Toward a theory of the educational encounter: Gert Biesta’s educational theory and the right to the city

Abstract

This paper outlines a theory of the educational encounter, the space of, and the right to that encounter. Situated in response to neoliberal educational reforms, this theory is developed through a reading and synthesis of the educational theory of Gert Biesta, the architectural component of his theory, and literature on the right to the city. The author argues that the notion of the encounter is latent yet central in Biesta’s work and that it can be further cultivated and more precisely attended to by turning to theoretical work on the right to the city, which is engaged here primarily through the lens of the encounter. Several themes are drawn out from the literature that can help in formulating a theory of the educational encounter such as the habitat/inhabit dialectic, the use/use-value/exchange-value framework of space, and the role of struggle in the production and maintenance of space.

Keywords:

• educational theory
• encounter
• Gert Biesta
• Henri Lefebvre
• responsibility
• right to the city
• urbanism

Notes

1. 1. I thank the associate editor and anonymous reviewers at Critical Studies in Education and Don Mitchell for their critiques and help in framing and tightening this paper.

2. 2. A wide-ranging collection of work on neoliberalism and its nuanced and localized effects on education can be found in a special issue on the ‘International impact of neoliberal policies on education’ of Critical Studies in Education, 48(2).

3. 3. For more about the history of accountability in education, see Biesta (2010), pp. 50–72.

4. 4. See Biesta (2006), pp. 1–12 and (2010), pp. 17–80 for more on his critique of humanism.

5. 5. Here, Biesta draws heavily on the work of Jacques Rancière. See Bingham and Biesta (2010).

6. 6. Harvey (2009) makes an important, similar argument, that capitalist production played the central role in the creation of the modern city, particularly by ‘absorbing the surplus product that capitalists perpetually produce in their search for profits’ (p. 317).

7. 7. Thus, Marcuse’s (2009) political program for the right to the city calls for strengthening those ‘sectors of everyday life that are free of capitalist forms, operating within the capitalist system but not of it, not dominated by it …’ those sectors ‘that are not motivated by profit but rely on solidarity, humanity, the flexing of muscles and the development of creative impulses, for their own sake’ (p. 195).

8. 8. This is so for Lefebvre, but other right to the city theorists have taken the notion of ‘rights’ in varying ways. See Attoh (2011) for an examination of the differing notions of rights used in the right to the city literature and how they often conflict.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Derek R. Ford

Derek R. Ford is a PhD student in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University, where he also holds an MS degree. He studies philosophy of education, with a focus on the broad intersections of pedagogy, aesthetics, subjectivity, identity, and political economy. His research is guided by historical materialism and extensively informed by post-structuralism, Marxism, and continental philosophy. His writing has appeared in Educational Theory and Philosophy, Educational Change, borderlands e-journal, and Critiquing and Reimagining Society. Collaborating with his partner, Sarah Pfohl, he also makes art videos, one of which has been exhibited at PrattMWP.