Paper short abstract:

This paper carefully analyzes the implementation of post-conflict educational theory in South Africa. By leveling a Foucauldian critique of neoliberal governmentality, this paper aims to better understand the maintenance of historical inequality in post-conflict South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

In South Africa, neoliberal economic policies occupied the discourse on education policy development, attempting to embed a kind of rationality in the educational system that promoted imperatives of global and local economic competition. By analyzing education policy development through a Foucauldian critique of governmentality in differentiated forms of neoliberalism, (post-) colonialism, and transnationalism, persistent power relations and their effect on maintaining historically prevalent social divides in society and education are rendered visible. Using these contextualized forms of governmentality, this paper explores post-conflict theory in the context of South Africa with special regards to education policy. Thereby critiquing post-conflict educational theory based on its arguably destructive Western, neoliberal approach to development. (Examples include policies that promote an outcome-based system and human capital theory, which are problematic under neoliberal states constituted by social inequalities.)