Session Information
13 SES 11, A Plea for Potentialism in Education
Symposium
Contribution
In this paper I explore the educational value of a particular state which comes with the bodily side of education: exhaustion. On the one hand, this approach sets a step beyond the by now ‘traditional’ phenomenological account of the body as developed by Merleau-Ponty (2012). This is because the body in this Merleau-Pontian view is always conceived in terms of intentional meaning-giving (Cf. Nancy 2008), whereas the phenomenon of exhaustion typically cancels out all intentionality. On the other hand, this paper explores a different phenomenological approach, which is based on the (not yet translated) work of Frederik Buytendijk. Interestingly, Buytendijk (1961) analyses exhaustion as the point at which it has become utterly impossible to discern between the collapse of possibility and the collapse of subjective strength of will. If one is really worn out, the situation one is in could be described both as ‘I still would, but I cannot’ and as ‘I still could, but I don’t want’. Buytendijk’s precise analysis can be developed in Agambenian terms (1999), and more exactly as a direct, bodily experience of im-potentiality. This will allow to define the intrinsic educational meaning of aspects of exhaustion which come with teaching and learning.
References
- Agamben, Giorgio (1999). Potentialities. Collected essays in philosophy (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. - Buytendijk, Frederik (1961). Aspecten van de vermoeidheid. In Academische Redevoeringen, 151-173. Utrecht: Dekker & Van de Vegt. - Merleau-Ponty. M. (2012). Phenomenology of Perception (D.A. Landes, Trans.). Oxford: Routledge - Nancy, J.L. (2008). Corpus (R. Rand, trans.). New York, Fordham University Press.
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