Rethinking Subjectification: On the Limits of Biesta's Educational Theory

Abstract In this article, Andrew Thompson explores the tension between Gert Biesta's concept of educational purpose and education's historical function. For Biesta, the purpose of education consists of three overlapping spheres: qualification, socialization, and subjectification. While scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to Biesta's notion of subjectification, there is not enough consideration of his treatment of socialization and its limits on human freedom. Here, Thompson examines the historical role of socialization as it relates to the cultivation of self‐reflecting and self‐governing citizens through a process Ian Hunter describes as pastoral pedagogy. Both Biesta and Hunter critique essentialist notions of subjectivity, noting that critical pedagogy in both liberal and Marxian iterations has relied upon a metaphysics informed by Kantian moral definition in which the subject must freely exercise rational autonomy toward self‐realization. While Biesta suggests redefining the subject, Hunter dismisses any attempt at redefinition as irrelevant since the school's historical process of moral development is inevitably linked to the antiquated liberal ideal. In Hunter's view, all attempts to escape the school's moral teleology inexorably employ a pedagogy that is based on the moral ideal its critics wish to eliminate. This article illustrates the agonism inherent in Biesta's concept of educational purpose and explores the role of the theorist as the expression of a particular moral self that informs the ideal persona of the teacher.