ABSTRACT

The theme of this chapter is post-modernism and education, and though the French philosopher, Michael Foucault, is in some ways not representative of thinkers in this field,64 he does make reference in his work to a wide range of post-modernist themes: the delegitimisation of the transcendental self, the localisation of knowledge, a distaste for universalising modes of thought and global narratives, and a rejection of ethical and teleological ideas. What, in particular, needs to be examined is his central theme of power-knowledge, that is: a particular configuration of the two that would seem to exclude them operating independently. He has argued that:

Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regimes of truth, its general politics of truth, that is the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each one is sanctioned, the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth, the status of those who are charged with saying what comes as truth.