Foucault and his acolytes: Discourse, power and ethics

The ideas of the philosopher Michel Foucault have proved seductive to many researchers in education. Alongside the serious scholars who have produced signifi cant analyses of education there are many more who have presented their work with a Foucauldian lens. Whilst this latter – often somewhat lazy – appropriation of Foucault’s thought is to be regarded with disdain, it is nevertheless remarkable how appealing making reference to Foucault has seemed to so many. Such an observation may, of course, be dated and it may be that the obsession with Foucault has been replaced by a more recent penchant for citing Deleuze, and where previously power was everywhere, now everything is a rhizome. This chapter introduces Foucault and traces the development of his ideas, beginning with his archaeologies of knowledge, medicine and madness, followed by a series of genealogies of discipline and sexuality and concluding with his work on ethics, directed towards the self and including the practice of transgression. This tracing will be accompanied by a consideration of aspects of Foucault’s biography and refl ection on how some of his own professional and personal experiences may have helped him to develop and refi ne his ideas. The fascination his work has held for educational researchers, and the way in which they have been applied, with varying degrees of sophistication (or rather levels of engagement with the original concepts), will be examined, as will the dissatisfaction with his ideas expressed by some of his most ardent critics such as Habermas (1986) and Rorty (1986, 1990). The chapter ends with a discussion of whether there is such a thing as a legacy of Foucault, and if so, how this might be constituted.