Introduction

Abstract

One of the more interesting and controversial thinkers to have emerged in the Western World in the twentieth century is Michel Foucault. According to Libération (30 July,1984); “Sans doute la dernier grande voix d’aujourd’hui”. Yet he does not seem to impinge directly and explicitly upon educational thought and practice. Where he has influenced Western thought it might be argued that it was at the periphery, perhaps heralding the end of traditional philosophy in the company of Jacques Derrida, or the end of history in the company of Nietzsche. If he has been seen as a visiting European scholar at North American Universities he may not have been taken as a serious philosopher, historian, whatever, but rather as a visitor to established intellectual fortresses, or as a vagabond without the gates demanding entrance. How can any one who says this be taken seriously by University academics?:

I think I have in fact been situated in most of the squares on the political checkerboard, one after another and sometimes simultaneously: as anarchist, leftist, ostentatious or disguised marxist, nihilist, explicit or secret anti-marxist, technocrat in the service of Guallism, new liberal etc. An American professor complained that a crypto-marxist like me was invited to the U.S.A., and I was denounced by the press in Eastern Europe for being an accomplice of the dissidents. None of these descriptions is important by itself; taken together, on the other hand, they mean something. And I must admit that I rather like what they mean. (Foucault, 1984a, p. 383f)