ABSTRACT
Fundamentally, the poststructuralism of Foucault and the educational strategy of Freire provide the theoretical framework for teaching and practising critical emancipatory interpersonal communication skills. Foucault’s poststructuralism is particularly useful because it offers a political approach to social construction rather than the often nihilistic deconstruction of some other postmodernist writers. This distinction between poststructuralism and postmodernism is important. Peters (1995: 10) reminds us about the latter that:
postmodernism signifies a change in people’s relation to . . . meaning . . . the conditions of existence of meaning(s) can no longer be taken for granted or blithely assumed. Meaning must be understood as implicated in power relations . . . meaning/knowledge/truth has lost its innocence and so have we.
