Governing the Intermediary Spaces: Reforming School and Subjectivities Through Liminal Motivational Technologies

Abstract

A recent national reform of the Danish public school facilitates a number of ongoing experiments in (re)organizing the school day in an attempt to potentialize the spaces in the shape of what we usually recognize as recess, breaks, and transitions. The reform may indeed be positioned within what have been termed the GERM or Global Educational Reform Movement; however, the Danish reform also has particular traits of its own as “a new, different and more varied school day.” Within this lies the reorganization of the everyday rhythm of schooling as well as the addition of a mandatory daily 45 min of physical education and activities. In the chapter, we focus upon the governmentality of “the intermediaries.” Reorganizing the school is not only a way of ordering and structuring the day and of disciplining subjectivities but also a way of potentializing subjectivities to promote learning. Hitherto unnoticed spaces of freedom – both in the form of recess and free or spare time and resources and in the form of energies and affects – are the object of intensified management and pedagogy. We analyze this governmental shift by reading our empirical material through the lens of two thinking technologies, “the liminal motivational technology” and “potentializing intermediary spaces.” Our analysis shows how certain kinds of leadership for learning can be designated as psy-leadership, which means leadership that draws on (post)psychologies, how educational subjectivities are being reformed through this setup, and finally how the potentialization of the liminal and the intermediary spaces also invites new unmanageability into the school, which may result in non-intended and perhaps unwanted effects and exhaustion.