an ethics of becoming in a pedagogy for social justice - by dirk postma

An ethics of becoming in a pedagogy for social

justice. A posthumanist perspective

SOLT, UJ, 25 February 2016Dirk Postma

Faculty of EducationUniversity of Johannesburg

Introduction• Protests movements are part of the ‘long revolution’ towards radicalising

democracy

It is a genuine revolution, transforming men and institutions; continually extended and deepened by the actions of millions, continually and variously opposed by explicit reaction and by the pressure of habitual forms and ideas( Raymond Williams, 1961).

• New context of global capitalism and neoliberalism

• How could our pedagogies contribute towards this revolution?

• Posthuman strategies could enhance the affectiveness of many humanistic insights

• A posthuman pedagogy of social justice refers to the ways we respond to and enhance students’ will and desire to become

Neoliberalism

• Global capitalism• Neoliberalism

• Humanistic ideals of autonomy, rationality

• Quasi-autonomy• Desire production and deferral• Governmentality

Neoliberalism

Governmentality

• We are being governed in particular ways and towards particular ends– Desire production and –satisfaction– Reflexivity: Self-governance, self-monitoring, self-

evaluation,– Entrepreneurial self: innovate, commodify, market– Active, busy and not passive object of power

• We seem to be neatly caught up into a self-reinforcing cycle of subjugation

• Long revolution?

Neoliberalism

Stephen Ball:Within this ensemble, teachers are represented and encouraged to think about themselves as individuals who calculate about themselves, ‘add value’ to themselves, improve their productivity, strive for excellence, live an existence of calculation. They are ‘enterprising subjects’, who live their lives as ‘an enterprise of the self’ (Rose, 1989) – as ‘neo-liberal professionals’. (2005:145)

Posthumanism• Confusing similarities between neoliberalism and posthumanism

• Posthumanism provides key insights to counter neoliberal forms of subjugation

• Assemblages– Decentres the human– Part of multiple networks consisting of humans, animals and things– Constituted through ‘intra-actions’

• Becoming– We have always been part of the becoming of the world– Becoming with others, animals, things, technologies, environment– Becoming has not predefinable ends– Become more, different, multiple, complex– Pre-individual will (force) to become (vibrancy of matter – Bennet)

Posthumanism

• Affect– The power to affect others is, for Spinoza, related to the power to be

affected (Hardt, 2007, p. x)– Mutuality, interdependence– Increase powers through expansion and intensification of affects

• Desire (non-Freudian)– Desire-production– Pre-individual desire to become– Desire is undefinable, uncontrollable

• Power– Potestas: power to control, dominate– Potentia: affirmative, creative, life-giving– Reactive (fear, revenge, resentment)/proactive (desire, passion)

Posthuman ethics

• What is the good (social justice) and how should we promote it?

• Enhance the powers and desires to become minoritarian through the expansion and intensification of affects

Posthuman pedagogy for social justice

• Becoming-minoritarian– Emphasis of the becoming of the student in relation to own

desires, passions– Becoming without predefined outcomes– Becoming-towards-and-end vs. becoming-without-an-end– Minoritarian: open to affects, associations, increased

powers– Becoming-woman, becoming –imperceptible, becoming-

black, becoming-gay– Majority: domination, self-sufficient, sameness, exclusion

(white, male, western) – absence of affects, creative powers


• Affect– Enhance opportunities to affect and be affected

• Free association, free speech– Multiply connections, spaces– Open endedness of outcomes– Experimentation with different possibilities to become since we

do not know what a human being is or what a body could do– Pedagogy of discomfort: pedagogy where the body (and mind)

experience a shock – opened up to become different– The body is ‘recomposed’ and subjectified when affected by new

forces, relations and concepts. In the process the body grows in its capacity to affects and be affected (Duff 2013, 194, 199).

Desire and affect

A pedagogy of desire and experimentation (Olssen 2009)


• Desire and will– Awaken the desire and will to become different– In stead of the desire-fulfilment (

qualification/rewards)– Participate within public sphere, govern yourself– Contribute own knowledges, meanings– The desire to become is expressed in protests (we

do not want to be what is prescribed)– A will against potestas (dominant power)

• The statement by Olssen about the marginalisation of the handicapped applies to the alienation students experience in HE:– … these children have probably been cut off in their

desires; they have for one or another reason not been able to connect their lines of flight to other lines. Or maybe they live a construction of sense and problems that seems very far from established facts about the world. Working with the production of desire, sense and problems could be very beneficial for these children (Olsson 2009, 187)

Conclusion

• A posthumanist pedagogy provides insights and strategies that could enhance the powers to become different

• These powers to become a different subjectivity are necessary to challenge neoliberal forms of subjectification and exclusion

• Becoming different is an ethos of the care for the self and for others that are part of constituting the self

References

• Bennet, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: The political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at the College de France, 1978-9. (M. Senellart, Ed., G. Burchell, Trans.). Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

• Hardt, M. (2007). Foreword: What affects are good for. In P. T. Clough & J. Halley (Eds.), The affective turn. Theorizing the social. Durham: Duke University Press.

• Olsson, L. M. (2009). Movement and experimentation in young children’s learning. Deleuze and Guattari in early childhood education. London: Routledge.

• Williams, R. (1965). The long revolution. Harmondsworth, UK.: Pelican Books.

Thank you