Abstract
In this chapter, ‘Re-imag(e)ining the Cosmopolitical: Deconstructing the Other’, proffers another view of normativity within contemporary higher education and the specific field of peace education. Bryan Wright explores the problematic of subjectivity through Levinasian theory to deconstruct commonly received notions of self and other in the Western paradigm, which critically structure issues of peace and peace education within educational contexts. Through a destabilising inversion of subjectivity, the self and the other as conceptual foundations arising from the metaphysical ground of deconstructed modern ideologies open to questions of human relationship, responsibility, and cosmopolitanism. Relocating the other and self through différance disrupts the fundamental conceptions we hold about human nature and our simultaneous a/di- synchronous (non-) relation. The question of the kosmopolitês and the antinomies of cosmopolitanism reveal the onto-teleology of contemporary higher education and its import for peace and peace education. In this examination, the veil of syncretism that masks understanding of the dis-con-nections between demos, ethnos, and episteme within an evolving (post-)critical peace education for the present age is rent exposing our understanding(s). Challenging epistemological boundaries in the interest of peace education towards the noble end to promote cultures of peace in our increasingly globalised existence is a twofold process that requires simultaneous deontological analyses of form and process along with historicized contextualisation of social relationality.
[The ]guarantee [of perpetual peace] is given by no less a power than the great artist nature (natura daedala rerum). –Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace…1917 ed.
Are we responsible? For what and to whom? If there is a university responsibility, it at least begins the moment when a need to hear these questions, to take them upon oneself and respond to them, imposes itself. This imperative of the response is the initial form and minimal requirement of responsibility. –Derrida, Eyes of the University
The ineluctability of the third is the law of the question. The question of a question, as addressed to the other and from the other, the other of the other, the questions of a question that is surely not first (comes after the yes to the other and the yes of the other) though nothing precedes it. No thing, and especially no one. –Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas
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Notes
- 1.
Andria Wisler (2008) expands on Betty Reardon’s (1988) earlier definition of peace knowledges, which comprise peace studies, peace research, peace education, and peace action. Wisler understands peace knowledges ‘…as that which constitutes a country’s or a region’s own ways of knowing and living necessary for its own creation and sustainability of a culture of peace’ (vii).
- 2.
Lévinas was especially interested in the phenomenology of Husserl in his early studies. This interest grew throughout his experiences of WWII and the Shoah leading him to look deeper into the breadth of human experience. The body of literature from Lévinas has been explicated for decades now with two important works: Re-Reading Lévinas—Bernasconi and Critchley (1991) and the Lévinas Reader—Hand (2000).
- 3.
- 4.
For further exposition of Kant’s treatise, or peace treaty and hospitality, see Huggler (2010) and Derrida’s Of Hospitality (2000). The reader is cautioned to note the sociopolitical scene or milieu in which any philosopher has transversed, with particular note to those who have lived during times of heightened upheaval. Certainly, the two particular individual philosophers in this note deserve such scrutiny.
- 5.
See Elizabeth Thomas’ Emmanuel Lévinas: Ethics, Justice and the Human Beyond Being (2004) for a deep excursus of Lévinasian subjectivity and tertiality: Il y a and Illeity (Chap. 8). Also see http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue126.html or http://www.philosophos.com/philosophy_article_142.html
- 6.
Also see Croce et al. (2010) for another discussion on the dis-con-nections of demos, ethnos, and the episteme.
- 7.
Ulrich Beck (2004) offers a new theme on an old song, suggesting that the “second modernity” acknowledges the deconstructive nature of reflexivity in modernity (p. 430).
- 8.
David Hansen notes the heuristic categorisation of Kleingeld and Brown (2006): (a) political cosmopolitanism, (b) moral cosmopolitanism, (c) cultural cosmopolitanism, and (d) economic cosmopolitanism. For further exploration of these types/categories, see Julia Kristeva (1993) Nations without Nationalism; Martha Nussbaum (1997) Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education; Martha Nussbaum (1996) chapter on patriotism and cosmopolitanism; the aforementioned Immanuel Kant; J. Hill (2000) Becoming a cosmopolitan: What it means to be a human being in the new millennium; and M. Costa (2005) chapter on Cultural cosmopolitanism and civic education; and A. Barnett et al. (Eds.). (2005) Debating globalization.
- 9.
Yasmine Soysal (2010) offers an erudite critique of sociological theory and cosmopolitanism which I draw on here.
- 10.
This call and critique resonates with the interpretative play of Trifonas (2005) and the trace of Derridean deconstruction that would deontologise the façade of contemporary knowledge.
- 11.
Here, Strand is bringing our attention to the action that is metaphor itself drawing on the transpositions of meaning in Derridean (1982) philosophy.
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Wright, B.L. (2012). Re-imag(e)ining the Cosmopolitical: Deconstructing the Other. In: Trifonas, P., Wright, B. (eds) Critical Peace Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3945-3_3
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