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Abstract
In this article I discuss how Jacques Rancière’s thought invites us to re-conceptualize the education–emancipation nexus. The primary goal of traditional approaches to emancipatory and anti-oppressive education has been to empower the oppressed so that the latter can (re)gain their voice and transform their situations. Building on Rancière’s ideas, I argue that the processes of empowering the oppressed imply that one has the power to empower the other, and thus start with an assumption of inequality. I conclude the article with a call for a pedagogy of ignorance. Grounded in Rancière’s thought, this pedagogy is ignorant of any division and hierarchy of intelligence.
Notes
1. It has similitude with an imaginary conversation between a critical researcher and an oppressed subject in Robinson (Citation1992).
2. All quotations in this section are from Rancière (Citation1987/1991).
3. For detailed discussions of Jacotot’s method, see Rancière (Citation1987/1991), Ross (Citation1991), and Bingham and Biesta (Citation2010).
4. I do not intend to be gender-biased when I use the word ‘father’ and the masculine pronoun ‘he.’ Rancière uses these words in his writing, and I follow his style as I build on his arguments.