Introduction
The aim of this thesis is to address the question of how B.E.M. teachers position themselves as role models to B.E.M. pupils. In this chapter I explain my theoretical framework which is situated within the larger context of critical education research. Although the theoretical structure for this thesis utilises ideas from within the general field of poststructuralism, it is predominantly guided by concepts drawn from the work of Michel Foucault, so I offer extensive explanation of his key ideas throughout the chapter. The chapter begins by defining the main parameters of poststructuralism where, as Davies & Gannon (2005) maintain, the analytic focus is on discourse and discursive regulatory practices.
Discourse
A discourse is a ‘group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment’ (Hall, 2001, p72). In this thesis, the assumption of a correspondence between language and reality is rejected in favour of a critical questioning of what constitutes truth and knowledge. Foucault’s interpretation of discourse extends beyond the textuality of signs, and refers to practices, rule and procedures that exhibit a systematic regularity. Here my use of discourse emphasises the ‘materiality of language at every dimension’ (Young, 1981 p339). In other words, role model discourses have constitutive (real) effects on teachers’ bodies, practices (and spaces). I discuss Foucault’s work in four main areas: discourse (in relation to the generation of knowledges and truths), power, subjectivity and bio-power. The ideas of the material effects of the discursive and the discursive effects of the material are developed throughout the chapter. I argue that to understand B.E.M. teachers’ discursive work, one needs to theorise both about what is said, as well as about the effects of saying a particular statement. To make this argument, I move from discourse to an explication of Foucault’s radical interpretation of power as acting through the capillaries of all social relations. Here Foucauldian power (as a relational phenomenon) is shown as inextricably linked to all forms of knowledge production, as well as to resistance. In addition, I develop the idea of a body as a target of power and as an object of knowledge, to suggest how it can be understood in terms of resistance strategies. In the final section on bio-power, I continue with the notion of
materiality; here I consider how a body is constituted by the workings of disciplinary power on its psyche (or mind). The aim here is to reveal the ways that the body is corporeal, the site of local, intimate complex power relations and enmeshed within wider social and political discourses and narratives.
What poststructuralism has done is to begin to … open the cracks, to expose those gaps and silences that undermine the claims of modernist philosophy to impartiality and universality. Above all, it deconstructs the boundaries between categories, be they ontological, epistemological, ethical or material; and it demonstrates the inescapability of the leaks and flows across all such bodies of knowledge and bodies of matter. (Shildrick, 1997, p4)
Poststructuralism is a broad umbrella term for a form of critical scholarship that examines the relationship between human beings, the social world and the practice of producing and reproducing meaning (Rabinow & Rose, 2003: St. Pierre, 2005). A wealth of studies exist that apply poststructural theories to education issues (Ball, 1990; Peters & Burbules, 2004) ranging from analysis of policy (Ball, 2015) to learners’ identities (Youdell, 2003). In this thesis, the idea of poststructuralism is applied to create a framework from which to interpret and theorise about B.E.M. teachers as role models and the subjectification processes attached to role modelling. A poststructural approach is concerned to question our taken-for-granted meanings and assumptions; the aim is to explore how we come to know ourselves (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).
Given the centrality of the social meanings and values B.E.M. teachers attach to their notion of ‘role model’, the adoption of a poststructural approach is appropriate for this thesis. An aim of this enquiry is to problematise the ‘role model’ concept, and explore ‘how and why certain things, behaviour, phenomena, processes become a problem’ (Foucault, 1983, p.115). In short, I will explore understandings of the concept and how others appropriate these. To do this, the enquiry needs to make visible the social conditions that allow some meanings attached to B.E.M. teachers’ notions of ‘role model’ to have salience or greater legitimacy than others. The conditions, while varied, locate B.E.M. teachers within socially, culturally and historically specific contexts. The application of a poststructural frame is a useful approach to examining the plurality of meanings attached to this social text. Through this process, I will theorise how this social text is adopted by B.E.M. teachers and can be understood as embedded within culturally-constituted ideas about shared
histories of marginality and affinity with B.E.M. pupils. History and Foucault’s Genealogy
In addition to its critique of meaning, poststructuralism has an antipathy to traditional notions of history and epistemology. Poststructural theorists generally hold the view that ‘our ideas of truth, knowledge, rationality and all canonical or organising principles are products of social and cultural development’ (Prado, 2000, p18). Such perspectives reject the idea of meta-narratives or totalising theories which can analyse past or present events. Instead historical interpretations are viewed as inherently contingent. The premise is that interpretations can be assigned to an innumerable set of contestable meanings. This assumption should not be construed as relativism, (which is rejected) as not all interpretations are equally valid. In this regard, a Foucauldian historicist perspective is adopted in this thesis, to see knowledge as meaning-making where ‘forms of rationality are created endlessly’ (Prado, 2000, p19). Viewed in this way, there is no form of intellectual inquiry which has access to objective external correctness. For example, the particularity of a person’s circumstances or their dilemmas may cause them to reinterpret, modify or transform their customs or habits. The argument made is that within every epoch there are rules, ideas, procedures and structures that govern the production of knowledge; these overlap with those in other historical epochs (Foucault, 1971). Foucault uses the term genealogy to describe enquiry based on critical analyses of past events in relation to the present. The genesis of genealogy, is to: ‘identify the accidents, the minute deviations … the reversals … the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that have value for us’ (Foucault, 1971, p81).
Foucault posits that doing genealogy requires the assumption that nothing is constant, and the conception of any phenomena as a state of becoming. His notion of genealogy is always oppositional, anti-essentialist, and rooted in discontinuity as its central organising principle. Adopting such an approach is useful in this thesis in order to examine B.E.M. teachers’ identifications with the role model concept, for example, how they negotiate the disjunctions between their private and public roles. The approach considers different moments in B.E.M. teachers’ stories and organises, juxtaposes, and locates their unique ‘critical’ events. In this way, I understand their
stories, or performances of critical events, as epitomising particular experiences of being or becoming role model teachers. Thus my theoretical frame is underpinned by Foucauldian notions of genealogy. In this regard B.E.M. teachers’ narratives about the role model concept are examined to expose the manner in which this concept ‘disturbs what was considered immobile: it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself’ (Foucault, 1997, p147).
Prado (2000) argues Foucault’s genealogy can be understood as an alternate form of narrative, one which opposes traditional notions of history and how its knowledge is generated. Foucault adopts an anti-foundationalist stance on the production of historical knowledge. He argues that it is flawed to conduct history as a search for ‘origins’ that can explain an already fabricated event. There is no underlying or originating cause, rather one needs to understand history in terms of the random and other unsystematic occurrences that congeal or co-exist to create an event. According to Rorty, genealogy maps the ‘reinterpretation(s) of our predecessors’ reinterpretation(s) of their predecessors’ re-interpretations’ (Rorty, 1982, cited in Prado, 2005, p34). I take such a historicist approach, creating a history of the present, that ‘prefers to interrogate the present, its values, discourses and understandings with recourse to the past as a resource of destabilising critical knowledge’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, cited in Hook, 2001, p533, original emphasis). In other words, this involves examining the contradictions, and discontinuities within the discourses about role modelling, their nodal points of vulnerability, and discerning (if any) tactics of sabotage within the teachers’ knowledge about their pupils. I problematise role model discourses by attempting to expose existing discourses or to introduce alternative or counter discourses about taken-for-granted actions or performances. These discontinuous ‘unsystematic occurrences’ support a genealogical approach that treats the teachers’ stories as ‘events’ or atoms of discourse. I examine the contradictions in their stories, and juxtapose and make these contradictions stark in order to ask what incites B.E.M. teachers to understand themselves as role models. Given that the ‘events’ they perform are significant to these teachers, they must be read in conjunction with the other discourses, stories or language that B.E.M. teachers draw upon, and through which they constitute their notion of role model. I elaborate further on this at the
end of Chapter 4 in the section on Foucauldian Discourse Analysis). Language, Discourse and Discursive Practices
Language is neither transparent nor is it possible to obtain a final meaning (MacLure, 2003). While languages allow us to categorise, distinguish or discern entities, their usage is a product of the symbolising systems of the cultures in which we are located (MacLure, 2003).
Here I acknowledge that for any given language (in any particular culture) there may be different ways of representing the world. Poststructural theorists, assume a Saussurian perspective on language as working through relations of difference. The fundamental premise is that any linguistic sign is arbitrary, with the implication that without difference there can be no meaning. The poststructural analytic highlights the effects of dualistic constructions of difference. Applying such framing allows the effects of binary constructions to be explored in terms of, for example, the manner in which B.E.M. teachers include or exclude others through their practice. To examine binaries is to give attention to the logic of dichotomous thinking (Marshall & Rossman, 1995) and how this may manifest as action or in what teachers say about the ‘other’. For example, there are ideas about ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ role models, or what constitutes a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ teacher. In addition, B.E.M. teachers are themselves ‘othered’ (or not) within varied hierarchical arrangements in their classroom environment, school community, and elsewhere. ‘In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures’ (Foucault, 1981, p52). Discourses structure the way we perceive our social reality, Discourses constitute the world by bringing phenomena into being through the way in which they categorise and make sense of them (Hardy & Phillips, 2004). Foucault understands discourses as being rule-governed, giving legitimacy to some forms of knowledge over others in a manner inherently systematic. Rules govern the selection and inclusion of objects, concepts, theories and norms, governing, in totality, what can be thought or spoken. Discourses provide ‘conditions of possibility’ which define, and give legitimacy to some knowledges whilst discarding others. From this perspective, discourses are understood as embedded in social systems. Foucault explains that discourses are ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972,
p49). Discourses do not correspond to language rather they are an effect of language practices. Language choices determine the type of discourses a speaker (writer) draws upon, and how they position themselves in relation to others. There is here the notion of legitimacy and regulation: what is said and to whom. Discourses may combine with, or exclude, other statements and practices. Discourses are inherently circular and temporal and they produce an effect on both speaker and listener. Thus discourses function to both constrain and enable what is said. Foucault refers to discursive practices as operating in both inhibiting and productive ways, that allow certain statements to be made while preventing others. Foucault’s conceptualisation of discourse makes it possible to consider its material effects. He argues that discourses are realised both in ‘the textuality of representation and knowledge and in the regulating principles and actions of institutions, in forms of everyday practices’ (Hook, 2007, p17).
I offer an example of role model discourses to elaborate the above. Managerial discourses refer to role modelling in terms of: leadership, following, managerialism, entrepreneurialism, superiority, subordinate acceptance and employee-organisation relations; these lexicons do not include human subjectivity. In contrast, educational discourses refer to role modelling in terms of: pedagogy, sex role theory, behaviour theory, imitation, stereotypes and the self-regulated learner. These different sets of naming practices subsequently combine with new types of knowledge to describe socialisation and how to manage the ‘subject’. While both sets of discourses construct asymmetric relations between role models and their subjects, the rules governing their interactions differ.
In the previous chapter, I argued that ‘role model teacher’ discourses function to give legitimacy to hegemonic statements and practices that promote mimesis (for example, mimicry, emulation, admiration). Mimesis discourses, as with any discourses, can be understood as continually transforming through the application of new rules, procedures, practices or political hegemony; these create and re-configure our social realities. Moreover, this suggests, not only are hegemonic mimesis and role model discourses implicated in positioning B.E.M. teachers in their narrations, but they also constitute the knowledges they attach to themselves, and acceptance of these knowledges as true.
Since discourses are continually evolving, the rules governing discourses can also be reversed to create different meanings; they are not immune to forms of contestation (Butler, 2006). In this regard, Foucault’s concept of discourse reveals the dialectics at work and invites the view that normality is dependent upon, whilst seeking to exclude and contain the category of the ‘abnormal’. As Dollimore (1991) points out:
We know that the centre remains vulnerable to marginality because its identity is partly created and partly defined in opposition (and therefore also at) the margins. But the concept of reverse discourse suggests another dialectic sense that the outside may be said to be always already inside: a return from demonized other to challenging presence via containment, and one involving a simultaneous contradictory, yet equally necessary appropriation and negation of those dominant notions of sexual identity and human nature by which it was initially excluded and defined. (Dollimore, 1991, p225, emphasis added)
Although Dollimore (1991) is referring to how perversity discourses legitimate conventions of sexual behaviour, parallels can be drawn with regard to the ways that B.E.M. teachers’ comportment and actions as role models are judged. I use reverse discourse to refer to the ways in which marginalised groups seek to contest their demonisation.
This thesis is concerned to understand the ways in which BEM role model teachers ‘speak themselves into existence’ (Davies & Harré, 1990, p8) within the terms of available discourses, cultural narratives and discursive practices. I take the view that B.E.M. teachers have agency, and are thus positioned to produce their own counter discourses about their practice.
Linking Truth and Knowledge to Discourse
I am well aware that I have never written anything but fiction. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a fictional discourse to induce effects of truth. (Foucault, 1972, p193)
A poststructural approach resists closure; since all truths are partial, and contingent, there are no truths only interpretations (Prado, 2000). Foucault argues all forms of knowledge are constituted out of discourses. For Foucault, discourses generate ‘truths’ or ‘truth effects’ that have the power to convince others to accept a statement as true. Foucault (1978) locates discourse at the intersection of power and knowledge
production stating that:
discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are. We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (Foucault, 1978, p101)
Here, I understand discourses as inherently unpredictable, which suggests a need for mindfulness in attending to the generation and/or production of ‘truths’ and knowledges. Furthermore, Foucault argues discourses produce simultaneously the conditions of oppression and the conditions of resistance (Foucault, 1978). Taken together, discourses are implicated as effects of power. Given the centrality of Foucault’s ideation of power to this thesis, the next section outlines his theoretical concept of, and of its relevance to my thesis topic. This is followed by an explanation of how I conceptualise resistance and how the theoretical frame I adopt is used to understand role modelling relations. In his theorisation of the concept, Foucault sought to locate power within everyday relations between people and within institutions. His insistence that power should not be conceived of as belonging to, or residing in, an individual, group or institution, marks a radical break from traditional ideas. Thus, the next section begins with traditional understandings of power, and specifically the limitations of Marxist conceptualisations of power, and then introduces Foucault’s analytic of power. I then move on to explain its inter-related enabling and determining function in relation to Foucault’s idea of the power/knowledge nexus.
Power
Limitations of Marxist Notions of Power
Power is usually understood as the capacity of an individual or group to impose their will over another individual or group, or to have the ability to force them to comply against their will. This traditional approach views power as fundamentally the possession of dominant human beings or of the state. This model of power understands it as generally operating in a ‘top-down’ manner within institutions and/or other hierarchical arrangements (Lemke, 2000). In this configuration, Marxist
theorising often concerns the means by which oppressed people accept the present fictive versions of the world, which serve the interests of those who dominate society (Clegg, 2013). Power, in Marxist terms, functions within capitalist systems as an oppressive tool for the (re)production of social class inequality and the perpetuation of the proletariat (Smart, 2013). For Foucault however, economic and class relations are a subsidiary of a more complex and pervasive system of power relations (Popekwitz & Brennan, 1998). Foucault discounts the Marxist idea of power as inherently repressive, in that it simply enforces obedience and compliance or total domination through the force of authority. A key criticism levelled at Marxist theorisations of the operation and distribution of power, is their limited account of how power permeates all relations within a society.
Foucault’s Analytic of Power
Power is not something that can be acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from
innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations.