Q.1 Explain how Foucault, Bourdieu, and Friere provided grounds of critical theory?
The Unit introduces the learners to the theories that
emerged in history and became the roots of critical thinking and pedagogy.
Various theorists were later named “critical theorists” as their theories
fall into the classification of critical theory under the Transformatory
Emancipatory paradigm of Social science
Foucault, Bourdieu and Friere
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian, and literary critic. His theories focused on the relationship between power and
knowledge. Though often cited as a postmodernist, Foucault did not adopt
these labels rather presented his thought as a critical history of modernity. Foucault
challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of
‘episodic’ or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as
dispersed and pervasive. “Power is everywhere” and ‘come from everywhere’ so in
the sense is neither an agency nor a structure Foucault was pleasing in shaping
up the understandings of power, picking up from the analysis of actors who use
power as a tool of oppression and even into judicious structures in which those
actors function.
“Truth
is a thing of this word: it is produced only by the virtue of multiple forms
of constraint,. And it induces regular
effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics”
of truth
Contrary to many
interpretations, Foucault believed in
possibilities for action to challenge
power is not a matter of seeking some ‘absolute truth’
According to Bourdieu, the education system of developed
societies functions in such a way s to legitimate class inequalities.