From the Verso Books Blog (15/02/2023)…
The philosopher Jacques Rancière invites us to fundamentally reconsider our conception of education. Criticising the current ‘teacher-pupil’ configuration, which he believes aggravates inequalities, he proposes a teaching method that is both demanding and intellectually and politically emancipating.
This interview was originally published by Philosophie on 20 January 2023.
Interview conducted by Clara Degiovanni and Octave Larmagnac-Matheron
At first glance, the act of explaining seems indissociable from pedagogical practice. Yet, when reading you, one gets the impression that the will to explain hinders the autonomous emancipation of intelligences.
This was first proposed not by me, but by Joseph Jacotot (1770-1815), whose thought I explained and updated in The Ignorant Schoolmaster. This pedagogue managed to teach the French language to students in the Netherlands without speaking a word of Dutch. In this way he managed to teach something to people to whom he had not explained anything. He carried out this experiment in the 19th century, at a time when the education of individuals raised the question of public instruction. After the Revolution, the question was how to ensure that people were not too stupid, but not too intelligent either – because then they might be a bit too restless. Citizens needed therefore to learn in the right way, in the right order, and above all with the clear understanding that if they can learn, it is because someone is there to explain it to them. In this framework, explanation is not just a technical exercise; it functions as a kind of inequality device. It is based on a world view that nobody can learn anything unless there is someone who knows, to explain to them what there is to know. This logic is therefore part of a whole institutional, social, political and philosophical system that keeps a large proportion of people in a position of intellectual tutelage.
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War in Ukraine: An anarchist debate
A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might
transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s
condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such a
distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards.
Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil,
than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.
I am frightened: I dare think this way no more. This way lies the abyss. It is not now the time
but I will not lose these thoughts, I will keep them, shut them away until the war is ended.
My heart beats fast: this is the aim, the great, the sole aim, that I have thought of in the
trenches; that I have looked for as the only possibility of existence after this annihilation of all human feeling; this is a task that will make life afterward worthy of these hideous years.
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Are Anarchists Giving in to War Fever? – In Defense of Anarchists Who Support the Ukrainian people
Wayne Price (Anarkismo.net 18/02/2023)
This is my response to an article, “British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever” by Alex Alder. It appeared on the libcom.org site and has been promoted by the Anarchist Communist Group. It was published on anarchistnews.org.
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