Reframing responsibility in an era of responsibilisation: education, feminist ethics

ABSTRACT

Late modern social theories and critiques of neoliberalism have emphasised the regulatory and negative aspects of responsibility, readily associating it with self-responsibility or analytically converting it to the notion of responsibilisation. This article argues for stepping back from these critiques in order to reframe responsibility as a relational disposition and practice in education that warrants a fresh look. Feminist scholarship on the ethics of care, affective equality and relational responsibility are revisited in light of a consideration of teachers’ work and educational purposes. It is argued, first, that there is an urgency for repositioning responsibility as a productive orientation and practice, given definitions of teaching are increasingly instrumental. Second, feminist theories of care and relational responsibility remain relevant to normative discussions of education and its knowledge and person-making purposes. Third, critical engagements with the affective and social circumstances of precarity bring new challenges for how educational institutions might respond to a pervasive sense of vulnerability, and accompanying opportunities and demands for care, interdependence and relational responsibility – towards others, not only the self.

KEYWORDS:

• Relational responsibility
• feminist ethics of care
• emotions
• affect
• teachers’ work
• precarity

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with thanks discussions with Katie Wright and Fazal Rizvi and helpful feedback from two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The oral history interviews were undertaken by Julie McLeod and Katie Wright as part of the project Educating the Australian Adolescent: An Historical study of Curriculum, Counselling and Citizenship, 1930s – 1970s. Australian Research Council Discovery Grant 2009–11 (DP0987299). The oral history archive comprises more than 80 interviews with former teachers and students from the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s. Project website: http://education.unimelb.edu.au/news_and_activities/projects/eaa.

Additional information

Funding

This article draws from research undertaken as part of two ARC Projects: ‘Educating the Australian Adolescent: An Historical study of Curriculum, Counselling and Citizenship, 1930s – 1970s’, (DP0987299, Discovery Grant); and ‘Youth Identity and Educational Change since 1950: digital archiving, re-using qualitative data and histories of the present’ (FT110100646, Future Fellowship.)