Emmanuel Levinas, one of the most profoundly original Western philosophers in the twentieth century, has recently received considerable attention from educators and educational theorists. Against t...

Biesta has suggested that education after humanism should be interested in existence, not essence, in what the subject can do, not in what the subject is—the truth about the subject—and this is the way inspired by Foucault and Levinas. In this article, I analyze Foucault’s alleged deconstruction and reconfiguration of the subject and Levinas’ approach to human subjectivity and suggest that Foucault’s early and later works have already implied certain concepts of the subject and that Levinas’ approach to human subjectivity (...) does not, as has often been perceived in educational circles, avoid theorizing about human subjectivity. Drawing on the French philosophy of difference, particularly Levinas’ ideas of alterity and subjectivity, I propose a post-humanist subject as a singular existence that ‘announces, promises, and at the same time conceals’, that cannot be exhausted, totalized, and replicated. The singular and unique subject, open and responsible to the world and beyond, is indispensible to the educational mission of subjectification. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision (...) an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity. (shrink)

In education, art has often been perceived as entertainment and decoration and is the first subject to go when there are budget cuts or test-score pressures. Drawing on Emmanuel Lévinas's idea of the primacy of radical alterity that breaks the totality of our being, enables self-transformation and ethics, and ensures community as a totality of singularities, and on Maurice Blanchot's expansion of radical alterity to art, Guoping Zhao argues that the role of art in education must be reconsidered and greatly (...) expanded. Art as alterity takes students beyond where they are and what they have, and teaches them to appreciate and respect difference and diversity. If art as alterity is so essential to human subjectivity and society, and if education is conceived as a process of human growth and formation, art as alterity is essential to education and needs to be more seriously engaged and more fully integrated into the whole educational process instead of being isolated in arts education. Zhao concludes the essay by pondering the pedagogical implications of such a reconsideration of art as alterity in education. (shrink)

The postmodern critique of modernity has focused on the construction of the modern subject and the self‐disciplining and self‐cancellation tendencies within it. This critique, however, fails to consider what happens during the early years of children’s development — the period during which the modern subject is made, and the one in which the paradoxes and ambiguities inherent in modern subjectivity are established. In this essay Guoping Zhao analyzes how children’s developmental process affects the definition and formation of the self in (...) the United States. She uses a cross‐cultural lens, comparing the dominant cultural ideas and practices associated with child development in the United States with those influenced and supported by Confucianism. Zhao argues that children’s paths of development are not natural but cultural ones guided by underlying ideologies, and ultimately concludes that this cultural process determines the shapes and forms of the modern subject and the nature of individual freedom and autonomy. (shrink)

This article explores and extends Levinas’s ideas of singularity and community as multiplicity and argues that his identification of language and discourse as the means to create ethical communities provides tangible possibilities for rebuilding genuine democracy in a humane world. These ideas help us reimagine school and classroom as communities open to differences. They also give education the opportunity to support the emergence of the singular and the irreducible—infinite human beings.

Maintaining education as a pedagogical space for human formation, this book is distinctive in looking at the crisis rather than the success of Chinese education. The editors and contributors, mostly overseas and mainland Chinese scholars, argue that modern Chinese education has been built upon a superficial and instrumental embrace of Western modernity and a fragmented appropriation of Chinese cultural heritage. They call for a rethinking and re-envisioning of Chinese education, grounded in and enriched by various cultural traditions and cross-cultural dialogues. (...) Drawing on Chinese history and culture, Western and Chinese philosophies, curriculum and pedagogical theories, the collected volume analyzes why education as person-making has failed to take root in contemporary China, how the purpose of education has changed during the process of China’s modernization, and what a rediscovery of the meaning of person-making implies for rethinking and re-envisioning Chinese education in the current age of globalization and social change. _Re-envisioning Chinese Education: The meaning of person-making in a new age _discusses among other issues: China’s Historical Encounter with the West and Modern Chinese Education Rediscover Lasting Values: Confucian Cultural Learning Models in the Twenty-first Century Rethinking and Re-envisioning Chinese Didactics: Implications from the German Didaktik Tradition The New Basic Education and the Development of Human Subjectivity: A Chinese Experience This book will be relevant for scholars, researchers, and policy makers everywhere who seek a more balanced, more sophisticated, and philosophically better grounded understanding of Chinese education. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is commonly understood as a universal norm—moral and political—in the light of enduring differences, and for that reason it has historically embodied a seemingly inevitable dilemma of universality/particularity. Since its inception, cosmopolitan thinkers have struggled with the dilemma and have attempted ways to address the question of difference so that the universal norm and obligation can be justified and defended. One of the most common strategies is to give primacy to universal humanity and override difference; another recent strategy is (...) to give up universalism to take difference seriously and frame difference in agonistic terms. I argue in this article that both strategies are inadequate and unsatisfactory in conceptualising and dealing with difference. Briefly tracing some of the major cosmopolitan approaches, I argue that the conceptualisation of difference and human subjectivity is at the core of the problem as well as the solution. Drawing on Lévinas and his emphasis on the primacy of difference in the constitution of human subjectivity and community, I propose a new understanding of the self and the Other for the success of the cosmopolitan project. (shrink)

Foucault and Zhuangzi share important insights on the role of knowledge practices play in the pursuit of human freedom. This article investigates Foucault's discussion of the subjectivation truth games of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in light of the discussion, reconsiders Zhuangzi's approach to knowledge practices. It also examines the notion of self and freedom embedded in the knowledge practices of Foucault and Zhuangzi and suggests that, when trying to get away from the metaphysical subject, there is an inherent (...) problem associated with Foucault's embrace of the Western notion of freedom as autonomy. The conclusion suggests that Zhuangzi's notion of freedom as breaking through our limits and entering into the larger whole; his notion of the self as non-being may make the human pursuit of freedom more successful. (shrink)

The construction of the modern subject and the pursuit of human freedom and autonomy, as well as the practice of human science has been pivotal in the development of modern education. But for Foucault, the subject is only the effect of discourses and power?knowledge arrangements, and modern human science is part of the very arrangement that has given birth to the subject who is thoroughly subjected. In his final years, however, a strong passion for human liberty reemerged, and he proposed (...) that a different truth game, the ancient ethical truth practices may actually constitute a self that is free and enjoys self-mastery. In this article, I analyze how modern human science, exemplified by Piaget's child developmental research, has become the means of unfreedom and domination and discuss the ancient ethical truth games Foucault so admired and how they bring self-mastery and freedom to the self. Furthermore, I discuss whether liberal education can ground its notions of autonomy and liberty on the Foucauldian concept of the subject and truth games. (shrink)

The examination of the modern construction of subject is not over yet. Although many thinkers have exhausted its conceptual ambiguities and practical consequences, its impact is far from fully understood without an analysis of the construction of childhood for the future subject. In this essay, I problematize five constructions of childhood that emerged in the modern time and scrutinize the impasses of logic or conceptual ambiguities within, along with the practical consequences thereof. I explore how the modern construction of childhood (...) is problematic in and of itself, as well as the light it sheds on the deeply embedded ambiguities and aporia :75–88 2007) in the construction of the modern subject. This paper will untangle the problems associated with each of these constructs and their respective implications for the making of the modern subject. (shrink)