Adult education as a technology of the self |
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| Authors: | Mark Tennant |
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| Institution: | Professor of Adult Education , University of Technology , Sydney, Australia |
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| Abstract: | Adult education has a long history of interest in the development and transformation of the self. As such it is useful to consider a range of adult education programs as belonging to and extending the lineage of ‘technologies of the self’ identified by Foucault (1988). In all such programmes, even the most individualistic, there are implicit or explicit theorizations concerning the nature of the self and the way the self relates to others or to society more generally. The purpose of this paper is to explore the postmodern critique of the dominant theorizations of the self in adult education: the psychological/humanistic and the sociological/critical; and to comment on the ‘solution’ proferred by a postmodern theorization. The postmodern critique is valuable in drawing attention to the difficulties of theorizing some kind of originary, core, true, stable, or ahistorical self. Nevertheless it is important to acknowledge that in many of the sites in which adult educators work, the pursuit of a coherent, continuous self is indispensable to transformative (and thereby resistant) adult education practice. |
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