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Science Education as a Site for Biopolitical Engagement and the Reworking of Subjectivities: Theoretical Considerations and Possibilities for Research

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Book cover Activist Science and Technology Education

Part of the book series: Cultural Studies of Science Education ((CSSE,volume 9))

Abstract

This chapter advocates viewing science education as a site for biopolitical struggles and the reworking of subjectivities. Such a perspective provides a framework that can unite various struggles for social justice and help educators and students intervene in the forces of what philosopher Michel Foucault calls biopower. This chapter draws from Foucauldian notions of biopolitics and subjectivity and the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, to provide some notes on biopolitical theory and potential applications in science education. This chapter is just one theoretical articulation of how biopolitics and biopolitical struggle can inform critical, activist work in science education. The full productive ‘value’ of biopolitical theory has yet to be realized.

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.

(Foucault 1982, p. 785)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I use the terms biopower and biopolitics in the way Hardt and Negri (2009) do. Simply put, biopower represents the control and exploitation of populations, life forces, and human bodies. Biopolitics operates in relation to biopower and consists of interventions and challenges to biopower on the same terrain of bodies and subjectivities toward different subjectivities, social relations and ontologies.

  2. 2.

    Obviously science education discourses cannot completely constitute subjectivities, but works in conjunction with other discourses, institutions, and material realities. Moreover, as John Fiske (1998) notes of Althusser’s work and production of subjects, education systems are not able to tell a different story than the legal system or the family.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of STEM education and Teacher Development, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, MA, USA

    Jesse Bazzul

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  1. Jesse Bazzul
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Correspondence to Jesse Bazzul .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Bencze

  2. Faculty of Education and Department of Science and Technology Studies, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Steve Alsop

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Bazzul, J. (2014). Science Education as a Site for Biopolitical Engagement and the Reworking of Subjectivities: Theoretical Considerations and Possibilities for Research. In: Bencze, J., Alsop, S. (eds) Activist Science and Technology Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4360-1_3

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