technologies of the self in an age of insecurity

malcolm n. macdonalduniversity of warwick

My experience of the discourse of reflection

• Taught communication in Faculty of Medicine University of Kuwait

• PhD in medical discourse looked principally at the production, transmission, and reproduction of medical knowledge (after Foucault, Bernstein, Halliday)

• ELT:- the rise of reflective practice for (English) language teachers - Integration of seminars on reflective practice into collaborative module on ‘Issues and

research into ELT’

• External examiner for UG programmes (Oxford Brookes and elsewhere):- emergence of reflective writing as integral part of undergraduate assessed work

• ED programme for practicing teachers (TESOL and other areas)- short reflective piece written yet research assignment- module on reflective experience in ‘generic’ EdD for mainly FE teachers- action research as increasingly dominant form of research methodology

• Corpus of cross-disciplinary reflective writing in BAWE corpus

Reflection as Discursive Practice

Technology of the Self (Foucault, 1987, 1988)

- relation of the self to the self

Pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 1990, 2000)

- relation of the self to institutions

Techniques of the self

Art of existence

Those reflective and voluntary practices by which men not only set themselves

rules of conduct, but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in

their singular being, and to make of their life into an oeuvre that carries certain

aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria (Foucault, 1984, pp. 10-11).

Reflective writing in ancient times

The new concern with self involved a new experience of self. The new form of

the experience of the self is to be seen in the first and second century when

introspection becomes more and more detailed. A relation developed between

writing and vigilance. Attention was paid to nuances of life, mood, and reading,

and the experience of oneself was intensified and widened by virtue of this act of

writing. A whole field of experience opened which earlier was absent (Foucault,

1984, pp. 28)

Care of the self

There has been an inversion between the hierarchy of the two principles of

antiquity, “Take care of yourself” and “ Know yourself”. In Greco-Roman culture

knowledge of ones self appeared as the consequence of taking care of yourself.

In the modern work, knowledge of oneself constitutes the fundamental principle

(Foucault, 1988, p. 19)

Pedagogic discourse: social relations and discourse of reflection

Symbolic control

Symbolic control is the means whereby consciousness is given a specialized

form and distributed through forms of communication which relay a given

distribution of power and dominant cultural categories. Symbolic control

translates power relations into discourse and discourse into power relations.

(Bernstein, 1990, p. 134)

Relations of power

The more abstract the principles of the forces of production the simpler its social

division of labour but the more complex the social division of labour of symbolic

control. (Bernstein1990, p. 133)

Modulation between the social relations of production, the social relations of symbolic control and the orientation of knowledge

• Precapitalism: the medieval period

• Competitive capitalism: mid-nineteenth century

• Transitional capitalism: the twentieth century

• Reorganised capitalism: twenty first century

The knower and knowledge

Trivium• logic• grammar• rhetoric

Quadrivium • arithmetic (numbers)• geometry (space) • astronomy (motion) • music (time)

“Word before world”

Discourse of reflection in reorganised capitalism

• The re-emergence of an ethical discourse about the self in relation to i a discourse of ‘professionalism’.

• ‘shared competences’ (similar to) as opposed to ‘specialised performances’ (different from)

• ‘organic solidarity’ as opposed to ’mechanical solidarity’

• ‘transferable skill’

• reinstatement of the Trivium, a discourse of the knower, in which to embed the discourse of knowledge (the Quadrivium).

• instructional discourse (ID) embedded in a regulative discourse (RD).

• evaluative rules inculcates a deep-rooted and lifelong sense of auto-evaluation (and guilt)