Poststructuralism, Politics and Education

The poststructuralist critique of subject-centered reason is investigated, both historically and theoretically, against the background of the modernity/postmodernity and information society debates. Peters criticizes neoliberal constructions of the subject in education that rest heavily on the assumption of economic man. He searches for viable contemporary political forms by investigating the role of intellectuals and education in postmodern culture; the neoliberal doctrine of the self-limiting state; and its construction of market subjects such as education and the politics of space, ethics after Auschwitz, science and technology, the critical role of mass media, cybernetics and cyberspace, democracy and the politics of difference.

MICHAEL PETERS is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is a contributor to Kanpol and McLaren’s Critical Multiculturalism: Uncommon Voices in a Common Struggle (Bergin & Garvey, 1995). and editor of Education and the Postmodern Condition (Bergin & Garvey, 1995), a collection of essays on the signficance of Jean-Francois Lyotard for the field of education.