Horyzont oczekiwań - z recepcji myśli Michela Foucaulta w badaniach pedagogicznych

Abstract

The article is devoted to the presentation of the reception of Foucauldian ideas in Polish pedagogical research over the past twenty years. This movement of thought is described as an oscillation between heterotopia and utopia, autonomy and heteronomy, emancipation and repression. The exploited and neglected problem areas were reconstructed on the basis of texts showing evidence of reception, developing and employing Foucault’s “conceptual toolbox” for purposes of research on specific problems of contemporary educational practice. As results of this analysis indicate, Polish pedagogues are most interested in those of Foucault’s analyses which undertake an inquiry into the problems of discursive power or reveal the generative conditions shaping particular discursive formations. The concepts of disciplinary and pastoral power are adopted and utilized for analyzing power relations inscribed in discourses of gender, market, childhood, youth, disability, homelessness, subjectivity. Apart from this, the article discusses Polish reception of Foucauldian texts devoted to the critique of autonomous subject and to his project of heterotopology. In conclusion, the author points to the inspirations issuing from the works of the French philosopher, which encourage us to depart from a dualistic mode of reasoning and look for perspectives which allow for thinking outside oppositions, irreducible to answers dichotomizing social reality.