Adult Education as a Heterotopia of Deviation : A Dwelling for the Abnormal Citizen

Summary, in English

We argue that municipal adult education (MAE) can be seen as a place for displaced and abnormal citizens to gain temporary stability, enabling their shaping into desirable subjects. Drawing on a poststructural discursive analysis, we analyze policy texts and interviews with teachers and students. Our analysis illustrates how two distinct but interrelated student subjectivities are shaped: the rootless, unmotivated, and irresponsible student; and the responsible, motivated, and goal-oriented student. The difference is that the latter of these subjectivities is positioned as desirable. MAE provides a temporary place in time, a heterotopia of deviation, allowing students to escape precarious employment. The heterotopia places the students in a positive utopian dream of the future. A utopia is not a real place, and what is to become of the students after finishing MAE is not determined; the students themselves should shape it. If they fail, in line with a neoliberal governmentality, it is their own fault.

• Author: Fredrik Sandberg; Andreas Fejes; Magnus Dahlstedt; Maria Olson
• Publishing year: 2016
• Language: English
• Pages: 103-119
• Publication/Series: Adult Education Quarterly
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 2
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Topic: Pedagogy; Sociology
• Keywords: heterotopia of deviation adult education Foucault power citizenship precarious employment poststructuralism
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0741-7136