Gianluca Giachery, The body between institutions, subjectivity and throng. Biopolitics and pedagogics: starting from Foucault

 

Starting from the last and prolific production of Michel Foucault’s work, the essay is focused on the meaning of the concept of biopolitics and on the formation of subjectivities, since the XVIII century. The disciplinary structures analysed by Foucault (hospitals, schools, madhouses, jails and factories) represent the scheme of a condition that – in the modernity – has taken the pervasive characteristics of control, restricting the modalities of socialization. One of the terms of this restriction – from a socio-educational point of view – is the continual loss of autonomy, choice and decision of subjectivities, as inherent possibilities of the educational work. In this sense, the relationship between biopolitics and pedagogics is built in the tension between social regulation and self-realization.

 

Publisced on: Geographies of body, N. 18 New Series – Year IX 2013