From Foucaultian bio-power to Confucian respect: bio-power and e-Confucius

In their session Abdul Paliwala (University of Warwick) and Amy Huey-Ling Shee (National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan) presented linked papers aimed at considering the cross-cultural problems raised in e-learning and legal education generally by the Foucaultian concept of bio-power and ways in which Confucian pedagogy may assist in their resolution.

You can download Abdul’s full paper at the foot of this page, and find out more about the application of Confucian pedagogy in Amy’s paper, Lessons from a drama e-course. Abdul further developed his ideas on Confucius and legal education in Socrates and Confucius: a long history (?) of information technology in legal education, presented at Learning in Law Annual Conference 10.

For Foucault power is not hierarchical, but a diffused flow in which both the exercisers of power and its recipients participate. This notion of power has been further elaborated by Deleuze as rhizomic and by Castells as networked. In an e-learning context this power process envelopes not only the student and the teacher but all those involved in the organisation of learning including the departmental and university hierarchy, so that both students and lecturers become actively engaged in their own bio-power domination.

Abdul’s paper illustrates the potential of this process to influence apparently progressive transformations of learning from an ‘authoritarian’ classroom where the lecturer is supreme to a participatory e-learning experience, such as the SIMPLE project in the UK and Taiwan’s e-Confucius teaching room.

Enter the dragon!, the presenters’ paper at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008, set out three principles of Confucian pedagogy:

1. Balance between studying and reflection (self illumination), what we term ‘guided independent learning’.
2. Respect for the teacher and self discipline by the teacher.
3. Inner strength of students to learn from both good and bad teachers.

These principles were explored further to ascertain their significance in resolving two issues – firstly, their relevance in relation to the principles of independent, active, reflective and transactional learning promoted as part of the orthodoxy of e-learning, and secondly their relevance in resolving issues of bio-power in a cross-cultural context. In particular, what is the relevance of the Confucian principle of ‘respect’ to authoritarian connotations of contemporary Taiwan legal education, and secondly, how can it transcend the subtler implications of bio-power in western e-learning environments?

About Abdul

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Abdul Paliwala is a professor in Warwick School of Law and Consultant (E-learning) at UKCLE. He presented a version of his paper, ‘The culture of learning: from biopower to e-Confucius’, by videolink at SubTech 2008.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010