Foucault News

Pang, B., Hill, J.
Representations of Chinese gendered and racialised bodies in contemporary media sites
(2018) Sport, Education and Society, 23 (8), pp. 773-785. Cited 1 time.

DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2018.1489226

Abstract
Social media are influential sociocultural forces that construct and transmit information about gender, health and bodies to young people in the digital age. In health and physical activity, Chinese people are often represented and positioned differently to other (minority) ethnic groups. For example, Black young people are often understood as having low academic motivations and aspirations but as ‘natural’ athletes; in contrast, Chinese young people, seen as the ‘model minority’ who excel in STEM subjects, are fragile, reserved and disinterested in physical movements. These public forms of representation may sit in opposition to the young people’s embodied identity. When these misrepresentations are internalised, issues such as micro-aggression and racism may have an impact on Chinese young people’s health and wellbeing. This paper aims to examine how Chinese bodies are gendered and racialised in contemporary social media sites (e.g. Google News, LiveJournal, Medium, WordPress). Drawing on critical discourse analysis and Foucault’s concepts of normalisation and discursive practice, the paper will problematise the often taken-for-granted gendered and racialised stereotypes related to Chinese physicality and health on social media sites. Implications for developing future research and teaching resources in critical media health literacy for young people on issues related to gender and equity will be provided. The results affect how we understand, represent, and discuss Chinese (young) people on social media sites, thereby how Chinese young people engage, construct, and perform their embodied identities in Western, English speaking societies. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Chinese bodies; critical discourse analysis; critical media health literacy; gender; race; social media

Index Keywords
aggression, article, Chinese, discourse analysis, drawing, female, gender, health literacy, human, identity, male, organization, racism, social media, speech, stereotypy, teaching, wellbeing

Bazzul, J.
Ethics, Subjectivity, and Sociomaterial Assemblages: Two Important Directions and Methodological Tensions
(2018) Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37 (5), pp. 467-480.

DOI: 10.1007/s11217-018-9605-8

Abstract
Research that explores ethics can help educational communities engage twenty-first century crises and work toward ecologically and socially just forms of life. Integral to this research is an engagement with social theory, which helps educators imagine our shared worlds differently. In this paper I present two theoretical-methodological directions for educational research that centres ethics: Ethics and (human) subjectivity; and Ethics-in-assemblage. While both approaches might be seen as commensurable, they can also be seen as quite divergent. Using Michel Foucault’s later work on subjectivity and ethics, as well as recent work in Anthropology, I present a methodological direction for research into ethical subjectivity, how students come to see themselves as self-reflective ethical actors. Relevant here is the tension between ethics and politics, individual and collective modes of being, as both are crucial to both struggles for justice on a damaged planet. The second direction involves a sociomaterialist approach that employs Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘assemblage’ as well as Karen Barad’s notion ‘entangled responsibility’ to show that ethics can also be seen to co-emerge with/in phenomena that exceed human relations. In short, exploring ethics through educational research means simultaneously examining ethics as subjectivity and ethics as co-emergent larger assemblages/phenomena. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature.

Author Keywords
Assemblages; Ethics; Foucault; Justice; Materialisms; Politics; Subjectivity