Abstract
In this chapter I outline a theoretical approach to subjectivity as it is constituted through power-infused discourses. Discourse constrains and affords certain choices for individuals and therefore works to allow certain outlooks, beliefs, practices, and ways of being (and not others). I argue that how educational discourses work to constitute subjectivities should be a focus of educators and researchers if they hope to gear education toward the goals of justice. I discuss how a focus on subjectivity can be useful in determining what identities are constituted and valued in science education.
…[o]ne of the places most likely to provoke a questioning of the scientific landscape is that of the examination of the subject of science and its psychic and sexed implication in discourse, discoveries and their organization.
—Luce Irigaray (Irigaray and Bové 1987, p. 79)
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Notes
- 1.
This makes Foucault’s notion of discourse more plastic that Althusser’s notion of ideology (see Mills 1997).
- 2.
And it is often the case that at the time someone comes up with an idea, many others are thinking along the same lines with the concepts, data, and procedures available!
- 3.
Again, this is not to say that the author function does not play a role in textual analyses, nor that the identity of an author is unimportant to analysis of curriculum and policy. For example, when no specific author is given, textbooks take on more of an authoritative quality; their author becomes less of a “who” than a “what.”
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Bazzul, J. (2016). The Constitution of Subjectivities: Discourse, Practices, and Repetition. In: Ethics and Science Education: How Subjectivity Matters. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39132-8_2
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