Power/Knowledge Relations in Dance Discourses in a Dance Degree Program in Chile

Abstract

This article is the result of a doctoral research exploring the political-ideological positions that underpinned the practices of producing spatial-bodily knowledge in a dance program at a university in Santiago, Chile. To this end, a poststructural qualitative methodology was developed, focusing on the analysis of a case study that included twelve interviews with academics, two focus groups with students (a total of fourteen participants), as well as a documentary analysis based on a Foucaultian reading of the curriculum and students’ class notes. Based on the above, categories were established for analysis, initially emerging categories, then reflective categories for discussion, and finally, points of contention that allowed the information produced to be organized. One of the most important findings of this article is that there is indeed a production of spatial-bodily knowledge that forms a system of knowledge production, circulation, and distribution, which demonstrates the establishment of a regime of truth in the case study analyzed, promoting discursive practices of inclusion or exclusion of dance knowledge in the teaching-learning processes of dance.