Session Information
13 SES 04 A, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
In the past years, the french philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has gained more influence within philosophy of education (e.g. Todd 2003, Egéa-Kuehne 2008, Säfström 2005). Levinas is critical towards ontological truths, and puts ethics as the first philosophy. The Other is placed before the subject, which is a dismissal of the dominating western subject-centered philosophy. For Levinas, placing an Other into a category and reducing him/her to the Same, is committing violence towards this person since this does not respect the Other’s infinite alterity. In Totality and Infinity (1969), Levinas regards the Other as someone infinite that cannot be categorized, and concurrently the concept of totality is a way of looking at an Other as a limited, understandable and integrated unit.
Judith Butler is influenced by some of the French post-structuralists; for example in Gender Trouble (1990/1999) she works her way through Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, among others. Her main contribution with that book is the theory of performativity and the way she develops her view on gender. Butler discusses both Irigaray’s as well as Beauvoir’s view on gender, but is not satisfied with any of their conclusions. Being critical to the view on gender as something socially constructed, Butler claims that the binary idea of the two biological sexes is also something socially constructed. She states that it is possible for an individual to construct gender in a different way; the concept she calls performativity. Butler is one of the leading queer theorists, and has influenced educational theory, especially in questions regarding norm critical perspectives, anti-oppressive pedagogy and gender issues (Kumashiro 2002, Bromseth & Darj 2010).
Butler is critical to any ontological pre-discursive category and argues for individuals to perform and act politically and individually in order to change norms and society. Neighter Levinas nor Butler approaches these questions from a societal perspective. Instead they both start from a unique individual’s perspective: Levinas ethically and Butler performatively.
However, using the theories of Levinas and Butler raises certain questions that need to be revised: Levinas’ binary view on gender and his use of man/woman as stable pre-discursive categories. Normally, Levinas is critical to totalizing categories, but the category ’man’ seems to be an exception to this thought: ”the common function men may exercise in the world as a totality permits the applying to them of a common concept” (1969, p. 213). Levinas also talks about the ”Eternal Feminine” (1969, p. 258) and that ”The human I is posited in fraternity” (1969, p. 279). Even though one might say that Levinas wrote in the spirit of the time, the blind approaval of a binary gender system requires a re-reading of Levinas concerning this particular issue. The re-reading is made with help from Butler, especially Gender Trouble (1990/1999).
The research questions are as follows: How can Levinas binary view on gender be re-read with help from Butler? What concequences or benefits does this re-reading have on Levinas concept of infinity?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bromseth, J. & Darj, F. ed. (2010). Normkritisk pedagogik. Makt, lärande och strategier för förändring. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, Centrum för genusvetenskap. Butler, J. (1990/1999). Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life. The Power of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Butler, J. (2005). Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. Egéa-Kuehne, D. (ed.) (2008). Levinas and Education. At the Intersection of Faith and Reason. New York: Routledge. Kumashiro, K. (2002). Troubling Education. Queer Activism and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Säfström, C-A. (2005). Skillnadens pedagogik. Nya vägar inom den pedagogiska teorin. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Todd, S. (2003) Learning from the Other. Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education. New York: State University of New York Press.
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