Beyond: Towards a precarious pedagogy

Beyond: Towards a Precarious Pedagogy Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain Annual Meeting April 6-8, 2001

Introduction What are the conditions that create the possibility for the event in which one learns from another? How might we describe the conditions for learning from a teacher? Although each of us do in fact learn from teachers every day, it is not at all obvious what conditions exist to make this possible. What is clear is that before the teaching process begins, someone does not know something and at the end of the process, someone does know something. This may include learning how to ride a bicycle or care for a pet, to name the capital of Canada, to use the Pythagorean theorem, or to make a moral judgement. What conditions are present when learning occurs? When teaching and learning are correlates, what conditions the relationship of the learner to the teacher? In their recent analysis of education, Usher and Edwards suggest that historically the educational process “is founded on modernity’s self-motivated, selfdirecting, rational subject, capable of exercising individual agency” (Usher & Edwards 1994, p. 2). As such, teaching is founded on a view of the learner as a subject who has “the inherent potential to become self-motivated and self-directing” (p. 24). Personal autonomy, a rational subject that can exercise individual agency, remains central to education’s goal, something that recent literature illustrates. For example, in her article “Fostering Autonomy,” Jane Morse views the learner as a rational agent free to act on principle, where “Reason guides the will, overruling our inclinations when appropriate” (Morse 1997, p. 37). Or, in an example from a discussion about hermeneutics and education, Debora Kerdeman presents the learner as agent and knowing subject that, though situated and finite, does not compromise “our capacity to intend, decide, direct” (Kerdeman 1998, p. 261). Or, in his appeal to keep reasonableness as an educational aim, Nicholas Burbules argues that being rational “illuminates fundamental aspects of how the learning process occurs” (Burbules 1995, p. 98). More generally, as Gert Biesta suggests, modern education still takes the knowing, autonomous subject as its central point of departure and foundation as well as its goal (Biesta 1999, p. 204). A question hides in the background. If the student is ideally (on the way to becoming) a rational agent, how is it possible that such a student can learn from a teacher? Why would a student, an autonomous agent, need a teacher? If the essence of the student is a Kantian-like subject centrally comprised of spontaneous and autonomous freedom (Allison 1995, p. 11), then how is it possible (or why is it desirable) for the student to learn from someone else, a teacher? It is not obvious how, within a rational model, we might describe how it is that one learns from another. In contemporary educational thought, this might reduce to involving the

Precarious Pedagogy

page 2

student at center stage, actively constructing or recollecting knowledge, making the process of teaching a midwifery of guiding the student in giving birth to knowledge. But this begs the question of the relation to the teacher in the process. Recognizing this problem, Biesta suggests we shift from this notion of the learner as a traditional (modernist) subject to locating the subject in intersubjectivity (Biesta 1999). In this paper I wish to build on Beista’s approach, focusing on a description of pedagogy that will overcome the conceptual problem that arises in modernist articulations of education. As such, this paper attempts a new description of pedagogy, one based in intersubjectivity. However, what I wish to highlight is the asymmetric character of the intersubjectivity that constitutes pedagogy. 1 By pedagogy, I mean a human relationship that forms the conditions in which a student learns from a teacher, including but not limited to school learning. I will suggest the condition for learning and teaching, at its deepest core, is an asymmetrical relation between human beings involving what Emmanuel Levinas calls “the other.” The actual asymmetric teacher-learner relationship I wish to call precarious pedagogy. I do not wish to deny the validity or importance of rationality. However, I wish to challenge its primacy as a way to describe students as they are found in the student-teacher relation. My goal is to depict pedagogy as an ethical relation in Levinas’s sense. That description, I contend, provides an adequate account of the conditions of teaching and learning. My main question will be: what are the main features of the ethical relationship between teacher and learner when a learner learns because he or she is in a relationship with that teacher? Throughout I will designate the student as one-who-learns and the teacher as the one-with-whom-one-learns, realizing that I may be using these terms in an unusually expansive sense. In this I am not limiting the teacher and student to social roles in institutions we call schools. To move beyond the view of students as first of all (rational) subjects, I wish to turn briefly to Heidegger, Levinas’s early mentor and teacher. Human beings, according to Heidegger are first of all being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1996). This means that, before we identify ourselves as rational subjects who can get to know the world objectively and cognitively, we are already in the world. Being in the world, which Heidegger calls care or concern, means being attuned to the world as it is at hand. For example, this means chairs are that on which you can sit, sidewalks are that on which you walk to get to the store, and so forth.2 This also has import for the relationship with other people, something Heidegger calls Mitsein (or Mitdasein), being-with-others. Others are those for whom the sidewalk is also equipment (possible walkers), those who have made the chair, or who might buy it. As such, others are first of all part of the environment for Dasein, “encountered in the surrounding world” as those also for whom the world is available (Heidegger 1996, p 111-112). Owners, workers, parents, teachers, students, and recipients all constitute the other in ‘being-with-others,’ who become “a matter of concern” (p. 114). Heidegger’s analysis shows that being in the world, including our relations to other humans, is not primarily rational. Humans are not, first of all, autonomous and spontaneous subjects. Heidegger’s insight here informs Levinas’s description of

Precarious Pedagogy

page 3

human relationships. However, Levinas goes beyond Heidegger’s notions of Dasein and Mitsein. And, as I suggest in the next section, Levinas’s version of “radical intersubjectivity” (Biesta 1999) is necessary for an adequate description of pedagogy.

The Asymmetry of Pedagogy Perhaps an obvious observation is that pedagogy is first of all a relation between persons. However, it is not a symmetrical relation such as friendship, for in a pedagogical relationship one is teaching and the other is learning. The teacher is teaching and not learning per se (although likely the teacher is learning something during the process as well; see Gallagher 1992, p. 38), and the student is learning and not teaching (although the student may in fact be teaching the teacher many things as well). Although later we may see this relation in a more complex light, the crucial point here is to note a simple asymmetry. Without asymmetry, there may well be no learning from a teacher. As a first pass, pedagogy is an asymmetry. So how can we describe this asymmetry? Emmanuel Levinas describes the fundamental, original relationship between people in asymmetric terms. In particular, he describes human relations as a connection between a ‘me’ and an ‘other.’ To depict that relation, however, we must first describe a more egocentric relationship, between an I and the world, one that, in part at least, echoes Heidegger’s analysis of being-in-the-world. From a first-personal perspective, although not (yet) that of a rational, autonomous subject, the ‘I’ that constitutes the first-personal is the center of the world and all other things are relative to the ‘I’ who is at that center. A spatial example may help make this clearer. Although a Euclidean description of space treats the entire expanse as homogenous, from a first-person perspective it make sense to talk about space in terms of ‘high’ and ‘low,’ ‘near’ and ‘far,’ ‘right’ and ‘left,’ and as having a horizon. These are all first-person categories that each of us uses to navigate about in the world and make sense of the world. Beyond the strictly spatial, there are a multitude of additional categories that all reflect a first-person relation to the world, ones we use to interpret the world as we navigate within it. These interpretive categories include, to name just a few, ‘threatening’ and ‘desirable,’ ‘useful’ and ‘obsolete,’ ‘fast’ and ‘slow,’ ‘caring’ and ‘stifling.’ Even categories such as ‘chair’ and ‘table,’ ‘driveway’ and ‘car,’ ‘basketball’ and ‘book’ are, first of all, first-person designations that serve a similar function. In fact, it might not be too much to suggest that, before being a subject relating to objects, a more primary mode of being-in-the-world is a first-personal one, with me as an ‘I’ in the center and the things around me as a surrounding arena for my actions in the world. Most of the everyday ways we understand (and thus name) things in the world suggest this. Levinas has several names for interpreting the world (including the things in it) in this manner: totality, sameness, economy. That is, an I’s interpretation of the world, a first-person perspective, has a totalizing function, for it gathers everything in

Precarious Pedagogy

page 4

the world into a totality, of which I am at the center. Everything has its place—is in its place conceptually—and thus has a certainly familiarity or domesticity. With the ‘I’ at the center, the world is a home, an oikonomos; maneuvering around in the world then is a matter of proper exchanges of value, where one thing is seen as interchangeable with another thing. That is, they have a certain sameness, and the I’s navigation of the world a kind of economy. What is true of the first-personal approach that the ‘I’ takes with respect to the world generally is also true of relations of the ‘I’ to other people. Certainly, from a first-person perspective, my relation to other people in my life are understood first of all through first-person designations: my mother, my brother, my wife, my sons, my preacher, my colleagues, my students, my former advisor. These terms designate my relations to these people with respect to my life; they do not designate universal, objective characteristics of these humans. Most of our interactions and relationships with other people in our lives are first-personal, a kind of Heideggerian Mitsein. It would seem, then, for people too, our more primary understanding of them is with an ‘I’ as center and the other people in my life as a kind of support cast for me. That is, for human relations too, other people are part of my totality, my sameness, my economy. It would seem that for each of us, our usual way of being-in-the-worldwith-others is first-personal. Levinas asks us to look beyond this concern with living (being-in-the-world, being-with-others), for another relation between people, one more original although often less recognized.3 In that relation, it remains that, at the near pole, one person is an ‘I’ of sorts, and hence it still is a kind of first-person approach. However, at the far pole, the other person is ‘other.’ But for the other person to be truly other, he or she must not simply be part of my totality, economy or sameness. As Williams puts it, for Levinas “[w]hen totalized, the other is denied, or reduced to the same: the other is neutralized by ontological universality and totality” (Williams 1997, p. 410). That is, the other as other must not be simply a brother, mother, advisor, spouse, for those terms designate other people merely as part of my totalized surroundings, my “environment,” even where others are thought to be I’s just like the ‘me’ I personally know. Instead, Levinas suggests, the other must be other than me, other than the human categories that constitute my totality, truly an ‘other.’ Here is an asymmetry more profound that that of ‘I’ and ‘supporting framework.’ The key here is the ‘I.’ More particularly, although the relation is firstpersonal, it is not a relation between an ‘I’ and ‘those who surround the I,’ as Heidegger’s description might suggest with Mitsein. Instead, the first-person is ‘me’ rather than ‘I.’ And the other relata is not ‘those who surrounds the I’ but the ‘other.’ This makes the relationship one between ‘me’ and the ‘other.’ This is definitely not Mitsein. The deeper, more profound character of this asymmetry lies in the designations of ‘me’ and ‘other.’4 To designate the other person by ‘other’ rather than ‘my support cast’ is important. By ‘other’ Levinas means to say not merely another person, one who may

Precarious Pedagogy

page 5

well turn out to be very much like me, as I might think in his or her role as support cast, but that person in his or her strangeness, alterity, difference, foreignness. That is, the ‘other’ highlights that person’s not fitting within my categorization and expectations, my equipment, my totality and economy, my sameness. Instead, the other is a stranger that I welcome. The near pole of the relation between ‘me’ and ‘the other’ is the designation ‘me.’ The word ‘me’ grammatically is in the accusative case whereas the word ‘I’ is in the nominative. For Levinas this makes a great deal of difference. If an ‘I’ is at the one pole, then the other pole is a totality (an economy, a sameness, a support cast). In that case, the power is still at the locus of the I. However, with a ‘me’ at that pole, the ‘other’ escapes the totality for the ‘me’ is constituted by ‘the other.’ The shoe is on the other foot, so to speak: the ‘me’ is now the support cast of ‘the other,’ and a kind of power is now on the side of ‘the other.’

Conditions that Constitute Pedagogy Let’s now bring this deeper asymmetry into the description of pedagogy as the central condition for teaching and learning. What conditions are present when a student learns from a teacher? More particularly, what conditions make possible learning from another person, a teacher? All persons are I’s. Therefore each person already understands the world as a totality, an economy, a sameness. However, when a person is a student, at the event that constitutes learning from a teacher, I would suggest that the student is not an ‘I’ but a ‘me.’ To become a student is to change from the nominative to the accusative, to use grammatical language. In the learning event, from the first-personal perspective of the student, the teacher is no longer merely part of the student’s totality or support cast, but is truly ‘other,’ a stranger. The asymmetric relation between student and teacher is that of a ‘me’ and an ‘other.’ What is it about teaching, from the first-person perspective of the student, which requires this sort of asymmetry? A student typically ends up with skills, knowledge, or habits that he or she did not have before. Something new has been acquired. Or, to use the language developed earlier, an ‘I’ (nominative case) has added something to his or her totality. Perhaps it is theoretical, objective, disciplinary knowledge of school. In that case, the student may well be (on the way to becoming) a rational subject who gains objective knowledge. Or, perhaps the student learns a concerned way of coping better with the world. In that case, the student might not (yet) be an autonomous and spontaneous subject. Yet, in all cases, something new has been thematized and integrated into that person’s existing totality and economy of knowledge, broadly understood. Teaching could be thought of as showing.5 What is being shown, its content as it were, could be called a thematization. Perhaps the sentences of the teacher’s speech clear up the ambiguity of a little understood part of the world. Perhaps a

Precarious Pedagogy

page 6

teacher’s actions demonstrate how to do something new. In that sense, to use Levinas’s words, “[t]eaching, the end of equivocation or confusion, is a thematization of phenomena” (Levinas 1969, p. 99). But in order to learn from a teacher, he or she must successfully draw attention to something, representing it, thematizing it. Thematization itself, thus, is not yet the condition for learning from a teacher. Instead it is part of the teaching process when it is conditioned in a particular way. A central condition for learning through a thematization by a teacher is the student’s attention to that representation. But in order to attend to that content, a student must attend to the bearer of that content: “Attention is attention to something because it is attention to someone” (Levinas 1969, p. 99). Only because the student is attending to the teacher is it possible for the student to successfully attend to what is thematized. Thus the very presence of the teacher as a person is the condition for the possibility of the student’s ability to attend to the thematization: “the first teaching of the teacher is his very presence as teacher from which representation comes” (Levinas 1969, p. 100). The presence of the teacher, a person, is the condition for learning in this context. But, in this relation,6 the teacher is not a Heideggerian Mitsein, a being-with for the student, a support cast for a student’s ‘I’ that already is actively and freely knowing and acting in a totalizing economy. Instead, the teacher is ‘present’ in his or her alterity. In the learning event, the teacher is other for the student. Or, in the teaching event, the student is a ‘me’ in relation to the teacher. It is in the otherness of the teacher, the teacher outside of the student’s totality and therefore outside of his or her grasp, that constitutes the condition for learning from a teacher. Only then is it possible to learn something new from someone else. What makes this sort of learning possible is that the teacher qua other is outside of the student’s totalizing economy. The possibility of the teacher’s showing something new itself requires that showing to come from outside of the student’s totality. In situations where a student needs a teacher in order to learn, the student qua student is incapable to thematize by him or herself. Thus the student needs to be in relationship with an other who can show the student something. But to show something novel, not known before, the teacher qua teacher, in the teaching event, cannot be in the circle of sameness of the student, for then novelty would not be able to break into the existing totality of the student as an I. Learning something new requires the teacher to be an other, beyond the totality of the student. The first condition for learning, a central part of pedagogy, is that the teacher qua teacher is other. For the teacher to be other the student must be a ‘me’ rather than an ‘I.’ If the student were an I, there would only be presently existing objective knowledge, enjoyment7 (Levinas 1969) or concern (Heidegger 1996), but not yet learning. As an I, the student would not be welcoming the teacher as other. Without a switch from I to me, the potential exchange would be forced, a violence. As an I, the world is at my feet, for I am the sovereign center of my personal kingdom, free to do as I please. To

Precarious Pedagogy

page 7

be an ‘I,’ Levinas says, is to be a “being whose existing consists in identify itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it” (Levinas 1969, p. 36). To be an I is to squeeze out alterity by domesticating it, making it part of the same. As such, there is no pedagogical room for learning; instead, the I is always an ‘I can,’ as in, ‘I can do it by myself, alone, without help; I am an autonomous agent, a spontaneous subject.’ This stance excludes learning from a teacher, for it is the condition that shuts out the otherness of the other by enveloping the other into my totality. A ‘me,’ however, has a different relation to the other, a kind of vulnerability or passivity with respect to the other (Levinas 1998), an openness that is not part of an autonomous and spontaneous agent, an ‘I.’ The switch from ‘I’ to ‘me’ shows up in the form of welcoming the other. In welcoming the teacher the student thereby suspends his or her own egocentricity. It is the welcoming that avoids the asymmetrical relation from being violent, coerced, domination, something that, for Levinas, constitutes its ethical character (Bernasconi 2000, p. 62). Thus, in pedagogy, the presence of the student as a me is a second condition for learning that constitutes pedagogy. However, in the welcoming, in the switch from being an ‘I’ to being a ‘me,’ an unsettledness occurs in the student, something crucial for the possibility of learning. As a student, in my welcoming the teacher as other, “the exercise of my freedom is called into question” (Levinas 1969, p. 100). The student’s vulnerability and passivity of welcoming the teacher, precisely as an other, creates a calling into question of my freedom as an I to think what I want (i.e., as a spontaneous subject) in order to make room for the showing by the teacher. The calling into question is precisely the movement that creates the room necessary for the student to absorb something, to learn something new.8 The teacher, including his or her speech, is exteriority with respect to the student. The student can learn precisely because of that exteriority. Without it, nothing genuinely new would be possible, and thus nothing genuinely learned. Learning is a welcoming of something genuinely novel. What is welcomed is a new thematization, generally speaking. But that requires an other who is outside the system of the student’s thought, who is welcomed. And this requires that my freedom to do and think as I want is put on hold, is questioned, is found wanting. Thus a third condition for learning, part of pedagogy, is calling into question the freedom of the student in the change from ‘I’ to ‘me.’ Perhaps a word of clarification is in order here. Although being a student is having my freedom called into question, the role of freedom needs to be highlighted as well. The moment of welcoming does require freedom for the student. That is, without the existence of freedom in the student there is no possibility of calling it into question, something that is central to learning. There is thus no teaching without freedom. More generally, Levinas states that “[t]he rending of a totality can be produced only by the throbbing of an egoism” (Levinas 1969, p. 175). For learning, this would mean that there needs to be an I (nominative case) and its concomitant totalizing economy in order to call this freedom into question. But this also suggests that mere imposition of knowledge is never true teaching, for in that situation there is no freedom to begin with, and thus no possibility of calling into question the freedom

Precarious Pedagogy

page 8

of the student. Instead, in that sort of teaching, all that exists is the totality of the ‘teacher’ (scare quotes!). In that case, the ‘teacher’ is that in name only, but does not function genuinely as a teacher, an other. In contrast to such a ‘teacher,’ a genuine teacher does not oppress: “His alterity is manifested in a mastery that does not conquer, but teaches. Teaching is not a species of a genus called domination, a hegemony at work within a totality, but is the presence of infinity breaking the closed circle of totality” (Levinas 1969, p. 171). This suggests that teaching is the opposite of oppression. In teaching, the teacher as other breaks through the totality of the student so that the student can move forward. In that sense, the relation is more a “power-with” than a “power-over” (Olthuis 1997, p. 143). The pedagogical relation is thus not inherently violent. Instead, it is the opposite of violence by rousing the student out of the naïveté of the totality, including mere enjoyment. The condition for learning is a breach in the perhaps smug unity and satisfaction of the student. To be a student is to be disturbed by something. Learning requires a freedom disturbed. Precarious Pedagogy The asymmetry of the relation between student and teacher that condition learning and teaching gives pedagogy a precariousness. The welcoming of the teacher, as other, by the student, as a ‘me,’ is really, pedagogically, a request, an entreaty. To learn from an other is to ask the other (for) something. And a wordless request or entreaty involving a dependency on the will or favor of the other. It is an entreaty for an as yet mysterious something. Learning is a request before one knows what to ask for, a kind of voiceless prayer. As such, it is actually the student’s exposure to change before knowing what the change will actually be, a change unforeseen. Or even more than mere exposure, learning is a being affected, a being touched by an appeal “which lays a claim on me… [whose] impact on me places me in the accusative” (Marion 2000, p. 230). As such, learning is inherently lacking in security and stability, something outside of the control of the student. And this is not just something collateral or peripheral to the process. Indeed, for learning to occur, being precariously labile is central. Learning could be thought of as following a furrow, a disturbance in one’s totality.9 The furrow is the pedagogical space within which the student can move. As a disturbing opening in the student’s field of sameness, the furrow is the track for getting beyond the present totality. The furrow creates the possibility of the student’s educational movement, for without it the student would not go anywhere, would stay in the comforts of hearth and home, the totality. No path to move on, no movement. Learning is a movement from the comforting environment of home (economy, totality, sameness) to a disquieting unknown. The walk along the furrow is not assured, for it involves a forward journey in a region of discomfort. To learn is to be uncomfortable, insecure. Each step in the walk through the learning furrow is a weight-shift forward before the forward foot is firmly planted, before the student is assured of the firmness of the ground.10 How much easier it would be to stay at home,

Precarious Pedagogy

page 9

in the comforts of being an ‘I,’ rather than partaking in this journey to the unknown as a ‘me.’ Although a furrow restricts the movements to the side, its total openness ahead exposes an unknown destination. As such, the furrow in which the student walks is a rupture of the comforts of his or her totality. The movement of learning is inherently an exposure, a vulnerability, a trauma. And that is not peripheral to the learning process. Learning is intrinsically precarious. In that precariousness, the student is vulnerable. Such vulnerability, in successful teaching, cannot be violated. The rupture of the same cannot be an annihilation of the same. A track must leave much of the field untouched, for otherwise it would not lead forward. The furrow must not undermine the student’s commitment to walk, and perhaps stumble and fall. It must be a furrow ploughed with care. One that shelters the student from harm. To teach is to lead.11 The teacher as other, precisely by being outside of the totality of the student, guides the student forward in the furrow. Teaching as leading is showing. It is a pedagogical showing precisely because it comes from outside the student’s economy of sameness. The showing is a calling into question the freedom of the student by the teacher as other. Teaching is thus a showing that ruptures the totality. The rupture is what creates the furrow in which the student walks, precariously. And the student is led in the furrow as a ‘me,’ precariously, rather than as a confident ‘I,’ in freedom and brashness. Being led shifts the student’s ‘I’ to a ‘me,’ a welcoming of the teacher as other, a dependency on the good will or favor of the teacher. Being led means not being in total control, not quite knowing where you are going, moving despite the distinct possibility of stumbling and falling, relying on the teacher to navigate the breach. But leading the student is not carrying him or her. Showing is not walking for the student: The student must walk him or herself, despite the discomfort or the trauma. The teacher as other creates the furrow by showing. More particularly, the possibility of learning something lies not so much the content of what is shown as in the showing itself. In other words, showing is less than and prior to the content that fills a space. Instead, it is the creation of that space itself. The furrow is not a dogmatic pronouncement as a space for the student to fill in the content. The furrow is a question rather than an answer. The phenomenon of pedagogy, described in this manner, is meant to give a new description of the conditions for teaching and learning. It is based in a primary, originary way we are in relationship with each other, one that requires the student to be characterized in ways beyond the rational subject. A student can learn because precisely because of the asymmetrical character of the ethical human relation in which learning participates, one constituted by what Levinas calls ‘me’ and ‘the other.’ I can learn because there is an other who teaches. I can move forward toward unseen novelty, allowing my freedom to be called into question, because the other, in his or her alterity, leads by showing. Precarious pedagogy.

Precarious Pedagogy

page 10 Reference List

Allison, H.E. (1995). Spontaneity and Autonomy in Kant's Conception of the Self. In K. Ameriks & D. Sturma (Eds.), The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy. (pp. 11-29). Albany, NY: SUNY. Bernasconi, R. (2000). The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien. In J. Bloechl (Ed.), The Face of the Other & the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. (pp. 62-89). New York: Fordham University Press. Biesta, G.J.J. (1999). Radical Intersubjectivity: Reflections on the "Different" Foundation of Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 18(4), 203220. Burbules, N. (1995). Reasonable Doubt: Towards a Postmodern Defense of Reason as an Educational Aim. In W. Kohli (Ed.), Critical Conversations in Philosophy of Education. (pp. 82-102). New York: Routledge. Ciaramelli, F. (1991). Levinas’s Ethical Discourse Between Individuation and Universality. In R. Bernasconi & S. Critchley (Eds.), Re-Reading Levinas. (pp. 83-105). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Davis, C. (1996). Levinas: An Introduction. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Gallagher, S. (1992). Hermeneutics and Education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and Time. Ithaca, NY: SUNY. Kerdeman, D. (1998). Hermeneutics and Education: Understanding, Control and Agency. Educational Theory, 48(2), 241-266. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1998). Of God Who Comes to Mind. (2nd ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morse, J.F. (1997). Fostering Autonomy. Educational Theory, 47(1), 31-50. Olthuis, J.H. (1997). Face-to-Face: Ethical Asymmetry or the Symmetry of Mutuality? In J. H. Olthuis (Ed.), Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality. (pp. 131-158). New York NY: Fordham University Press. Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (1994). Postmodernism and Education. London and New York: Routledge. Williams, R.R. (1997). Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Precarious Pedagogy

page 11

Endnotes 1

There are different conceptions of intersubjectivity. Biesta’s notion, based on Levinas, is not to be identified as Husserl’s symmetrical “mutual being for one another” (quoted in Bernasconi 2000, p. 71). 2 Heidegger’s analysis implies that the subject-object relation, and thus also the stance of being a rational subject, is dependent on the more primary or basic being in the world. Thus objective knowledge, and the autonomy and spontaneity of the subject that it presupposes, is dependent on a kind of withdrawal from the world, suggesting that ‘rational subject’ is not primary. 3 According to Peperzak, for Levinas “the most fundamental intersubjective relationship … is radical asymmetry” (Peperzak 1997, p. 208). Peperzak argues thato the extent that Heidegger misses this point, he is still, for Levinas, a representative of the totalizing thought. See Peperzak 1997, Chapter 14. 4 In fact, according to Davis, the asymmetry of this relation makes its non-solipsistic: “only by discovering the irreducibility of the alterity of the Other can I understand that I am neither solipsistically alone in the world nor part of a totality to which all others also belong” (Davis 1996, p. 48). 5 The indoeuropean root for the word “teach” is deik-, which means to show (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition). 6 I use the term ‘relation’ here advisedly, for, as one Levinas scholar suggests, “the face-toface is not a relation, if that means it forms a totality” (Bernasconi 2000, p. 62). This is also why it is difficult to call this relation, without qualification, “intersubjectivity.” 7 Levinas’s notion of enjoyment is meant to identity an elemental way humans are in the world that is not described with either the rational noetic-noematic schema (Husserl) or the notion of Care (Heidegger). See Llewelyn 1995, Chapter 7. 8 In fact, to borrow a phrase, we could think of the being called into question as the student’s “ethical vocation” (Ciaramelli 1991, p. 91), a “responsibility which is mine even before my freedom” (p. 83). 9 The indoeuropean root of the term ‘learn’ is leis- which means track or furrow, and more fully, to follow such a rupture not created by the student (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition). 10 The first part of the term ‘pedagogy’ derives from the Greek paido, itself derived from the root pedo. The latter means ground or soil as well as stumble or fall. Perhaps the possibility of stumbling and falling is an inescapable condition for the forward movement along the disturbing furrow that constitutes learning (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition). 11 The root of the second part of the term pedagogy is the Greek word agogos, which means leader. In turn, this is related to agein, which means to lead. Both come from the indoeuropean root ag-, which means drive, draw, lead, move (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition). Thus, folded into the history of the meaning of pedagogy is the idea of leading students, moving or drawing them forward. This would suggest, minimally at least from the perspective of the student, that the student is not totally in control, that the student is not an autonomous agent or subject qua student.