Abstract

Post-secondary education in North America is submitting to the cultural and economic trends set out by globalizing, or neo-liberal, processes. Some of these processes include the standardization of knowledge and an increasing pressure to produce in a speedy manner. These impacts perpetuate the Dominant (neo-liberal) discourse: that knowledge which is 'productive' or can be commodified is more valuable that that which is not. Students, then, begin performing the needs of the market, perpetuating hegemonic power structures. In this paper I argue that education is a unique space in that while it is undeniably a product of the Dominant Discourse, it is not inherently destined to maintain the values and goals of this Discourse. Educational spaces are fluid in that they are acted upon by neo-liberal political and economic ideologies. They also have the potential to act upon these dominant power structures. Simply put, post-secondary education should acknowledge that there are, in fact, many competing discourses in any social/educational space. I explore the use of discourse analysis (from a Foucauldian framework) to describe how discourses represent more than use of language but how to interpret and portray various (possibly diverging) realities and identities. Using Lyotard's concept of performativity , I elucidate how post-secondary education is a space in which social values and norms are present and should therefore play active roles in modifying how these spaces are enacted.