‘Acceptance of the limits of knowability in oneself and others’: performative politics and relational ethics in the primary school classroom

Abstract

This paper takes up Judith Butler's calls to suspend the desire to completely know the other, and discusses these in relation to the pedagogic relationship in the classroom. It draws upon existing accounts of performative reinscription as a politics to disrupt exclusionary schooling practices and discusses these alongside Butler's theories of relationality. In so doing, it argues that the pedagogic relationship is the space within which performative reinscription occurs and which holds the potential for more ethical encounters between self and other. Acknowledging the impossibility of completely knowing the other is not an easy position to hold in the institution of the primary school, where policies and practices are based on the concept of rational, knowing subjects. However, this paper suggests that suspending the desire for the other to provide a coherent account of themselves has important implications for performative politics in the primary school classroom.

Keywords:

• pedagogic relationships
• performative politics
• ethics
• subjectivity
• relationality
• primary school
• Judith Butler

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Deborah Youdell for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and also the reviewers for their feedback.