The Dakar Framework: constructing and deconstructing the global neo-liberal matrix

Abstract

The paper's focus is 'The Dakar framework for action — education for all: meeting our collective commitments', which presents the UNESCO, G8, World Bank and International Monetary Fund's blueprint for the 'development' of education globally by 2015. Taking a discourse analytic approach, discussion of the Dakar framework make two claims. The first is that the Framework has a Matrix-like effect in that it potentially closes out other ways of thinking about and practicing education. The second argument is that the apparent contradiction between its deployment of a human rights centered discourse and neo-liberal discourse that establishes this Matrix-like effect, must be understood as something more than simply an exercise in lies, deception and rhetoric. Rather, the Matrix-like effect of the Framework succeeds not because the Framework lies, but because it doubly exploits the very same ambivalence in liberal-humanism that facilitated the European control of 'Others' in an earlier era of globalisation. Gandhi who challenged the Matrix-like effects of globalising British Empire power in this earlier era of globalisation is referred to in the paper as a real figure of history to exemplify the Neo figure in the discussion of the Matrix as a metaphor for the neo-liberal EFA policy.