Foucault Thought And Education: A Postmodern Perspective

Foucault's passing away makes him like a mystery in the field of educational philosophy. This great man has brought so many important things into academia in 20th century, even in 21st century. Just as post-modernism cannot depart from post-structuralism in French, post-structuralism cannot forget his leader: Michael Foucault. This article is based on the thoughts of Foucault, which so many people in the field of education have studied in the past. In this article, I will further make clear what Foucault has told us.As a famous and radical post-modernist, Foucault himself did not talk about education specially. But the philosophers in the field of education consider Foucault as a most important and influencing scholar who has discussed education in post-modernists (Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, etc). Main body, discourse, discourse hegemony, power and discipline in Foucault's sense have become familiar to us in today's education. Foucault gave a particular meaning to those words. Somebody has declared that if we could not grasp Foucault's thoughts, we could not understand the essence of post-modernism education.As archaeology of Foucault's thoughts, this article follows the track of Foucault's changeful topic, tricky thoughts. It will explore the basic characteristic of Foucault's thoughts and his viewpoints of discourse, power and ethic based on the divide of archaeology of knowledge, genealogy of power and ethic of main body. This article basically consists of three parts as follow:In the first part, I will state the basic characteristic of Foucault's thoughts. Foucault was famous for his changeful topic and vivid critique. But the basic things in his thoughts could not deviate from the background of his time. Structuralism or humanism was the main object that Foucault had attacked.In the second part, I will illuminate some inspirations we can learn from Foucault's thoughts. Discourse, power and ethic are made up of three landmarks in the development of Foucault's thoughts. Because Foucault did not make them form a whole theory, which Foucault was mainly opposed to, it would not be advisable to consolidate them as a whole statement in this article. So in this article, I will discuss them respectively. I believe in this way we would better understand what Foucault has told us.The third part will be a chief conclusion.Of course, my study is not perfect. Maybe it is just a start in my study of Foucault. My further study will continue researching this great man.