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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
The notion of otherness, often misused, requires important conceptualization work in order for it to be considered in all of its forms, and not simply reduced to the account of others. Although otherness certainly questions the link to the other (relation), it also questions the link to the self (reflexivity) and the link to knowledge (epistemology). Being tridimensional, the process of otherness is a paradox, the meaning of which can only be drawn thanks to ethics, psychoanalytical orientation and the history of philosophical ideas. This book, which relates to philosophy of education, seeks to explain the problematic notion of otherness, the desire for which is specific to humankind. It examines how otherness questions the limits of knowledge, transmission and language, and argues that it is in fact a value, a tool and practice for all the actors involved in the relationship between education, knowledge and care.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART 1: Issues, Forms and Processes of Otherness
Introduction to Part 1
1 The Stakes of a Problematic Otherness
1.1. A fashionable notion but very dispersed
1.2. The challenges of otherness in education and training
1.3. Otherness, a Socially Acute Question in the educational sciences
1.4. Conclusion
2 The Forms of Otherness
2.1. External otherness
2.2. The inner otherness
2.3. Epistemological otherness
2.4. Conclusion
3 The Process of Teaching Otherness
3.1. The concept of Otherness
3.2. Teaching Otherness
3.3. A risky but essential process
3.4. Conclusion
PART 2: Thoughts About Otherness
Introduction to Part 2
4 External Otherness, Educational Work and Holiness
4.1. An educational work
4.2. Holiness
4.3. For a new humanism to be transmitted through education?
4.4. Conclusion
5 Inner Otherness and the Object of Research
5.1. The researcher’s involvement
5.2. Personal projections, transfers and countertransfers
5.3. A clinical investigation
5.4. Conclusion
6 Epistemological Otherness and Non-being
6.1. The forbidden way of non-being
6.2. Non-being, a succession of paradoxes?
6.3. Non-being thought between literary fiction and philosophical knowledge
6.4. Why think of non-being today?
6.5. Conclusion
PART 3: Transfers of Otherness in the Educational Sciences
Introduction to Part 3
7 Didactizing Otherness
7.1. The conditions for a didactic approach to Otherness
7.2. Is Otherness didactic knowledge?
7.3. Perspectives of didactic research specific to Otherness
7.4. Conclusion
8 Educating for Otherness
8.1. Another “education for” or an education other than itself?
8.2. A Levinasian education?
8.3. A Meinongian pedagogy?
8.4. Conclusion
9 Training for Otherness
9.1. Legitimacy of professional training in Otherness
9.2. A paradoxical pedagogy to train for Otherness
9.3. An Otherness training engineering project
9.4. Training for Otherness through research
9.5. Research perspectives
9.6. Conclusion
10 Evaluating (with) Otherness
10.1. Otherness in evaluation
10.2. Evaluating and interpreting with Otherness
10.3. Application: evaluating and interpreting textual otherness
10.4. Conclusion
Conclusion
Postface
References
Index of Names
Index of Notions
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. Relationships with the Other
Table 3.2. Preferred theoretical references to conceptualize forms of Otherness
Table 3.3. Desires for the Other
Table 3.4. Preferred theoretical references to conceptualize the desires of Othe...
Table 3.5. Understanding of some philosophical systems with regard to Otherness
Table 3.6. How Otherness teaches
Table 3.7. What otherness teaches
Table 3.8. The risks of Otherness
Chapter 6
Table 6.1. Logical structure of the MXG version of Gorgias’ non-being treaty
Table 6.2. Comparison of Stoic/Meinongian knowledge objects
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. Comparison of the two Levinasian registers on education
Table 8.2. Levinasian educational work and learning actions
Table 8.3. Criteria for identifying the six dimensions of uncertainty
Table 8.4. Criteria for identifying tools to address uncertainty
Table 8.5. Pupil discussion according to the six dimensions of uncertainty
Table 8.6. Tools mentioned by pupils to deal with uncertainty
Table 8.7. Pupils’ comments on the nature of the unknown
Chapter 9
Table 9.1. Professional training survey in educational sciences
Table 9.2. Reasons for the usefulness of otherness for professionals in training
Table 9.3. Relative usefulness of forms of Otherness for professionals in traini...
Table 9.4. Reasons for the usefulness of otherness education for professionals
Table 9.5. Relative usefulness of otherness education for professionals
Table 9.6. Indicators of the nature of the three dimensions of Otherness
Table 9.7. Weight of the three dimensions of Otherness in the representations of...
Table 9.8. Summary of the importance of the three forms of Otherness
Table 9.9. Otherness training engineering project
Table 9.10. Situations conducive to the observation of a real practice of Othern...
Table 9.11. From Levinasian learning to ideal practices of Otherness
Chapter 10
Table 10.1. Otherness in each of the evaluation models
Table 10.2. Mediation and third-party functions according to Vygotsky, Peirce an...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. The desire to know placed in the pedagogical triangle
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Otherness at the heart of the didactic and pedagogical triangle
Figure 3.2. Process linking the desire to know and an-otherness
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Unconscious phenomena at play in research
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Meinongian division of knowledge objects
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. The didactic issues related to the teaching of Otherness
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. Michel Fabre’s training triangle (1994)
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. The cogito mediated by the universe of signs according to Ricœur’s ...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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My child
This book is dedicated to you as a testimony to the non-transferable:
my love
your freedom
our othernesses
May the quest for the infinite guide your steps
To my parents whom I cherish
who indicate to me day after day by their example
the way of infinite patience and love
Education Set
coordinated by
Gérard Boudesseul and Angela Barthes
Volume 3
The Meaning of Otherness in Education
Stakes, Forms, Process, Thoughts and Transfers
Muriel Briançon
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd 27-37 St George’s Road London SW19 4EU UK www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Muriel Briançon to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019937361
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-392-9
Acknowledgements
This book – the result of my HDR in the educational sciences – would never have been possible without the constant, regular and unconditional encouragement of Jeanne Mallet, Professor Emeritus of the Universities in Educational Sciences, who since my Master’s degree in 2004 has supported me in my professional and personal life. Her benevolent, spiritual and liberating support has helped to build the teacher, trainer and researcher I have become. I can never thank her enough for that. My debt to her is immense.
I would like to thank Christiane Peyron-Bonjan, Professor Emeritus of the Universities in Educational Sciences, whose otherness has pushed me and who is at the origin of my passion for research in philosophy of education. She embodies the task we give ourselves and to whom we give ourselves to. An extraordinary teacher, she revealed my desire to know, my pleasure to think, my taste for questioning. I owe her so much, starting with my research subject, and our relationship has inspired me.
This text would never have succeeded and taken shape without the quiet and wonderful support of Marie-Louise Martinez, Professor of Universities in Educational Sciences, who was its symbolic recipient. Her confidence in me and her faith in the usefulness and relevance of my research, supported me throughout this writing and summary work and beyond. She had probably perceived before me that our research would come together. It is no coincidence that an anthropological problem of ethics, language and transmission finally emerges from my reflection on otherness, drawing common perspectives and guiding my future research. Her magnificent foreword, the third part of which puts my inclusion in the French landscape of the philosophy of education into perspective, was an additional and essential gift. I warmly thank her here.
Michel Fabre, Professor Emeritus in Educational Sciences, and Eirick Prairat, Professor in Educational Sciences, who have agreed to serve on the jury and to be the rapporteurs, do me a great honor: to read and engage in a dialog on the themes that are common to us, to recognize where I am coming from. Coming from such personalities, this recognition, which is as much that of my ideas as of my otherness, is infinitely precious to me:
– since my reflections on otherness lead to the problem of teaching this value and a certain ethics in education and training, the participation in this jury of Eirick Prairat, whose field of expertise was this, seemed essential to me. I am also indebted to him for a very beautiful postface that ends this book with a useful and appreciated open door;
– Michel Fabre’s interest in my publications has never wavered since my
Altérité enseignante
, a work he agreed to write the foreword for in 2012. Subsequently, his attention, manifested from afar, when times were difficult for me, motivated me to continue my research. By encouraging my entry into the French-speaking society of educational philosophy (Sofphied) and supporting my many academic endeavors, he gave me an extraordinary gift: recognition by my peers.
I share with Sophie Nordmann, Philosopher, Associate Professor, PRAG/HDR and Teacher at the EPHE, my ever renewed taste for Levinas’ thought that has accompanied me from the relationship with the Other to the unspeakable transcendent. A specialist in contemporary Jewish philosophy, she has agreed to be a rapporteur, which has given the jury and the education sciences in general her expertise on Emmanuel Levinas, one of the greatest philosophers of otherness and ethics and one of my main references.
Natalie Depraz, Professor of Universities of Philosophy, a specialist in the dialog between phenomenology and theology, who developed the idea of experiential and practical phenomenology, did me the honor of participating in this jury. My philosophical reflections could only lead to the realization of the need for the experience and practice of otherness, tracing common perspectives for future research.
I am very grateful to Didier Moreau, a University Professor in Philosophy, a specialist in philosophy and the ethics of education, as well as in the phenomenology of silence which he writes about in his thesis on philosophy. He enthusiastically accepted to be part of the jury and to be its rapporteur. As my 10 years of quest for otherness ended with the possibility of sacred silence, our philosophical research could only come together and be combined, for example in a beautiful project on the transmission of the unspeakable transferable.
I would like to thank Nicolas Go, University Lecturer in Education, for his careful review of our doctoral thesis, and his remarks and advice, which took the form of personal emails exchanged in 2008.
Last but not the least, my most faithful reader, Jean-Marc Lamarre, Honorary Lecturer at the University of Nantes and the ESPE des Pays de la Loire, has once again shown his interest in my research by agreeing to be the patient and critical reviewer of this book, which represents a considerable amount of work. I cannot thank Lamarre enough, who, since 2013, has been constantly checking in on me by email, supporting and encouraging me from afar, before meeting us (five years later!) in real life. The precious exchanges we have had on otherness, our collaboration on a four-handed text to Sofphied, his university help and the many connections that are now emerging between his Saint Augustine (the inner master) and my Levinas (my master) feed our friendship.
I would also like to thank the countless people – parents, friends, colleagues, students – who have contributed directly or indirectly to my reflection and therefore to this book. For me, they have all been othernesses and opportunities for alteration, and therefore sources of inspiration on this path of transformation and education.
Introduction
Five years after our thesis and the publication of two books and numerous articles, this written summary for the HDR is for us an opportunity to gather and give shape to the research (published or unpublished) to which we have been dedicated since 2005. These may seem scattered to an outside observer reading here and there some of our publications, however they constitute – in our minds and from the beginning – a coherent whole. The objective of this summary exercise will therefore be to formalize this coherence, to distance oneself, then to communicate, perhaps to transmit – if this is possible for the research object that we (pre)occupy – these reflections that are close to our hearts but which remain very modest on the scale of the history of ideas. Unless they constitute yet another pretentious and vain attempt to solve this problem as old as human thought but still relevant today: to think, speak about and teach otherness.
Indeed, what is otherness? And what to do with it in the educational sciences? Everything obviously depends on the definition of this term. For example, D. Groux, who inscribes otherness in the relationship with the other and assimilates it more or less to the difference with others, easily proposes an education in humanist otherness, successor to intercultural education (Groux 2002). Our approach is at odds with this traditional conception, because we will not reduce otherness to that of others. We will also seek it in ourselves and in knowledge. This search for otherness in three different directions (relational, reflective and epistemological) will reveal the common point of these three forms of otherness: the unknowable, whose philosophical and historical origins date back to the concept of non-being which is – according to Parmenides – non-existent, inconceivable and unspeakable. If otherness is a transformation of Greek non-being, then the problem that constitutes the basis of our reflection is the following: what to do with this “nothingness” in the educational sciences? In other words, what is it for and how to think, speak about and teach “nothing”? These questions seem, a priori, to lead only to a dead end.
Faced with this challenge, the only thing that has kept us and still keeps us from giving up is the certainty that “research is essentially about writing” (Van der Maren 1996, p. 275) and our unfailing pleasure in this writing activity. Thinking to write, writing to think – our research is based on this evidence. Even if our words try to translate a thought of the non-existent with little chance – it must be admitted – of succeeding. Or rather, precisely. It is because the challenge is great and the object of our desire is rationally impossible and historically forbidden that writing manifests itself, continues and renews itself. Collecting words as many materials, choosing the most appropriate terms, arranging them in intelligible and striking sentences, modeling the text as one models clay, sculpting the work as one sculpts wood, all this to write what one cannot write; this absurd writing activity has become very strangely the meaning of this adventure. Because words create what does not exist. We have discovered in ourselves all the energy that comes from this sense feeding on the foolish. This energy and pleasure, paradoxically drawn from an intellectual quest that we know is lost in advance, we would now like to share it.
But the object of this summary being an Unknown who probably does not exist, our purpose would undoubtedly have been considered as a whole by Aristotle as useless chatter, verbiage, the incomprehensible noise of a woman-plant1. So this would not be a text conveying legitimate knowledge that deserves to be read, as its metaphysics and nicomatics ethics could be. We will assume the opposite position by positioning ourselves against this Aristotelian tradition in particular and against Western thought mainly built on Parmenidian, Platonic and Cartesian philosophy in general. This summary will therefore be a heterogeneous background/base alloy: formally, a rational thought worthy of the Greek logos but in the background, a “thought against”, nourished by “the non-Cartesian epistemology” and “the philosophy of the why not?” by G. Bachelard (1934, pp. 10 and 139), who resists tradition and is insubordinate, not respecting the ancestral prohibition of thinking about non-existent, inconceivable, incommunicable objects.
Otherness is one of these very problematic objects. It is everywhere and nowhere, like God, a non-being or is transcendent, which makes “the question of otherness so general – perhaps the most general of philosophy”, announces François Jullien, the philosopher who holds the first existing French chair on otherness at the Collège d’études mondiales (Jullien 2012a, p. 4). At the same time, this same thinker affirms that otherness is also a means because “it is not a matter of essence, but a tool” and “the other is the very tool of philosophy” (Jullien 2012b). Everything is said: a forbidden and problematic object but at the same time the question and the tool of philosophy, otherness covers all this. And when we have said that, far from being finished, the problem has unfortunately (or fortunately) only just begun because “under no circumstances can the category of otherness be immobilized – let alone hypostasized” (idem). The framework is therefore in place.
Writing about otherness is therefore a senseless and absurd action. Roland Barthes already stated that “otherness is the most unpleasant concept in common sense” (Barthes 1957, p. 44). Then, writing on this theme resembles the useless and hopeless work of Sisyphus whom the gods had condemned to constantly roll a rock to the top of a mountain from where the stone would fall by its own weight. The reasons for the divine punishment remain unclear and even if various explanations have been proposed, his torture remains unfounded. Sisyphus was the absurd hero: he lifted the enormous stone, made it roll, held it on his shoulder, barely climbed the slope to the top, reached his goal and deposited the stone, which then began to slide down in a few moments. Sisyphus slowly descended to the plain to raise the stone again. It was absurd and tragic. But Albert Camus (2005) imagined Sisyphus happy. The hero is conscious: “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent” (ibid., p. 117). The writer-philosopher reverses the situation: “If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy” (idem). He considers that Sisyphus’ silent joy comes from the fact that his destiny belongs to him: he has chosen it, he has appropriated it, he feels responsible for it. Then, absurdity and happiness mingle like “two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness” (ibid., p. 118). Why is this so? The idea that everything is good in this way “teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted” (idem). And, with Camus, “one does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness” (ibid., p. 118), not to produce one more manual on happiness, but to write at all… and perhaps to share.
This operation of putting otherness into words is part of a posture that can only be ambiguous and dialogical, reflecting both the absurdity of the task and the need to carry it out. It is clearly and consciously a synthesis of the senseless quest for the unthinkable nature of otherness. Not having as a naive objective to achieve this unattainable goal, since it would have to be repeated every time, we would rather give an esthetic meaning to the research we are gathering here. How can we talk of the absurd, the impossible, the unknown? Are these fields reserved only for poetry, literature, fiction, art and myth? Is not the researcher in the educational sciences, when aware of their limits, of their elusive and inaccessible object of research and of their absurd activity, not like Sisyphus? How can we speak about this experience and share it when we are researchers and teachers? That is the challenge. Doesn’t the conscious search for itself become an esthetic, a work of form since the content is no more than a pretext? But it is probably still too early for the educational sciences to take the side of poetry, as they still claim to be science. We will therefore have to use the rational logos and the usual scientific codes to communicate and transmit the current (and therefore necessarily provisional) meaning of our research. But let us not forget throughout these pages that the Greek term λόγος did not only mean what Western thought has retained: reason2. Our use of words will be both Platonic (rational and logical demonstration) and sophistic (contradictory discourse, noise, narrative, fable, seductive rhetoric).
This book is very classically structured in three parts.
The first part, which aims to answer the question “why?”, first questions the issues of otherness in education and training (Chapter 1), which leads us to try to define otherness, that is to conceptualize it in three fixed forms (Chapter 2) before conceiving it as a dynamic process (Chapter 3). Our philosophical approach gives consistency to the external, internal and epistemological forms of otherness that we then propose to bring together under the three-dimensional concept of teaching otherness. It is because otherness teaches us something important or even essential that it has a role to play in education and training. And it is because it has this educational and formative role to play that it is necessary to conceptualize it. But this concept poses a major concern: while it is a very useful form epistemologically and existentially speaking, it cannot really exist without immediately removing its content, constantly challenging the issues of this conceptualization process. By resisting the temptation to capitalize it, we seek to avoid the permanent risk of essentialization.
The second part seeks to answer the question “what?”. It focuses on thinking, recognizing and understanding otherness, that is understanding it in depth in its three forms, while running the risk of losing it as our investigations progress. With Levinas, external otherness leads us to ethics and holiness (Chapter 4). The inner otherness gives rise to a psychoanalytically inspired clinical investigation that highlights the apprentice researcher’s unconscious projections on their research object (Chapter 5). Epistemological otherness is approached as a series of paradoxes in ancient philosophy to the point of making it a fiction, while Meinong inscribes it in a more contemporary Aussersein (Chapter 6). These three paths to understanding otherness (ethics, the unconscious, fiction or non-knowledge) are possible and complementary paths to work on the relationship with the other, on one’s own incongruity and on the limits of knowledge.
The third part, which tries to answer the question “how?”, brings together our research perspectives in order to transfer and concretize otherness in the educational sciences despite all the objections that have been previously considered. We have to study under what conditions otherness can become didactic knowledge and whether didactic theory is able to accommodate this contradictory concept (Chapter 7). Then, we try to consider and begin to implement an educating for otherness in primary school even if any educational program can only alter this strange and recalcitrant object of knowledge (Chapter 8). Then, to meet the needs of the field, we glimpse at professional training in otherness, which first takes the form of a paradoxical pedagogy before risking to become a real training engineering (Chapter 9). Finally, it is examined whether otherness can be used as an evaluation tool in education and training (Chapter 10).
At the end of our reflection, we will have to ask ourselves whether otherness has succeeded in resisting this rational, logical and structured discourse. Didn’t our speech kill the mystery? Hasn’t the concept of Otherness distorted the multiple and complex phenomena of otherness? Didn’t the putting into words of non-being make it somehow exist, and therefore paradoxically disappear at the same time? Has the quest for the unknown not led to new knowledge that unfortunately no longer has the same flavor as the unknown we were looking for? This risk of reification of a nothingness which the human being has always run after makes us ask ourselves two questions that are underlying this synthesis, which the reader should keep in mind during his reading and to which we will return in the conclusion: what is the relevant mode of knowledge (and therefore of transmission) of otherness? And does otherness have a place in the educational sciences?
We must first question the appropriate way of recognizing otherness as a phenomenon. Indeed, how can we recognize the unknown? Perhaps a crazy question, but one that we have been confronted with since we became interested in otherness. Should knowledge of otherness continue to be rational to the end of the absurd or, on the contrary, should it assume esthetics, poetics or even the spiritual? Does its knowledge necessarily have to be accompanied by a discourse? If so, is the use of words – verbalization or writing – of the unknown a useful mode of knowledge even if it is insufficient or counterproductive and should it be avoided at all? Paul Ricœur ends Oneself as another “in the tone of Socratic irony”: “Only a discourse other than itself, I would say by plagiarizing Parmenides, and without venturing further into the forest of speculation, it is suitable for the meta-category of otherness, subject to penalty that otherness suppresses itself by becoming the same as itself…” (Ricœur 1990, p. 409). It is interesting to note that, first, P. Ricœur’s ironic conclusion did not prevent him from writing and publishing his major work and, second, it is his last sentence that constitutes the starting point for all our research: where he does not venture, we will clear the way. How can we maintain the paradox (writing about what cannot be written) with a reasoned and reasonable writing? Wouldn’t an absurd and disjointed gibberish or a blank page help us to better understand otherness? But if this were the case, how could otherness be communicated and transmitted? This first question thus inevitably leads to the second because the educational sciences cannot simply know: they must also seek to communicate and transmit “knowledge” to subsequent generations.
A second question, therefore, on the subject of conceptualized otherness in the educational sciences needs to be discussed. Indeed, the need for a thought on otherness seems to justify our temptation and attempt at conceptualization, which boils down to an attempt to redesign otherness, which should have been left “in such a state of dispersion”, P. Ricœur tells us again (Ricœur 1990, p. 410). In our opinion, the awareness of this impossible but necessary quest for an object that retreats each time the observer advances is a major experience on the path of wisdom. All education passes through this awareness linked to an incompressible non-knowledge due to the fact that the thought object is not separated from the observer who thinks it and because their language never exhausts the desire to think what one does not know, what escapes the individual. That is why we would like to point out with this book that the educational sciences cannot fail to grasp this very useful object of research, teaching, education, training and evaluation. But the price to be paid (the reification of the object) would be equal to the challenge (wisdom). The educational sciences would then have the responsibility of keeping this object intact, that is inaccessible, while using it to research, educate, train and evaluate. Is that possible? Making otherness a recognized, consensual, official and institutional object of knowledge in the educational sciences would risk making it too accessible, losing its nature and destroying3 its educational utility. The introduction of otherness as a concept in the educational sciences could even become totally counterproductive. So, what place should it have in the educational sciences?
However, these two issues, to which we will return in the conclusion, do not claim to be resolved in this summary.
Hybrid fruit of our philosophical research and distant development of our own relationships with otherness in all its forms, this book provides an overview and perspectives for research on otherness in the educational sciences.
All page numbers for citations throughout this chapter refer to the edition listed in the References section. Citations have been translated from the French edition.
1
Aristotle called plant men the sophists who made speeches about non-being (Cassin and Narcy 1989, p. 1006a).
2
A remarkable illustration of Greek dialogical thought, this term had many contradictory meanings: a) speech, word, language, maxim, divine revelation, resolution, condition, promise, pretext, argument, order, noise, news, interview, narrative, fable, prose, work and b) reason, intelligence, common sense, foundation, reason, judgment, opinion, value, relationship, analogy, explanation, divine reason (Bailly 1901, p. 537-538).
3
If this pun is allowed: to destroy the usefulness of nothingness.
PART 1Issues, Forms and Processes of Otherness
Introduction to Part 1
The first part of this book aims to answer the question “why?”
Chapter 1 questions the issues of otherness that are problematic in education and training. Indeed, this term proliferates so much and so well in the human sciences and in the educational field that its meaning is more than uncertain. Its Greek and Latin etymologies reveal its polysemy but also the semantic losses suffered by this term during its history. At school, otherness is present everywhere: in intercultural education, the inclusion of disability, the student’s relationship with knowledge and the desire to know, didactic encounters and the pedagogical relationship, in particular. This otherness, which may be responsible for the deep unease of teachers, also gives rise more generally to the training needs expressed by many relationship and knowledge professionals. Finally, phenomena related to the desire for otherness are also evident in adult education. Increasingly mediatized1 but also highly controversial at the theoretical level, otherness appears as a new and lively issue in the educational sciences. Apart from our compelling and personal need to write, why take up what appears to be an absurd challenge: to teach, educate and train for otherness?
The answer to this question lies in the conceptualization of Otherness, first in three fixed forms and then as a dynamic process. In Chapter 2, our philosophical approach constructs the external, internal and epistemological forms of Otherness, since it is discovered just as well in the relationship with others, in the relationship with oneself and in the relationship with knowledge. External otherness will be embodied in the face of others between conflict and encounter. The inner otherness will be discovered in time, the voice of the alienated consciousness and in the unconscious. Epistemological otherness will hesitate between an unspeakable full or empty space whose origins date back to Greek thought. Chapter 3 will then propose to bring together, model and schematize these three complementary forms under the three-dimensional concept of teaching Otherness after having experienced that each of them teaches important things during a sometimes risky process of cultivating knowledge.
It is because Otherness teaches something essential to the human being that it has a role to play in the educational sciences.
1
There has been an acceleration of this media coverage since the
Charlie Hebdo
attacks in January 2015. See for example
Charlie Hebdo
no. 1185 of April 8, 2015, p. 3.
1The Stakes of a Problematic Otherness
Otherness was not a very common term until recently. For a long time it was confined to written and precious use. But over the past 20 years, publications on otherness have multiplied, both in research in the human sciences and in the daily press. Listing the uses of this popular term is not an easy task because it proliferates in a dispersed manner. The recounting of etymology will be necessary and will show that the term has suffered semantic losses. Then, we will try to identify the issues of otherness in school and adult education. In our opinion, this mediatized but also theoretically very controversial notion is a new and prolific question in the educational sciences.
1.1. A fashionable notion but very dispersed
Otherness has become an essential notion in the humanities and social sciences, where the term is used in an inflationary and heterogeneous way (Briançon et al. 2013). This polysemous term appears more and more but is never truly defined. Its etymology allows this untimely use. A term that has been slowly introduced into our vocabulary but continues to be omnipresent, otherness is not conceptualized in such a way as to allow a rapprochement between all its manifestations.
1.1.1. The proliferation of a polysemous term
Let us provide a brief overview of the use of the term “otherness” in the human and social sciences and then in the educational sciences.
1.1.1.1. In the humanities and social sciences
The term “otherness” is proliferating in the humanities and social sciences. But what otherness and which otherness are we talking about? Or as those from Quebec say: Quel Autre (Which Other?) (Ouellet and Harel 2007). This is obviously the fundamental question. Otherness lends itself to all uses. Our first non-exhaustive overview of the multiple uses of this term is: would otherness be a fact, a form of life, a phenomenon, a theme, a sensitivity, a behavior or an experience (Ouellet 2007)? A shifting terrain, an obligatory link between separation and relationship, or a retracted power that wanders between its pronouns (Bailly 2007)? A bodily and morphological, scandalous and unjust limit, or limits of the power to act and the will, the “I can” (Audi 2007)? The rejection of the other enemy excluded from philia, the fiction of the “all others” or the infinite and unconditional welcome of “any other” (Leroux 2007)? Is this the origin of anguish (Bucher 2007)? A new tourism, a commodity, or astonishment of the event (Méchoulan 2007)? An indomitable animal in novels or the very essence of writing? (Asselin 2007)? A “home” experienced as an unstable compromise between familiarity and strangeness that is poetically expressed (Villain 2007)? A terra incognita of the truth of the other monstrous and enigmatic, a common horizon or mutual trial and error (Vidal 2007)? The threshold of a hospital world or an opening arrangement and the deal of a moment (Tremblay 2007)? Another difficult concept to listen to and especially to hear about (Wall 2007)? A figure incarnated in the field of art by Dionysus, a masked god who is both foreign and strange, born twice and who must be recognized again (Uzel 2007)? A gap in literature between the truth of autobiographies and the plausibility or fiction of narratives in the case of extreme events such as the Shoah for example (Prstojevic 2007)? In translationology, the author, the other translators, the reader or the multiplicity of possible translations (Nouss 2007), the unfaithful translation or the untranslatable (Simon 2007)? A disciplinary theory about the other or a transtheoretical term to be used to “create worlds” (Popelard 2007)? Another object in the mapping of a theater of operations, missing or absent subjectivities, uninhabited and wild places (Harel 2007)? This extremely heterogeneous Quebec catalog, a true patchwork of what can be found in the human sciences on otherness, perfectly illustrates the multiple and disparate uses of this unclassifiable term. Let us note in passing that we have written “uses” and not “definitions”, because otherness is most of the time used without ever being defined.
In France, in 10 years, the human sciences have gone from an otherness synonymous with that of the other to a multiple and dispersed otherness. In 1998, the book Altérités: entre visible et invisible, edited by philosophy professor J.-F. Rey, proposed a typology of the other: an eight-month-old baby’s understanding of his mother’s face, the alter ego, the enemy, the stranger we welcome, the neighbor. This vision of otherness logically led to a reflection on human rights, secularism, citizenship, the integration of immigrants, tolerance and racism. Ten years later, we see that we are no longer left behind in terms of the breakdown of otherness. Various colloquia are now struggling to gather fragmented, very different and sometimes irreconcilable points of view. The 2007 Figures de l’Autre symposium organized by Jacques Ardoino and Georges Bertin brought together epistemological, anthropological, artistic, literary, psychoanalytical, educational, economic, political, philosophical and professional perspectives, constituting a real ballad in the imagination of otherness and alteration. Another conference, Altérité et Aliénation, organized by Guillaume Seydoux and Laurent Husson in 2009, confronted psychoanalytical alienation, forms of religious otherness, clashes of civilizations, fiction, poetic otherness and temporality. The observation is clear: the notion of otherness is nowadays dispersed, disintegrated; although the latter term suggests that otherness would once have known unity. However, as we will see later, nothing is less certain.
Thus, the Figures de l’Autre (Ardoino and Bertin 2010) reflects on an other that would be used by the human sciences in every possible way, all of them undoubtedly relevant but without any link between them. First of all, the other man would be the non-human, the animal, which paradoxically would make it possible to meet the other human animal outside oneself but also within oneself (Gouabaut 2010). But the other would also be the foreigner with an Arab identity, the one who is excluded from lineage or the one who is foreign to the Arabic language, who becomes a non-Muslim, who can be accepted or rejected or even dehumanized (Al Karjousli 2010). In myths, the medieval fairy Mélusine, with her supernatural nature and ambiguous attitude, a dual, disconcerting and even quite dangerous character, is said to be a figure of otherness and mediation and questions “the quality of the links to be established with the other, whether it is a being from the other world, a stranger or the one with whom we live” (Clier Colombani 2010, p. 69). In psycho-anthropology, we distinguish the alter (the other who is not me when there are two of us, an alter ego) which can deteriorate from the alienus (plural and foreign, the allogene of the Gnostics, the God of Jung, the big Other of Lacan) which can alienate me (Cazenave 2010). Precisely, according to Jung, the other in us, this dark part of ourselves, our unconscious, hides behind the persona, a role that we accept to play and a mask that we wear for others (Liard 2010). Thus, traditional masks, whether popular or carnival, can be considered both as a means of dynamic expression of identity, agents of possible alternation, tools of otherness and as social mediators (Sike 2010). In Jung’s work again, to question otherness is to confront the other in oneself, the dual animus/anima, archetypal and primordial forms of the masculine and the feminine (Bertin 2010). For Lacan, the big Other is the symbolic mediator, the third body breaking the imaginary relationship with the other (Picquart 2011). In literature, this “monster” of poetics, the unreliable narrator, diverts the logos to carry another word that creates worlds (Grimaud 2010). In economics, the CEOs of French SMEs relocated to Morocco would experience an ethnographic context of otherness that is both close (for historical reasons) and distant insofar as they do not really know or approach Moroccans (Labari 2010). In economics, too, the constitution of a territory would require us to think of its limit, an instituted limit that encloses (protection against otherness) in the case of the Park or, on the contrary, an instituted limit that attracts (acceptance of otherness) in the case of the Pole (Taddéi 2010). Politically, otherness could take the form of homelessness, a “vagabond” becoming a “tramp” then “homeless”, a victim of a precariousness of which we feel sorry towards but which we maintain at a distance (Neuilly 2010). In medicine, the other would be the doctor, the foreigner who represents external norms and who is not afraid of the suffering body (Bagros 2010). Faced with these countless figures of the other, would it then be necessary to take a poetic and literary journey, as disordered as it is senseless, to the land of otherness (Le Bossé 2010)?
What can we learn from this list of such disparate uses of the same term? Otherness is used savagely, gradually ridding itself of its content. Wherever there are differences, strange things, limits or borders, it is fashionable to talk about otherness. As all areas of knowledge face limitations, they can potentially use the term “otherness” to refer to them, hence the proliferation of the term. Not surprisingly, this word will be found in all fields of the humanities1. D. Jodelet also notes that “the question of otherness is part of a broad intellectual space, ranging from philosophy, morality and law to the human and social sciences” (Jodelet 2005, p. 24). What is the common point between ethnology, psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, spirituality, theology, law, visual arts, music, sport or literature? Otherness, of course. And we see that this term is given the meaning we want. Otherness is a term that attracts and welcomes all possible projections.
1.1.1.2. In educational sciences
In education, the notion appears to be just as polysemic as elsewhere and its use also varies greatly. In L’Altérité, Groux and Porcher (2003) propose a hundred extremely different words to discuss otherness but do not directly define it. In the educational field, otherness nevertheless refers, in the vast majority of cases and in the first place, to that of the other. Thus, political philosophy has taken the challenge of ethnic categorization and the problems linked to the integration of immigrants in school seriously (Lorcerie 2006). The intercultural movement (Groux 2002) and foreign language teachers (Matthey and Simon 2009) advocate welcoming the otherness carried by people who do not have the same culture or speak the same language. The school is then populated by multiple figures of otherness, borders and
