Educational commons and the new radical democratic imaginary

Abstract

This article reflects on emergent (radical-progressive) languages of democracy to consider what common educational institutions might mean today. It explores distinct philosophical and political tensions that cut across these languages in relation to educational organization and pedagogy including – antagonism versus exodus, transcendence versus immanence, pluralism versus multiplicity, democracy versus communism. In contrast to other theorists in education who have tended to privilege certain conceptual positions in these debates to address a wide range of educational issues, the author argues that these tensions should be read selectively and generatively for linking political questions concerning democracy to educational transformation. In conclusion, the article calls for a language of insurrectional democracy that integrates aspects of each approach and where strategic engagements with, and creative lines of flight out of, public institutions and the State play a role in reimagining a common education for a democratic society to come.

Keywords:

• educational reconstruction
• post-politics
• radical democracy
• social transformation
• the common

Notes

1. This paper is intended to contribute to a larger conversation in educational theory that has taken up the language of the common(s) as a way of rethinking educational problems and categories. See De Lissovoy (2011), De Lissovoy, Means, and Saltman (2014), Lewis (2012b), Lewis and Kahn (2010), Means (2013a, 2013b), Saltman (2012). While different in points of emphasis and theoretical commitments, this literature suggests that to imagine a common education is to imagine a form of education that is not beholden to the private interests of capital and/or the hierarchical conditioning of the State.

2. I follow Balibar (2008) in my use of the term ‘language’ here to signal that democracy is not a model, ideology, or static form of social organization and that its diverse historical and concrete manifestations are highly dependent and contingent on its diverse narrative and symbolic representations. Radical, Absolute, and Communist languages of democracy hardly exhaust the myriad ways of conceptualizing democracy and/or social change from a radical or progressive perspective. While my analysis here runs the risk of reducing these forms of democracy to ‘ideal types’ removed from concrete practice, I am choosing to focus on these specific ‘languages’ because they are at the forefront of discussions in contemporary radical philosophy today oriented toward developing new theoretical perspectives on emancipatory politics. Moreover, while there is a tradition of radical democracy in education, absolute democracy and new discourses of communism have thus far been largely unexplored in educational studies.

3. For detailed explanation of ‘lines of flight’, see Deleuze and Guatarri (2002).

4. For further discussion of Rancière in education, see Biesta (2010); Lewis (2012a) and Means (2011b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander J. Means

Alexander J. Means is an assistant professor of Social and Psychological Foundations of Education at SUNY Buffalo State. He is the author of Schooling in the Age of Austerity (Palgrave, 2013) and Toward a New Common School Movement (Paradigm, 2014) with Noah De Lissovoy and Kenneth Saltman. His work has also appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including Educational Philosophy and Theory, Journal of Education Policy, Policy Futures in Education, Politics and Culture, and the Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.