Ingesting power

Abstract

This paper starts with Foucault’s ideas about social control and how they were further developed in Preciado’s Testo Junkie exploring the ingesting power through various pharmaceutical technologies. The shift from disciplinary control to the much subtler pharmaceutical control will be analyzed within the context of the university. In particular, we will focus on this emerging form of biopower thinking through its implications teaching within the fields of art therapy and teacher education. Taking into account the steady increase of (mental) health diagnoses on college campuses, professor’s responses, the possibilities of actions, and the pedagogical implications will be debated. Within blurring borders of health and education, how do professors and students encounter education in different ways? An institutional critique of health and education seems necessary in this context. Issues of unease, disease, social class and entitlement will refer us back to Foucault and his work about avowal, truth, and power.