Active learning as destituent potential: Agambenian philosophy of education and moderate steps towards the coming politics

Abstract

Beginning in earnest in the late 1990s, educational researchers devoted increasing attention to the study of “active learning,” leading to a robust literature on the topic in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Meanwhile, during largely the same period, political theorists discovered the radical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, which soon after began to ripple through more radical forms of philosophy of education. While both the SoTL works on active learning and writings of “Agambenian” philosophers of education have offered new insights into their respective fields, active learning has not yet received a systematic philosophical reflection and the community of Agambenian philosophy of education has not yet been systematized. This article addresses both gaps, first through an outline of existing Agambenian approaches to the philosophy of education and second by theorizing active learning as a form of “destituent potential.” The systematic reflection on the three threads of Agambenian philosophy of education—whatever, potentiality, and study—offers an introduction to less familiar readers, and the second section offers a model for how philosophical concepts can become theoretical tools for SoTL analysis.

Keywords:

• Giorgio Agamben
• continental philosophy
• destituent potential
• active learning
• potentiality

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Jovan Groen, Andy Leger, and Andrea Phillipson for their many informative conversations about active learning. Further, I am indebted to Kailey Taplin, Doug Yearwood, and Oliver Cusimano, as well as the reviewers and editors of Educational Philosophy and Theory for their insightful and extensive comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the work of the author and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the Algonquin and Lakeshore CDSB.

Notes

1 For discussions of these approaches, see Chiesa (2014); Virno and Hardt (2006).

2 Here I follow Adam Kotsko in italicizing Homo Sacer only in reference to Agamben, 1998, and not in reference to the philosophical series (see Kotsko, 2016: 123n7; on the Kotsko convention’s utility, see Murphy, 2018b: 125).

3 As Murphy (2017b) offers a similar analysis: 'His [Agamben’s] mastery of the canon of Western political philosophy, theology, linguistics, and many other fields weaves a rich tapestry of interdisciplinary insight, yet - even now that we have reached the ‘end’ of the project - he offers only broad strokes towards what might be called a solution' (91).

4 It is perhaps worth noting that earlier versions of the theory were published as book chapters and given as speeches before publication in The Use of Bodies (Agamben, 2016).

5 This is in sharp contrast with the anarcho-revolutionary use of destituent power (pouvoir destituant/potere destituente) in the mid-2000s (see Amato, Dini, Primi, Salza, & Vinale, 2008).

6 Kotsko’s translator’s note specifically addresses the translation of destituent potential, noting that preserving Agamben’s original phraseology in translation resulted in persevering through cases ‘where [it] is somewhat awkward an unidiomatic’ (2016: xi).

7 Zhao’s (2019) example of an unplanned journey of study where learning becomes one with being is an example of the positive meaning that remains in the word “learning” even after its commercial side has been criticized by others. Active learning and learning as being/study both offer examples of positive, non-biocapitalist modes of learning.

8 An exception to this is when these writers address the active learning choir, where the definition of and problems with passive learning are assumed.

9 For more on the role of constituent power or pouvoir constituant, see Agamben, 1998; Murphy 2017a; Schmitt, 2014, esp. 123.

10 Fairfield’s recent work on agency, teachability, and learnability, especially as regards critical thinking, would perhaps be the closest philosophical work on the topic, though his material does not focus on pedagogies of active learning (Fairfield 2009; 2010; 2016a; 2016b).

Additional information

Funding

The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Michael P. A. Murphy

Michael P. A. Murphy is a PhD candidate and SSHRC doctoral fellow in International Relations and Political Theory at the University of Ottawa. His central research interests are in the philosophical foundations of International Relations theory, drawing on political theology, quantum physics, and continental philosophy. He is also active in the scholarship of teaching and learning, in the study of active learning pedagogy, flexible learning spaces, and course design. His recent work has been published in Critical Studies on Security, the Journal of Political Science Education, the Journal of Museum Education, the Journal of Political Power, and International Relations. He currently works as Editorial Assistant at Security Dialogue, serves as an elected school board trustee and member-at-large of the International Studies Association Active Learning in International Affairs Section, and is an associate member of the University of Ottawa's Research Unit for the Advancement of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.