Imagining ourselves into being: conversing with Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This article seeks to develop and apply a line of thought that is centrally concerned with the process character of action, and with ‘the political’ as the field within which the irreversible and unpredictable consequences of human agency play themselves out. Arendt's theorising of action, together with more recent elaborations of some of the key notions within that theoretical ‘frame’, provide a set of parameters within which to analyse the nature of learning and the roots of learning in human action. Drawing on this ‘frame’ of analysis, the article argues for a renewed emphasis on ‘local learning democracies’, on ‘community-based change’ and on ‘learning-as-capacity’. The final section of the article returns to Arendt’s notion of ‘worldliness’ as a further elaboration of the central argument. A prime purpose of the article is to draw into the current debate on educational renewal Arendt’s subversive and disruptive presence.