Overview

""Olssen ! brings Foucault to life and sheds new light on understanding his work...Educationalists and scholars across the disciplines will welcome this interpretation of Foucault."" Michael A. Peters, University of Glasgow ""Olssen distills in brilliant and succinct language the core of Foucault's most important insights. This is a book that every student should read in order to understand how to link theory to practice, and educational thought to legacy and work of one of Europe's great thinkers."" Henry Giroux, McMaster University Michel Foucault is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, and his works are some of the most difficult to grasp. Mark Olssen offers an accessible overview of Foucault's thought, putting into context the relevance of Foucault's ideas. Olssen adds important new insights to Foucault scholarship by bringing to light the influences of other thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, Gramsci, Habermas, and others on Foucault's development as a thinker, and their influence on the deep historical materialist strand that grounds and uniquely characterizes so much of Foucault's thought.

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9781594511691

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Reviews

Commendable both as a reference guide to Foucault and for its pedagogic value as exemplary scholarship and writing. Throughout the text, Olssen combines erudition with lucidity. His writing is generous to those entering the field of Foucault scholarship without tiring those more familiar....I advise readers to attend to this important book. -Jeff Stickney, OISE/UT in Paideusis, the Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society Olssen . . . brings Foucault to life and sheds new light on understanding his work. In this new paperback edition he provides a clear and penetrating account of the relation between the concepts of 'freedom', 'history' and 'ethics' in relation to Foucault's materialism. Educationalists and scholars across the disciplines will welcome this interpretation of Foucault. -Michael A. Peters, Professor, Chair of Education, University of Glasgow Olssen not only distills in brilliant and succinct language the core of Foucault's most important insights, he also uses Foucault's ideas as an theoretical resource to enhance and deepen the possibilities of education as a political and moral practice. This is a book that every student should read in order to understand how to link theory to practice, and educational thought to legacy and work of one of Europe's great thinkers. -Henry Giroux, Global Television Network Chair Professor Communication and English Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University Mark Olssen provides an important reading of Michel Foucault's oeuvre. Rejecting a postmodern reading of Foucault, correctly in my view, he opts instead for a broadly modified historical materialist approach, providing a viable and challenging thesis for Foucauldian students and scholars. -James Marshall, Emeritus Professor, University of Auckland

Uses Foucault's ideas as a theoretical resource to enhance and deepen the possibilities of education as a political and moral practice.

Author Information

Mark Olssen is Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Political, International, and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey. He is coauthor recently with John Codd and Anne Marie O'Neill of Education Policy: Globalization, Citizenship, Democracy (Sage, 2004); and editor with Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear of Futures of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

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