Post-structuralist discourses have usually been associated with forms of critique and deconstruction of social, cultural and philosophical phenomena. However, this article attempts to provide a generative approach to understanding educational leadership through Michel Foucault’s notions of power and subjectification, and Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and discursive agency through re-signification. We argue that leadership is not simply a list of traits, characteristics or behaviours to be implemented. Rather, we argue that leaders are performatively constituted through everyday practices and discourses. The (...) aim is to interrupt prevailing discourses that often re-inscribe certain forms of meaning and understanding in educational leadership. This disruption subsequently provides possibility for putting forward otherwise silenced ideas about what leadership is and how leadership ‘identity’ (subjectivity) is formed, thus expanding the methodological tools scholars can use to talk about leadership. (shrink)

This paper considers the place of education within our “consumers’ society”, beginning with Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise of consumerism to a position of political dominance and the resulting eclipse of public life. Connections are then made between Arendt’s account of this rise and Jean Baudrillard’s account of the postmodern proliferation of signs and the transformation of the sign into a commodity. This radical “semiurgy” accelerates into a self-referential series of signs which entails the loss of reality – it (...) contributes to the disappearance of the human subjectivity behind the creation of images. I argue that Baudrillard does not respond adequately to the dynamic that he describes so well. By contrast, Arendt’s concept of natality, I suggest, prepares the ground for a response to the forces of commodification that colonize the educational environment and threaten its critical possibilities. As youth and schools receive more and more attention from advertisers, students are sold by educational institutions to commercial interests who seek unfettered access to this “captive audience”. Yet education is profoundly compromised when youths are viewed as consumers and not as a social investment, when education is viewed merely as an opportunity to secure a new market. (shrink)

The problematics of language and communication, as pertaining to educational theory and practice, is closely connected with the understanding of human subjectivity (Biesta, 1995; Garrison, 1999). The discussion in this paper will focus on a specific philosophy of language as developed by Gilles Deleuze. In order to address some possible implications of such philosophy for moral education, this paper will position Deleuze’s philosophical thought against the background of Charles Taylor’s book The Ethics of Authenticity (1991), in which Taylor introduces his (...) quite influential notion of the language of personal resonance. Taylor’s assertion that such a language might play a central role in helping us to be more responsive to the claims of nature and the social world at large will be critically examined, as will Taylor’s distinction of the two kinds of subjectivation and the danger, which, according to Taylor, arises from the confusion between the two. While recognizing the appropriateness of conceptualizing subtle languages, and supporting in general Taylor’s intent of the idea of reconstruction, this paper will question Taylor’s views on what he specifically identifies as a deconstructive strand of philosophical thought. The paper’s argument—in an effort to consider poststructuralist thinking as a sign of cultural evolution rather than decline, posited by Taylor—will address Gilles Deleuze’s postmodern, yet thoroughly constructive and pragmatic, philosophy that he called a philosophy-becoming . Within the scope of this paper, the review of Deleuzian (and Deleuze and Guattari’s) thinking will be selective and limited to some aspects of the problematics of language in both its expression and content. The paper will conclude by presenting a brief summary of Deleuze’s ethics for the purpose of considering his philosophical method within the context of moral education. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical analysis ofHeidegger and Nietzsche's approach tometaphysics and the associated problem ofnihilism. Heidegger sums up the history ofWestern metaphysics in a way which challengescommon sense approaches to values education.Through close attention to language, Heideggerargues that Nietzsche inverts thePlatonic-Christian tradition but retains theanthropocentric imposition of ‘values’. Ihave used Nietzsche's theory to suggest aslightly different definition of metaphysicsand nihilism which draws attention to theontological parameters of human truths as astruggle between competing sets of conflictingor contradictory values (perspectives) thatopens (...) space for rethinking and re-educatinghuman possibilities. How this openness willshow up in educational theory and practice isonly beginning to be evoked. The twophilosophers indicate an approach to issues ofmorality, decision making and knowledgeproduction which may surprise and disconcerttraditional views. As the forefathers ofpost-structuralist thinking, Nietzsche andHeidegger offer a critique of Humanism whileretaining the Renaissance tradition ofpositioning education as the well spring ofvalues in society. It is through the generationof new knowledges, the development of critiqueand the nurturing of character that societyreformulates itself in relation to the earth.The ethical evaluation of these new forms ofknowledge is crucial to the creative and caringregeneration of the human environment, asopposed to the corrosive adoption ofconsumerism and usury. (shrink)