Foucault, decolonial thinking and critical leadership studies in education: expanding the epistemic and ontological toolbox

Emanuela, Spano'

;Peruzzo, Francesca

2026-01-01

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Abstract

Foucault openly acknowledged that his analyses were limited to the history of the Western subject. In this chapter, we explore how Foucault’s toolbox in Critical Leadership Studies could be greatly challenged and expanded through the encounter of the decolonial thinking. By intersecting politics, economy and education, scholarship in decolonial studies seeks to undo the epistemic premises onto which the West was created, claiming that imperialist aims of the project of modernity invalidated Southern forms of being and knowing. Here we attempt to contribute to this endeavour by drawing upon two ethnographies we conducted in two educational communities located in underprivileged and peripheral contexts in the South of Italy. By engaging with accounts of community leaders, youth, teachers, and fieldnotes, we problematise, expose and rethink the epistemic limits and subjective possibilities operated by present leadership approaches in education, expanding the use of Foucault’s tools through decolonial thinking applied in context, in particular the axes of knowledge, power, space and ethics. Our aim is to ontologically open subjective positions invalidated by Eurocentric hierarchies and epistemologically engage with critical perspectives to provide more convivial, equitable and redistributed instances of doing educational leadership.