What one decides fi t for appearance through writing and speech bears a political signifi cance that risk being distorted through both language, reception in the public, and through calls for gendered representations. How can work of female philosophers be interpreted as a concern for the world from that of having to respond to a male-dominated discourse through which speech becomes trapped into what one might represent as ‘other’? In this paper, I explore the public reception of two female thinkers who question, in diff erent ways, the domi-nant notion of the author or philosopher as a male subject; what kind of limitations does the relative notion of ‘female’ pose political action, and how can privilege constitute a hindrance to feminist solidarity?
Taking its point of departure in the connotations to war and violence inherent in what is here called the ‘language of crisis’ (Jantzen), the purpose of this article is to explore what it might mean to reassess the language of educational change and policy reform in the imagery of natality and birth (Arendt). If the task in a ‘crisis’ is to fight against the crisis, effectively and forcefully, the argument of the paper is that the root metaphors of natality and birth puts into play an imagery that makes possible a relational language for educational change and reform. If the language we use has performative consequences, the question explored is what a ‘language of natality’ can make possible as a language of struggle for education.
[A Hand on the Shoulder: Touch as a Posthuman Feminist Phenomenon] With a posthuman feminist perspective, we explore touch as a phenomenon in the philosophy of education. Our argument is that touch is one of the prominent phenomena in educational contexts and therefore it requires closer theoretical investigation. In this article, we seek to challenge a ‘subject centric’ and ‘anthropocentric’ perspective, proposing a posthuman approach where touch is relationally intra-active and constantly present with multiple directions. Inspired by the methodological approach ‘concept as method’, we explore the phenomenon of touch through tracing-and-cartographing how it is used in educational texts. Two central aspects – body and ‘natureculture’– appeared in the intersection of touch, education and posthuman feminism. Touch as an educational phenomenon is seen as active in highlighting everyday activities in educational practices, and pushing them to be questioned and disrupted. To conclude, we raise a few questions and discuss some challenges that emerged while working with touch as a posthuman feminist phenomenon.
This paper explores the moral underpinnings of education for sustainable development by studying the humanization of nature in contemporary teaching materials. To this end, Spinoza’s and Freud’s naturalistic psychological accounts – suggesting, among other things, that the human psychological constitution tends to further a reversed sense of causality – are invoked as resources for explaining the image of nature as portrayed in education for sustainable development. It is argued that the examples looked at rely on two problematic assumptions: (1) that there exists a metaphysical gulf between humanity and nature, and (2) that natural forces, like humans, act intentionally and therefore appear to be motivated by an underlying, albeit seemingly unexplainable, sense of teleology. To conclude, the humanization of nature in education for sustainable development is taken to make for a potential democratic problem insofar as the image of nature may be conceived as a powerful instrument for governing the everyday lives of people. That is, being able to influence the humanized image of nature also implies having a degree of influence over the ways that people live.
This paper explores the educational significance of the critique of representationalism. As it includes the notion of non-representational knowledge, Rudolf Steiner’s epistemology is introduced and further linked to elements in Bergson and Deleuze. Humboldt’s idea of Menschenbildung as the central function of knowledge is brought in, since both Humboldt and Steiner emphasise knowledge as mediating the interplay between self and world, producing a deeper sense of reality. Such an education must respect the living nature of genuine concepts as well as the aesthetic aspects of learning. After a note on the educational abuse of language in discursive closures, some traits of Steiner’s practical pedagogy are presented as possible practical implications.
This article considers the common and shared world in teaching, by reference to the concept of profanation in relation to biopolitics. “To profane”, means to treat something (or someone) as worldly and as something “that can be played with”. The act of profanation has implications for how objects that are “put on the table” can be regarded in teaching and how these “objects” can become public goods. But what happens when things that are used in teaching are representations of social injustice and suffering? This article will give a critique of the idea of profanation, specifically discussing when teaching deals with social injustice and representations of suffering.
Cosmopolitanism is a value-loaded concept that seems to become popular in intervals. The latest cosmopolitan period started after the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union and concentrated mostly on aspects such as “a new world order”, and often with reference to Kant. It might be questioned if the cosmopolitan period still exists. Here it is suggested that a historical understanding of cosmopolitanism together with experience from later social and political experiences might give a new perspective on the difficulties of creating a better world in a Kantian sense, including cosmopolitan education. Considering its history and taking concern of experience Kant’s cosmopolitanism still is relevant, not least in its broader sense.
[English title: The Constitution of Special Education in a Child-centred Preschool for All: To Analyze Political Steering Instruments with a Discourse Theoretical Frame]
This paper identifies and analyzes what constitutes special education in the (revised) Swedish preschool curriculum. The paper also contributes with an analytical mode of understanding political, as well as other, documents, in, for example, an educational system. The analytical strategy is built upon discourse theory, using the ideas of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The results show a fortified hegemonic discourse about a preschool for all children, where child-centred and inclusive approaches are dominant and where special education, to a large extent, is constituted by more management, stimulation and special support. The paper raises questions about the possible effects the hegemonic discourse may contribute to.
The article explores the demands that the conflictual dimension of globalization poses for a cosmopolitan education. Such an emphasis seems necessary in times where the populations who undertake inter- and intra-national border crossings are increasingly those who are forced to: those trying to escape unbearable poverty, atrocious wars, the disenfranchised and victims of racist, sexist or religious persecution. Reflecting on the experiences articulated in the two graphic novels, Persepolis and American Born Chinese, the dimension of the globalizing world and its impact and demands on its future world citizens which comes to the fore is one that highlights the necessity for learning how to take a critical and political stance rather than the search for how education can facilitate a smooth adaptation to a new mobile order. Stanley Cavell’s examination of the relationship between autobiography, philosophy, and the founding of a self-reliant voice will be reconsidered in light of its contribution to re-thinking the meaning of a cosmopolitan education between critical self-appropriation and developing a transformative political vision of a new societal order.
The paper explores the relationship of happiness and critique. It is a reflection on a decade of being trained in and practicing philosophical critique. It is a reflection on experiences I had during teaching on social justice, inclusion and diversity; and it is a reflection on the on-going debate on negative vs. affirmative forms of critique within feminist philosophy. It is also an exercise in imagining a transformation of our critical practices, where the embrace of more affirmative (rather than destructive-negative) modes of critique does not entail overlooking or turning a blind eye to the barriers that unjustly restrain some movements and allow for others' privileges to persist. I suggest that a diffractive approach to critique would allow for joyfully interchanging and alternating appropriate modes of debunking, of being the killjoy against sedimentations that weigh some of us down, with other modes of critique which allow us to augment and lift up examples of already on-going structural change.
The idea for this special issue developed during one of the yearly meetings of the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA). A group of younger researchers interested in feminist and queer philosophical perspectives on education had gathered between the official network meetings and discussed the organizational division between a more narrowly defined philosophy of education, on the one hand, within the network of The Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education and on the other hand feminist philosophical perspectives within the networks Gender and Education and Post-approaches to education.