Abstract
In this chapter we investigate – on an ontological level – the relation between the spheres of education and politics. The argument begins with an analysis of the critical pedagogue Elisabeth Ellsworth’s claim that education and politics are closely interwoven. But, we equally show – with Ellsworth – that following this idea to its last consequences entails an abandoning of education in favour of political action to be performed together with the new generation. In order to overcome this deadlock inherent to a critical position, we introduce a taxonomy regarding different understandings of politics and how they are related with education. This leads us to the conclusion that although the spheres of education and of politics are ontologically related, when this relation is reduced to functional terms, i.e. when education is viewed as a means for political aims, this leads to the end of education. Nonetheless, we hold that education can have a political significance, but only when education is taken as an autonomous sphere, i.e. as having its own intrinsic logic and autotelic value. Therefore, we conclude with an analysis of two distinct logics that steer politics and education. If the former always entails an attitude of hate for the world, an educational logic is uniquely based on an attitude of love. Moreover, it involves a particular kind of hope: hope in the present.
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Ellsworth’s (1989, p. 302) critique of a Habermasian model of emancipation in critical pedagogy, which – according to her – advocates “…engaging in rationalist, analytical debates with those holding other positions. In a racist society and its institutions, such debate has not and cannot be “public” or “democratic” in the sense of including the voices of all affected and affording the equal weight and legitimacy. Nor can such a debate be free of conscious and unconscious concealment of interests….” (italics added J.V. & P.Z.).
- 2.
…the particularities of historical context, personal biography, and subjectivities split between the conscious and unconscious will necessarily render each expression of student voice partial and predicated on the absence and marginalisation of alternative voices. Thus, the very term “student voice” is highly problematic. Pluralising the concept as “voices” implies correction through addition. (Ellsworth 1989, p. 312)
- 3.
Cf. McLaren’s (2000, p. 199) formulation of the goals of a revolutionary pedagogy: “A revolutionary pedagogy fights for macroeconomic policies favoring full employment and guaranteed support in the public sector for public schools, global labor rights, sustainable development, environmental protections, and the growth of popular movements for social and economic change.” Cf. furthermore: “A revolutionary pedagogy informed by Guevarian- and Freirean-inspired leadership qualities would place the liberation from race, class, and gender oppression as the key goal for education for the new millennium. Education […] would be dedicated to creating a citizenry dedicated to social justice and to the reinvention of social life based on democratic socialist ideals. […] the development of a coalition of new revolutionary movements that would work conjointly with students, teachers, and administrators to create a civil society responsive to all of its citizens, echoing the zapatudo “!Ya Basta!” (Ibidem, p. 196).
- 4.
A similar critical point is made by Tyson Lewis (2012).
- 5.
To refer to the examples given by Rancière himself: the plebs of Ancient Rome, gathered on the Aventine, demand deliberation with the Senate, Frenchwomen ask if they belong to the category of Frenchmen, a revolutionary women convicted to death claims that if a woman can be sentenced to death, all women should be entitled to participate in assembly (Cf. Rancière 1992, p. 60; 1999, pp. 23–25; 2010, pp. 68–69).
- 6.
For reasons of consistency we have chosen to use the word subjectivisation, although Masschelein and Simons stick to the word ‘subjectivation’, which is in line with Foucault and the original work of Rancière, but which is not consistent with the English translation of Rancière. Obviously, the use of this term differs from the way in which Gert Biesta (2010a) refers to a similar, but not altogether identical, phenomenon (i.e. subjectification).
- 7.
Cf. Ibidem, p. 191, where Arendt speaks of this as a specific productivity of human action.
- 8.
As we have noted in Chap. 4 of this book, Arendt (1958) claims that plurality of human beings is one of the fundamental ontological characteristics of the human condition. In her own words: “[p]lurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live” (p. 8).
- 9.
This argument is of course inspired by Giorgio Agamben’s idea that potentiality gets neutralized when it is captured by the metaphysical apparatus which defines it in relation to the possibility of concrete actualizations (Agamben 1999). The sphere of education could then be analysed in terms of pure potentiality or impotentiality (Cf. Lewis 2015b; Vlieghe 2013), i.e. as a sphere where the inevitable actualization of the experience of potentiality connected to a particular course of action (e.g. political action) is temporarily postponed and de-activated.
- 10.
Interestingly, such an appropriation can also happen in the reverse direction. For example, in Communist Study (2016), Derek R. Ford performs an educational appropriation of politics. Although we do not agree with his standpoint, in the context of the current political arrangements that appropriates education for economic reasons, and educational theory that appropriates education for political reasons, we treat Ford’s successful attempt as a very important contribution to an educational philosophy and theory that aim at reclaiming the autonomy of the sphere of education.
- 11.
For Kant, basing one’s moral judgment on affections is wrong-headed: although it is not immoral to act out of love (e.g. love for one’s own children), this love doesn’t make one’s action more ethical. Morally speaking there is no difference between a father who looks after his child and who adores it, and a father who acts the same but who feels a profound dislike for his child.
- 12.
We realize that this runs counter to the philosophy of Arendt, from which we have drawn many insights that are central to this book project. However, as we made clear previously in this section when making a taxonomy of the different meanings of politics, we are referring here to a particular concept of politics. If politics is considered from the standpoint of joint deliberation on the agora, as Arendt does, it makes sense to hold that politics presupposes amor mundi.
- 13.
There is another possibility to read Rancière’s “wrong” which do not follow here, i.e. ‘wrong’ as the ‘mistake’ of the police order that excludes some people as strictly phonic animals, not so much based on an intended mystification of social reality, but as a structural necessity.
- 14.
To be clear, the argument of this book is not aimed against politics as we define it here. The only point we want to argue for is that education and politics are different things, and that they have their own proper logic. We think it is very reasonable that politics is informed by hate.
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Vlieghe, J., Zamojski, P. (2019). Love and Hate for the World: The Educational and Its Relationship with the Political. In: Towards an Ontology of Teaching . Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6_10
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