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Abstract
Is Gert Biesta is a philosopher of Bildung? The answer is “both yes and no. First I argue that Biesta's philosophy is based on a denial of the concept of Bildung, and that he, by the very nature of this fact, cannot be considered as philosopher of Bildung. This conclusion is based on Biesta’s roots in the post-structuralist tradition and its problems with enlightenment and humanism, approaches that normally defines Bildung. I consider two consequenses of this: On consequence of the poststructuralist discourse is the effect on Biesta's reading of Hannah Arendt. Biesta focuses on Arendt’s concept of action, while Arendt's cultural philosophy, as this is reflected in her educational essay “The Crisis in Education”, is diminished. Second, I show how Biesta's poststructuralist denial of Bildung is transferred to the structure of Biesta's main categories, namely qualification, socialization and subjectification and their respective overlapping areas: This triple structure, I argue, rejects and defend processes of Bildung simolultaniously. Thus, there is a fundamental division between Biesta’s post-structuralist starting point and his hopes for human sciences and educational philosophy. This division is rooted in the post-structuralist tradition itself. However, this does not mean that Biesta is in favour of instrumentalism and learning ideology, indeed on the contrary. I will argue that Biesta suggests a ontological turn, which, however, cannot be fully expressed because of the poststructuralist influence that undermines the ontological questions. Finally, I draw the entire structure into a model showing the various ontological constraints and possibilities in Biesta's work.
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Notes
1 See also footnote 8 and 12. Another important source of critique of poststructuralism is the realist phenomenology of Graham Haman, who investigate into the landscape of things in itself, based – among others – on a ontologization of Bruno Latour’s work.
2 Biesta’s article was reprinted in the anniversary edition of Nordic Studies (Biesta, Citation2005) and was also the first chapter in his book Beyond Learning. Biesta’s critique also appears almost unchanged in a chapter in a later book, where he writes: “I even sometimes think that learning is the last thing that educators should be concerned about” (Biesta, Citation2013: 59).
3 The same critique of Kant can also be found in Biesta (Citation2008, Citation2009: 17ff, 2010: 88ff) and in Biesta and Stams (Citation2001), while an even harsher critique of Kant and humanism is expressed in Biesta (Citation1998b). Here, based on a Foucault-inspired critique of Kant, Biesta distinguishes between a manipulative and a communicative understanding of education, and the self is perceived as a “product of a relation of power” (Biesta, Citation1998b: 7). Biesta continues, in a characteristically post-structural manner, by pointing to transgression as an ideal of education. This is very similar to Foucault’s own critique of Kant’s philosophy of enlightenment (Foucault, Citation1984). For a few positive remarks on Kant, see Biesta (Citation2010, p. 80) (Kant “remains important”). But again, these short comments appear after a poststructuralist analysis that is very hostile to the Kantian and neo-Kantian traditions.
4 See Biesta (Citation2015) and Osberg and Biesta (Citation2010). Osberg and Biesta presented their ideas at an ECER conference in Bolzano. Here, Osberg reduced the tradition of Bildung to “euro-centrism”. And in their 2010 book, the opening chapter is written by a hardline Danish system theorist and learning instrumentalist. In Biesta (Citation2017, p. 46), there is a short – perhaps critical – mention of Luhmann, placing him in the same group as von Glasersfeld (ibid., p. 32). Biesta’s critique concerns the fact that, due to the lack of an external world, both Luhmann and von Glasersfeld have problems with processes of “passivity”. Actually, this comes close to a Bildung point of view. I say “perhaps critical” because Luhmann’s ideas are still considered to be “insights” and are compared to the transaction theory of John Dewey, which is very much an ontological theory in my view. See also Vembye and Korsgaard (Citation2018) for a full discussion of Biesta’s use of systems theory and how it affects his reading of Hannah Arendt.
5 Another example of the synthesis between post-structuralism and systems theory is Bob Jessop’s work on political theory. This synthesis became a significant part of the so-called competition-state theory, leading directly to an instrumental concept of learning (Jessop, Citation2008; Pedersen, Citation2011).
6 However, Masschelein still considers himself a critic of Bildung, according to a lecture at Aarhus University, Denmark, February 2016.
7 An exception: Arendt’s interest in Kant is mentioned in passing in Biesta (Citation2009: 89).
8 See Biesta (Citation2008) for a discussion of the neo-Kantian ‘pedagogical paradox’ mentioned above. This article discusses Foucault’s emancipatory potential in line with the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, and anticipates the theses of “The Pedagogical Manifesto” (Biesta & Säfström, Citation2011). A recent “manifesto” that is a little bit critical towards the first is closer to my interpretation of both poststructuralism, Hannah Arendt and “world” (Hodgson et al., Citation2017).
9 Already in 2004, Biesta stated, correctly in my view, that a basic prerequisite for the rise of “learning” is the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment. You might say that my reading of Biesta accuses him of being a part of this “critique” himself. In this way, his conceptual structure promotes the very thing he is against, even according to his own theory. Jean-Francois Lyotard, who, like Biesta, initially reduced Bildung to “metanarratives”, eventually reconnected to the European tradition through a positive application of Kant’s critique of judgement, very much in the same style as Arendt’s involvement in the kantian matter.
10 Foucault also reflected on the ideas of subjectification, self, care and morality, especially in his late philosophy, but he never – as I see it – broke with his structural understanding of the content of culture, and most poststructuralists – contrary to Biesta - seem to ignore this “self-care” (see e.g. Foucault, Citation2001).
11 In 2016, Biesta used this Kierkegaard-inspired approach in yet another critique of Bildung, suggesting “Erziehung” as an alternative. Personally, I like both.
12 See Hodgson et al. (Citation2017) “Manifesto for a post-critical pedagogy”. This manifesto – relating directly to Biesta and Säfström’s (Citation2011) manifesto – presents a more conservative and worldly pedagogy that is also founded on Arendt’s work, but offers a far more friendly reading of Arendt’s essay on education than Biesta’s interpretation.
13 In one of his recent books, Biesta criticises Rancière for some of the same things as I criticise Biesta for in this article (Biesta, Citation2016).
14 One student of Lingis and Latour students, Graham Harman, has further developed this ontological interest through so-called ‘speculative realism’. Biesta himself sometimes comes close to these interesting ideas, but I have not come across any references, and Foucault would struggle in despair in Harman’s world of essences (see e.g. Harman, Citation2005).
15 Biesta said in a recent lecture that he would like to talk about ‘formation’, and that it resembles the Danish concept of ‘dannelse’, but he emphasises that ‘formation’ is different from the concept of ‘Bildung’, which – in his opinion – has only caused the Germans trouble (Biesta, Citation2015). However, there are deeply-rooted links between the Danish concept of “dannelse” and that of Bildung. See Andersen and Björkman (Citation2017) for a recent investigation of the synthesis of German Bildung and Scandinavian folk-bildung.
16 The Norwegian philosopher Lars Løvlie has also attempted to develop a synthesis of Bildung and the postmodern and critical traditions, resulting in highly creative ways of bringing together neohumanism, pragmatism and postmodern thought (Løvlie, Citation2003, Citation2013).
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Thomas Aastrup Rømer
Thomas Aastrup Rømer is associate professor, PhD, at Aarhus University, Denmark. His fields of interest are philosophy of education, educational politics and theories of learning, e-mail: [email protected].