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Foucault, power and participation

Foucault, power and participation. Dr. Michael Gallagher School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. Why Foucault?. After all, he is widely accepted… …but perhaps not widely understood?

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Foucault, power and participation

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  1. Foucault, power and participation Dr. Michael Gallagher School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh

  2. Why Foucault? • After all, he is widely accepted… • …but perhaps not widely understood? • Getting to grips with his understanding of power may help to make sense of the ambivalence of participation

  3. Polarised thinking? • Participation should be: empowering, enable children’s voices to be heard, a radical strategy for change • Participation is: limited, tokenistic, ineffectual, not leading to any real change • I think participation is more ambivalent than this

  4. A dubious visual metaphor • Advocates of children’s participation want to see a Monet (Habermassian harmony) • When they look, what they find is a Goya (Machiavellian/Orwellian gloom) • What I’m seeing is a Pollock (Foucaultian/Nietzschean chaos)

  5. Monet

  6. Goya

  7. Pollock

  8. Power for Foucault • A form of action, not a commodity • Exercised not possessed • Polyvalent and diverse • Everyday - “actions upon actions” • Not tied to conscious intentions • Scale - large powers (structures) depend on small powers (agency), and vice versa

  9. Implications for children’s participation • Participation is strategic and tactical - organised chaos • Need to look at how power is exercised • Need to look at relationships between scales • Can’t prevent liberty, and can’t prescribe it either: unpredictability and chaos • What is the relationship between participation and other political tactics: subversion, refusal, critique, demonstration, protest, collective action, direct action?

  10. Difference and repetition: minimalist music • 20th century minimalism: Phillip Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, John Adams • Music as a way of illustrating concepts • Reich illustrates relationship between difference & repetition

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