The pleasures of learning at work: Foucault and phenomenology compared

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative account of two conceptualisations of pleasure. The first draws on Foucault's analysis of bio-power. The second provides a phenomenological account where pleasure is viewed as an aspect of our immediate consciousness. These conceptualizations are illuminated through an analysis of employees' accounts of learning at work. Overall, the paper demonstrates how, in a Foucauldian analysis, pleasure disappears as it becomes a cipher for power whereas within the phenomenological account pleasure is foregrounded but power disappears. The concluding section focuses on the problems of both conceptualizations and explores whether we should simply accept that different analytical frameworks do different work for us or whether we should be more concerned at the losses, and gains, associated with theoretical choices. The conclusion further asks whether a concern to foreground pleasure in accounts of learning represents an antidote to the pessimism of much critical analysis or whether we should treat pleasure as a morally duplicitous category that encourages political apathy.

Work and leisure in higher education

“…Episodes of mortification seem long-remembered even by the successful (on working-class female students and academics see, for example, Plummer 2000). As Hughes (2007) reports, the relief at being able to manage such challenges eventually is a source of pleasure, and the experience might deliver the sort of personal insights that follow from 'crowding the edge' in more physical settings.…”

“…It is notable that Bourdieu is reticent in discussing pleasure as such in his own work, however, even in the pioneering work on the body, which is seen as marked by social forces but not as a focus for bodily pleasure (Hughes 2007). One consequence is to minimise the power the pleasureseeking body has to effect 'creative revelation' (Shilling 2004), as an active reworking of the original habitus.…”

“…It is important to suspend immediate judgement when discussing some pleasures. Hughes (2007) cites work that suggests eroticism is inevitably involved in a pedagogic relationship, for example. Equally controversially, Pronger's (1999) analysis of the unconscious structure of desire in many team sports stresses a 'libidinal economy of territorial domination'.…”

Psycho classrooms: teaching as a work of art

“…11 Whilst some may wish to contemplate the art and its meaning, for the majority 38 Cath Lambert of those using the room it functions to provide visual pleasure, something which Gillick emphasises in his work (see Szewczyk 2009). Like embodiment, pleasure in relation to pedagogy is difficult to talk about and so we tend to pretend it not particularly significant in terms of what is happening in the classroom (Hughes 2007;McWilliam 1999). However, the use of artwork such as this foregrounds aesthetic pleasure and helps us to pay critical attention to the way the architecture incites or indeed inhibits pleasure.…”

Pleasure, change and values in doctoral pedagogy

“…Thus, Freud conceptualizes pleasure as a state of oscillation rather than transformation (MacCormack, 2008). Foucault's (1985) account of bio-power and the development of the ethical subject also indicates how pleasure can be construed in the quantitative terms of balance (Hughes, 2007 (Deleuze, 1997: 189) Foucault's preference for 'pleasure' was because of a concern about the psychoanalytic understandings of 'desire' that always suggested lack, and because it foregrounded a meaning of power in negative, repressive rather than productive terms. Indeed, Foucault illustrates how pleasure can be a form of resistance through which change occurs.…”