KNOWLEDGE/POWER

POSTMODERNISM

AND

Implications for the Practice of a Critical

Social Work Education
Peter Leonard
MICHEL FOUCAULT delivered his inaugural lec.ture as professor of
"htstoire et systerne de pensee," entitled "L'ordre du discours," at the
College de France, Paris, in December 1970. We may take this event as a
significant step in the gradual unfolding of a major challenge to the
knowledge claims of the established physical and social sciences and professions by a man who had already published Histoire de Lafolie Iil'age dassioue (1961), us mots et les cboses (1967), and L'arduologi du savoir (1969) ,
aU subsequently issued in English (Foucault, 1967,1970,1972). Early in
his inaugural lecture Foucault puts forward a hypothesis "in order to fix
the terrain" within which his future work would be undertaken, though
we can also take it as the ground upon which his preceding work had
been based. Foucault states his hypothesis in the following way:

Abrege

Les post-modernistes ont grandement critique les revendications sclon lesqueJJesla rnodernite a contribue a I'emancipation de la race humaine grace a la
recherche de la raison, de l'ordre, de la science ct de I'objccuvne, parce que ces
revendications sont eurocentriques et om emraine la domination des peuples
et de la nature. La remise en question de la connaissance objective et des
valeurs universelles eornporte des repercussions profondes pour Ie feminisme,
Ie marxisrne et les auIres doctrines axees sur l'emancipauon. L'aruclc adopte
une perspective critique post-moderniste et en decrit les repercussions sur
notre comprehension de I'histoire du service social, sur la pensee et les regles
de ceue discipline, les formes de connaissance que son enseignement vehicule,
ainsi que sur les methodes d'enseigoement.
Peter u071l1Td is a professor in lilt School of Social Work at McGill University. Tills artide
is an extended versiqn of" paper given at the annual conference of the Canadian Associatum o] Schools afSocial Wo,~d" OUaUJllin June [993.
Canadian Social Work Review, Volume II, Number 1 (Winter 1994) / Revue canadienne de service social, volume t t, numerc I (hlver 1994)
Printed in Canada / Jmprime au Canada

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J am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is'at

once controlled. selected. organized and redistributed according to a

certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its
danger, to cope with chance events. to evade its ponderous. awesome
materiality.(Foucault, 1991,p. 135)

To state a hypothesis in these terms is immediately to show the antipositivist intent of his enierprise-a complex, imaginative, poetic, and
cultural challenge to the assumed domains and mechanical language of
the dominant discourses of social research and of philosophical and historical accounts of the "human sciences" and their associated professional technologies. In his investigation into the "rules of discourse,"
Foucault identifies exclusion as a major means by which what we think
and say,what we consider to be "the truth," is subject to prohibitions.
rejections, limitations. and numerous other forms of control of which
we are hardly conscious. "[Olnly one truth appears before our eyes:
wealth, fertility and sweet strength in all its insidious universality.In contrast, we are unaware of the prodigious machinery of the will to truth,
with its vocation of exclusion" (Foucault, 1991, P: 139).
That the will to truth or knowledge is involved in power, control, and
exclusion is largely hidden within any given epoch; this is the reason why
Foucault gives his attention to the knowledge/power relations of earlier
historical periods. He is interested in discursive change. "What it is possible to say will change from one era to another. In science a theory is
not recognised in its own period ifitdoes not conform to the power consensus of the institutions and official organs of science" (Selden, 1989,
pp. 100(101). Disciplines, within Foucault's perspective, operate as
another "principle of limitation" because, to belong to a discipline,
statements must fulfil certain conditions, refer to a specific range of
objects, and later fit into a particular theoretical field. "Disciplines constitute a system of control in the production of discourse, fixing its limits
through the action of an identity taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules" (Foucault, 199}, p. 144).
These introductory comments have focused on Foucault's approach
to the rules of discourse in order to set the scene for what follows.
Foucault's work assumes the impossibility of objective knowledge
because truth is defined by power relations, a social phenomenon and
not a universal absolute. Foucault has been variously described, from
neo-conservative (partly because of his pessimism) to nee-Marxist
(because of his emphasis on the social construction of reality by ruling
classes), but he rejected attempts to be labelled. He would certainly
reject the label "postmodernist" today, not least, perhaps, because postmodernism is a confused and confusing array of social and cultural
theories and practices that resist simple categorization. They do, however, constitute a diverse challenge to dominant ideas for which
Foucault's work must be reckoned an important part

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Modernity
Let us first identify the target against which the challenge. in its various
forms, is mounted. Because we deal here with social work education, it is
the knowledge claims of the social sciences and their allied professions
to which I shall give attention, though this constitutes only one pan of
the overall target of current social and cultural criticism.' Stated briefly,
the contemporary social sciences may be seen as the inheritors of that
European Enlightenment project, originating in the early 17th century,
in which reason and order were to be the means by which the ignorance.
superstition, cruelty. and disorder of the Middle Ages were to give way to
universal knowledge and human progress (see Bauman, 1992; Behler,
1990). The notion of science as objective knowledge of the physical
world was to become the cornerstone of what was later to be called
"modernity" -the domination of nature in the interests of human welfare and, possibly, happiness. Although modernity as the triumph of reason is marked at its beginning by certain names-Francis
Bacon, Voltaire-Foucault
points to the specific ways in which this rational knowledge was constructed:
[All the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries-and particularly in
England-a will to knowledge emerged which, anticipating its
present content, sketched out a scheme of possible.observable, measurable and classifiable objects; a will to knowledge which imposed
upon the knowing subject-in some waystaking precedence over all
experience-s-a certain position, a certain viewpoint, and a certain
function (look rather than read, venfJ rather than comment) a will to
knowledge which prescribed ... the technological level at which
knowledge could be employed in order to be verifiable and useful.
(Foucault. 1991,p. 137)

This useful and verifiable knowledge, the result of the application of

reason to the natural and social world. became the basis of the disciplines and professions (economics, engineering, medicine, physical sciences) which were to transform the West and, through the rise of capitalism, release and exploit new forces of production at an unprecedented
rate. The protagonists of modernity, from Adam Smith to Marx, saw in
this explosion of knowledge and production a record of human progress
and a potential for further advancement. Modernity, through its "grand
theories," especially those of capitalism and socialism, is seen still as a
means of emancipation from poverty, disease, and ignorance: the negative side of continuous "modernization," including the exploitation of
people and of nature, need not continue but can be subordinated to its
positive side, namely, the achievement of human freedom. The social
sciences are seen as acrucial part of this emancipatorv project of modernity because, through carefully established scientific knowledge of the
soda] world, expertise can be developed that enables professionals to

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intervene purposefully in order to-enhance human capacities and manage those disorganizations and dislocations that are an inevitable sideeffect of social change.

Postmodern critique
If modernity r~presents the triumph of reason over nature and tradition, of planned order over disorder, of the creation of new social structures in accordance with a grand design, of the pursuit of objective
knowledge as a means of human emancipation, we may take postmodernisrn as representing a direct challenge to all of these intellectual
assumptions and social practices. Looking back at the birth of modernity
as a set of ideas and activities emerging among European intellectual
elites in the 17th century intent on creating a rational social world, we
can see now how culturally and historically relative many notions and
practices were. They became, eventually, the ideological foundations of
successful bourgeois revolutions against anciens regimes. but they claimed
not to be just appropriate economic, political, and social practices, but
to be universal truths, the necessary conditions of human progress. This
claim to universality and objectivity has made modernity subject to- critiques that emphasize its eurocentric and androcentric roots. Foucault,
as we have seen, subjects the dominant discourse on reason to a critique
that focuses on its controlling and excluding rules-the
will to truth
through a historically specific socio-cultural track, which claims universality and thereby banishes from the discourse the experiences and
forms of knowledge generated by non-Europeans, by women, and by the
most subordinate classes.
The postmodernist critique questions. furthermore,
modernity'S
claims to be the intellectual vehicle for progress on the grounds, as Lyotard (1989) argues. that for every technological advance, for every increment in human freedom (of speech, of belief, of democratic choices of
who shall govern us). we must acknowledge accompanying crimes
against humanity. "I use the name of Auschwitz," Lyotard (1989. P: 89)
writes. "to point out the irrelevance of empirical matter. the stuff of
recent past history, in terms of the modern claims to help mankind to
emancipate itself." Modernity may mean material and social progress
for some populations: the modern history of imperialism. colonialism.
economic "development," and warfare means exploitation, impoverishment, cultural destruction. and death for others. Modernity's history of
progress/oppression
has taken place in the name of grand theories,
"rnetanarratives" to use Lyotard's term, which serve to legitimate dominant political, scientific, and professional discourses. At one level. these
metanarratives have emerged as overarching theories about "the market
economy," "the dictatorship of the proletariat," "racial purity," "the
white man's burden." "the inferiority of women." or currently "the new

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world order." At another but connected level, dominant grand theories

have been articulated within prof-essionalpractices: psychiatric classification of menta) illness, psychosocial definitions of family dysfunction, or
pathology models-of child sexual abuse.
The objection of postmodernism to modernity rests not only on
modernity's claims to universal truths on the basis of overarching
theories that rule out alternative forms of knowledge, but on the totalitarian features of its dominant discourses. As a system of belief. modernity, it can be argued, demonstrates clearly what Marx meant by "ideology as a material force," for its institutions of control-education, social
welfare, the judicial system, and others-determine
the language with
which the social world and its issues and problems are discussed and
acted upon. Foucault writes about this social appropriation of discourse
as reflecting class, gender, ethnic, and other forms of domination:
"Every educational system is a political means for maintaining or modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the power
it carries with it" (Foucault, 1991,p.146).
For Foucault, and for others profoundly critical of modernity, the
prime example of a controlling universal truth can be found in its COI1ception of a unified, essential subject. Foucault's historical studies such
as Madness and ChJilizatioll (1967) are histories of subjugation, which
reject the notion of a universal essential subjectivity that can serve as a
normative standard legitimating professional and scientific power. In
the words of Lemen (1992, p. 38), "subjectivity is the code word of modernism which masks the truth of modernity that subjects are subjected to
the dominant cultural and economic interests of capitalism." In place of
the dominant notion of an essent.ial subjectivity, postmodern writers
emphasize difference, the experiences of individual diverse subjects whose
exclusions and subordinations can be understood more fully in all their
complexity, an understanding that is pan of social and political practice
and does not claim the status of universal historical truth.
The challenge presented to forms of emancipatory politics by the idea
that. there are no universal truths is a considerable one. Postmodernism
may be seen as an often uneasy ally of'ferninism in the latter's Critiqueof
the universalist claims of the 'dominant discourses of patriarchy (see
Nicholson, 1990). The uneasiness lies in the problem that, in rejecting
universalism, perhaps feminism limits its own political claims. Flax
(1987) points out the contradiction most clearly: if feminists say that
knowledge is sociallyconstructed, then they cannot also say that feminist
theory is true in any absolute sense. This is the problem of relativism to
which feminists have given a great dealof attention and to which we will
return.

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Contradictions of postmodernism
The current debate on the knowledge claims of scientific and professional disciplines-t.he relation between knowledge and powerdemands closeattention in social work education. [fprofessional education reproduces, through its discourse and practices, eurocentric and
androcentric claims to universal truth and objectivityand so defines reality in the interests of normative order, then intellectual and political
challenges to professional education are necessary. Drawing on postmodern critique and the work of Foucault isexceptionally difficult, however, because the assault on modernity is both wide-ranging-s-encompassing philosophy. sociology,cultural studies. architecture, literary criticism, and other disciplines-and marked by profound political contradictions.2 Posunodernism in all its diverse manifestations cannot be utilized as an unambiguously "progressive" critique. as some authors such
as Moore and Wallace (1993) appear to suggest.
Foucault is essentially pessimistic about the possibility of overcoming
dominant discourse in the interests of subordinate populations. partly
because revolution simply replaces one dominant discourse for another
equally controlling and excluding one. Lyotard (1989) attacks the left
for its totalitarian "metanarratives." and Foucault (1991) argues that the
form of discourse called. dourine depends on exclusion and rejection
mechanisms that enable its subjects to identify inadmissible utterances,
speech labelled heresy or unorthodoxy. For Foucault, doctrine is
the sign, the manifestation and the instrument of a prior adherence-sadherence to a class, to a social or racial status, to a nationality or an
interest. to a struggle, a revolt. resistance or acceptance. Doctrine links
individuals to certain types of utterance while consequently barring
them from all others. Doctrine effects a dual subjection, thai of speaking subjects to discourse, and that of discourse to the group. at least
virtually. of speakers. (p. 146)

We may lind in this passage traces of the right-wing notion of "political

correctness" as a label with which to castigatethe left, but with the significant difference that Foucault argues that exclusion and rejection mechanisms are active within all political and religious doctrines, a point to
which we shall return later.
While some elements in postmodern critique may be politically
ambiguous or at least uncomfortable, more generally (see Agger. 1990)
we also may often detect an outright neo-conservative rejection of a
planned welfare state on the grounds that the ideological fantasies of
politicians are corrupting and that social welfare has become a source of
social problems rather than a means to their alleviation. Insofar as postmodernism is a critique of Western "reason," it is also post-rationalist in
the sense that it stands against the overconfident sweep of Enlightenment reason, and thus often reflects the despair and disgust that comes

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17

with the perceived failure of the attempt. in Agger's words. "to impose
reason's order on the recalcitrant. bitter world" (p. 13).
If. as some Marxist critics suggest. postrnodernism reflects a particular
historical period in the West characterized by increased cynicism. the
erosion of a self-confident belief in progress,' and cultural production
dominated by the transient and the trivial. then perhaps we should see
postmodernism, in Jameson's (1984) words. as "the cultural logic of late
capitalism" and resist it. Certainly. there is a case to be made that, while
it has produced some highly relevant criticisms of modernity, much of
what might be described as cultural postmodernism reflects the interest.
lifestyles. and angst of a professional middle class, a yuppie world captured in Agger's (1990) polemical attack: "Hip endures as the quintessential postmodern sensibility, expressing a combination of self-satisfaction and aversion to the passions and polemics of the political" (p. 9).
Postrnodernism can function as a politics that is relativist because. if
there remains no single universal standard (reason, truth) upon which
to judge what we know or what we should do, then we must see truth.jusrice, and moral behaviour as entirely historical and cultural artifacts.
Mass politics' leads [0 new forms of despotism, and so we are urged to
embrace a new individualism based upon difference. Within this reducuonist and relativist perspective, the best we can expect from politics is
continuing struggle around the specific interests of particular populations in which the major social divisions-such
as gender .class. race.
ethniciry, age. differential ability, sexuality-fragment
into smaller and
smaller units, which seek homogeneity of interests and experiences
within themselves as a basis for their pressure group politics. Within this
perspective. temporary coalitions of interests may be organized for specific purposes. but the mass movements and broad politics thai once
characterized socialist parties are consigned. along with .!:he idea of
socialism itself. to the dustbin of history: they have no pan in a postmodern world.
Attention to this emerging form of politics stemming from a critique
of modernity and its claims to knowledge is dearly an important part of
a critical social work education. For me. however, engaging in the debate
is only the first step in an attempt to' forge new forms of education that
may benefit (rom elements of postmodernist critique. Developingwithin
social work education a profoundly critical attitude. which is sceptical of
all received ideas, demands from us an interrogation of both modernism and posunodernism, but it is not an interrogation that should leave
us neutral. Critical social work education is a frankly partisan enterprise;
it attempts to stand alongside oppressed and impoverished populations
and against domination and exploitation. Being partisan means. 1 suggest, saying where you stand personally in relation to some of the issues
discussed here so far. It is time to focus. therefore. on the implications of

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modernism and postmodernism for the practice of a critical social work

education.

Critical postmodernism as part of modernity

We must begin, I believe, by acknowledging the two contradictory sides
of modernity. One side might be seen as emancipatciry: the development of a rational scepticism which rejected tradition as an invadable
guide to action and, through the growth of capitalism, released huge
productive forces that have the potential, yet to be realized, for human
betterment. The other side of modernity might be characterized as
domination: the triumphal "conquest" of nature and the subordination
and exploitation of populations, legitimated in the name of universalistic claims, and which have the potential, almost realized, of self-destruction. Furthermore, modernity, especially in its most recent forms,
appears to have lost its capacity for scepticism, as its eurocentric and
androcentric commitment to reason and science became a set of culturally founded dogmas that deny challenge. In responding to.the contradictions of modernity we can usefully adopt a critical postmodemist perspective, which rejects the neo-conservative individualism and self-interest of a postmodernist "cultural logic of late capitalism." Instead, it
develops a critique of modernity (of which postmodernism is seen as a
part) that continues its ernancipatory project in the form of feminist.
socialist. anti-racist, anti-colonial. environmentalist. and other political
struggles but also emphasizes a common ground underlying this diversity.
The argument that postmodern critique must take place within the
project of emancipatory modernity is made strongly by Lovibond
(1989), a feminist philosopher who. while acknowledging the accuracy
of many postmodern perceptions, is also sceptical of its more extreme
claims. She suggests mat feminists should continue to see their efforts as
concerned with global emancipation, with me "universal standpoint,"
and not be sidetracked by postmodern emphasis on me local, the differen t, the particular. She writes that the feminist movemen t "should persist in seeing itself as a component or offshoot of Enlightenment modernism, rather than as one more 'exciting' feature (or cluster of features) in a postmodern social landscape" (p, 28).
In 'its critique. of modernity, critical postmodernism opposes the idea
that economic and cultural "modernization" on a global scale, linked as
it often is with corporate capitalist exploitation in the supposed interest
of "scientific advance," is necessarily a requirement of human progress,
especially where it is accompanied by cultural genocide and environmental destruction. In essence, critical postmodernism attempts to
develop a new concept of the normative which is neither completely
absolutist nor totally relativist; through cross-cultural dialogue it seeks,

Canadian Social Work Review, Volume 11 (Winter)

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for example, to investigate the relationship between local, culturally specific values and wider notions of universal human rights, acknowledging
that both are specific historical products. Dialogue about the normative
links with scepticism about knowledge claims in providing a means by
which critical postmodernism engages in the deconstruction of its own
emancipatory assumptions. This reflexive stance enables us to examine
our assumptions about social justice, equality, and rationality in light of
our critique of the eurocentrism and androcentrisrn of modernist thinking, Self-interrogation is also. perhaps. the basis of more modest claims
concerning our own political beliefs: feminism and Marxism, for
example, are no longer required to claim the status of absolute Truth in
the form of feminist science or historical materialism. Rather, we may
see them as disruptive interventions into dominant discourses, social
practices emerging from specific cultural and historical conditions. Of
course, these alternative disruptive interventions may, given certain circumstances, become a part of dominant discourse; when this occurs, we
will need to be true to our critical postmodern perspective in attempting
to identify those mechanisms of exclusion and rejection to which
Foucault referred in his comments on doctrine, and either resist or, at
the, very least, question them.
The critical postmoderuism of which 1 write maintains, then. a questioning attitude towards its own "metanarratives," recognizing their
dangers-the
attractiveness of dogma, the temptations of certainty. the
urge to control others "in their OVITl interests." We recognize in a practical way that power is not simply located in one place-the
central mechanisms of capitalism, patriarchy, or institutional racism-but
is diffused
throughout the social order and takes many new forms. These newer
forms of power, especially those of cultural production and professionalism, are a particular target of posunodern and Foucauldian analysis, for
they are both forms of knowledge/power directed towards homogenizing, controlling, and disciplining subject populations. In recognizing
that power is diffused and has a symbiotic relationship with knowledge,
critical postrnodernism, if it is to avoid the pessimism of Foucault and
the despair of Lyotard, must excavate a place for resistance, for our ability to act together in our overdetermined world of economic and cultural production. We must turn away from the conception of a unitary,
essential subjectivity, "the code word of modernism," and towards the
resolutely anti-determinist idea of multiple and interacting subjectivities
which connect to the political.

Implications for social work education

If, as I have argued, we should approach social work educationfrom me
perspective of critical postmodernism, can we ideruify in more detail
some of the implications of this perspective? While elaborate model-

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building would be not only premature but also inconsistent with the
exploratory and tentative thrust of postrnodernism, it is possible nevertheless to identify our approach to the history of social work, to social
work discourse and its rules, to the forms and sources of knowledge
included in social work education, and to educational methods, which
appear to be consistent with a critical postmodern perspective.

History
We begin with history on the grounds that, if we aim to develop ernancipatory forms of social work practice and education, then we must
acknowledge, describe, and confront the origins of social work in structures and practices of domination. I turn once more LO the work of
Foucault as exemplifying the kind of profoundly critical approach to our
own history as an occupation and profession that weshould, I believe,
adopt Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1967) is an example of his
general thesis about discourses-in this case that on "madness"-in
which he identifies the rules of exclusion within the discourse and shows
that the opposition between true and false knowledge is a historically
constituted division. Specifically,Foucault renounces the usual portrayal
of psychiatry as a history of the advance of science and humanity over
ignorance, superstition, and brutality. In place of a history of increasing
psychiatric enlightenment, Foucault tries to unearth the preconditions
that had to exist before psychiatry could be established, and which have
continued to determine its historical trajectory of knowledge, power,
arid control. Foucault attempts to discover how a complex and diverse
set of social valuations about behaviour, previously largely undifferentiated, came to be transformed, from the beginning of the 18th century,
into a set of "official" classificationswhereby madness became a condition separate and excluded from mainstream life: unreason was
excluded from reason. Foucault argues that transformations in the discourse on madness provided the basis for the establishment of psychiatry because the asylum keepers and doctors then had an object (madness, unreason, fallacy) to confront in the name of reason and science.
Foucault may be faulted perhaps for not exploring sufficiently the material concomitants of these changes in discourse, although he points to
accompanying economic crises and increases in poverty in France and
Britain as relevant social pressures towards a more efficient management and control of the poor and the mad.
How might we characterize the history of social work, and what kinds
of investigations of this history might be undertaken? AIe we tempted to
see our history as one of increasing enlightenment founded on humanitarian values and advances in the social sciences?To read Foucault's history of madness is to experience a powerful method of investigation of
the effect that a discourse claiming to be scientific has on the practices

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within a particular field and how mechanisms of exclusion develop in

answer to specific needs. When we turn to our own history as a profession developing in North America and Britain from the 19th century
onwards, we see, Isuggest, a story of exclusion, classification, and subordination similar to that of Foucault's history of the preconditions for the
establish men t of psychiatry.
A Foucauldian history of social work might begin by showing that,
before social work could be established as a modern profession,
equipped with an appropriate panoply of institutional powers and techniques; certain preconditions were necessary: the identification of the
object of its interventions and the establishment of its moral and political purposes. The story would show that its object was determined by a
patriarchal bourgeois commitment to the regulation of the poor, a class
relation in which the Charitable target was. more specifically. "the
deserving poor." As madness was separated from other conditions afflicting various populations, so further categorizauon subdivided people
specifically within the lower classes. We might wish [0 trace the mechanisms whereby the object of social work became further divided into different "client groups" of predominantly working-class subjects, especially women, who were to be influenced and whose resistance was to be
overcome by intervention from outside the class. Perhaps we may find
that the need for intervention originated in the belief that the poor
were among the "dangerous classes" who needed to be reformed in
order to reduce deviance, disease. and chaos and to advance civilized
standards. Because their institutional incarceration or segregation in
ghettos was unlikely to be entirely successful as a preventive measure,
moral interven tion in the family was deemed necessary.
This account of the history of social work would surely show that. true
to its aspirations to modernity and its wish to sever its links with the "lady
bountiful" symbol of feudal and early capitalist relations between
classes, social work was obliged to clothe its moralistic surveillance and
control in the mantle of scientific rationality' Social work brought patriarchal bourgeois reason, objectivity. method, and organization to bear
on the irrationality, subjectivity. chaos. and disorganization of the casualties among the subject classes. We may wish to trace the ways in which
these modernist values were constituted into a social work discourse that
articulated a scientific language appropriate to an occupation intent on
professional advancement.

Discourse
Constructing a Foucauldian history of social work should not be seen as
simply an interesting academic exercise, bUI as a means of identifying
t.he origins, exclusions, changes. and lasting tendencies in the discourse
on social work as we engage in it today, To what extent does it remain a

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discourse based upon a belief in the possibility and actual existence of

objective professional knowledge and in the neutrality of scientific classificat.ion?To what extent do the discourse and its attendant practices
demonstrate the continuation and, perhaps, increased intensity of the
age-old tasks of surveillance and control, of a relation between actors
ami those who are predominantly acted upon? If discourse determines
what counts as knowledge-the consensus of dominant forces-we can
see, in fact, that social work and social work education have a foundational belief in "expert" knowledge as the means by which science is
applied to human problems. Professional socialization into the dominant paradigm of objective, specialized technical knowledge is the primary task of schools of social work. It is a system of knowledge production and professional advancement based upon mechanisms of accreditation and the establishment of standards of practice. Although considerable ideological dispute existswithin this system of knowledge production about the politics of the means and ends of practice and of education, social work is almost invariably seen as benign in its effects, or at
least in its intentions and possibilities: it could hardly be otherwise, for
how would we justify ourselves morally unless we believed that we were
engaged in an enlightened, progressive, emancipatory enterprise?
Foucault, and many postmodern critics, argue precisely the opposite:
that enlightenment, progress, and .emancipation, code words of modernism. have legitimated the subordination and homogenization of subject populations to the logic of capital accumulation through professional discourses and practices.
A professional discourse such as that of social work is based upon an
assumption of expert knowledge as an increasingly close approximation
to the truth about what exists in the objective world-our diagnosis.
assessment, interpretation-and
because of this excludes, with differing
degrees of rigidity,outside knowledge. This monopoly over what counts
as knowledge may lead us to question whether the discourses of social
work practice and education can have been essentially benign. The rules
of exclusion that have operated so powerfully in social work to privilege
forms and sources of knowledge that are eurocentric, patriarchal, and
bourgeois are an essential means of ideological domination. The task of
a critical social work practice and education might be seen as the search
for alternative sources of knowledge, both those that have been subordinated as part of the social mechanisms of class,gender, and ethnic domination and those that have flourished outside the discourses of objective,scientific knowledge, in literature, myth, and folklore.
Where does this search for alternative sources of knowledge in social
work education lead us? What sort of relativism are we to encounter on
the way?Once again, feminist work on this issue proves to be of critical
importance. Unlike Lovibond (1989), referred to earner as a defender

Canadian Social Work Review, Volume 11 (Winter)

of feminist modernity, Nicholson (1992) develops a careful analysis of
the problem of relativi ty from a feminist perspective by starting with the
postrnodernist assumption that human history cannot be captured by
one grand theory. Grand theories, she maintains, reflect the theorists'
own cultures. But if we give up general theory, she asks, will we then be
unable to decide among social and political perspectives, which are in
conflict? In answering this question Nicholson provides some useful
guidelines.
Nicholson argues (see also Habermas, 1984) that we only need to
become relativist if we cannot suggest cross-cultural criteria for truth or
validity upon which to decide in a situation of conflict. We can, however,
try to explicate the criteria for truth embedded in social practices and
develop cross-cultural tools of adjudication through dialogue. Once we
have renounced our claims to universal objectivity, then, Nicholson
argues, relativism develops when communication breaks down as a
result, for example, of differences of traditions, rules, and notions about
the legitimacy of knowlcdge claims. Although there can be no guarantees about the validity of our knowledge and beliefs, we can give maximum attention to organizing satisfactory modes of communication within which to examine and debate what we know and believe.

Educational practice
If, as I am suggesting, critical social work education must renounce a
commitmeru to privileged, objective knowledge, take a sceptical, questioning approach to all metanarratives, including its own, and explore
alternative accounts, histories, and experiences of our socialworid, by
what approaches to educational practice might this be achieved? That I
turn, at this point, to the work of Paulo Freire (see especially Freire,
1970) may seem, at first sight, to be paradoxical, and so it is. Freire is an
unrepentant modernist, committed to an emancipatory mass politics
whereby the historical possibility of human freedom can be struggled for
because human beings, in his view, following Marx, have an "ontological
vocation" to become more fully human (see McLaren & Leonard,
1993). In a spirit that maintains a critical, sceptical attitude to metaphysical claims as to our ontological vocation, we may still draw upon Freire's
approach to banking and dialogical forms of education as one that connects closely with a postmodern perspective on knowledge/power.
We may take Freire's account of the dominant practice of banking
education, where "useful and established" knowledge is invested in students through a process of socialization to ruling conceptions of the
social world, as the model, par excellence, of modernist rationality and
order. This banking model manifests itself in the authority and power of
teachers and institutions and the relative powerlessness of students, who
are expected to reproduce the knowledge of the "authorities" and sub-

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Revue canadienoe de service social, volume 11(hiver)

mit to the rules of dominant discourses. Freire's account of banking

education illuminates how the "social appropriation of discourses," in
Foucault's phrase, takes place and how the exclusion of subordinate
forms of knowledge and of hidden histories of oppression acts to reproduce dominant discourses and their sedimentation in relationships of
power.
What is different about Freire's account, compared with that of
Foucault, is that it stands against the pessimism and fatalism that
afflicted Foucault because it seeks in the practice of dialogue an alternative to banking education. Dialogical education is not a fully established
alternative form oflearning within Western countries; rather it is a set of
social practices to be struggled for in a spirit of revolutionary optimism.
We may interpret the practice of dialogical education as a challenge to
the knowledge/power connection of dominant discourses and their
rules of exclusion. It is a practice in which teachers and students work
together in the construction of forms of knowledge that enable them to
develop a critical consciousness of the social world in a collective, rather
than in an individualist and competitive, spirit. For Freire,like Foucault,
knowledge is always problematic because it is historically constructed
within specific social structures reflecting particular social relations of
class,gender, ethnicity, and culture.
Although there is plenty of evidence of the problems faced in
attempts to use a dialogical model of education within Western educational systems, not least because of its vulgarization in radical rhetoric
and tokenism (see McLaren & Leonard, 1993), nevertheless, I believe
that Freire's approach has a Significant place in a critical postmodern
education. In the first place, dialogical education rejects the idea of a
monopoly of "expert" knowledge in the control of the teacher who simply transmits it to the student. If knowledge is socially and historically
constructed, then dialogical education should be concerned not only
with unearthing "hidden" knowledges reflecting the diverse experiences and world viewsof subordinate populations, but also with disputes
about the nature of all forms of knowledge. If the notion of objective,
universal truths is rejected, then all absolutist knowledge claims must be
met wiLhequal scepticism: alternative knowledges, reflecting' a range of
gender, class, ethnic, and cultural experiences, must be treated with
respect as social practices but within an educational arena of critical pluralism. Just as social workers might, from a postmodern perspective,
attempt to be co-authors with their clients of alternative accoun ts of clients' lives-different narratives which elucidate a range of meanings
rather than a single authoritative interpretation-so,
similarly, might
teachers and students together build the different knowledges necessary
for practice.

Canadian Social Work Review, Volume 11 (Winter)

25

In a system of university-based professional education founded predominantly on the idea of expert knowledge as objective and therefore
privileged, developing a critical social work education is a revolutionary
task. It is a task already begun. especially within developments in ferninist, multicultural, and anti-racist education: a reflective and self-critical
postmodern perspective on knowledge/power will, I believe, contribute
much to these developments. In one of his more optimistic reflections
on "being on the other side of discourse," Foucault presents us with the
challenge of the uncertainty we face when we recognize the possibility of
there being forms of knowledge different from our own: "There are
times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently
than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely
necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all" (Foucault.
1991.p.4(6).
.
NOTES
1 For an excellent critical account of modernism and postmodcrnism from a Marxist per~
specuve, see David Harvey's (1990) The Conditionoj PostmoMmity:An Enquiry i11UJ the Ori
gins oj Culturol Chang.. For a debate among. major protagonists in the literary and cultural field see, for example. Poumodemism: JCA Documents(1989) edited br Lisa Appignanesi.
2 The contradictions of both modernity and postmodernism are well argued in Harvey's
(1990) book and Ben Agger's (1990) The Decline oj Discourse:Rlading. Writing and fl..;..
tancein PostmodemCapitalism,from which J have drawn substantially in what follows.
3 In England at the end of the 19th century, the dominant discourse of the Charity
Organization Society was the Individualism and victiin-blarning represented by Social
Darwinism. What was excluded (rom this discourse was an alternative modernist
account stemming from the COS'sarch-rivalsin the Fabian Society.whosesocial reformism and commitments to centralized planning were later to become one cornerstone of
the ideology of the British Labour Party. However orne of the bourgeois women who
were COS caseworkers became covert Fabians. secretly resisting the dominant COS discourse (Todd. 1955).

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