Ain’t no makin’ it in the age of austerity: The making and taking of educational life

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Notes

If we follow Foucault (2003) and expand our definition of death to include “The fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on,” then we can recognize the central role that schools play in the making and taking of educational life. Moreover, this essay seeks to build on Tyson Lewis’ (2006) elaboration on the concept of educational life and his exploration of biopower and sovereign power in school contexts.

Biopolitical production refers to collaborative and immanent forms of labor involving “all aspects of social life, including communication, knowledge, and its affects” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 101).

I am suggesting that constituent bíos (life) is a form of (educational) life that could potentially manifest as an insurgent constituent power. It is both a threat and source for constituted power and is therefore met with practices of absorption, containment, and eradication that typically attempt to either “deal with” it through carceral practices or “care for” it with progressive pedagogies that have, for the most part, exhausted their subversive potential.

For a more thorough analysis on the techniques of absorption, containment, and eradication, see Bourassa and Margonis (2017).

Also, like the lads in Willis’ study, the Hallway Hangers problematically invest in the logics of White supremacy and patriarchy.

For more on the concept of a politics of fulfillment, see Benhabib (1986).

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Gregory Bourassa

Gregory Bourassa is Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Northern Iowa. He publishes on theories of the educational common, autonomist Marxism, educational biopolitics, resistance theory, and culturally relevant pedagogies.