ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the previous archaeological analyses to locate educational evaluation within the epistemic space where it finds its conditions of possibility as a mode of inquiry, governmental practice and ethics. First, this chapter presents the figure of the homo of educational evaluation (HoE), a peculiar form of empirical-transcendental doublet which is at the same time an externally determined object of knowledge and government, and also an unlimited knower who is able to know and control his fate. Second, the analysis highlights how this produces a set of epistemic and ethical paradoxes, establishing educational evaluation as a paradoxical science of truth, a form of modern ethic, and a dialectical and teleological techne. Third, this chapter re-connects the archaeological terrain to the problem of government, showing how the configuration of this epistemic space produces political paradoxes and makes it possible to understand the complexities of the relationships between educational evaluation, the homo of evaluation and a distinct set of political rationalities: liberalism, welfare state liberalism, neoliberalism and risk rationality.
