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What's Foucault Got to Do with It? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjected

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Ronald E. Butchart
Ronald E. Butchart*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Extract

The three essays before us constitute an indictment of the field of the history of education for its neglect of theory. Read linearly, from the Introduction through Coloma, the indictment becomes increasingly strident, moving from a gentle call for greater consideration of the potential contributions of theory for historical writing to a condemnation of the field for its parochial “indifference, imperviousness, and perhaps even resistance” to theory. As one practitioner within the field who shares with these authors a keen relish for theory and philosophy of history, I regret that the challenge to the field to attend more carefully to the possibilities of theory has been presented in exactly this form. My regret flows from the indictment's incoherent form, from its misleading evidentiary base, from its curious move from a broad embrace of multiple theoretical stances to a narrow, crabbed insistence on only one deeply problematic theory as acceptable evidence of the field's theoretical sophistication, and from the stunning effort in the last essay to appropriate and deploy language as power in order to marginalize and exclude from historical inquiry all but the narrowest range of discourse traditions. I will take up each of those issues in turn.

Type
Response
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 239 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 It appears to be the expectation in this exchange to engage in a good deal of self-reference, so I will follow suit. For evidence that I have, indeed, worked on those issues from various theoretical stances, see for example, Butchart, Ronald E., “Edmonia G. and Caroline V. Highgate: Black Teachers, Freed Slaves, and the Betrayal of Black Hearts,” in Portraits of African American Life Since 1865, The Human Tradition in America, no. 16, ed. Mjagkij, Nina “Wilmington, DE.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003“, 1–13; Butchart, Ronald E., “Recruits to the ‘Army of Civilization': Gender, Race, Class, and the Freedmen's Teachers, 1862–1875,” Journal of Education 172, no. 3 “1990”: 76–87; Butchart, Ronald E., “Punishments, Penalties, Prizes, and Procedures: A History of Discipline in U.S. Schools,” in Classroom Discipline in American Schools: Problems and Possibilities for Democratic Education, eds. Butchart, Ronald E. and McEwan, Barbara “Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998”, 19–49; Butchart, Ronald E., “Imaging Order: The Visual in the Social Construction of Classroom Order in Twentieth Century U.S. Schools” “unpublished paper presented to ISCHE, Kortrijk, Belgium, 1998”; Butchart, Ronald E., “Normalizing Subordination: Textbooks for Freed Slaves in the Southern U.S., 1863–1870” “unpublished paper presented to ISCHE, Alcala, Spain, 2000”; Butchart, Ronald E., “Spielberg's Amistad: Film as History and the Trivializing of History Teaching,” Teaching History: A Journal of Methods 24 “Fall 1999”: 63–70. My work borrowing from borderlands theory is cited below, note 3.Google Scholar

2 Coloma indicates in note 24 that he intends, in the future, to also examine Paedagogica Historica. Given its reputation among historians of education as the journal to which they turn for theoretical essays and the venue in which to publish more theoretical work, it is curious, at least, that he did not begin with that journal. To have done so would have undermined the polemical intent of the essay, however.Google Scholar

3 Depaepe, Marc and Henkens, Bregt, “The Challenge of the Visual in the History of Education,” Paedagogica Historica supplementary series vol. 6 “2000“. Among American historians of education publishing in Paedagogica Historica and employing theory to a greater or lesser extent, see for example, Cohen, Sol and Depaepe, Marc, eds., “History of Education in the Postmodern Era,” Paedagogica Historica 32 “April 1996”: 301–5; Richardson, Theresa, “Ambiguities in the Lives of Children: Postmodern Views on the History and Historiography of Childhood in English Canada,” Paedagogica Historica 32 “April 1996”: 363–93; Kennedy, Katharine D., “Visual Representation and National Identity in the Elementary Schoolbooks of Imperial Germany,” Paedagogica Historica 36 “February 2000”: 224–45; Goodchild, Lester F., “Oxbridge's Tudor Gothic Influences on American Academic Architecture,” Paedagogica Historica 36 “February 2000”: 266–98; Richardson, Theresa, “The Home as Educational Space: Bayonne Housing and the Architecture of Working Class Childhood, 1917–1940,” Paedagogica Historica 36 “February 2000”: 299–337; Beatty, Barbara, “The Disconnected Discourses of Childhood and Child Care in the United States,” Paedagogica Historica 37 “June 2001”: 662–76; Staiger, Annegret, “School Walls as Battle Grounds: Technologies of Power, Space and Identity,” Paedagogica Historica 41 “August 2005”: 555–69; Weiler, Kathleen, “The Historiography of Gender and Progressive Education in the United States,” Paedagogica Historica 42 “February 2006”: 161–76; Butchart, Ronald E., “Remapping Racial Boundaries: Teachers as Border Police and Boundary Transgressors in Post-Emancipation Black Education, USA, 1861–1876,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 1 “February 2007”: 61–78; Kudlick, Catherine J., “Guy de Maupassant, Louisa May Alcott and Youth at Risk: Lessons from the New Paradigm of Disability,” Paedagogica Historica 45 “February 2009”: 37–49.Google Scholar

4 As just a tip of the iceberg, see, for example, Apple, Michael W., “Teaching and ‘Women’ Work: A Comparative Historical and Ideological Analysis,” Teachers College Record 86 “Spring 1985“: 455–73; Blount, Jackie M., “From Exemplar to Deviant: Same-Sex Relationships Among Women Superintendents, 1909–1976,” Educational Studies 35, no. 2 “April 2004”: 103–22; Butchart, Ronald E., “Discipline, Dignity, and Democracy: Reflections on the History of Classroom Management,” Educational Studies 26, no. 3 “Fall 1995”: 165–84; Cohen, Sol, “From Badness to Sickness: The Mental Hygiene Movement and the Crisis of School Discipline,” Proteus 4, no. 1 “1987”: 9–14; Franklin, Barry M., “Discourse, Rationality, and Educational Research: A Historical Perspective of RER,” Review of Educational Research 69, no. 4 “Winter 1999”: 347–63; Hogan, David, “From Contest Mobility to Stratified Credentialing: Merit and Graded Schooling in Philadelphia, 1836–1920,” History of Education Review 16 “1987”: 21–42; Hogan, David, “Modes of Discipline: Affective Individualism and Pedagogical Reform in New England, 1820–1850,” American Journal of Education 99 “November 1990”: 1–56; Hogan, David, “Moral Authority and the Antinomies of Moral Theory: Francis Wayland and Nineteenth-Century Moral Education,” Educational Theory 40 “Winter 1990”: 95–119; Popkewitz, Thomas S., “Dewey, Vygotsky, and the Social Administration of the Individual: Constructivist Pedagogy as a System of Ideas in Historical Spaces,” American Educational Research Journal 35, no. 4 “Winter 1998”: 535–70.Google Scholar

5 Coloma buries two of those books in his footnotes “notes 9 and 30”; Cohen is entirely absent. See Popkewitz, Thomas S., Franklin, Barry M., and Pereyra, Miguel A., eds., Cultural History and Education: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling “New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001“; Cohen, Sol, Challenging Orthodoxies: Toward a New Cultural History of Education “New York: Peter Lang, 1999”; Grosvenor, Ian, Lawn, Martin, and Rousmaniere, Kate, eds., Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom “New York: Peter Lang, 1999”; Reese, William J. and Rury, John L., Rethinking the History of American Education “New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007”.Google Scholar

6 Appleby, Joyce, Hunt, Lynn, and Jacob, Margaret, Telling the Truth about History “New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995“; Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession “Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988”; Munslow, Alun, Deconstructing History “London: Routledge, 1997”; Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies“London: Routledge, 2000”; Jenkins, Keith, Re-Thinking History “London: Routledge, 1991”.Google Scholar

7 Palmer, Bryan D., Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History “Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990“; Best, Steven, The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, Habermas “New York: Guilford Press, 1995”.Google Scholar