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Radical Discussions: Agonistic Democratic Education
- Author(s):
- David Backer (see profile)
- Date:
- 2019
- Group(s):
- Education and Pedagogy, Philosophy
- Subject(s):
- Democracy--Philosophy
- Item Type:
- Essay
- Tag(s):
- Democratic theory
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/t8j0-g613
- Abstract:
- Claudia Ruitenberg’s recent work on democratic education has spurred an important debate.1 On the one hand, philosophers of educa-tion such as Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson, and more recently Tomas Englund, draw from John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas to claim that democratic education should be rooted in deliberative competence, consensus practices, and reasonability. Call them the deliberators. Draw-ing from critiques of this deliberative tradition made by Chantal Mouffe, Ruitenberg calls for a democratic education of adversaries, a pluralistic agonism in education rather than a deliberative reasonability that, ac-cording to Mouffe, represses the confrontational forces constitutive of democracy. This educational agonism prioritizes passion, affect, and imagination - all oriented towards disagreement rather than consensus. Others, such as Gert Biesta, have developed this agonist position further. Call them the agonists. While Ruitenberg gestures towards the praxis of agonistic democratic education using examples of social movements and current events, neither she nor others working in her paradigm have extended her thinking to educational discussion. This essay will bring the tradition of democratic discussion to bear on the debate between the deliberators and agonists, and recommend discussion techniques consistent with the agonist position.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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