Making Use of Foucault in a Study of Specific Parrhesiastic Scholars

In this article, I describe how I made use of Foucault theoretically and methodologically in a study of five specific parrhesiastic scholars. Such scholars challenge hegemony in educational policies and practices, and advocate for educational reform and societal structures that move toward equity instead of marginalization. The article begins by exploring Foucault's notion of specific intellectuals through the experiences of the scholars. It then moves to an explanation of why the five scholars selected for this study should be considered specific parrhesiastic scholars. An account of how I made use of Foucault in this study follows. My interpretation of Foucault's work into a research methodology for this project has been a process of identifying illustrations of technologies of the self and technologies of power in text, dialogue, and narrative—qualitative data, which I analyzed using a framework that merged these technologies into the analytical categories of (1) application of logos, (2) engagement with politeia, and (3) practice of techne toubiou.     

‘Me at university doing teacher training – what a big laugh’: narrative and parrhesia

This paper uses Foucault’s notion of parrhesia to analyse the story of another and to interrogate teacher education in terms of the particular moral order or the forms of socialization that it uses. I examine the context of my own teaching in terms of truth‐telling and the normative expectations that were found to exist. Through reflection and analysis and using the patterns of action research came the realization that some of what we do within teacher education examines a student’s moral performance rather than their pedagogical ability. The particular moral code that fits within teaching and teacher education needs to be considered in terms of social justice and social change. It argues that there exist collegial restraints and the typifications that serve to find the kinds of students and future teachers we consider appropriate. As an example of an action research study, the paper raises many questions that need to be further considered particularly in regard to ‘regimes of truth’ within teacher education.     

Truth telling in Foucault and Arendt: parrhesia,the pariah and academics in dark times

In this paper, I consider the problem of truth telling through the notion of parrhesia as developed and explicated in Foucault’s last lectures at the College de France (1982–1983 and 1983–1984) and the figure of the pariah that runs throughout Arendt’s work. In tracing connections and tensions in the way the two thinkers explore questions and dilemmas around the courage to tell the truth in philosophy and politics, I look into the current climate within the UK academia, where there is a lot of ambivalence about whether people mean what they say or say what they mean anymore. In a Foucauldian mode of inquiry, I raise the question: what is the role of the academic when going through ‘dark times’, vis-à-vis questions of truth telling; what are the conditions of possibility for truth telling itself to be recognised as a question or a problem and how can we start mapping the effects of what we as academics do or refrain from doing?     

Subjectivity as a site of struggle: refusing neoliberalism?

This paper extends the author’s previous enquiries and discussions of governmentality and neoliberal policy technologies in a number of ways. The paper explores the specificity and generality of performativity as a particular contemporary mode of power relations. It addresses our own imbrication in the politics of performative truths, through our ordinary everyday life and work. The paper is about the here and now, us, you and me, and who we are in neoliberal education. It draws upon and considers a set of ongoing email exchanges with a small group of teachers who are struggling with performativity. It enters the ‘theoretical silence’ of governmentality studies around the issues of resistance and contestation. Above all, the paper attempts to articulate the risks of refusal through Foucault’s notion of fearless speech or truth-telling (parrhesia).