The politics of knowledge: a poststructuralist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites

Abstract

This thesis investigates visual arts education at tertiary level in New Zealand. I examine practices which constitute the object of art education, historically and in the present. I ask to what extent are the constructed objects produced and legitimated via a 'politics of knowledge', and to what extent can the political dynamics be unearthed? The philosophy, politics and pedagogy of visual arts are examined as cultural and political discourses through congeries of institutionalised practices, both local and global. I focus attention on constituted discourses of the Bachelor of Visual Arts degree programme at three related institutional sites: ASA School of Art, Auckland Institute of Technology and Auckland University of Technology. But the issues raised extend beyond one specific programme in one location. With concern to investigate the subject 'art' as a set of discourses, ideologically, historically and politically conditioned, I advance ways of opening modes of practice in art education, to explore the characteristics of disciplinary processes and discern the capacity for legitimation. Out of this, Nietzsche's 'critical history' of the defining character and genealogy of art education is produced within the matrix of liberalism, neoliberalism, and globalisation. Through poststructuralist tenets of Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida, my thesis enlarges current conflicts over the status of knowledge, reverberating today within educational policy, practices and procedures. How do discourses of power operate to normalise social practices and silence difference in institutional practices of art education? To elucidate the politics in questions both of knowledge and difference, I render a critical method and discourse, endeavouring to interrogate the exploitation of political idealism endemic to institutional practices in the arts. Chapters are designed as sites in order to construct an anatomy of discourses of art education, adhering to Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods. Throughout the thesis, the research is grounded in my experience as an art educator in the practices under examination. This research process tests assumptions, asks questions, and uncovers identifiable grounds of dispute in the archives of art's educational practices, as I work towards a critical and relational pedagogy.