Session Information
13 SES 04, Posthuman and Agonistic Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The location of education is a central question for educational theory and philosophy. Once education is located, it calls for new questions, answers, and proceedings. Often, education is located either with the teacher or with the student. In contrast, the area of educational relations often locates education between individuals, that is, between a student and a teacher. This paper takes a departure in educational relations, but from a different, posthuman, perspective. It is argued, using Barad's (2007) concepts intra-action and touch, that the location of education is not 'between' subjects in a relation, but in the intra-acting relational activities. The concept of edu-activity is proposed with this argument.
Placing the location of education as something between subjects is the leading idea in intersubjective approaches to educational relations, which the following educational theorists seem to embrace. von Wright (2000) focuses on educational relations as existing between the teacher and the student. Sidorkin (2000) states that “Relations located, so to speak, in-between things, and are located in neither of the things joint into a relation” (Sidorkin, 2000, p. 3). In his study on the work of the teacher, Conroy (2004) focuses on liminality as a metaphor for, among other things, the space between the teacher and the student. A final example is Biesta (2004) who writes:
"The idea that education is an interaction between the (activities of the) educator and the (activities of the) one being educated is, as such, a sound idea. It shows that education is basically a relationship between an educator and the one being educated. But in order to understand the precise nature of the educational relationship, we should take the idea that education consists of the interaction between the teacher and the learner absolutely seriously. We should take it in its most literal sense. If we do so, it follows that education is located not in the activities of the teacher, nor in the activities of the learner, but in the interaction between the two. Education, in other words, takes place in the gap between the teacher and the learner" (p. 12–13).
Biesta argues that there is a gap between students and teachers and that this gap is the foundation for communication and education. The important issue for Biesta when locating education to the gap is that it is neither placed at the student’s side, nor at the teacher’s side. Biesta’s argument is to propose a different direction within educational theory, namely the interaction of subjects. As argued in Ceder (2015), intersubjective theories of educational relations are, despite their focus on intersubjectivity, subject-centered, and as in the quote above, also connected to the dualist teacher/learner roles. The distinct subjects are needed for the idea of the gap to work. The idea of the gap requires separated entities because this is the starting point of the interaction.
Whereas this paper in one way follows Biesta in that education is located in the relation, its approach is not interaction intra-action (Barad, 2007). From an intra-active perspective, instead of interacting educational subjects, the location of education is not a place where educational subjects interact, but it is the relational process itself. For Barad (2010), “between” presupposes an existing dualism with distinct entities. For intra-action (Barad's version of interaction) to take place does not require a particular space for subjects to meet. Instead, the meeting place—the relation—iswhat education is, what it starts from, and where it is located. It is not a secondary space that existing educational subjects enter. Hence, the words “gap” and “between” do not correspond with an intra-active approach. Where then to locate education?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Barad, Karen (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barad, Karen (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime enfoldings, and justice to come. Derrida Today, 3(2), 240–268. Barad, Karen (2012). On touching – The inhuman that therefore I am. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 23(3), 206–223. Biesta, Gert (2004). ‘Mind the gap!’ Communication and the educational relation. In C. Bingham & A. Sidorkin (Eds.), No education without relation (11–22). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Braidotti, Rosi (2013). The posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ceder, Simon (2015). Cutting through water: Towards a posthuman theory of educational relationality (Diss). Lund: Department of Sociology, Division for Education, Lund University. Conroy, James C. (2004). Betwixt and between: The liminal imagination, education and democracy. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Hultman, Karin (2011). Barn, linjaler och andra aktörer: Posthumanistiska perspektiv på subjektsskapande och materialitet i förskola/skola (Diss). Stockholm: Stockholms universitet. Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenz Taguchi, Hillevi (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education. Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge. Sidorkin, Alexander (2000). Toward a pedagogy of relation. Philosophical Studies in Education, 32, 9–14. Sørensen, Estrid (2009). The materiality of learning. Technology and knowledge in educational practice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Waltz, Scott B. (2006). Nonhumans unbound: Actor-network theory and the reconsideration of “things” in educational foundations. Educational Foundations, 20(3&4), 51–68. von Wright, Moira (2000). Vad eller vem? En pedagogisk rekonstruktion av G H Meads teori om människors intersubjektivitet. Göteborg: Daidalos.
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