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A Critical Enquiry Into The Relationship Of Literature In American Public Education And Michel Foucault's Governmentality, Lucille Ann Van Alstine

Dissertations

The purpose of this Critical Enquiry was to describe how literature taught in American public school can be viewed as an instrument of governmentality. The late popular Twentieth century philosopher/historian Michel Foucault viewed governmentality as a perspective of rule within a society, or more accurately, the pervasive thought attached to power of the given ruling structure of a particular historical time period. Foucault’s governmentality provided a framework in which to examine the relationship between citizens' voice as a collective "We, the People" or as "I, the individual." These balancing voices appear in literature taught in American education and parallel the …