ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore the relevance and importance of Foucault’s later works on subjectivity, counter-conduct and parrhesia as windows into the complex subjectification of school principals. At a time when neoliberalism and capitalist dimensions of education politics and policy continue to have profound influences on schools and the work of school leaders, I argue there is still a need to theorise and better understand these shifting tensions and complexities of educational leadership. With an emphasis on autonomy as a key feature of desirable education systems, principals are often constructed as subscribing to neoliberal regimes or working as resistors to such regimes. However, principals are uniquely positioned as both those that exercise power and also, at the same time, those that are subject to various modes of power. It is through looking at these discourses via Foucault’s later works that more generative understandings of leadership and of the principal can be located and understood that go beyond the disciplinary. This chapter then contributes to a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the subjectification of school principals rather than continuing the much over-researched and narrow focus on leaders as heroic identities that has captivated the educational leadership field for too long.
