This thesis explores the implications of the work of Michel Foucault for the Enlightenment project. Specifically, it asks whether and how the modern drive to explain the world so as to guide political action and promote progressive change, can be defended in the light of Foucault's critique of Western philosophy, his reconceptualisation of power relations and his account of the subject. Firstly, it is shown how Foucault's genealogy, a hybrid and polemical approach, aims to call into question the theories and practices which underpin the present. Genealogy problematizes what we have come to take for granted, and in so doing it requires that we rethink not only the nature and history of Western philosophical thought but also the role of intellectuals. To attempt to write a history of truth is to ask what one can know of a concept which structures the very limits of our knowledge. It is to become aware of the forces and constraints involved in our production of truth, and thus to bring to light the complex relationship between knowledge and power. Secondly, Foucault argued that, since ancient times, forms of knowledge and relations of power, characterised by individualising and totalising tendencies, have steadily but discontinuously integrated into disciplinary technologies which have been instrumental in constituting the sovereign human individuals which philosophy assumes as given. Following Foucault's lead in focusing not on what power is, but on how it operates historically and in concrete ways, it is shown how Foucault reconceptualised relations of power as strategies of governance which depend on the existence of free subjects capable of resistance. Thirdly, the spotlight falls on the role of relations of power and knowledge, especially the human sciences, in manufacturing subjectivity (from souls and bodies to individual actors), which is in turn related to Foucault's call to irreverently question the limits of philosophy and to engage in aesthetic stylistic experimentation upon ourselves within and against the bounds imposed on us by our present. The thesis concludes by arguing that Foucault's iconoclastic genealogy of our limits and our possibilities leaves us with a rich set of analyses and strategies with which we might render modernity unfamiliar and available for refabrication. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, 1997.

The thesis utilises Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary power to study the changes which played themselves out in the area of educational activities and governance at the Pietermaritzburg centre of the University of Natal during the 1980s and 1990s. It examines the effects of these changes in relation to students, staff, and the institution, the 'academic subjects' of the title, raising questions about the implications of these for the future of the institution. The overall context of the changes was one of national transition from an apartheid to a democratic, nonracial dispensation; decreasing state funding for higher education; and international 'globalisation'. The primary vehicles for the changes were Education Development initiatives around access, teaching and learning, curriculum, and related issues, which brought 'disadvantaged' black students into the fold of an 'historically white' institution and facilitated their academic success; and a Vice Chancellor's Review and rationalisation and restructuring processes which brought about structural and governance changes. The study examines how these processes interacted with each other and with other forces (e.g. technological change); the discourses and resistances they generated; and how Education Development gave way to a new dominant discourse of 'Quality' , Its point of departure is genealogy, an analytic which reveals the mutually-generative, normative, subject-producing nexus between knowledge and modem disciplinary power, as illustrated by Foucault's historical studies of the prison and human discourse on sexuality. It demonstrates that Education Development, operating against resistance and established norms of autonomy, developed and employed sophisticated techniques and tactics of power-knowledge to supervise tighter norms in student and staff academic practices, Education Development's linkage with the Vice Chancellor's Review and other processes and the uneven incorporation of its truths into the everyday practices of the university's established 'regime of truth' produced a more general mechanism of institutional control which 'transformed' the university, partly in line with political demands but also, through an increased degree of government of its staff and students, as a more panoptical institution for efficiency, productivity and 'international competitiveness'. The study posits the need for further inquiry into whether the university's current 'regime of truth' is that for an 'ethical' institution producing 'ethical' subjects, that is, subjects capable in Foucault's terms, of inventing themselves through exercising 'the care for the self' as a practice of freedom. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-164).

Thèse (D. en philosophie)--Université du Québec à Montréal, 2005. / En tête du titre: Université du Québec à Montréal. Bibliogr.: f. [271]-283. Publié aussi en version électronique.

Freie Universiẗat, Diss.--Berlin, 2006.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, Yale University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical notes.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-107). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Augsburg, Univ., Diss., 2008