Abstract

This article explores how George Lapassade’s institutional pedagogy meets the definition of ‘praxis’ formulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, as the activity creating reflective and deliberative subjects. Lapassade applies Castoriadis’s criticism of bureaucracy to transform the teacher-learners’ relationship and emphasises how self-governance group dynamics among learners facilitates learning in general and access to critical thinking in particular. Castoriadis’s concept of democracy as individual and collective autonomy demands an interpretation of equality as a dynamic process instead of as a state of social relations, both in politics and in classrooms. His understanding of politics as a matter of opinions rather than applied knowledge necessitates a questioning of how the relationship between politics and knowledge is presented in classrooms. The argument articulates two main themes: authority and power both between adults and children and within class groups, and the relationship between knowledge and politics, problematised by Castoriadis’s concept of truth.