Hello Marc,
Interesting points... I guess I can only offer this. Several years ago a prospective PhD supervisor (at another university) told me "yes, great! do a PhD here but hmm... you want a career at the end of it... and your topic is too left field, too esoteric. You need to be more of a generalist". He recommended doing something on citizenship education using grounded theory. Not knowing any better I went away, did my proposal as requested, finished it after 6 weeks (of what felt like torture) and decided - stuff it, I'm going to do what I originally wanted to do. Somewhere else.
I was thinking wryly about this experience yesterday as I was being awarded with a Philosophy in Education Society of Australasia PhD Scholarship. My "esoteric" use of Foucault to question ADHD as a discursive formation and schooling as a system of formation of disorderly objects has been recognised as valuable work. The most important thing is that applying Foucauldian ideas to the problem that we call "ADHD" has helped me (as Clare cites Foucault) to question the category, take it apart and see whether it is worth putting back together again (p. 119).
As it currently stands, I don't think it is.
I couldn't have gotten to that way of thinking without Foucault's work. So... regardless of what the anti-intellectuals of this world say, thinking about stuff and thinking about how we think about it and why we think about it in the way we do at this current point in time - is important work. Because it helps us to remember that (1) we made the problem and (2) we can unmake it.
Cheers,
Linda
(PS: Please excuse the blatent self-promotion... and once again thank you, PESA! Interested philosophers of ed, please see this excellent society's webpage at www.pesa.org.au. 2006 conference is in Sydney end-November)
Linda J. Graham
Centre for Learning Innovation
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Kelvin Grove QLD 4059, Australia
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Graham,_Linda.html
CRICOS No 00213J
----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Beerline
To: Mailing-list
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] How do we use Foucault texts in teaching?
I think the issues/approaches presented and described by Linda Graham bring up a very interesting problem or area of study. The mere fact that people rarely see Foucault as something that could be considered 'legitimate' I know with my slight experience, Foucault isn't really taken seriously. What made me interested in Foucault in the first place was from a series of lectures that I listen to eradically, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition from the Teaching Company. In the lecture itself, there seemed be be a 'warning within' for Foucault and his body of work. The first attack or deligimation was through his homosexuality and its relation to his three-volume History of Sexuality, mainly pointing out the fact that Foucault seemed to focus remotely on male sexuality, which the lecturer accounted to his homosexuality. I haven't read his History of Sexuality, so I can't offer my own opinion. And also there was a through critique of his somewhat idosyncratic reading of history and presenting it in/as a philosophy/psychoanalysis (sexuality, the clinic, the prison, madness, discourse itself) which makes interpreting and/or grouping Foucault difficult as he acts as a kind of ambiguous enigma, if undertaking such an action even matters.
Which also brings forth this whole 'post-modern' or 'post-structualist' taboo, I guess I'll call it? I know not what else it should be called. I think it would certainly be interesting to try and understand the academic alienation from thinkers such as Foucault and Barthes somewhat due to their somewhat liberation from convention and embrace of uncertainty. I can understand the slight problematization through the freedoms of interpretation, but if anything that should be more of an academic pursuit. Foucault read history as a philosopher/psychoanalyst; in doing so, he wasn't looking to simply analyze the past and perhaps present 'objectively' much like Max Weber did, but, instead, to perhaps provide/account for some insight into the future and the history of the present. Are we left with nothing but to indirectly cite Foucault or allude to his works because of this somewhat apparant academic stigma with which he has been regarded?
-Marc J. Beerline
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Interesting points... I guess I can only offer this. Several years ago a prospective PhD supervisor (at another university) told me "yes, great! do a PhD here but hmm... you want a career at the end of it... and your topic is too left field, too esoteric. You need to be more of a generalist". He recommended doing something on citizenship education using grounded theory. Not knowing any better I went away, did my proposal as requested, finished it after 6 weeks (of what felt like torture) and decided - stuff it, I'm going to do what I originally wanted to do. Somewhere else.
I was thinking wryly about this experience yesterday as I was being awarded with a Philosophy in Education Society of Australasia PhD Scholarship. My "esoteric" use of Foucault to question ADHD as a discursive formation and schooling as a system of formation of disorderly objects has been recognised as valuable work. The most important thing is that applying Foucauldian ideas to the problem that we call "ADHD" has helped me (as Clare cites Foucault) to question the category, take it apart and see whether it is worth putting back together again (p. 119).
As it currently stands, I don't think it is.
I couldn't have gotten to that way of thinking without Foucault's work. So... regardless of what the anti-intellectuals of this world say, thinking about stuff and thinking about how we think about it and why we think about it in the way we do at this current point in time - is important work. Because it helps us to remember that (1) we made the problem and (2) we can unmake it.
Cheers,
Linda
(PS: Please excuse the blatent self-promotion... and once again thank you, PESA! Interested philosophers of ed, please see this excellent society's webpage at www.pesa.org.au. 2006 conference is in Sydney end-November)
Linda J. Graham
Centre for Learning Innovation
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Kelvin Grove QLD 4059, Australia
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Graham,_Linda.html
CRICOS No 00213J
----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Beerline
To: Mailing-list
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] How do we use Foucault texts in teaching?
I think the issues/approaches presented and described by Linda Graham bring up a very interesting problem or area of study. The mere fact that people rarely see Foucault as something that could be considered 'legitimate' I know with my slight experience, Foucault isn't really taken seriously. What made me interested in Foucault in the first place was from a series of lectures that I listen to eradically, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition from the Teaching Company. In the lecture itself, there seemed be be a 'warning within' for Foucault and his body of work. The first attack or deligimation was through his homosexuality and its relation to his three-volume History of Sexuality, mainly pointing out the fact that Foucault seemed to focus remotely on male sexuality, which the lecturer accounted to his homosexuality. I haven't read his History of Sexuality, so I can't offer my own opinion. And also there was a through critique of his somewhat idosyncratic reading of history and presenting it in/as a philosophy/psychoanalysis (sexuality, the clinic, the prison, madness, discourse itself) which makes interpreting and/or grouping Foucault difficult as he acts as a kind of ambiguous enigma, if undertaking such an action even matters.
Which also brings forth this whole 'post-modern' or 'post-structualist' taboo, I guess I'll call it? I know not what else it should be called. I think it would certainly be interesting to try and understand the academic alienation from thinkers such as Foucault and Barthes somewhat due to their somewhat liberation from convention and embrace of uncertainty. I can understand the slight problematization through the freedoms of interpretation, but if anything that should be more of an academic pursuit. Foucault read history as a philosopher/psychoanalyst; in doing so, he wasn't looking to simply analyze the past and perhaps present 'objectively' much like Max Weber did, but, instead, to perhaps provide/account for some insight into the future and the history of the present. Are we left with nothing but to indirectly cite Foucault or allude to his works because of this somewhat apparant academic stigma with which he has been regarded?
-Marc J. Beerline
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Foucault-L mailing list