This article examines how Michel Foucault’s theories have been received in Brazilian education research, highlighting his ideas’ diverse interpretations and applications. The discussion is divided into three main areas of reception. The first area examines the effects of the Brazilian publication of “Discipline and Punish,” which contributed to labelling Foucault as a “theorist of power.” The second area discusses the reinterpretation of Foucault’s work by the Porto Alegre Group, which has been instrumental in fostering a new understanding and spreading Foucauldian (...) studies in Brazil. The third area reviews current academic work that explores themes like neoliberalism, curriculum, education, and teaching. In summary, this article aims to provide a thorough overview of Foucault’s impact on Brazilian education research while recognising that addressing the full scope of his work is challenging. Ultimately, it argues that Foucauldian theories are valuable tools for educational research that go beyond established frameworks. (shrink)

This paper functions as both an introduction to the German debate around Foucault’s model of critique and the questions of normativity surrounding it as well as presenting one possible interpretation of critique at the intersection of Foucault’s writing and his intellectual activism. Foucault’s model of critique has been and can be used or criticised productively in contexts of normative political theory. To properly capture Foucault’s critical project it is necessary to focus on the insights of governmentality studies and their normative (...) abstinence when criticising, his turn towards the ethical and practices of the self like parrhesia, but also his activism as a public intellectual, with all of these notions always situated in the tension of particular and universal. (shrink)