Vibrant power, vibrant subjectivities: A storytelling approach to the study of power in education

Authors

  • Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen Aalborg University, Department of Business and Management

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/edu.2017.211.11289

Abstract

This article constructs a framework for studying power through stories in education. Stories are presented as the practical ways in which subjectivities are made within a dispositive, which is theorized as where power becomes concrete. Stories serve two paradoxical roles. They actualize power but are also where power is resisted. The human subject is theorized as embodied living history, who lives and enacts discursive, spatial and material forces in new ways. A story is the living response to the human and non-human others with whom you are entangled in every moment. Therefore I argue that power and storytelling are closely connected and rely on each other. Used together, they provide a framework for capturing education as a vibrant, dynamic, living and plural space where multiple subjectivities are created and recreated at every moment within and across the confinements of power.

Keywords: power, dispositive, storytelling, subjectivity.

Author Biography

Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen, Aalborg University, Department of Business and Management

Professor of Learning and Philosophy areas

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Published

2017-01-05

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2017): January/April

Section

Articles

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