Читать книгу Educating Students with Refugee and Asylum Seeker Experiences - Maura Sellars - Страница 20

Foucault did not use the term racism in its current meanings of either devaluing others by engaging with negative stereotypes or xenophobia which results in domination or of believing that ‘self’ is superior and therefore rejecting others by exclusion. He used the term in a way that excluded any notion of opinion. In his later [25] work Foucault frequently engaged with the notion of governmentality (Lemke, 2000) which appeared to extend and reframe his concept of biopower. While Foucault did not ever explain the exact relationship between governmentality and biopower or biopolitics, governmentality does appear to include the conception that, not only did authorities gather statistics and data to monitor populations and to improve their circumstances, but that they did so with another purpose in mind. Linked with neo political regimes, Foucault (2003) stated

The specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities, ideologies, or the lies of power. It is bound up with the technique of power, with the technology of power. ...The juxtaposition of – or the way biopower functions through - the old sovereign power of life and death implies the workings, the introduction and activation, of racism. And it is, I think, here that we find the actual roots of racism (p. 258).

This new idea of modern racism is also intrinsically linked with construct of governmentality. Foucault describes this as,

The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analysis and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific, albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, its principle form of knowledge political economy, as its essential technological means apparatuses of security (1991 p. 102).

This definition may, on the surface, present a relatively abstract view of governmentality. However, the means of governance that he describes is currently observed to be status quo in western industrialised countries. This has powerful implications for the inclusion, wellbeing and future prospects of whole categories or groups of populations in these societies.

Rasmussen (2011), explains this writing of Foucault’s as ‘flexible technology of power that entails a new and novel form of government (p. 40). This new and novel form of government was able therefore to differentiate between those individuals who were to be invested in and those who were not- leaving those who were not to metaphorically ‘die’ in that they were not deemed to be members of society who merited access to resources and benefits that that would facilitate maximum human functioning as part of society. It appears to Foucault that the role of some of the medical sciences changed from one of nurturing and healing to censorship in order to protect society from any abnormalities (Foucault, 1987). Ball (2012), in his work on the history of British education as perceived through a Foucauldian analysis, gives detailed descriptions of the laws which prevented some individuals, at various times throughout history, from participating in education because of their perceived disability; intellectual or physical. In Foucauldian terms, these individuals were not to be invested in as part of society.