ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of discourse in public education policy imposition and implementation, and the relationship between affect and ideology. Affect is an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage of forces or intensities. Affect is 'beyond' emotion, in the sense that it lies prior to the experience of an emotion, not just in relation to any given manifestation but also, perhaps, chronologically, in relation to the individual's development as a human subject. Sometimes an ideology and a discourse can be identified in terms of the same language, so that, a discourse of 'competition', which promotes competitiveness in education and in economic practice and policy, can be said to be the bearer of an ideology of competition. Dispositif comprises a 'heterogenous combination of discourses, institutions, architectural edifices, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific pronouncements and philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions'.
