social theory and in the practices of the democratic left. In their practice the students had shown the pressing need for new forms of social theory. This theoretical vacuum was entered by the group of thinkers who are caught by the coined term ‘poststructuralism.’ Indeed the paths taken by the philosophers whom we are interested in here may be considered as both continuing the 1968 revolt and developing theoretically the students’ and workers’ revolution. Hence the use of the term ‘68 Philosophy.’ It would be a mistake however to see these events as causing the emergence of poststructuralist philosophy, for the intellectual roots lie much deeper in Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, but May-June 1968 provided in the difference and diversity that poststructuralism itself exhibits. For feminists poststructuralism was to provide theoretical paths to develop themes already introduced by de Beauvoir as early as 1949 in The Second Sex (see chapter on Kristeva).

INTRODUCTION XIX

5. THE NEW LITERATURE By May-June 1968 many seminal works had been published by poststructuralists. It was this literature that attracted the attention of North American academics and led to the coining of the term. Important works were: Gilles Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy in 1962: Jacques Derrida’s Writing and Difference in 1967, and Of Grammatology in 1968; Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation first appeared in 1961, and The Order of Things in 1966; and Jacques Lacan’s Ecrits in 1966 (Lacan traversed both structuralism and poststructuralism). Julia Kristeva’s Semeiotiké appeared in 1969. But these writers did not occupy all of the philosophical stage, for in addition to , Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Louis Althusser and other marxists, prominent philosophers writing in France at this time included, for example, Paul Ricoeur, , Georges Canguilhem, and . Poststructuralism, or ‘68 philosophy’, was then but one strand of French philosophy.

6. CRITICISMS According to Henry Giroux the post modern debate “has spurned little consensus and a great deal of confusion and animosity” (Giroux, 1995, p. ix). He notes that much of the reaction has involved rhetorical flourishes that dismiss postmodernism “as reactionary , fad, or simply a new form of consumerism”. Much of what he has said there applies to reactions against poststructuralism. Wittgenstein was a philosopher of culture (Peters and Marshall, 1999). The culture that was attacked by the thinkers in this volume was undergoing dramatic change as the meta-narratives of modernity became increasingly irrelevant to youth. There was a wide ranging breakdown in forms of authority, economic uncertainty, the proliferation of economic technologies, and the march of permeated by principles of performativity. Poststructuralist at least tried to look at the modern world and not retreat to some ‘golden’ modern . But if we take Lyotard’s notion of the differend seriously, as involving in a conflict no form of agreed judgement applicable to both arguments, then it is difficult to see how rational agreement could arise. That is not a problem for the poststructuralists but it is for the modernists. This rational impasse has in many cases led to a form of political correctness based upon the universal themes of modernism (Giroux, 1995, p. xii). Thus poststructuralism and postmodernism, Giroux says, have been seen by some people as nihilistic, stylistic nihilism and even as soft fascism. The important point here he argues is to see which side provides a more insightful understanding of how power operates in modern societies, how it is produced and developed, and how people become subjugated or remain in tutelage, to use Foucault’s term. Giroux dismisses some of these critiques but acknowledges that important critiques have been developed by Jürgen Habermas, Perry Anderson, David Harvey and . Within France important critiques have been raised by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut (1990). XX JAMES D. MARSHALL

7. STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE VOLUME Each of the authors of the chapters in this collection was requested to deal with ‘their’ philosopher in the areas of: brief biographical details; key philosophical ideas; and the applications in, or implications of their work for education (though not necessarily in that order). For some poststructuralists biographical detail is extremely important for understanding their work − e.g., Michel Foucault, who saw philosophy as work upon the self and who was to say of his major works that each was a response to a personal issue. Some of these philosophers do address educational issues very explicitly − e.g., Lyotard − but others do not − e.g., Foucault. Hence the authors have, almost of necessity, addressed the general request differently.

8. FRENCH PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION In chapter 1 I provide a wide introduction to French philosophy and education between 1945 and 1968. This is to provide the background in both philosophy and education for the authors discussed. The chapter is designed to give a general overview and not to discuss in detail any of the authors dealt with individually in later chapters. After a general introduction on the problems involved in defining poststructuralism I look at French philosophy and the status of French intellectuals, and how they differ from Anglo- and philosophers. In particular I look at the immense influence of Jean-Paul Sartre, and at the influences of existentialism and marxism. Section 3 discusses marxism and communism, the crisis of and differences between the (PCF) and various marxist groups and publications. Section 4 discusses Sartre’s existential marxism in more detail and why he remains as a humanist philosopher of the Enlightenment and as a target for the anti- humanism of both structuralists and poststructuralists. Section 5 develops Levi-Strauss’ account of structuralism and the basis of his attacks upon Sartre. Louis Althusser’s structuralist marxism is discussed in section 6. In section 7 the events of May-June 1968 are discussed in detail. It is argued that the students were not theoretically driven by marxist or leftist literature but they were legitimately attacking an unsatisfactory educational system, and calling in question the power of authorities to decide upon both content and pedagogy in education. What the students wanted was participation but the Gaullist government did not hold the same concept of ‘particiapation’ as that held by the students. The philosophical curriculum is examined in section 8 as an example of an outmoded curriculum and an arguably outmoded pedagogy. The final two sections open up the possibilities for a philosophy that is post structuralism.

INTRODUCTION XXI

9. JACQUES DERRIDA Jacques Derrida attacked the account of meaning inherent in Saussure’s account. In arguing that there is no meaning outside of the text he is not committing himself to any fixed notion of meaning as in structuralism, for whereas structuralism emphases the search for stable linguistic patterns Derrida privileges différance. This coined neologicism suggests not ony what is different but also that which is deferred, and there is no longer an essential stability of signs. Gert Biesta in chapter 2 makes much of this fundamental point in trying to write about Derrida, for to stay true to Derrida how can one write about him when he (Derrida) claimed that he never wrote on anything, and that meaning is always, necessarily, inconclusive. Trying to get Derrida “right” then, is necessarily to get him “wrong”! Biesta further points out that according to Derrida we are never in a position to choose between understanding and misunderstanding because the former is always contaminated by the latter and, of course, it must be also vice versa. In his chapter Biesta explores the possible significance of Derrida’s writings for education. He does this in three steps. First, he discusses some of the problems entailed in writing about Derrida. The aim of this section is not so much to make clear why it is difficult to do so, but rather to show what is special about writing “after” Derrida. This then allows him to introduce some deconstructive “themes”. In the next section he then presents in a more traditional manner some of the central ideas and insights that are “at stake” in deconstruction. Against this background he offers ideas about what deconstruction might entail for education and educators.

10. JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD Jean-Francois Lyotard is, without doubt, a leading philosopher of the postmodern condition and a leading figure in the postmodernist debate. Yet his early work, influenced by his teacher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, was on phenomenology La Phenomenologie (1954). Influenced by the work of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas Lyotard becomes concerned by the gaps between abstract universal and timeless theory and the contingencies and complexities of experience, where factors other than language must be considered. He brings to his works a creative interdisciplinary approach which draws upon a diverse group of thinkers, but which includes Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and Wittgenstgein. Michael Peters charts in chapter 3 Lyotard’s early membership of the radical Marxist group Socialisme ou barbarie, where he remained for several years as head of the Algerian section, before losing faith in Marxism as a master discourse and turning to philosophy in the 1970s. This chapter charts Lyotard’s Marxist commitment, intellectual trajectory, and final break with Marxism and focuses upon his subsequent writings concerning “the postmodern condition”. This phase of his work, represented in The Postmodern Condition (1984, orig. 1979), centred squarely on the combined questions of the legitimation of knowledge and education in an age of “performativity”. It is in this context that Lyotard’s writings directly address educational questions and XXII JAMES D. MARSHALL particularly those concerning the fate of educational systems under what Peters calls knowledge capitalism. For Lyotard, “the problem of capitalism” overshadows all others (including that of the State). It is a problem that consistently occupies him in his “post- Marxist” writings. Under the conditions of postmodern capitalism, education, like all other spheres of life, has been subordinated to the criterion of technicity, requiring the optimalization of the cost/benefit ratio in an endless circle of performativity. In particular, capitalism in the postmodern condition has infiltrated language commodifying it as encoded messages with an exchange value and stored as information. This chapter explores these issues, recognising how Lyotard, despite his break with Marxism, remains within the ambit of a Marxist commodification thesis (albeit as a representational system) viewing it as one of the main processes of rationalisation that guides the development of the system as a whole. While he recognizes the way in which the of performance, aimed at maximizing the overall efficiency of the system, generates socio-economic contradictions, he parts company with Marxists on the possibility of emancipation or of salvation expected to arise automatically from these contradictions.

11. MICHEL FOUCAULT Michel Foucault is probably the best known poststructuralist for educationalists. Yet whilst his work has been used and referred to there are not a great number of books explicitly centred on educational issues yet available, in spite of the burgening Foucault industry. The exceptions are the edited collection by Stephen Ball (1990), the use of some of Foucault’s ideas by Ian Hunter (1995) in Rethinking Schools, and detailed books on Foucault, on personal autonomy and education by Marshall (1996), and a materialist reading of Foucault by Olssen (1999). But many uses of Foucault and references to his works in education have been improper because, e.g., his work on discipline cannot just be tacked onto sociological approaches to social control, or his work on freedom evoked by critical theorists concerned with emancipation. In a chapter entitled “The School as the Microscope of Conduction: Doing Foucauldian Research in Education,” Mark Olssen, drawing upon his earlier book on Foucault (1999), seeks both to present an introduction to Foucault and to the tradition of research he has inspired for students of Education. Olssen notes that a major goal for Foucault was to counterpose the philosophy of the concept against the philosophy of and hence against Sartre et al. Olssen also seeks to present an account of Foucault which bridges the divide between linguistic receptions of Foucault and historical by pointing to the developing interest after 1968 in the relationship between discursive and extra-discursive dimensions of . In this context, Foucault’s analysis of the double relation between power and knowledge differs radically from the self-referential textuality of Derrida and his followers. The chapter provides a good introduction to some of Foucault’s fundamental ideas: power and power/knowledge; the constitution of subjects; bio-power; governmentality

INTRODUCTION XXIII and; normalisation. He discusses the appropriation of Foucault’s works by feminists, noting also that some feminists have turned away from him. Olssen also looks at the relations between Foucault’s position(s) and marxism, and examines the differences between Foucault’s version of and Marxist versions, noting the central rejection of the Hegelian conception of a closed totality and the . Educational research is discussed in the final section and Olssen provides a good number of references and comments upon the work of researchers in education who have contributed to the Foucaldian literature.

12. GILLES DELEUZE Gilles Deleuze was an original, complex and technical philosopher who explored such diverse philosophical sources as Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche, Freud and Marx. Because he rejected influential and authoritarian positions he was not in the mainstream of philosophical thinking in France. He is recognised as the person who was mainly responsible for the Nietzsche revival in France with his Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962). He was equally recognised for his work with Felix Guattari on . Whilst Deleuze is not well known in educational an interest is emerging, particularly in feminist writing. John Morss’s chapter is concerned to investigate ways in which Deleuze’s ideas “might be articulated into educational theory and practice.” But he does not stop there, he instead aligns Deleuze’s insights with ideas from critical psychology. He opens his chapter on Deleuze by introducing Deleuze’s vocabulary. Morss then comments on Deleuze’s explicit comments on education. Next drawing upon Nietzsche he links Deleuze in a thoughtful, if not original manner, with critical psychology. Finally a number of educational topics are introduced, reflecting a Deleuzean sensibility. Morss that the influence of psychology on educational practice “has been largely baleful” and that a form of critical psychology bolstered by some Deleuzean insights may be more helpful and productive. Morss notes that Deleuze’s ideas provide innovative possible contributions to education, but that at present any such claims rest at the level of suggestive possibilities and speculation. Nevertheless his aim is to indicate how Deleuze’s ideas “might be articulated in the context of educational theory and practice”. He sees Deleuze’s contribution to be that of a form of creativity in an unpredictable, and Heraclitean, world. Thus Deleuze’s attempts to radically rethink the social world might be more specifically applied in education. Morss provides some insights into the way that this might happen, in particular with, and within, critical approaches to psychology. Morss characterises Deleuze’s position as a blend of and , for Deleuze had no taste for abstractions and totalising theory. Following Nietzsche he concentrates his genealogies on rather than on knowledge, as in Foucault’s morewell known earlier genealogies. Deleuze was obviously concerned by the advancement of technique or the ordering and control of human beings by bureaucratic XXIV JAMES D. MARSHALL . His reaction to education, Morss suggests, was very open and perhaps shared similarities with some of the deschoolers. In summary then Morss has seen Deleuze (here and elsewhere - see his references to his own work on Deleuze) as providing insight into education in these areas: his emphasis on creativity in an unpredictable world; subjectivity (rejecting contemporary approaches to subjectivity through interiority); desire; the development of human beings; the “reception” of totalising grand theory; and the politics of the state.

13. JACQUES LACAN Jacques Lacan was strongly influenced by structural and by Saussure, Lévi- Strauss and Jacobson in particular, in his radical reinterpretation of Freudian . Through a series of seminars which commenced in 1953 Lacan, recognised as an excellent clinician and diagnostician, presented theoretical ideas to some of the leading French intellectuals. These ideas led to his regarded as an enfant terrible and difficulties with both professional bodies and the universities (e.g., Vincennes). Lacan’s ideas from these early seminars and from conferences were later to be assembled in Ecrits (1966). His major target was the model of which was then dominating Anglo-American psychoanalysis (Kearney and Rainwater, 1996, p. 328). However he did not reject Freud, relying on the earlier texts as opposed to the biologism of the later Freud which leads to the ego being seen as a biologically given core. Interestingly for this volume, Lacan was to marry Sylvia Bataille and his daughter Judith was a colleague at Vincennes with Foucault (She was dismissed for distributing examination material to students, prior to the examination). Stephen Appel develops these general points in chapter 6. He notes that Lacan's endeavour was to rethink Freudian developmental theory in terms of structural linguistics so as to account for the “humanisation” of biological individuals and the constitution of their “identities” through language and ideological discourse. Perhaps overly philosophical (certainly for Foucault – Macey, 1993, pp. 223-224), his writing was both highly logical and lyrical. Appel argues that the most basic notion of Lacan's is that the subject is decentred, split, without a centre, and characterised by . His basic idea is then that contrary to the commonsense notion of identity, what we like to believe about ourselves as selves involves a fundamental misrecognition, and e.g., the notion of autonomy is an illusion. Appel then moves on to look at some of Lacan’s central concepts. Important for the self or subject, and educationally, are Lacan’s distinguishing between need, desire and , and his concept of the Other, necessary for the structuring of the self as subject through the evocation of a necessary lack. Language for Lacan is prior to consciousness and entering into language and an extant symbolic order is therefore to have one's mediated and drives directed. It is the entry of the child into language which for Lacan marks the transition from a (mere) biological entity to a human being.

INTRODUCTION XXV

Appel has reservations about the use of Lacan's theoretical notions in education. In many cases he see Lacan as providing a critique of optimistic liberal educators who see certain behaviour and /or attitudes as capable of being unlearned, or who see insight as sufficient for overcoming alienation and leading to ‘wholeness’. On the contrary he sees desire as being a missing link of educational theory. From Lacan we learn about the unaviodable and fragmentary notion of the self, and an unaviodable alienation from one's lacks. Lacan was and perhaps offers hard pills for the progressive and optimisitic educator to swallow. The Scots philosopher offered hard pills to swallow also, but this he argued was in the end therapeutic. This I see as being Appel’s interpretation also of Lacan.

14. JULIA KRISTEVA Utilizing a metaphor of ‘mystery’ and Kristeva’s novels, Possessions and The Old Man and the Wolves, Lynda Stone’s chapter on the French philosopher and psychoanalyst, presents an introductory, but novel and creative, overview of her writings. The central topic is the “subject in process,” arguably her most important contribution, developed over several decades of chronological interdisciplinary writing. The chapter situates her work in both biographical contexts and also within related theoretical traditions. Then three central sections take up key concepts that constitute the subject in process: semiotic, , and love. The first defines a pre-lingustic ‘potential’ affect of human beings, the second a bodily and linguistic affect of loathing, and similar to the second, a third as a basic human need. Each entails what the poststructuralist Kristeva recognizes as an unknown, an incompleteness, an emptiness. Finally the chapter closes by solving the mystery of her novel and through a concept of foreigner posits a politics out of her poetic and psychoanalytic work. The frame of the mystery or detective story is instructive as mysteries entail a secret (whodunit?) to be solved: human psychic life and social endeavours such as education might be posited as entailing a desire for ‘solution’ but different from a story, one unrealizable. The chapter explicates three central elements of the individual affect; these follow a situating in biography and relevant theory. The chapter closes with a turn to societal life, to “politics as solution.” In these three and the concluding section, some indications of application for educational thought are suggested.

15. CONCLUSION As stated earlier the intention behind this collection was to provide a sound introduction to the key positions of a number of thinkers who are being increasingly referred to, used as support, and even embraced by theorists in educational discourse. As editor my concern, shared by the contributors, has been that these thinkers have been misappropriated on occasions. Foucault protested that he didn't know what postmodernism was, and I have some sympathy with his position. Hence, I have chosen to emphasise instead, poststructuralism. XXVI JAMES D. MARSHALL

Jim Marshall is Professor of Education, in the School of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

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