Re-thinking ‘pointiness’: Special education interrupted

Abstract

In this chapter, I look at some of the ways in which psy-discourses and processes inform teachers and students’ understanding of persons, events, situations, and practices in an attempt to make the discursive practices of the special school more visible. The special school I work in is for those students who are read as unmanageable and too violent to be maintained in mainstream/regular schooling. I discuss how the works of Foucault and other poststructuralists, and the use of irony and humour, helped me to move towards counteracting dominant discourses and to bring about change.