Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
FROM INCLUSION TO TRANSCLUSION? EDUCATION, EMANCIPATION AND GROWN-UP DEMOCRACY
Gert Biesta Brunel University London – ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, the Netherlands
preliminary remarks
[1] thanks for the invitation I speak as a relative outsider (with some experience of migration).
an exploration of central ‘Nordic’ values democracy, equity, social justice, inclusion
[2] a strike – a matter of social justice! also indicates that money still is the real capital
[3] Who is the immigrant? How do other distinctions cut across?
poor/rich, Western/non-Western, secular/religious/ ethnicity
[4] Why should we assume that migrants would want to keep ‘their’ language and ‘their’ culture?
losses and gains
Iceland – October 2015
and in the background ↓
[5] the question of identity &
the problem of identity
the idea that identity is pure and should remain pure is perhaps the biggest problem of our time;
the ‘desire for identity’ is historically understandable,
but democratically unsustainable (plus the capitalist commodification of identity)
↓ which could indicate that the question of social justice
is not the question of recognition of identity (inclusion) but of democratic political agency (transclusion)
and living together in plurality ↓
which is always an interruption of identity
Iceland – October 2015
FROM INCLUSION TO TRANSCLUSION? ↓
an exploration of in/exclusion in the context of democracy, democratic citizenship, and citizenship education
a motto ↓
“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” Timothy Leary
the ‘standard view’ of citizenship education
↓ the ‘production’ of democratic citizens through the inclusion of
‘newcomers’ (children, immigrants) into the democratic ‘order’
by means of the acquisition of ‘citizenship attributes, the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for good citizenship
↓ Is that all there is to say?
[1] DEMOCRACY AND INCLUSION: THE POINT AND THE PROBLEM
the ‘point’ of democracy ↓
the inclusion of all (the whole demos) in the ruling (kratein) of society
Pericles: democracy as the situation where “power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people”
Aristotle: democracy as the “rule of all over each and of each by turns over all”
the legitimacy of democracy depends “on the degree to which those affected by it have been included in the decision-making processes and have had the opportunity to
influence the outcomes” (Young – see also Dewey)
the problem of democracy ↓
Who is included in the (definition of the) demos?
the history of democracy as a history of inclusion ongoing “demands for oppressed and marginalized people
to be included as full and equal citizens” (Young)
the history of democracy as a history of exclusion
exclusion of certain outcomes liberal democracy
popular rule (equality) qualified by basic liberties so that popular rule does not restrain or obstruct individual freedom
exclusion of participants those that are not deemed to be ‘fit’ for democracy
see Honig (1993) Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics construction of the political community before the ‘act’ of democratic politics
communitarianism: positive political identities liberalism: rationality and public/private separation
exclusion of those who are non-, sub- or pre-rational →
role of education to make newcomers ‘ready’ for participation
[2] INCLUSION AND CONCEPTIONS OF DEMOCRACY
2 models of democracy/democratic decision making
aggregative model: counting preferences assumes “that ends and values are subjective, non-rational, and exogenous to the
political process” and that democratic politics is “a competition between private interests and preferences” (Young)
deliberative model: deliberative transformation of preferences not about “determining what preferences have greatest numerical support, but [about] determining which proposals the collective agrees are supported by the best reasons”
↓ the transformation of what is individually desired,
to what can collectively be considered to be desirable ↓
an interruption and interrogation of desires (including the desire for identity) a grown-up way of ‘existing in plurality’
more ‘rational’ and more ‘political conceptions of deliberation
Dryzek: non-coercive; Elster: impartiality and rationality Mouffe: Agonistic Democracy
a question/problem: entry conditions for participation
Young: reasonableness (yes) or rationality (no) reasonableness: a disposition (willingness to listen to others)
rationality: a judgement about the (logical) quality of arguments
the deliberative turn raises new questions about democratic inclusion because it is not simply a model of decision making but of political communication
not only: who should be/can be/are included? also: who are able to participate effectively?
↓ already suggests a different task for education
external exclusion: formally ‘out’ internal exclusion: formally ‘in,’ but effectively ‘out’
Young’s proposals for counteracting internal exclusion:
greeting/public acknowledgement rhetoric (attention to form and audience) narrative (to share always partial views)
Dryzek: it’s ultimately about rational arguments
[3] TWO ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT DEMOCRACY
democracy can in principle become the normal situation ↓
the only problems are practical ones: increasing external and internal inclusion towards a situation of total inclusion of everyone in the democratic demos
democratic inclusion works‘from the inside out’
↓ including those who are ‘outside’ by those who are already ‘inside’
according to the standards set by those on the ‘inside’
Can democracy and democratisation be understood differently? And might that matter/be important?
↓
[4] RANCIÈRE ON DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISATION
democracy as sporadic
politics (‘always democratic politics’) and police or the police order
the police order: “an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying, and that sees that those bodies are assigned by
name to a particular place and task”
an order “of the visible and the sayable” a distribution (‘partage’) of the sensible
in which some sounds appear as voice and other as noise
not the Habermasian system that colonizes the lifeworld, but both system and lifeworld
a remarkable claim: the police order is all inclusive
↓ everyone has a place or position or identity in it
(e.g., women and slaves and immigrants in Athens: “included as excluded”) (e.g., immigrants and refugees today)
WHAT THEN IS POLITICS?
politics: an interruption of the police order in the name of or with reference to the principle of equality
“an extremely determined activity antagonistic to policing: whatever breaks with the tangible configuration whereby parties and parts or lack of them are defined by a
presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration”
a series of actions “that reconfigure the space where parties, parts, or lack of parts have been defined”
“Political activity is always a mode of expression that undoes the perceptible divisions of the police order by implementing a basically heterogenous assumption, that of
a part of those who have no part, an assumption that, at the end of the day, itself demonstrates the sheer contingency of the order [and] the equality of any speaking
being with any other speaking being.”
a meeting of two heterogeneous processes: the police order and the principle of equality
↓ dissensus
two implications
[1] for Rancière politics is always democratic politics, and democracy is not a regime or social way of life, but the institution of politics itself
↓ hence democracy can never become ‘normal’
(it is a sporadic event: democratizstion)
[2] Who makes the ‘claim for equality’? ↓
political actors in this sense do not exist before the ‘act’ of politics
democratisation not as a process of adopting an existing political identity, but of creating new identities
↓ “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”
a process of subjectification (becoming-subject), not identification
a matter of political agency
emancipation: not as liberation (by someone) but as escape
subjectification ↓
“the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experience, whose
identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of the field of experience”
the struggle of women for the right to vote was not aimed at adopting an existing identity, but creating a new identity – that of a women with voting rights
(see also, for example, gay marriage)
subjectification therefore implies reconfiguration “redistrubution of the sensible”
↓ what can be ‘perceived’ – noise and voice
not a matter of being given a voice (liberation), but of who speaks (escape)
Politics is therefore “primarily a conflict over the existence of a common stage
and over the existence and status of those present on it”.
[5] FROM INCLUSION TO TRANSCLUSION
democratisation not as a process that emanates from the centre and that aims to include those on the outside into its sphere
democratisation emanates from the ‘outside’ in the form of a claim to equality
(not a known outside, but ‘outside’ of the distribution of the sensible)
not a claim to be included in the existing order but a claim for a different order
so that different ways of being can become possible
not inclusion but ‘inclusive transformation’ → transclusion
a call for constant chaos? anarchy? ↓
democratic anarchy &
democratic disputes produce “inscriptions of equality” there is “worse and better police”
whether police is ‘sweet and kind’ does not make it any less the opposite of politics
[6] CONCLUDING COMMENTS
a different view of inclusion and a different idea of social justice
not recognition of identity (from the centre to the margins) but a focus on political agency (from the margins to the centre)
↓ which entails a ‘redistribution of the sensible’
and interrupts identities on both sides ↓
but always with reference to the democratic values of equality – liberty – solidarity
that ‘frame’ living together in plurality
not a social project, but a political project not social identity, but political agency
education for democratic citizenship
not socialisation – producing a pre-defined identity but subjectification – engagement in the ongoing ‘experiment’ of democracy
