Critical Subjectivization: From Docile, Ascetic Bodies to Polyglots in Foreign Language Education in Higher Education

This paper revisits Michel Foucault’s ideas about subjectivity, its applications to understand foreign language education, and, importantly, its learners in higher education. The paper argues that Foucault’s ideas about subjectivization were grounded primarily in his related concept of disciplinary societies; while today, the government of human subjects in higher education have shifted to forms of governance better described as control societies – an extension layered upon disciplinary societies. If control is overlooked when examining foreign language learners’ subjectivities, it perpetuates an ascetic register of the self that language learners must implicitly navigate under the governance of control societies. As a result, the paper argues that an ascetic register of the self limits the possibilities of dynamically becoming different subjects. The paper concludes by arguing that adding ideas about ‘nomadic-subjects’ with Foucault’s ideas of subjectivity is a more comprehensive framework from which to understand foreign language learners’ subjectivities.