Today, people are constantly encouraged to verbalise and disclose their "true" inner self to others, whether on TV shows, in newspapers, in family life or together with friends. Such encouragement to disclose the self has proliferated through discourses on lifelong learning through which each citizen is encouraged to become a constant learner. The Confessing Society takes a critical stance towards the modern relentless will to disclose the self and argues that society has become a confessing society. Drawing on Foucault’s later work on confession and governmentality, this bookcarefully analyses how confession operates within practices of lifelong learning as a way to shape activated and responsible citizens and provides examples of how it might be possible to traverse the confessional truth of the present time. Chapters include:

Reflection and Reflective Practices

Deliberation and Therapeutic Intervention

Lifelong Guidance

Medialised Parenting

This controversial book is international in its scope and pursues current debates regarding trans-national policy and to research discussions on education, lifelong learning and governance, and it will provoke lively debate amongst educational practitioners, academics, postgraduate and research students in education and lifelong learning in Europe, North America and Australasia.

Contents

1. Introducing the Confessing Society 2. Reflection and Reflective Practices 3. Deliberation and Therapeutic Intervention 4. Lifelong Guidance 5. Medialised Parenting 6. Revisiting the Confessing Society

Author Bio

Andreas Fejes is an Associate Professor in Education at the Division for Education and Adult Learning at Linköping University, Sweden.

Magnus Dahlstedt is an Associate Professor in Ethnic Studies and has an academic background in political science and cultural studies. He is a Senior Lecturer at REMESO, the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping Uni Sweden.