This is the draft of a peer-reviewed paper that will be published sometime soon in the Race, Gender, & Class Journal.

1. Race, Gender & Class: Volume 17, Number 3-4, 2010 ( )
Race, Gender & Class Website: www.rgc.uno.edu
I HEAR YOU NOW:
HOW THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY
HAS RAISED EXPECTATIONS AND INSPIRED
TRUTH-TELLING
Joelyn K. Foy
Curriculum & Instruction
Kansas State University
Abstract: Although electing an African-American president in 2008 did not
mark the end of racism in the United States (ASHE, 2009; Carter, 2009; Fluker,
2008; Wise, 2009), African-American children now know that it is possible to
become President. As a White female, I expected that having a man of color
holding the highest political office in the land would send a message of
empowerment. There is an opening up, a bringing to light, conditions like
poverty and incest, but there is also dissent. Foucault’s themes of power,
knowledge, and self clarify voices that have previously been silenced within the
dominant White majority.
Keywords: Foucault, theoretical, power, knowledge, self, Precious
Joelyn Katherine Foy is currently a Graduate Research Assistant with the
Center for Science Education at Kansas State University and a Doctoral student
in Curriculum & Instruction with the College of Education. Her research
interests include engaged pedagogy, critical theory, educational foundations,
multicultural education, mathematics education, applied statistics, and lgbtqia

2. issues in PK-20+ education.
Address: P. O. Box 1112, Manhattan, KS 66505-1112. Ph.: (785) 764-2129,
E-Email: jofoy@k-state.edu

3. I Hear You Now 3
A lthough electing an African-American president in
2008 did not mark the end of racism in the United States
(ASHE, 2009; Carter, 2009; Fluker, 2008; Wise, 2009),
African-American children now know that it is possible to become President.
Young African-American men, in particular, have experienced a shift in
expectations. Dr. Robert Franklin, President of Morehouse College, Atlanta,
Georgia, shared that his students recognized President Barack Obama as a
Renaissance man. Morehouse College aims to prepare young African American
men to be Renaissance men; to be “well-read and well-spoken and well-traveled,
well-dressed and well-balanced” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2009).
Dr. Franklin comments upon an open meeting at Morehouse the day after the
election.
Oh, I’ll tell you, it was an amazing theme that began to emerge that can
be summarized in two words: no excuses. I mean, one after the other
they got up and said, “You know, after this election it means there’re
no excuses for our academic underperformance, for our irresponsible
behavior—no excuses.” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2009)
African-American girls may have also experienced a shift in expectations.
Bigler et al. (2008) conducted a study before and during the campaign.
“Interestingly, girls, African American, and Latino participants were quite
optimistic about their prospects of actually becoming president. When asked
whether they really could be president, approximately 75% of each group
responded affirmatively” (p. 108). Perhaps the participation of Michelle Obama
in the campaign and the leadership role she assumed as First Lady will be
evidenced in the future lives of African-American girls.
As a White female, I would have thought that having a man of color
holding the highest political office in the land would send a message of
empowerment like no other. However, when I discussed this idea with one of
my African-American colleagues, I found that the phenomena I am observing is
much more complicated. I claim that since President Barack Obama’s election,
African-American voices are being heard that have previously been silent. My
African-American colleague, however, proposed that what has really occurred is
that African-American voices are coming out into the open. What I perceive as
an “opening up” of communication is what my African-American colleague
describes as “bringing into the light” (B. Stoney, personal communication,
February 3, 2010).
As an educator, the phenomena of opening up, of bringing to light,
conditions like poverty and incest, which affect contemporary students on a

4. 4 Joelyn K. Foy
daily basis, is critical for me to understand. Nelson et al. (2010) report that
“between one quarter and one third of children of color live in poverty; only 10
percent of white children do” (p. 245). My students bring into the classroom all
of their life experience, not just their homework. Had Claireece Precious Jones
been my student today, she would have been one of those anonymous students
“left behind” that NCLB (U.S. Department of Education, 2004) claims to target
and assist. But there are other effects of this opening up, of bringing to light,
that are equally as important, I believe. African-American boys and girls now
see in the White House a family of color. Granted, that family has two parents,
a mother and a father, whereas many children today come from single-parent
households (Close, 2009).
This phenomenon of opening up, however, is not all sweetness and
light. There is dissent. Hate crimes in “the Southern states, where opposition to
Mr. Obama is at its highest and where reports of hate crimes were emerging
even before the election” (Strange, 2008) increased significantly right after the
election according to the Intelligence Report at the Southern Poverty Law
Center (Mark Potok in Strange, 2008). Sandy Close reported that “Growing
evidence indicates that a sizable white minority, for racial reasons, feels
increasingly alienated from the Obama White House” (U. S. Department of
Homeland Security as quoted in Close, 2009). Anecdotally, I overhear more
racist remarks in my everyday life. When I discussed this with my African-
American colleague, it was pointed out to me that for some reason with an
African-American President, White racists feel like they can say out loud what
was once said in private (B. Stoney, personal communication, February 3,
2010). The more we discussed this aspect of opening up, the more I understood
racist remarks spoken openly as an example of bringing racist sentiment out into
the open, “into the light” of day.
In this paper I will use the theories of Michel Foucault to clarify power
relations among the characters within “Precious” the movie. In addition, I will
use Foucault’s understandings of knowledge and truth to further identify
Claireece’s path to becoming a free subject. Finally, I will describe how
becoming a free subject relates to care for self and how Claireece’s subjectivity
evolves into an effective kind of resistance.
Within the theoretical framework of power, knowledge, and self,
Foucault proposed that knowledge and power are intertwined.
“What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the
fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it
traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge,
produces discourse.” (Foucault, 1980:119)
Furthermore, Foucault described “regimes of truth” as “the types of discourse

5. I Hear You Now 5
which it (society) accepts and makes function as true” (p. 131). Building upon
Foucault’s definition, McLaren (2009) notes that “dominant discourses” are
“those produced by the dominant culture” (p. 73). Therefore, when a truth is
spoken that is outside the dominant White culture, it may be considered
dangerous. Within Greek culture parrhesia, “the Socratic practice of truth-
telling,” was “a specifically ethical practice” with the theme of “care of the self”
(Gutting, 2005:141). The themes of power, knowledge, and self will help to
clarify what I’m hearing since the election of President Obama.
In particular, I will use the movie, “Precious”, as an example of how
the African-American voice clarifies issues of intergenerational poverty and
incest in a way that dominant White stories of poverty and incest do not. When
Mo’Nique was interviewed on the red carpet of the Academy Awards, she
emphasized the universal nature of the story (Churchwell, 2010) even though
there was also resistance among African-Americans toward the mother’s
character (Harris-Lacewell, 2009). In an interesting juxtaposition, the book
Push (Sapphire, 1997) upon which the movie is based, is set in the year 1987.
Another major film, “Nuts”, starring Barbara Streisand and featuring a high-
priced prostitute who murdered a john was released in 1987. “Nuts” is about
incest in a White family: a family where the silence has everyone questioning
their daughter’s sanity.
Why film? bell hooks (1997) in a preview to her DVD on “Cultural
Criticism & Transformation” makes the case that contemporary students need
popular culture to make sense of and to question contemporary issues. hooks
uses film in her critical pedagogy with students from Harlem. By delving
deeply into “Precious” the movie, which takes place in Harlem, it is my intent to
hear clearly the voices of Precious, her mother, and her teacher. These voices
speak in such a way that I hear a message that has previously been silenced
within the dominant White majority.
WHO IS MICHEL FOUCAULT?
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French intellectual—a historian
and philosopher—whose writings and activism played a unique role in
poststructuralism. Foucault was a homosexual and is believed to have died from
an AIDS-related infection. He was academically brilliant and in 1969 became
Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the prestigious Collége de
France, a post in which he remained until his death.
Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx influenced Foucault
during his early years, although later he turned away from existentialism and
Marxism. An early influence upon Foucault was Georges Canguilhem who
sponsored Foucault’s doctoral thesis on the history of madness (The History of

6. 6 Joelyn K. Foy
Madness in the Classical Age, 1961). The French tradition of history and
philosophy of science contained inconsistencies that informed Foucault’s early
work and his recognition of the marginalization of the subject (The Birth of the
Clinic, 1963 and The Order of Things, 1966). On the other hand, Foucault was
fascinated by French avant-garde literature that influenced his notions of
subjectivity.
Foucault’s later work included a critical analysis of modern prison
systems (Discipline and Punish, 1975), and three volumes on sexuality (The
History of Sexuality, 1976). Foucault’s work was incomplete when he died, and
his estate froze his writings. However, in recent years more and more of his
unfinished and previously unpublished work are being made available (Books
and articles on Foucault, 2009).
USING FOUCAULT
Foucault’s ideas and points of view are used in education research in
varying ways. Educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities) are
compared to prisons and mental institutions because of the constant surveillance
upon both students and teachers by administrators; and the oversight by
superintendents and governmental agencies upon public systems of schooling.
Education is a knowledge enterprise that is steeped in power relations and for
students who are not the White majority, classrooms are significant loci of
resistance. Just as Foucault’s approaches to and understandings of knowledge
changed over time, so too did his understanding of the self as subject. Towards
the end of his life self-reflection gained importance as an activity of caring for
self, which he also saw as an act of freedom (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000).
The self, reflecting upon the self, was seen as an ongoing process. “The
outcome of this struggle between subject and power/knowledge is always
uncertain, never decided in advance, and never final” (p. 230). In order to
follow Foucault’s thinking it is imperative to compare and contrast knowledge,
subjectivity, and power.
Knowledge
Up until the 1970’s, structuralism was the method of describing
knowledge. The theory of discourse, however, shed a different light upon the
postmodern view of knowledge. Pinar et al. (2004) describe the
poststructuralists’ view of knowledge.
The difference, however, between the structuralists’ set of relations,
structures or systems, and the theory of discourse, is that the former are
seen as foundational and invariant, while the latter proposes that
discourse is historically and socially contingent, and that the analysis of

7. I Hear You Now 7
discourse must remain at the level of the signifier. To analyze a
discourse is not to say what it means but to investigate how it works,
what conditions make it possible, and how it intersects with
nondiscursive practices. (Pinar et al., 2004:462)
This difference is key to explicating knowledge within poststructuralism.
Knowledge involves discourse. “For Foucault, discourse is an
anonymous field in that its origin or locus of formation is neither a sovereign nor
a collective consciousness. It exists at the level of ‘it is said’” (Pinar et al.,
2004:462). Discourses may be practices, techniques or rules that concern the
speaking subject, power relations and the words themselves (Simola et al.,
1998). “Knowledge is that of which one can speak in a discursive practice and
which is specified by that fact” (Foucault, 1972:182-183, quoted in Pinar et al.
2004:459). We tend to think of knowledge as belonging to a particular
discipline or content area, whereas Foucault saw knowledge in a more specific
way as that which is spoken in a particular place and at a particular time. In
addition, what is said in that place and at that time is constrained by the
individual speaking (the subject) and the power relations acting upon that
moment in that place and time.
Therefore, from Foucault’s point of view, both history and philosophy
give us specific words, phrases, and perspectives that are unique both to the
speaker/writer and the time in history. Foucault believed that the constraints on
what could be said or written, governs what we know and how we are able to
view events in history. Our understanding of philosophy is governed by what
was allowed to be thought and the way that societies manage the thoughts and
actions of individuals. These societal constraints, in addition, determine how a
person sees him or herself.
In applying Foucault’s ideas about knowledge and discourse to
education, for instance, we must keep in mind the context. Individuals in a
particular place produce knowledge at a particular time. Individuals bring to
their work their personal history, their personal biases, cultural influences, as
well as, the biases of the time in history. Patti Lather (1991, 1989) points out
the following:
… all research, even emancipatory or critical research, represent forms
of knowledge and discourse that are inventions about the researchers.
All research, she insists, also represents definitions, categorizations and
classifications of the researchers themselves. All forms of research, she
asserts: ‘elicits the Foucauldian question: how do practices to discover
the truth about ourselves impact on our lives?’ (p. 167).” (Pinar et al.,
2004:506)

8. 8 Joelyn K. Foy
The truth becomes not only about knowledge (discourse or discursive
formations) but also about the individual (the subject).
Subjectivity
Subjectivity is often considered to be the opposite of objectivity.
Making an object of something or someone creates a distance that allows the
observer not to identify with the observation. Subjectivity, on the other hand,
creates a space where the observer identifies closely with that being observed.
Simola et al. (1998) explain that Foucault understood that “the subject is not a
substance but a form” (p. 66). From Foucault’s point of view subjectivity is
related to becoming an object or becoming objectified. “My work has dealt with
three modes of objectification that transform human beings into subjects”
(Foucault, 2003b:126). Becoming objectified meant being made into a subject.
A person is made into a subject in Marxian analysis, for instance, where the
laborer is the unit of production. A person is made into a subject through
affiliation (or disaffiliation) as in “the mad and the sane, the sick and the
healthy, the criminals and the ‘good boys’” (Foucault, 2003b:126). A person is
made into a subject through inner turmoil; that is, when a person is divided
against themselves internally. Being made into a subject (or objectified),
therefore, can occur from the outside or within the individual.
We might be tempted, therefore, to ask, “How can the subject be
liberated?” Foucault argues, “the individual is not something that needs to be
liberated rather the individual is the closely monitored product of relations
between power and knowledge” (O’Farrell, 2009). For Foucault, becoming
liberated was a matter of ethics. “Ethical work, says Foucault, is the work one
performs in the attempt to transform oneself into an ethical subject of one’s own
behavior, the means by which we change ourselves in order to become ethical
subjects” (Olssen, 2006:153). The means by which the individual becomes
liberated involves tackling three ideas: modes of subjectivation, will to
knowledge, and art of governmentality (Simola et al., 1998). Modes of
subjectivation involve observing oneself, will to knowledge involves
questioning oneself, and art of governmentality involves seeing oneself in
relation to others.
Power
Foucault uses educational institutions as an example of regulated and
concerted systems driven by goal-directed activities and systems of
communication (Foucault, 2003b:136). Allocation of space, regulation of times
and schedules, who comes and goes are carefully defined. Specific demands
(rewards and punishments) on student (and teacher) performance are regularly
monitored and behavioral expectations carefully scripted. In relation to
Foucault’s understanding of power, Barker (1998, p. 59) brings out the idea that

9. I Hear You Now 9
institutions (such as schools) exercise power through the expectation of
conformity. Conformity to established norms, then, becomes a disciplining (and
disciplinary) power.
Simola et al. (1998) explain power as “a total structure of actions
brought to bear upon possible actions, as a set of actions upon other actions” (p.
68). Continuing, Simola et al. (1998) claim that “education as a social
apparatus is itself a game of power and is dependent on other relations of
power” (p. 69).
One might, thus, apply Foucault’s idea to education research using
some of these three aspects, for example, by examining educational
systems as promoters of knowledge subordinated to games of power, or
scrutinizing how schooling produces the modern individual, or
analyzing school as a disciplining and punishing institution, a crypto-
prison. (p. 70)
Another approach suggested by Simola et al. (1998) is to ask these questions:
What is the true knowledge about teaching? Who is the good teacher? And
what kind of power is right? These three questions could form the basis for
Foucauldian analysis of modern teaching using the themes of knowledge,
subjectivity, and power.
A common critique (or “misreading”) of Foucault is that he “offers
little possibility for agency” (Mayo, 2000). Mayo adds, “he points to the
immense difficulty of negotiating freedom while avoiding the traps of
normalizing power” (p. 112). Therefore within educational institutions power is
synonymous with resistance. That is, power and resistance operate within and
among students, teachers, administrators, school superintendents, school board
members, and parents. Negotiating one’s freedom within these power relations
and under assumptions of resistance requires daily ethical decisions. In the
movie, “Precious”, we see Claireece Precious Jones evolve from being pretty
much at the affect of the middle school she has been attending to being an
ethical subject. This movement in Foucault’s terms is the care of self; a type of
agency which lies within the interplay of power and resistance. This is not the
agency of social movements which feminists would like for us to prefer; but it is
a “struggle against normalization to free ourselves: nothing more than the task
of education in its best sense” (Mayo, 2000:113). “Precious”, the movie,
provides us with a visual, graphical example of ethical self-formation within a
social, cultural, and educational system where everything is stacked against her.
“PRECIOUS”, THE MOVIE
Early in 2009, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry announced that they

10. 10 Joelyn K. Foy
would collaborate through Lionsgate on the release of “Precious” the movie to a
limited number of theaters in the United States (Morales, 2009). For instance,
only two movie theaters in Kansas carried this movie based upon the book,
Push, by Sapphire (1997). The main character, Claireece Precious Jones, is an
obese 15-year-old who is pregnant by her father for the second time. She is
suspended by the principal from her middle school for being pregnant (NPR,
2009). The principal recommends an alternative school and through her teacher,
Miss Rain, she learns to read and to write. With the encouragement of Miss
Rain, she leaves the apartment of her abusive mother and moves into a shelter.
By the end of the movie, only one year has passed. Precious is still only 16
years old, she is reading and writing; she is living independently from her
mother; she is caring for her two children; and she is ready to enter a public high
school.
Miss Rain made the difference for Precious in this movie. There is a
scene where Miss Rain asks Precious what she does well. Precious replies, “I
don’t know.” Miss Rain says, “Everyone does something well.” As Precious
begins to write about her life, to express herself, to find her voice, she learns to
read and to write. At the beginning of the movie, Precious is writing at a 1st
grade level; at the end, at a 6th grade level. Only a few months have passed. In
addition, Precious has begun to care for herself. Precious is writing her truth;
she is deciding what her truth is; she is finding her voice. In Foucault’s terms,
she is becoming a free subject. As a free subject, she uses her voice, her writing,
to resist the societal forces that are still very much acting against her. These
ethical acts, finding within herself and writing her own truth, are also a form of
care for herself. The dangerous truth that she tells, we are now able to hear
because she has found her own inner voice.
I viewed this film on Thanksgiving Day in Wichita, Kansas with a
friend and her daughter. We are all White, middle-class females. My friend, the
mother, observed that Precious finding her voice was like “ripping off a scab”
(J. M. Ray, LMSW, personal communication, February 6, 2010). Removing the
scab is painful, but once it is removed, the healing begins. Once Precious begins
to find her voice and to speak and write her truth (a truth about her time and her
place), she is able to make some decisions for herself. She makes friends. She
relates to her second child differently. As my friend observed, “she becomes
someone with more than a fat, black, welfare, pregnant-teen subjectivity” (J. M.
Ray, LMSW, personal communication, February 6, 2010).
In “Precious” the movie, the will to knowledge--that is, Precious
finding her voice and her truth in her place and in her time—culminates in a
scene in the office of the social worker played by Mariah Carey. Carey has
invited Precious and her mother to meet with her to discuss the next welfare
checks. Prior to this time, the mother has manipulated the visiting social
workers into continuing to provide her checks by pretending that she (the

11. I Hear You Now 11
mother) is caring for Precious’ first-born, a little girl with Down syndrome. As
Precious has gained some autonomy by moving into a shelter away from her
mother, the question of who will receive the welfare check arises. The social
worker is obligated to find out the details of what has gone on in this family.
There are tears in the eyes of the social worker as she asks the questions and
hears the replies of both the mother and the daughter.
My friend asked me “Does voicing the ugly truth make way for
change?” (J. M. Ray, LMSW, personal communication, February 6, 2010). In
Foucault’s terms, this discourse, this telling of the truth, seems to be the result of
change that has already taken place in Precious. Precious is caring for herself.
She is caring for her second child. She wants to also care for her first-born. But
the social worker needs to hear from the mother.
In the case of the mother, I believe that telling the truth will bring about
change for her. We do not see the change because the movie ends fairly quickly
after this scene. But the mother’s confession of her complicity in the sexual
abuse of her daughter is bound to make some kind of difference in this woman’s
life. For one thing, now that the social worker knows the truth (or at least a
version of it), Precious will receive the welfare checks for her and her two
children. The social worker will have to make a different arrangement with the
mother now. Precious will be living on her own, caring for two infants and
going to high school. The hold on Precious that her mother has held is now
broken. Although Precious is still poor, obese, and virtually homeless, she is
more free than she has been in the previous 16 years of her life. No longer does
Precious see herself through her mother’s eyes or through her mother’s jealousy.
Precious is able now to see herself and to care for herself and her two children as
independent from the twisted psychology of her mother’s view.
Generally, we think of power as coming from the outside, from the
State, from other institutions or systems outside ourselves. Foucault’s view of
power was much more individual; he understood power as something that we
are and something that we become as a result of both inner and outer forces.
Barker (1998) explains that juridical or sovereign power “is believed to be
invested in an individual or an institution from which it flows down” (p. 28).
Barker is describing a hierarchical flow of power from the top of a pyramid to
the bottom. Foucault, however, saw power as a “’net-like’ series of relations”
(Barker, 1998:28) with “no single site of revolt, no point of resistance more
dramatic than another” (Barker, 1998:28). In this model of power, there is little
to hang on to, nothing to catch. Power is diffuse and is equally distributed
everywhere.
In “Precious” the movie, Claireece comes to care for herself in spite of
the abusive behavior of her mother. This care for self in Foucault’s work is an
ethical act and a conscious practice of freedom (Foucault, 2003a:28).

12. 12 Joelyn K. Foy
Claireece’s care for herself arose through the pedagogical relationship between
her and her teacher. In addition, she and her classmates began to care for each
other. I believe Claireece began to care more for herself because others (her
classmates, her teacher, Cornrows, the male nurse at the hospital) began to care
for her. Caring was contagious.
I HEAR YOU NOW
Foucault saw power as net-like and dispersed. “Power is everywhere;
not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere”
(Foucault, 1990:93). He acknowledged the hierarchical power of juridical and
state structures where power flows from a central figure “down” through levels
of importance until it reaches the bottom, the common person. But Foucault
proposed that more often individuals are free subjects involved in power
relations rather than bound by hierarchical power. Within relational power,
there is resistance (Foucault, 2003a:34). Therefore, relations of power and
resistance exist together at the same time among free subjects.
Foucault proposes that “the person who has the capacity to formulate
truths also has a power” (Foucault, 2003a:39). The power of speaking the truth
lies within the meaning of what is said. When I hear racist remarks more
frequently today, it may be that this opening up, this bringing into the light, is
also ripping the scab off the strictures which govern dominant discourse.
Perhaps White racists feel they have more permission to speak now. Comments
by White racists qualify as an example of truth-telling just as surely as
“Precious” the movie. What has been hidden is now being spoken; speaking out
may bring about change.
When Claireece Precious Jones told her social worker that she was
carrying her father’s second child, she spoke a dangerous truth. It was
dangerous because her social worker was then ethically bound to investigate that
fact before she approved additional welfare checks. The investigation led to
Precious’ mother confessing to her cooperation with her husband’s sexual abuse
of Precious. The mother’s confession to the social worker is also a dangerous
truth. She admits her own complicity and, in doing so, frees Precious.
What can we learn from the speaking of dangerous truths? How do
power relations shift when the truth is told? In the final scene of “Precious” the
movie, our heroine, Claireece Precious Jones, is walking down the steps of the
Welfare office building with both of her children in hand. She is still only 16
years old. But she has a support network, she is prepared to attend a regular
public high school, she has a place to live away from her abusive mother, and
she has the certainty that no matter what happens to her, there are people who
will stand by her.

13. I Hear You Now 13
These African-American voices have emerged since the election of
President Obama. I don’t believe this movie would have made the same impact
on White audiences if it had been distributed in 2007 (before the election of
President Obama). It isn’t that these kinds of stories have not been told. But
many of these stories have been told from the dominant, White perspective. In
“Precious” the movie, we see African-Americans telling their own truths; truths
which are also universal. Mary Jones, the mother we want to hate, also exists
within White culture. Carl Jones, the father we want to vilify, also exists within
White society. Miss Rain, the teacher, and Cornrows, the school secretary, exist
within White alternative schools. Using Foucault we recognize the stories of
Precious, Mary, Carl and Miss Rain as a form of truth-telling. Precious’
response to her life story and her ethical responses to life situations exemplify
resistance to the dominant culture.
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