An ethics of rhythm—reflections on justice and education

ABSTRACT

I here explore how an ethics of rhythm can shed light on what promotes and inhibits recognition between people across our vulnerable lives, and the need for a renewal of the philosophy of pedagogy. I argue that philosophy itself has contributed to a certain oblivion regarding how we follow and create rhythmic societies, the need for a more profound and fine-tuned listening attitude as a philosophical-ethical marker, using among others Barthes concept of rhuthmos, Kierkegaards concept of repetition, Herbart’s concept of pedagogical tact and Kristeva’s existential relationship. What forms of imposed rhythms of life can be said to cast light on new ways of living together today? I argue that rhythms affect, shape and set boundaries for interpersonal relationships. Moreover, that they serve as incentives for an ethic, or better; as views, perspectives and concepts to think with when describing the rhythm of the Anthropocene.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy of education
• Educational Justice
• Ethics Of Rhythm
• Disability Studies
• Repetition

In this chapter, I articulate a cosmic or ontological notion of rhythm as constitutive for human society and show how the existence of rhythms inhibit or promote, and generally, affect educational justice. ‘Rhythm as the center of humanity,’ as it was spelled out in the UN General Assembly September 2021 commemorating the 20^th anniversary of the Durban Declaration.

In the following, I introduce and reflect on what I call an ‘ethics of rhythm,’ and along with offering some tentative suggestions, I explain how I landed on the concept, and how it may contribute to an understanding of some preconditions and a constitutive framework of educational justice. Furthermore, I aim at exploring how an ethics of rhythm can shed light on what promotes and inhibits recognition between people across our vulnerable lives, and the need for a renewal of the philosophy of education. I argue that philosophy itself has contributed to a certain oblivion regarding how we follow and create rhythmic societies, and the need for a profound and fine-tuned listening attitude as a philosophical–ethical marker. What forms of rhythms of life can be said to illuminate new ways of living together today? I argue that rhythms affect, shape and set boundaries for interpersonal relationships – and, moreover, that they serve as incentives for an ethic: or better, as views, perspectives and concepts to think with when describing the rhythm of the Anthropocene.

Rhytmic lives and rhythmic societies¹

In 1977, the French literary theorist Roland Barthes, newly appointed professor at the College de France in Paris, introduced the concept of ‘idiorrythmy’ in his opening lecture on the semiology of literature; the title of the lecture was ‘Comment vivre ensemble. How to Live Together: Literary Simulations of Everyday Spaces.’ Barthes uses the term critical, while at the same time linking it to a fantasy or an investigation on how to live together respecting different forms of life and their rhythms. According to Barthes, idiorrythmy (from the Greek rhuthmos) is understood as individual rhythms of life (Barthes 2013; Stene Johansen, Refsum, Schimanski 2018), and his interest is to present literary and actual places where coexistence and interaction between rhythms are lived out. This is an interaction characterized by a common ‘interplay between rhythms and the ensuing production of interference emerging from living together’ (Tygstrup, 2018, 224). Rhuthmos, says Barthes “is ‘a rhythm that allows for approximation, for imperfection, for a supplement, a lack, an idios: what doesn’t fit the structure, or would have to be made to fit (…) Now, only a subject (idios) can “delay” rhythm – that is to say, bring it about.’ (Barthes 2013, 35). By uncovering some of the rhythms of life imposed on each individual child, we see how vulnerable a life can be. The individual rhythms of life is a ‘flexible, free, mobile rhythm’ (Barthes 2013, 35) that stand out in contrast to the disrhythmy (heterorhythmy) of others). Barthes writes,

From my window (December 1. 1976), I see a mother pushing an empty stroller, holding her child by the hand. She walks at her own pace, imperturbably; the child, meanwhile, is being pulled, dragged alone, is forced to keep running, like an animal or one of Sade’s victims being whipped. She walks at her own pace, unaware of the fact that her son’s rhythm is different. And she’s his mother! (Barthes 2013, 9)

In Barthes’ starting point – How do we live together? How do we create a community with room for individual peculiarities, habits and preferences? – he problematizes the desire to be respected as an individual, with our individual life rhythms, whilst being in a community with the organized temporality or collective rhythms (bus timetables, scheduled classes, etc.), living more or less distanced to others. At the same time he ‘attempts to crop images of forms of life that have the capacity of capturing the desire of the reader: this is how life can be felt!’ (Tygstrup 2018, 225).

Through the concept of rhythms and idiorrhythm, Barthes explores different fantasies about togetherness (utopias of justice, or ‘justiopias,’ one could say), where the individual and the community’s interests are played out in harmonious or disharmonious ways – that’s why the subtitle is literary ‘simulations,’ not necessarily transferable to our lives. He describes and explores different texts with their topos in history, like the hermetic desert fathers, Thomas Mann’s description of The Magic Mountain, and Robinson Crusoe’s Island; and, seen in the context of education and schools, he asks: How do we live together with respect for others’ needs and integrity? Are personal boundaries liveable? How do we organize a community where respect for diversity is maintained and responsibility for the needs of others, their longings and dreams are taken care of?

According to sociologist Emile Durkheim, social life is rhythmic by nature, with social rhythms, like religious rituals, placed upon – but not coinciding with – cosmic, biological and psychological rhythms (Brighenti and Kärrholm 2018). Society has rhythms and individuals have rhythms, and they condition each other: different idiorrhythmic societies can show us ways to live together, according to Barthes, as in colonies, bureaucracies, utopia, in the convent, a garden or even in the ocean as a sim. He further emphasizes the balance between relaxation and connection – that this may manifest itself in different ways, in different places. How do you keep your own rhythm without keeping pace (more dogmatically) with others, such as children and young people, with completely different diagnoses and challenges?

According to Barthes, it is precisely the biorhythm – or the rhythm that arises through the body’s regular activities – which can provide some of the answers to the question of why societies and institutions should be organized in certain ways. To be human is to be in a place, a place where we are with and connected with others; and many children and young people (such as refugees in institutions) have not only moved away from home, from where they once belonged, we could say, but also from a majority to a minority: from something familiar – a home – to an unknown place, which also involves a loss of home, a loss of roots, the place where you were familiar, a place where cultural codes, attitudes and behaviours were woven together with who you are (Bostad and Hanisch 2016).

How it is possible to live together while respecting different life rhythms, different expectations and needs, desires and longings – this, according to Barthes, cannot be taught. On the contrary, it must be created every time, in new places, in ever-new communities. Barthes’ own notion of the ultimate rhythm-regulated community is the monastery, where all hours of the day are regulated to create the ideal rhythm for a spiritual, contemplative life, and ‘where architecture and aesthetic means emphasizing and enabling daily rhythm as, and in, a community’ (Bostad, 2015). In the monastery, the rules for the daily rhythm are both subtle and detailed.

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) place rhythm on an abstract level, opposed to the material that was actually rhythmized – as a description of relations and connectedness, rhythm is something that happens. One interpretation is that rhythm works as a concept different from a kind of repetition, and in opposition to a pure acceptance of the conditions of life, though also stabilizing or regulating social and personal relations. In other words, ‘Tact is dogmatic, rhythm is critical’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987). And, ‘Rhythm is the milieus’ answer to chaos. What chaos and rhythm have in common is the in-between – between two milieus, rhythm–chaos or the chaosmos’ (ibid). Moreover, rhythm can be seen as ‘critical,’ tying together ‘critical moments’ and operating between ‘heterogeneous blocks’ of space–time (Deleuze and Guattari 1987).

Rhythm and repetition

It could be argued, as I see it, that rhythm as a critical concept resembles Kierkegaard’s distinction between memory and repetition (gjentakelse og erindring), as seen in his work On Repetition (Kierkegaard, 2009). Memory, for Kierkegaard, represents a beholding of the past, while repetition becomes the existential condition of life that contains the paradox of living: namely, that everything repeats itself while at the same time nothing is the same (Kierkegaard 2009). Preserving something is therefore ambiguous (Gadamer 2012) because it contains both memory and recollection: remembrance makes me unhappy while repetition makes me happy, according to Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard 2009). Repetition can thus seem stagnant and conservative – and, at first glance, considered the opposite of a classroom characterized by a questioning culture, by innovation and open-ended questions. The clearer the expectations of a desired learning outcome are present, the less room for new and unknown situations. But being in a classroom can also be seen as a continuous creation through repetition, or in Barthes terms, thorough rhythms that are continuously invented; that is, something new takes place, as a contrast to the expected learning outcome.

Forgetting something or putting something aside is a prerequisite for moving on and learning something new. Forgetting something as a condition in all learning. Indeed, ‘It is time to free memory from its faculty psychological levelling and understand it as an essential feature of man’s final, historical being’ (Gadamer 2012, 41). It is only through forgetting something that it is possible to renew oneself and look at reality with fresh eyes, Gadamer argues.

In Kierkegaard’s text on repetition, it is through the concept of repetition that experiences can be understood philosophically: that is, in light of philosophical concepts. Intense infatuation is the starting point for several of his writings and is about wanting to repeat something, a passionate love affair, because he remembers something that was once passionate and intense. At the same time, repeating an action is impossible. Everything happens within a time span, and to think back on what has happened, to remember something, is to colour something – to subtract and add. With the help of concepts, such as memory and repetition, experiences, are detached from history and generalized, whether in the text or in reality.

According to Kierkegaard, repetition requires both courage and seriousness: the double movement in giving something up, but at the same time getting something back from the world. And now I will approach repetition in the classroom and the pedagogical relationship of rhythms: using rhythm as a critical concept implies uncovering an architecture of power that, according to Barthes, that works repressive in its inflexible and regular cadence. The idiorrhythmic relations he is looking for is the opposite of barracks and boarding schools (Barthes 2013, 9), its outside a superiors control because ‘the first thing that power imposes is a rhythm (to everything: a rhythm of life, of time, of thought, of speech)’ (Barthes 2013, 35). At the same time repeating something is essential to mastering skills and techniques. Students, researchers, and athletes must perfect themselves, and that means exercising the same jumps, the same steps, over and over again. Simultaneously, repeating something is also about being focused on the future and not the past, and thus be seen in opposition to power, the inflexible and controlled output. Barthes distinguishes between following an example in contrast to a chief (Barthes 2013, 35). The repetitions of perfection are directed towards a goal: the championship to be won, the victory to be achieved, the exam to be passed (and everyday life to be endured, we could add).

The easiest is to let the tinge of memory shed its light on the future and compare everything with what was (or what we thought was this way or that way). The easiest thing is to be in the old and familiar, and not prepare for the uncertainty and chaos of the future. But to be as authentic as possible, as Kierkegaard sees it, is to take on the ethical responsibility that lies in the uncertainty of existence: that life does not have a clear and pre-defined meaning for an ethical community.

And so we can summarize thus far that we have seen how the concept of repetition can play an ambiguous role in pedagogy. It sheds light on the difference between remembering and repeating the familiar, and the need to develop what we call a responsiveness to an unknown future. At the same time, we see through Kierkegaard’s reflections that repetition brings with it something new, and that we should be vigilant about the urge to let memory colour the future as well. And here it is obvious to draw lines to what is my concern in the following, namely how an awareness of a rhythmic ethic can create a greater understanding of how we live together. Firstly, rhythms can be both controlled and applied to students with predefines goals without attention to individual differences, and secondly, the concept of rhythm is itself aimed at an uncertain future. When rhythms are repeated in a body, by a child being pulled by his mother or a gymnast repeating his seventh jump, there is always a new event that takes place.

A ‘repeated’ rhythm is not a repeated sameness, but is always rhythm differentiated, always potentially ‘poly-rhythmic.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). A rhythm is simultanously something that is occurs every time and again, and is thus a promise of a new beginning, a becoming.

Instead of reversing/deconstructing previous holistic paradigms such as Marxism, Freudianism or Structuralism (…) they (philosophers in the 1970s) developed a set of rhythmic perspectives, which escaped sterile oppositions and put the qualities of the becoming, its intensities, at the heart of their approaches. Moreover, while the essays of Lefebvre and Foucault, which aimed at the cadences of modern life, remained imbued with the antimetric spirit that had permeated critical thought from its earliest years in the 20th century, those of Benveniste and Barthes introduced the entirely new question of the ways of flowing or rhuthmoi of language, subjectivity and self (…). The old metric perspective, which had spread widely, from the 19th century, into the Western culture (Vol. 3), was strongly questioned and began to be replaced by an entirely rhuthmic perspective. (Michon 2020)

A note can never be exactly the same as another note, given that it is a new voice that sings it, a new finger that hits the piano key – so, too, an educational relationship can never be fully controlled. There is always a new imitation: even if we repeat something, reread a text for example, something new enters the world.

In other words, rhythm happens with some kind of intention in relations, not as a blind repetition, nor as an impulse. At the same time, our individual lives, more than anything, are repetitions in a largely similar rhythm, wanting a life dominated by repetitions – and, as Barthes says, repetitions are rhythmic.

Rhuthmos, paideia and ethical dilemmas

As I see it, ethical insights are expressed primarily, but not exclusively, in our actions, in our way of being, and are dependent on us continuously justifying our actions – and, moreover, that they are first and foremost about ongoing reflections on the durability of these reasons. At the same time, ethical dilemmas are constantly and thus currently at stake, and have to be justified within different contexts in different parts of the world at different times.

At the same time, the question of justice for, in and through education is basically an ethical issue. How should we act, and how should we live together?

My first suggestion on the way forward to an ethics of rhythm is that not only respecting but creating rhythms facilitates a relationship between people; at the same time, an investigation into the rhythmic presence in interpersonal relationships can shed a critical light on conditions for togetherness, recognition, and ultimately, love. And here I distinguish between flexible and shifting conditions and more or less predetermined bodily or material contingencies.

My second suggestion is that an ethics of rhythm can shed light on what promotes and inhibits recognition between people across our vulnerable lives, and the need for a renewal of a philosophy of pedagogy. Here, I argue that philosophy itself has contributed to a certain oblivion regarding how we follow and create rhythmic societies and the demand for an idiorrhythmy in opposition to power, and that ‘safeguards a flexible, free and mobile rhythm’ (Barthes 2013, 35). I argue that we need for a more profound and fine-tuned listening attitude as a philosophical–ethical marker, stimulated by imagination of different and unknown rhythmic lives.

Barthes understands the Greek word for education and learning, paideia, as a way of exercising and stimulating the imagination and a ‘fantasmatic’ thinking. All of us academics, he stresses, should – at least once a year – set out to conduct a research project induced by a fantasy, unfolded by experiences and imagination. Barthes shows us that imagination is not the opposite of reason, of the rational and logical: rather, through imagination, we can experience counter-perceptions, opposites and ambiguous scenarios, images and counter-images. In Barthes’ thinking, imagination is an open source of knowledge. Living together is not only something that happens in a place, but it also happens in time, and through imagination a transcendence of place and time occurs – through chronotopos or temporal imagination (Stene-Johansen, Refsum, and Schimanski 2018, Bondevik, Bostad 2021). Imagination requires a place, a scenario. Barthes compares the imagination to an abrupt floodlight where the imagination leads the way and sheds some disruptive light over selected fields. Simultaneously, there is no direct transition between literary simulations and moral actions, according to Barthes. It is the philosophical space of opportunity that opens up, and with a certain normative requirement perhaps to look for, look around, and imagine more or less harmonious communities – and, in this way, a space of solidarity may emerge.

Rhythm and Time

Rhythm is closely connected to time. A rhythm happens in time – expressing time, one could say. Our bodies are rhythmic in the sense that they are always in motion. Here, we can for a moment lean on Aristotle and his four types of motion or change: the quantitative change (our body grows, we put on weight or lose weight, our hair grows, it falls off); the qualitative change (we develop identities and habits and change characteristics, from being diligent in a subject or learning to knit, then get a disease and have to learn it all over again – it goes more slowly, time passes and rhythms are changed). And the third type of change is change of place: we may move to another country where the rhythm of life is different and we have to adjust in one way or the other, learning to live with it; or we are refugees having to flee and finding ourselves in a reception centre in a foreign country with an unknown circadian rhythm (dinner at five and not at nine, the light goes out in the corridor at 10). And the last of the Aristotelian types of change of motion is the substantial change: when we change fundamentally or existentially from being alive to being dead. Then, we are no more and our rhythm of life ceases into complete rest.

And as I see it, placing a concept of rhythms (inspired by Barthes idiorrhythms or individual life rhythms) in time, or as time, provokes a normative scale and a mapping or measuring indicator seems to emerge; being diagnosed with a developmental delay for a child, for instance, signifies a specific standardized life rhythm. And the consequences of different kinds of standardized divisions into time and time limits, duration of school hours, length of free time in relation to children’s life rhythms, etc., appear essential to education. So we must ask ourselves: In what way could time as a qualitative measurement of progress promote or hinder educational justice?

A room of harmony or disharmony

To create a rhythm is also a verb, closely connected to harmony or harmonious forms and structure, as for instance seen in My School by Tagore, where education and upbringing are characterized as a form of harmony. An ethics of rhythm linked to education as a pedagogical room (Bostad and Solberg 2022) calls upon us to ask how our bodily rhythms may constitute a room with certain harmony or disharmony; whether the distance between people in different public places and in institutions like schools are regulated so as to maintain and also preserve human integrity; or whether the experience of living together and respecting different life rhythms, different expectations and needs, desires and longings, cannot be taught or translated from one culture to another – only seen as an invitation to investigate how much distance we can tolerate in interpersonal situations, in everyday life and in social spaces (Bostad 2018).

In Marxist terms, being alienated as a human being is partly due to the structure or system of labour and profit, where being unable to practice solidarity towards your neighbour is embedded in the system: alienation resembling what, according to Barthes’s conceptual apparatus, may be labelled an ‘architecture of hyper-distance,’ an overgrown or ‘muted distance.’ In other words: what forms of alienation prevent or promote just education, and in what way is this about respecting life rhythms and ‘time autonomy’? The concept of distance (Bostad 2022) is seen as a prism through which we are aware of the inflicted alienation – as for instance seen in the monastery where the distance between young boys and older monks are part of the routine that both prohibits and stimulates the desire after bodily closeness and thus creates alienation between people to prevent human desire: this is another backdrop of increasing community engagement and community participation – as well as increasing spaces for interacting.

In Barthes’ more complex concept of distance and bodily rhythm, it is also the child who guides the mother, at the same time wanting to create distance, which I interpret as a respect for boundaries.

Pedagogical tact and rhythm

Now, let me turn to Herbart’s use of the concept of pedagogical tact, which could be said to refer to the ability of an educator/teacher to interrelate pedagogical theory and practice, or between pedagogy as a science and the art of education, with the individuality of the single case. Herbart introduces the concept of tact in ‘The First Lectures on Pedagogy’ (Die ersten Vorlesungen über Pädagogik) in 1802 (Herbart 1986). He argues that tact can only evolve from practice and is ‘a quick judgment and decision, not proceeding like routine, eternally uniform, (…), it at the same time answers the true requirements of the individual case’ (p. 20); and, further, is ‘a mode of action which depends on the teacher acting on (his) feeling and only remotely on his conviction, a mode of action rather giving vent to his inner movement, expressing how he has been affected.’

And along with this, I will elaborate on how tact forms itself in the teacher and how it is performed in practices within special education institutions. Transferred to the pedagogical relationship between, for example, a mentally disabled person and a pedagogue, we can say that there is a precedent if the teaching is based on a predefined, theoretical framework and does not primarily start with listening to the other’s rhythm. The one central source of knowledge is listening, we can say, while the secondary is theories and methods.

At the same time, there is a basic hermeneutical insight here: that what we experience while listening is largely made possible through our newly experienced horizon of understanding. This progress and decline are nevertheless not a counter-argument against separating primary from secondary knowledge bases: having listening competence or rhythmic competence is therefore a prerequisite for being responsive in the individual situation (see also Weisethaunet 2021). We can say that a newcomer in a classroom cannot be included and understood theoretically, but must be read, felt and experienced.

The boy with the cloth

Peter is 17 years old and arrives at a boarding school institution for youth with disabilities,² with an assistant named Knut. Peter has very restless body language and holds a large square of light cloth in front of his face. Knut tries to hold Peter’s hand, but has to let go several times when Peter runs away from him. Knut looks tired. Peter makes a stream of loud noises that vary between exclamations and repetitive mumbling. It is Peter’s first day in the boarding school and he is unfamiliar with the staff and the other students who live there. One of the older and experienced female employees walks over to Peter and leads him into the living room. She sits him on her lap and begins to sing into his ear as she rocks him slowly from side to side. Peter still has the cloth in front of his face. After a while he calms down a bit, but a few minutes later he breaks out of her lap and strikes out with his arms and kicks his legs on the floor. Another female employee with yet many years of experience has been sitting and watching and now approaches Peter. She sits down next to him and lifts him into her arms. She, too, sings into Peter’s ear as she rocks him from side to side. The same thing happens: Peter calms down for a while before he becomes restless again and breaks free. A third employee, also with many years of experience, takes over, sitting Peter on his lap. As it continues, the employees take turns holding Peter and after a while the rhythm of the rocking calms him down. Knut sits next to him and watches. After a few days, Peter is more relaxed. The music is used more systematically by scheduling a time thrice daily when Peter is invited to sit next to or on the lap of one of the employees, while they sing in his ear. After a few weeks, they replace the cloth with a toy animal – a monkey with soft fur.

This story about the ‘boy with the cloth’ is a single example of how rhythms are redirected by professional teachers: how singing in the ear and using a lullaby that soothes and provides care and warmth respectfully follows another person’s rhythm. Here, we also see a parallel to the pedagogy of music. Practicing a listening attitude is a question of listening to, and trying to understand, the premises of music itself (Weisethanuet 2021) – and in school or in a pedagogical relationship, being responsive to the other person’s own experiences, feelings and life situations are fundamental.

A rhythmic justice

We can think quite concretely: when initiating a lesson in sign language for a deaf–mute girl, we must, together with her, explore new and often unfamiliar ways of understanding something. Her rhythm has a different rhythm, we might say. The rhythmic justice rests on a recognition that there is no obvious way for her to learn a new sign, and we must recognize that different children are not necessarily better at communicating than others simply because they follow or imitate the traditional signs. At the same time, tact has a double meaning: it can be dogmatic, to keep pace, but also tactile, as in being touched by the other.

Being a good educator, according to Herbart, ‘is solely this – how tact forms itself in him (so as to be faithful or so as to be false to the laws enunciated by pedagogic science in its universality?)’ (Herbart, 1986, 20–21). ‘It is only performed during practice, and by the action of our practical experiences upon our feelings. This action will result differently as we are differently attuned. On this, our mental attuning, we can and should act by reflection’ (Herbart 1986, 21). Pedagogical imagination is ‘a practice for what is in the making, which is created in that which is fulfilled, when a question gives an unexpected answer, or a relationship is confirmed or denied by a new insight and cohesion’ (Løvlie 2015).³

In reform pedagogy, we see arguments for how the child’s own pace, its natural development and exploration are fundamental for teaching: the child should give the teacher the instructions she needs, as seen for instance in the works of the Norwegian reform pedagogue and school leader Anna Sethne (Løyte Harboe 2021)

The ethics of listening

In his essay ‘Ecoute’ (1975), Barthes describes listening as an act of creativity, it re-creates music with the body. According to Barthes, being together (ensemble) has a double meaning, referring to an orchestra, but also to the ensemble as a metaphor for life – where we, in occasional glimpses, experience a fine-tuned interaction as a collective (Refsum 2013). Barthes seems to imply that to listen is to be sensitive both to your own biorhythm and to others, and to be present: the sound is simultaneously in our ears and at the same time in the room, intimate and social.

The interdependence between the listener and the one that listens express relational responsibility as well as new beginnings. Listening to silence, is part of a rhythmic attentiveness to body language in caring for persons with severe mental disabilities. Creating rhythms to facilitate the mentally handicapped and following their rhythms enhances and fosters recognition and respect. Listening in the sense of taking the other seriously, following alongside an interest in and focus on the other (and here lies the critique of a philosophy of pedagogy), requires both knowledge and a culture of attitudes and respect for the unknown (see also Kristeva 1991, Kristeva 2008; Lindemann 2010; Kittay 2009, Kittay 2010; Hanisch 2021; Bostad and Hanisch 2016; Grue 2019).

An existential relationship

In her writings, Julia Kristeva has emphasized the unknown and foreign in every human being, and that we are ‘foreign’ to ourselves, as well (for example, in her books Strangers to Ourselves (1991) and Letters to the President: On People with Disabilities (2008)). This can be interpreted in several ways: first, that we need to see ourselves through the eyes of others to see what we do not normally see; secondly, in order to understand oneself, one must have an idea of oneself seen from the outside; or thirdly, that our identity is constantly changing, and therefore we also become strangers to ourselves (Bostad 2010).

According to Kristeva, it is not the case that man has a fixed or unchanging identity, nor is it the case that there is an ideal identity or a norm that everyone can or should strive for. Rather, we are all affected by a changing world. This perspective that we find in Kristeva can therefore emphasize the insight of the discourse of formation or bildung that is so important today: we must, as I see it, avoid one-sided education based on performance goals or predefined rhythmic-regulated settings, or the belief in absolute goal achievement; it is the process that takes place that initiates a deeper reflection – often a learning of something we previously took for granted – towards a greater trust and commitment to the outside world. At the same time, defining or setting up ideals for personal development and growth is something that can hinder, discriminate against and suspend the freedom of people who fall outside the stamp of normality.

Kristeva emphasizes that it is necessary to see a society (or a nation) as a melting pot of strangers in order for it to be regarded as an almost-free society. At the same time, this political relationship will be reflected in an existential relationship: living with others, with strangers, confronts us with how we want to be part of or avoid the unknown in others. Seeing oneself in the light of the foreign also leads to an interpretation of oneself, either as more similar or more different, as stronger or weaker, and we try to restore order by incorporating the unknown into what we already know. Kristeva emphasizes how categorizing others as strangers or as different protects us from the unknown in ourselves.

Towards an ethics of rhythm?

As we have seen, rhythm arises, or becomes visible when it meets power, according to Barthes. At the same time, the individual rhythm opposes power and wants to be flexible, that is, it is not the case that an authoritarian social rhythm should be imposed on us. But the individual is also created through participating in the rhythms of society, it is created in, and it creates, a coexistence with others. Idiorrhythmi therefore has two interpretations (Tygstrup 2018, 229); it refers both to a break with a common rhythm (the individual creates a rhythm that creates also creates the community), and it refers to the fact that it is the rhythm of the community that creates the individual, and that we must live with and together in a social rhythm and a community. What does the rhythm of recognition sound like? In this paper, I have tried to apply a concept of rhythmic pedagogy to the human way of life and interpersonal relationships. That we live different rhythmic lives opens up fundamental challenges about how we can think about educational justice today: how do we live together and at the same time recognize different rhythmic lives? How can we be inspired to live more spontaneous and less repetitive lives? How can we be more alert to differences and uniqueness? And, as I see it, pedagogical philosophy can show us a more humane life through examining, experiencing and better understanding a rhythmic presence in our interpersonal relationships.

One implication for educational justice in developing a concept of an ethics of rhythm may be seen as a way of leading someone to a place – as a mother leads her child into the world, or an experienced teacher leads their students, through the language of safe hands.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Barthes shares his interest in rhythm with several of his contemporaries in the 1980’, like Henri Lefebvres and his Rhytmanalyses, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus and George Perec with his Life: A User’s Manual (Tygstrup (2018:225)

2. This story describes a real observation I had in 2018, it is rewritten, names are changed so as to preserve the involved persons their integrity and privacy.

3. ‘Den er mellomrommet, pausen og ettertanken del av det vi kaller pedagogisk fantasi. Takt er med andre ord en praksis for det som er i emning, som blir til i det den fullbyrdes, som når et spørsmål gir et uventet svar, eller et forhold bekreftes eller avkreftes ved en ny innsikt og samhørighet’. My translation to English.