Power, Curriculum, and Embodiment: Re-thinking Curriculum as Counter-Conduct and Counter-Politics (Curriculum Studies Worldwide)

Winner of the 2019 AERA Division B (Curriculum Studies) Outstanding Book Award This book explores curriculum inquiry through the theoretical lens of governmentality as a site of disciplinary biopolitics and a system of heteropatriarchal political economy. Examining the powerscape in which education is currently situated, the author offers a conceptual framework for curriculum scholarship based on Foucault’s genealogy of power, and analyzes how curriculum design has historically effectuated disciplinary power on students and teachers. The book engages in a synoptic essay of the history of American violence, an important curricular issue, and finally applies Foucault’s concepts of truth-telling and self-care to curriculum studies as a form of self and social reconstruction in complicated conversation with each other. Explores curriculum inquiry through the theoretical lens of governmentality as a site of disciplinary biopolitics and a system of heteropatriarchal political economy. Examining the powerscape in which education is currently situated, the author offers a conceptual framework for curriculum scholarship based on Foucault's genealogy of power, and analyzes how curriculum design has historically effectuated disciplinary power on students and teachers. This book engages in a synoptic essay on the history of American violence, an important curricular issue, and finally applies Foucault's concepts of truth-telling and self-care to curriculum studies as a form of self social reconstruction in complicated conversation with each other Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Power, Curriculum, and Embodiment (James P. Burns)....Pages 1-23 Governmentality, Biopolitics, and Curriculum Theorizing (James P. Burns)....Pages 25-64 The Past in the Present: The Historic Reach of the “Tyler Rationale” (James P. Burns)....Pages 65-93 Reflections on Heteropatriarchal Violence: A Proleptic Narrative? (James P. Burns)....Pages 95-123 Re-thinking Power and Curriculum (James P. Burns)....Pages 125-148 Back Matter ....Pages 149-157