Affective Governmentality: Neoliberal Education Advertisements in Singapore

Andrew Joseph Pereira

Jul 2019 · Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education Book 9 · Springer

About this ebook

This book investigates the subjectivities in education arising from the triumphant mobilisation of care as portrayed in educational advertisements, and provides a novel theory of affective governmentality based on empirical research on affect, neoliberalism, and governmentality. It also takes the bold step of encouraging the re-imagination of the central and pressing question of school marketisation in Singapore, and problematises the seemingly innocuous portrayals of care in light of neoliberal governmentality seeking to perform cultural work on preferred identities and subjectivities. Using a judicious selection of media artefacts, the book scrutinises the creation of emotional technologies through an ethic of caring, harnessing vulnerabilities and triumphalism. As such it not only equips readers to understand the role of emotional technologies but also offers a critical and alternative view of hope and aspirations for transforming society.

About the author

Andrew Pereira is a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) National Institute of Education. His research interests include educational sociology, discourse studies, multimodality, and youth purpose. The central focus of his research delves into the political economy of education considering neoliberal philosophies and policies. Aiming to investigate ideology, he employs a variety of method including discourse, multimodal, and systemic functional grammatical analysis; architectural studies; literary criticism; and film theory. He has also taught in secondary schools and junior colleges in Singapore, He has published in journals like Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics and Pedagogies: An International Journal. In 2012, he was awarded the Nanyang Technological University Research Scholarship, where he obtained his Ph.D in English Studies from the National Institute of Education. In 2014, he won the Best Paper Award at the APERA Conference held in Hong Kong.