At the center of his work has been a series of attempts to analyze particular ideas or models of humanity which have developed as the result of very precise historical changes, and the ways in which these ideas have become normative or universal. To change something in the minds of people - that's the role of an intellectual. Foucault's theory of discourse is a central concept in his analytical framework. Discourses are about what can be said and thought, but also about who can speak, when , and with what authority. Discourses embody meaning and social relationships, they constitute both subjectivity and power relations.
Discourses are 'practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. . .
Thus the possibilities for meaning and for definition are preempted through the social and institutional position held by those who use them. Meanings thus arise not from language but from institutional practices, from power relations. This theme is adopted by radical educational theorists in the development of Critical Pedagogy, wherein the development of the student's subjectivity is analyzed through the discourses of the school and the power relations within the structures of education. What is analyzed is why, at a given time, out of all the possible things that could be said, only certain things are said. According to Ball, educational institutions control the access of individuals to various kinds of discourse.