The resilient child, human development and the “postdemocracy”

Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

“…While this, doubtless, also arises from the sense of urgency of responding to acute needs, nevertheless this absence -or overlooking of how and why these services and resources have disappeared -could be read as reflecting the 'success' of the activation discourse. As in Berlant's (2011) analysis of 'cruel optimism', the imperative to be positive and make things better generates responsibilised subject positions (Edwards et al, 2015) and colonises dissent (Henderson & Denny, 2015). This cruel optimism was also evident in the responses of community organisations, to which we will turn now as our third example.…”

“…In relation to this, the second example addressed the question of theorising an absence -of services that have 'all gone', suggesting that such formulations risk naturalising a sociopolitical context of deprivation, with the domain of the social figured as out of individual or popular control. The emerging focus on food and feeding, discussed in our third example, can be related to cruel optimism, responsibilisation, and other responses that focus on changing the individual rather than social (fixing the small problem, not the larger ones) (Henderson & Denny, 2015).…”

“…Notwithstanding the value of such programmes to the actual survival of individuals and to their ability to draw on community support to mitigate to some extent the adversities of poverty and hunger, limitations of such approaches should be noted. As Henderson and Denny (2015) point out in relation to the discourse of resilience, the idea of positive interventions based on 'actionable knowledge' directed towards enhancing 'human capital' narrows the terrain of discourse and makes it '…more and more difficult to mount critiques of the realities of injustices which cannot be made visible via resilience's technologies defining what it is feasible to change: indicators and outcomes relating to the functioning of the person' (p.22). Clearly some youth and community projects do engage communities in political education and action that explore a wider social and structural context for poverty.…”

“…Second, through the (false) portrayal of intergenerational worklessness (see Shildrick et al, 2012), these 'incentivising' policies are seen as useful in eradicating the cultures of worklessness and thus as an educational measure to prevent the spread of this 'culture' to future generations. Third, and crucially, these discourses place an onus on mothers to nurture resilient children who can maximise their 'human capital' in face of the adversity of poverty (Henderson & Denny, 2015). It is worth noting the contradictory policy demands on mothers to be simultaneously engaged in full time paid work (see Cain, 2016) and be emotionally available and ready to invest in the right nurturing response that would lead to such resilience.…”

Fanon and the child: Pedagogies of subjectification and transformation

“…While claims about children are put to multiple uses, pedagogies link to other key rhetorics and technologies of modernity, involving notions of progress and development. Normative overdeterminations of developmental discourse projected onto the embodied 'growth' and 'growing up' of 'the child' (Burman, 2008; in press a,b; Henderson & Denny, 2015), as well as figuring within projects of liberation or selfrealisation, equally contribute to the modes of alienation and oppression that Fanon so eloquently described.…”