Abstract
The themes of truth and power permeate each of the paradoxes distilled from my empirical work and theoretical interpretation. Those grouped as paradoxes of subjectivity and authority relate particularly to the use of truth as a form of power (Foucault, 1988, p.107) to work directly on the soul of the principal by shaping principal authority and subjectivity. While the use of ‘authority’ does not discount the legal responsibilities that legitimise the principal’s representative function, the focus is mainly on the performative acts of authority and the ‘legitimate resources’ they provide (Haugaard, 2012, p. 73) in constituting the principal as a figure of authority in schools within particular social and political limits. In the systemic arrangements within which my study is situated, the circulation of power between central policy-makers and the principal is vitally important in bestowing and sanctioning preferred subjectivities. More pointedly, the regimes of truth that are given expression in prominent discourses form a political incitement for principals to recognise and shape themselves in these discourses.
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Notes
- 1.
In his oft-quoted metaphor of interpellation, Marxist and Marxist critic Louis Althusser understands the subordination of subject as the effect of the authoritative voice that hails the individual. Butler (1997) provides a useful critique of Althusser’s interpellation (pp. 5–6, 95–96).
- 2.
McNay’s (2013) Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self works at the conjunction of Foucault’s practices of the self and feminist theory to provide insights into notions of gender identity, power, subjectivity and autonomy that greatly exceed those that could be gleaned from my empirical work.
- 3.
Butler (1997) adds complexity to Bacchi’s (2000) subject/user dynamic. She describes a type of performative agency for the user of a controlling discourses and notes a reversal in the appearance of power ‘as it shifts from the condition of the subject to its effects’ to give the impression of ‘self-inaugurating agency’ (p. 16). Niesche and Gowlett (2015) provide a useful explanation of Butler’s process of performative re-signification and its applications in the field of educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA).
- 4.
Later in the same work, Foucault (1997b) describes governmentalization as ‘this movement by which individuals are subjugated in the reality of a social practice through mechanisms of power that adhere to a truth’ (p. 47).
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Dolan, C. (2020). Paradoxes of Subjectivity and Authority. In: Paradox and the School Leader. Educational Leadership Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3086-9_6
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