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Poststructural Marxisms, the Politics of Difference and Educational Theory

Michael A. Peters

University of Glasgow

Presentation to special conference on Postmodernism and Education, Taiwan, October 2004

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Orientation

The world is a work of art that gives birth to itself

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1968, #796

Poststructural Marxisms is the pedagogical practice of (re)reading and (re)writing Marx in a critical manner

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First Lesson: Always Historicize The genealogy of methods The true co-ordinates of

poststructualism in structural linguistics in pre-Revolutionary Russia and European avant garde

Narratology and the application of structuralism to narrative

Historicizing discourse

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Second Lesson: Always Materialize (or nearly always) The linguistic turn and philosophical

modernism The birth of literary culture Texts and speech as cultural ‘materials’

fashioning the self, individual and identity Narrative as textual analogue for the self Materializing self-consciousness: the

embodied self

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Third Lesson: Do Not Prioritize Power Over Desire (or vice versa) Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as

‘masters of suspicion’ Repudiation of the dream of an

innocent language The discursive operation of power

and desire in the constitution of human subjects, practices and social institutions.

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Fourth Lesson: From Political to Symbolic Economy The ‘culturalization’ of the economy and

the ‘economization’ of culture The collapse of the base-superstructure

model The digitalization of communication and

its increasing compression and speed The emergence of the knowledge

economy

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Fifth Lesson: From the Knowledge to the Learning Economy ‘Fast capitalism’ and the

McDonaldization of education Increased knowledge turnover and rapid

change of knowledge stock with strong emphasis on links between organizational learning and innovation

New ICT-based learning processes have emerged in the post-Fordist era which have reduced the costs of transmission, storage, archiving, and retrieval of information, and made different kinds of networking possible

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Fifth Lesson: Capitalization of the Self The growth of intellectual, human and

social capital and increasing importance of all forms of capitalisation of the self

Accent on ‘logic of performativity’ (Lyotard) and epistemologies of performance

Role for government in developing learning infrastructure, providing incentives, promoting access to knowledge, and decreasing costs of forgetting

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Sixth Lesson: Affinities with Structuralism

The critique of humanist (liberal) philosophy and the decentering of the rational, autonomous, self-transparent, subject of humanist thought.

A general theoretical understanding of language and culture in terms of linguistic and symbolic systems.

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Seventh Lesson: Differences with Structuralism

New Historicism The reintroduction of history as

genealogy The challenge to scientism and

essentialism in the human sciences, anti-foundationalism in epistemology and ethics, and a new emphasis upon perspectivism

The rediscovery of Nietzsche and the significance of ‘the death of God’

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Seventh Lesson (continued)

The Critique of Reason The critique of classical reason and

suspicion of official metanarratives The diagnosis of ‘power/knowledge’ and

the exposure of technologies of domination based upon Foucault’s analytics of power

A critical philosophy of techno-science Understanding the emerging geopolitics

of the global knowledge economy

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Seventh Lesson (continued)

Politics of difference A deepening of democracy through a political

critique of Enlightenment values Understanding of ‘governmentality’ as political

reason linking forms of governance and the self-regulating individual (cf. couplization)

Emergent forms of postcoloniality,an emphasis on philosophies of difference and the encounter with the Other

‘The multitude’ – the coming of world democracy (Derrida, Hardt & Negri)

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References

Peters,M.A. & Besley, T. (2005) Building Knowledge Cultures: Education & Development in an Age of Knowledge Capitalism. Lanham & Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield.

Peters, M.A. & Burbules, N. (2004) Poststructuralism and Educational Research. Lanham & Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield.

Peters, M.A. (2001) Poststructuralism, Marixism and Neoliberalism. Lanham & Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield.

Peters, M.A. (1996) Poststructuralism, Politics and Education. Westport, CT & London, Bergin & Garvey.