Assessment, Power, Subjectivation Processes. Biopolitical-Transdisciplinary Hypotheses

Our main aim is to present very briefly a set of six hypotheses regarding the nature of a dispositif, its role in a process of learning assessment, the need to understand and control related processes of subjectivation. The most important conjecture is the sixth one. In the scenario drawn by Giorgio Agamben’s studies, this hypothesis affirms that contemporary assessment dispositifs have a biopolitical nature. This statement probably concerns every learning assessment dispositif: it is not limited to the market-oriented ones. In this perspective, perhaps the diffusion of authentic tasks and the investment in the assessment of inner dispositions have an ambivalent meaning: at the same time, they represent both technologies of power and technologies of the self. These hypotheses have to be refined and additional studies should be carried on. In particular we think a transdisciplinary and foucaultian critical research program is necessary.