Foucault sees the school partaking of an institutional framework which applies power, which is to say, applies knowledge. In this the school is but a post within a wider system of hospitals, factories and prisons, all of which effect discipline. Power is applied 'retail', at the very level of attitudes, gestures and movements. What is done ceases to be the sole measure of compliance, with the method of doing increasing in importance.
Power and knowledge are one according to Foucault, every power constructing its corresponding knowledge, every knowledge exerting its brand of power. The student is positioned in space, the individual desk, and in time, the class period. The student is a subject in so much as s/he is the object of grades, behavior reports and attendance records. It is the power relation that makes the student a knowledge, just as the teacher also becomes a knowledge. The student is subjected to objectification in the disciplinary school through the records that are held to be the student's measure.
The Panopticon physically manifests the application of power, the application of knowledge that the institutional framework exerts. The Panopticon is an architectural machine which magnifies power/knowledge by exposing the activities within to constant scrutiny, while hiding the scrutinier. Power no longer rests with its "enforcer", but is diffused into an omnipresent matrix of existence. Anyone could be in the central tower; no one could be in the tower at all. What matters is that the watched do not know if the watcher watches them now, or now, or now. The watched "sees" for the watcher, in effect. In this way power and knowledge are made absolute and infinite.
Think of a high school study hall, or a large lecture section. The students are arrayed in tiers, each elevated slightly above the proceeding one. The students are fixed in their seats, which are staggered from row to row. All are focused on a teacher or monitor at the apex at the bottom; the students do not face each other. The person at the apex can imperceptibly shift gaze from one student after another, all the while appearing to look right at you. Behavior is subjected as a knowledge which the monitor has the power to shape.
What the student accomplishes in the study hall is of less import than how they accomplish it. The student is to be quiet and still in the study hall. Generally, they should work alone, with a minimum of aids. Diligence is more important than brilliance.
The students are, to a large extent, the sum of their records, in which they are defined, as a knowledge determined by a power to know. Standardized scores, grades, attendance, behavior, personality inventories and whatever other sorts of records shape how teachers yet to see the student will react. Grades may reflect performance against expectation.
While his reputation as a theorist has grown since his death, Foucault was enough understood as a significant innovator in French philosophy to have been named to a Chair at France's most prestigious institution, the College de France. He also taught briefly at The University of Buffalo, as well as the University of Paris at Vincennes. Similarly, Jean-Fran*ois Lyotard is also a professor at the University of Paris at Vincennes; this researcher was asked to give a report on knowledge to the Quebec government. Foucault focuses on knowledge as power; Lyotard concurs, but pinpoints language as the form of knowledge for study, as opposed to Foucault's examination of the penitentiary as the structure the knowledge and power take.
Lyotard sees language as a game, with certain kinds of language moves permissible and others inadmissible, hinging on the kind of language game in play. In this, language exchanges have "senders", "addressees" and "referents". These roles can be played in succession. The sort of game that bears most strongly on education is that of scientific knowledge, which inhabits two games, that of the teaching game and that of the research game. The most notable restriction on these games concerns the referents. Referents for a scientific discourse must be "susceptible to proof" and available as evidence in a debate. That is to say, they must be sensible: "able to be sensed". Furthermore, "the same referent cannot supply a plurality of contradictory or inconsistent proofs."1
In a scientific discourse, referents may not be unique, transitory objects or events. Neither can referents be things like ideal forms. Perhaps it is easiest to illustrate this concept with a narrative example. It is not scientifically permissible to refer to the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who then promptly disappear without a trace. It is permissible to discuss the Universe. Science cannot discuss the number of angels waltzing on the head of a pin. Science can discuss the number of electrons in the average pin head. Additionally, referents may not be capricious, such as having qualities that are both p and not-p.
By so limiting the referents, statements made by the sender remain open to validation or refutation by the addressee, who is a potential sender. In a scientific discourse, the addressee should theoretically be an equal of the sender. That is to say, the sender is not "special" in regard to access to the referents; the sender may have greater knowledge, but is not a shaman, for example, with powers beyond those of others. An example of a proper scientific message involves Archimedes saying "the earth is a sphere." The earth is accessible. The earth, as far as we know, either is a sphere or is not a sphere; it is not both. The addressee then could say "Prove it." Archimedes would then describe the well, the appearance of the sun, and the geometric arguments pursuant to his assertion.
Both Foucault and Lyotard are considered postmodern; Lyotard helps us with a definition, which holds that postmodernism is characterized by an incredulity for metanarratives. The March of Progress Going Ever Onward ceases to be a meaningful narrative of legitimation of other discourses, such as science. As a result, heterogeneous fields of language games develop, where only local rules apply. It can, as a result, be very difficult to transfer knowledge from one domain to another, because what was a very skilled set of moves in one language game, may be utterly meaningless in another language game.
As mentioned above, The March of Progress is a metanarrative. That is to say, the narrative philosophically justifies a discourse's validity; in this case the scientific discourse's validity is established via its reference to The March of Progress as a macrotext. In this application, "narrative" refers to a particular language game. This logic may appear quite circular; this point is a major criticism of the Old Guard, or members of the old school of modernist thought, against postmodernism's jargon.
In my estimation, postmodern discourse can be very natural, for certain applications. This is most apparent when the game being played is teasing out meaning. While deconstructionism, as an end in itself, often attempts to "unpack" the locked auto trunk, containing the car keys therein, of theory, with a wrecking ball, this does not make the attempt to unpack the trunk itself an unworthy endeavor. Perhaps a good locksmith really is what's called for.
As an example, let us say that what we wish to unpack is "mainstream America". Our first move might be to look up the definition of "mainstream" in the dictionary. Learning its meaning to be "the predominate trend" or what is "widely accepted", we might posit that it implies a dialectic with a "deviant", minority trend that is not widely accepted. Seeking to get inside the term, we might then take the tack of determining what some of these non-mainstream views are. In all of this, language games are being played to effect a Fonzie chop to the jukebox of meaning, which plays the tune of one's making. As this reference may make apparent, postmodernism opens up large terrains of referents to be imported into divergent language game arenas.
A more familiar illustration of language games might be classic Warner Bros. cartoons, of particularly 1940-50s vintage. Here, the innovative moves consist of playing with the audiences' knowledge of the technology of film. Characters may walk right out of the frame, passing the soundtrack sprocket holes on the way out. Alternatively, they might jump down into the next frame, potentially questioning the singularity of identity, or the linear nature of time, in the process. A third option is the presentation of The Animator as a continuing Presence, who draws, or erases, reality as the show goes along. All of these options constitute moves that make sense only by the nature of the medium, or arena, in which the language game plays.
Historically, the juxtaposition of French philosophy; American cultural studies; and Hollywood animation would be judged as inappropriate. That inappropriateness is only exacerbated by these examples' appearance in academic consideration. However, in the postmodern setting, or "discourse", they can constitute an interlocking language game(s) arena, as a very heterogeneous regional discourse. In such situations, one must often set the rules as one goes along; many attempted moves may fall flat because they violate unmarked rules that become apparent only through the failure of sense.
1Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition:A Report on Knowledge. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis:1984. 24.
