Educational implications of philosophical foundations of Derrida

Education and Thinking in Continental Philosophy: Thinking against the Current in Adorno, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida and Rancière, 2020

This chapter aims at reconstructing Derrida's concept of thinking and analyzing its relations to education. The starting point is "Cogito and the History of Madness", where Derrida argues against Foucault's reading of Descartes’ reference to madness in the first chapter of his Meditations. While Foucault claims that Descartes constitutes a dichotomous opposition between thought and madness, Derrida shows that madness finds its way into the Cartesian cogito and into thought itself. This debate, I argue, has interesting educational implications: Derrida presents both Foucault and Descartes as teachers who not only provide their students with knowledge, but also leave them with the madness required to break discursive boundaries and think for themselves. Next, I broaden the perspective and show that Derrida understands thinking, like every system of signification, as a kind of writing – the thinking subject is in fact a writing subject who does not fully master the meanings of her thoughts. Finally, I turn to Derrida's writings on education: I discuss his call to make room in schools for thinking against the predominant "philosophy of the state", and analyze his claim that the university should "blink", namely think of the conditions making thinking possible within its walls.

Encyclopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory

The philosophical and social scientific debate between the postmodern critique of reason and Enlightened defenders of reason got under way in the 1980s and reached the sphere of educational discussion in the 1990s. Jürgen Habermas is on the side of the defenders of reason, although he has very peculiar concept of reason and is in many ways critical towards Enlightenment (the German philosophy of consciousness). Jacques Derrida, on the other hand, belongs to the side of postmodern critique, although he never makes explicit reference to the term postmodern. Derrida prefers the concept of deconstruction, which is his version of Heidegger's concept of de-struction. There are currently a number of ongoing projects in the field of educational science which rely on Habermasian communicative reason, and there are at least as many research programs which have their philosophical foundation in deconstruction. As such, examining the philosophical differences between Habermas and Derrida is extremely useful.

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2003

The century of 'Marxism' will have been that of the techno-scientific and effective decentering of the earth, of geopolitics, of the anthropos in its onto-theological identity or its genetic properties, of the ego cogito -and of the very concept of narcissism whose aporias are … the explicit themes of deconstruction. This trauma is endlessly denied by the very movement through which one tries to cushion it, to assimilate it, to interiorize and incorporate it. In this mourning work in process, in this interminable task, the ghost remains that which gives one the most to think about-and to do. Let us insist and spell things out: to do and to make come about, as well as to let come (about). (Derrida, 1994, p. 98) This essay began as part of a symposium on Marxism today. 1 It moves through a necessarily guilty reading of the reception of the 'post' in educational research 2 and then turns to its primary interest, the uses of deconstruction in thinking about the improvement of educational policy and practice through research, by way of a focus on reinscribing praxis under conditions of postmodernity. Whatever the meaning of the 'post' these days, it is pervasive, elusive and marked by a proliferation of conflicting definitions that refuse to settle into meaning. Efforts to accommodate/incorporate the 'post' in educational research have not been easy. In the pages of the Educational Researcher alone, warn against 'the decline of class politics,' textualism, 'toothless liberalism and airbrushed insurgency,' nihilism, localism and relativism, all wrapped up in 'a facile form of culturalism' that paralyzes progressive politics. Constas (1998) offers a typology of the postmodern noteworthy for its use of the very logic that the 'post' sets out to undo . Howe contrasts 'postmodernists' and 'transformationists' and worries about 'paradigm cliques ' (1998, p. 20). Harold has famously argued that all readings are misreadings, given the weight of perspective on what we see and how we see it. This essay adapts Bloom's thesis to read the space of the range of discussion concerning the 'post' in educational research as symptomatic of the anxieties attendant upon the collapse of foundations and the end of triumphalist versions of science. In order to make the project doable, I concentrate on the reception of Derrida as a 'part-for-whole' or synecdoche for the heterogeneous 'post' of postmodernism, including deconstruction.

Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities, 2021

This paper is designed to reveal some of the philosophical ideas of Algerian-born philosopher Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida, a leading figure of Post-structuralism and Postmodernism is best known as the founding father of ‘Deconstruction’ but many of his philosophical ideas such as, logocentrism, differance, phonocentrism, aporia, anti-representationalism, etc. still remain rarely focused. Therefore, in this paper the researcher has tried to explore various philosophical ideas of Derrida before the readers to get acquainted with Derrida’s contribution to the world of knowledge. This research work has done with the help of both primary sources i.e., original writings of Derrida and secondary sources including the texts written by others. Here, all of Derrida’s ideas are explicitly described and justified by an inductive method. Finally, a concluding remark on deconstruction has been made by comparing Derrida’s idea of “Differance” with Nagarjuna’s concept of “Emptiness” which left...

Derrida and the Future of the Liberal Arts, 2013

Th is section consists of two chapters that examine the university in relation to Derrida ' s contribution to thinking about these institutions, the challenges that Derrida has posed to them, and how social theorists have responded to those challenges and to the wider project of deconstruction in the university. Th e second chapter is a republication of Simon Critchley ' s " What Is the Institutional Form of Th inking?, " which lays out how we might better imagine what Derrida called the " unconditional university. " 02Chapter 01.indd 11 02Chapter 01.indd Th e university without conditions is not situated necessarily or exclusively within the walls of what is today called the university. It is not necessarily, exclusively, exemplarily represented in the fi gure of the professor. It takes place, it seeks its place wherever this unconditionality can take shape. Everywhere that is, perhaps, given one (itself) to think. Sometimes even beyond, no doubt, a logic or a lexicon of the " condition. "

South African Journal of Education, 2006

In this article, I explore Jacques Derrida's programme of deconstruction, in an attempt to indicate, and argue for, the possibilities that it might hold as a p hilosophical fram ework for edu cational discourse. Such possibilities are set out, not directly by way of a set of applications or methodologies to be followed, but rather by an exposition and interpretation of the Derridian text with the intention of relating deconstruction to educational discourse. I set about this, by examining Derrida's commentary on the nature of deconstruction in relation to some of the central concepts in Derrida's writings, such as, différance, justice, the other, and responsibility.

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2021

This chapter, in exploring the implications of Derrida's admission of the example of the Clipper chip into the book version of Politics of Friendship, desacralises the notion of khora, as 'the place of possible substitution', and as 'third genus' between the intelligible and the sensible.2 This opens up a 'spectrology' of the in-between in which the importance of design education, design practices and designed entities emerges, as media for formal and informal public education, by extension from Derrida's emphasis on the role of literature and the humanities in the university.3 In doing so, it acknowledges Derrida's emphasis on secrecy or confidentiality for his conception of the relation between the educational and the political. For Derrida, reflection upon the Kantian ethics and politics of friendship should organise itself around the concept of secrecy (PF, 257).4 The secret is 'that which one thinks [.. .] must remain secret because an engagement has been entered upon and a promise made in certain non-natural conditions' (259).

Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2012

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida's spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education-having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle-has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality. Keywords Derrida Á Spectrality Á Foucault Á Discipline Á Governmentality Á Democracy Á Deconstruction Á Schooling Á Education The Identity and Function of the School Is it possible to put into question the future of the school? Not only to ask: What will the future school be? but also to ask: Is it possible to think of a future beyond the school? In the first place, in addressing questions of schooling and the future, it seems essential to give some account of what the school has been and what the school has become and by what forces, within what circumstances, through what processes it has become what it now

Power and Education, 2013

This article argues for the development of a post-humanist philosophy. It does so by examining aspects of Derrida's perspective on humanism through three key works: The Ends of Man, Politics of Friendship and The Animal That Therefore I Am. It explores some ways in which Derrida's work might contribute to the construction of a post-humanist philosophy. The 'question of the animal', on the human-animal distinction and power relations between humans and animals, is at the forefront of the latter work, with animal studies theorists, such as Calarco and Haraway, also playing a key role in this discussion. The article contends that humanism has had a central part to play in providing a philosophical underpinning for political and educational approaches in the twentieth century, and that post-humanism, which is under construction, will offer wholly new ways of thinking and rethinking questions of politics and education. PAUL ALLENDER teaches on the full-time Masters programme in Education and on the BA Education, Culture and Childhood in the School of Education, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. His specialism on both of these is research methods, particularly the philosophy of research. His current research interests are in post-humanism and its relationship to the work of Jacques Derrida.

Textual Practice, 2018