In some of my past posts, I have begun to take up ideas that connect with the theories of the prominent educational theorist, Sharon Todd (2009) as she explores the place of conflict in education, democracy, society and subjectivities. Todd inspires a reconceptualization of being with others that asks us to question the necessity of conflict as we emerge in the world. While many philosophers (see Arendt, 1954; Nancy, 2000) conceptualize the subject at the moment she or he appears in the world, Sharon Todd(2009) looks instead, with Levinas, to the pre-originary subject. What compels us to speak or act in ways that allow us to emerge in the world? I think this conception of subjectivity disrupts the division between I/you, we/they, and private/public. It forces us to ask, where does this idea or theory come from and why is it something that I will take up in my practice or in my life? What thoughts and embodied ideas drive our speech and action? She also asks us to question how these theories might contradict or conflict with our existing theories, and how to live with that inevitable tension. Sharon Todd’s conception of conflict as pre-originary and as something that is important, points to the significance of struggling with the tensions as we take up the theories presented by the world and wonder what to do with the theories we have already been living with:
What we are advocating for here is the need to consider conflict in terms of political disagreement so that students’ views are conceived on the register of we/they instead of on the register of good and evil. The point is not to abolish the we/they distinctions, which are continually being made and remade in the classroom, but to help students recognize how these distinctions are drawn and how each of them needs to live responsively with the exclusions they create. In creating communities of “we” around certain issues, students need also to recognize those who are simultaneously being instantiated as “they.” Instead of telling students that the work of democracy is to create one “we” through consensus building, the point rather is to come to an acknowledgement of their implication in creating – and sustaining – exclusionary forms of belonging in holding certain points of view collectively (Todd &Anders, 2008).
With Levinas, Sharon Todd(2009) extends these questions of how we/they are formed in the classroom, to how we/they are formed within ourselves as we take up discourses and identities to form our subjectivities. As we submit to particular discourses- we exclude and omit others. Ellsworth(1989) reminds us in a previous posting that as we voice our stories and experiences in the world there are implications for others. While Sharon Todd recognizes the importance of discussing the implications of those conflicting and intersecting voices in the world, she also asks us to look at the voices within ourselves and recognize that there are often conflicts and diverse perspectives that are denied before we even speak, as we chose where to speak from. This silencing of the others within ourselves reflects the difficulty of living with difference and conflicting perspectives in the world.
Sharon Todd (2009) questions Nancy and Arendt’s ideas about being with others as a condition for the appearance of a subject in the world:
Read through Levinas, I am bound to express myself as a form of address that is always belated with respect to what the other commands from me. The speech that is expressive of a singular plural, then, is not simply a result of my being in the world with others, but is first structured by the other’s being otherwise- a structuration that we do not overcome as one stage in development, but that continually plagues our speech and action as singular events of plurality (p.8).
These events mark the fluidity of the theories we take up in our practice and they inspire a commitment to continually re-visiting the theories that shape our perspectives of the other that calls for us to speak and act in the world.
Arendt, H. (1954). The Crisis in Education. In, Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books. Retrieved from https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEEArendtCrisisInEdTable.pdf
Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review,59 (3), 297-324.
Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being singular plural. (R. D. Richardson & A. E. O'Byrne, Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1996).
Todd, S. & Säfström, C.A. (2008). Democracy, education and conflict: Rethinking respect and the place of the ethical. Journal of Educational Controversy, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/v003n001/a012.shtml
Todd, S. (2009). Can there be pluralism without conflict? Ingesting the indigestible in democratic education. Journal of Philosophy of Education Annual Conference, 1-11. Great Britain. Retrieved from http://www.philosophy-of- education.org/conferences/pdfs/Todd.pdf
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