In his works on ethics, Foucault turned towards an examination of one's relationship with oneself and others. This differs from the modern approaches that explore the relationship between and the responsibilities of actors to each other by adopting criteria. Ethical criteria engender assumptions about the actors by focusing on their responsibilities. Instead of relying on criteria, Foucault's writing and lectures contributed to an awareness of the activities we take upon ourselves as ethical subjects. His reconstruction of the Greco-Roman ethics seeks to examine the possibilities of the reconstitution and transformation of subjectivity. Through this, he offers an avenue of understanding the formation of ethical subjects in their educational interrelationships.

First published in 1990, this book was the first to explore Foucault's work in relation to education, arguing that schools, like prisons and asylums, are institutions of moral and social regulation, complex technologies of disciplinary control where power and knowledge are crucial. Original and challenging, the essays assess the relevance of Foucault's work to educational practice, and show how the application of Foucauldian analysis to education enables us to see the politics of educational reform in a new light.

In popularizing the term ‘speaking truth to power’, now widely used throughout the world, Michel Foucault established the basis upon which a new ethics can be constructed. This is the thesis that Mark Olssen advances in Constructing Foucault’s ethics. Olssen not only ‘speaks truth’ to existing moral and ethical theories that have dominated western philosophy since Plato, but also shows how, by using Foucault’s insights, an alternative ethical and moral theory can be established that both avoids the pitfalls of postmodern relativism and simultaneously grounds ethical, moral, and political discourse for the present age. Taking the late ‘ethical turn’ in the philosopher’s thought as its starting point, this ambitious study seeks to construct an ethics beyond anything Foucault ever attempted while remaining consistent with his core postulates. In doing so it advances the concept of ‘life continuance’, which expresses a normative orientation to the future in terms of the quest for survival and well-being, giving rise to irreducible normative values as part of the discursive order of events. This approach is explored in contrast with a range of other, established systems, from the Kantian to the Marxist to contract ethics and utilitarianism.

Textbook

There is now a considerable literature on Michel Foucault but this is the first monograph which explicitly addresses his influence and impact upon education. Personal autonomy has been seen as a major aim, if not the aim of liberal education. But if Foucault is correct that personal autonomy and the notion of the autonomous person are myths, then the pursuit of such an aim by educationalists is misguided. The author develops this critique of personal autonomy and liberal education from the writings of Foucault, and also considers Foucault's own educational practices. The author, James Marshall, who lives in New Zealand, has already written several articles for academic journals on Foucault.

Aesthetics offers a focused study on the philosophy, literature and art which informed Foucault's engagement with ethics and power, including brilliant commentaries on the work of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Wagner.

School principals are increasingly working in an environment of work intensification, high stakes testing, accountability pressures and increased managerialism. Rather than searching for the latest leadership fad or best practice model, this book suggests that in order to better understand these pressures, the work of educational leadership requires more sophisticated theorisation of these practices. In so doing, the book draws upon the work of Michel Foucault to provoke new thought into how the principalship is lived and ‘disciplined’ in ways that produce both contradictions and tensions for school principals. Amidst claims of a shortage of applicants for principal positions in a number of Western countries, what is required are more sophisticated and nuanced tools with which to understand the pressures and constraints that face principals in their work on a daily basis. This book provides a powerful example of theory working through practice to move beyond traditional approaches to school leadership. Key features of the book: provides a well theorised analysis of leadership practices acknowledges the messy reality of life for school principals provides key insights to the ‘real’ work that principals undertake every day examines the production of principals’ subjectivities in education, foregrounding issues of gender and race includes the principals’ voices through rich interview data. The book will be of significant interest to principals and those working and researching in educational leadership, including researchers in the field and academics who teach into educational leadership and administration courses. The book will also be of great interest to those working with the ideas of Foucault in education.