ABSTRACT
Politics is mostly represented as a discrete arena of activity. Relatively recent thinking has suggested that politics, the concern with collective living, is much diffusing than commonly thought. Perspectives from philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and linguistics all represent politics as an element interwoven with mundane and intimate elements of life. On this view politics is ever-present. Education cannot then be separated out as a distinct zone of activity and being. Education is political in all its dimensions from the get-go. This chapter addresses relations between education and the politics of meaning, education as political myth and goes on to explore global education as a politically powerful web enframing the world in an increasing and politically questionable grip. Education is further explored as the apparatus for the form of politics known as biopower, shaping the social landscape as a power-laden way of representing the world and as a form of politics of the self. The present era is defined, then, as the age of politics as education.
