THE FUTURE OF PEDAGOGY THE CONCEPT AND THE DISASTER

Sam McAuliffe, Daniele Rugo, Roberto Cavallini, David Smith for InC, Continental Philosophy Research Group

On the eve of yet another educational reform our interest will

focus on the future of pedagogy and in particular on the

possibilities of resistance that this offers when actively

configured as “a pedagogy of the concept”. The series

investigates the occasion for an explicit affirmation of singular

interruptions in the face of “absolute disaster”.

In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari speak of “the

three ages of the concept”, ages that express three varying

determinations of the activity of thinking itself. “The post-Kantians concentrated on a universal encyclopaedia of the concept that attributed concept creation to a pure subjectivity rather than taking on the more modest task of a pedagogy of the concept, which would have to analyze the conditions of creation as factors of always

singular moments. If the three ages of the concept are the encyclopaedia, pedagogy, and commercial professional training, only the second can safeguard us from falling from the heights of the first into the disaster of the third – an absolute disaster for thought whatever its benefits might be, of course, from the viewpoint of universal capitalism.” There is, then, “a pedagogy of the concept.” The concept

necessitates, calls for, is implicated in a certain form of

pedagogy. As though in the absence of this pedagogical

supplement, the concept would cease to be determinable as

such. And insofar as it accompanies a concept’s creation,

insofar as it works to ensure the latter’s efficacy, pedagogy

concerns the very possibility of thinking itself, its “condition.”

For philosophical thought the question of pedagogy is

therefore formative. And it is in this sense that the

pedagogical “age” of the concept cannot simply be

understood as one age among others. On this point Deleuze

and Guattari are explicit: pedagogy would be the single

configuration of the concept through which the passage from

subjective idealism to universal capitalism is not facilitated but

potentially interrupted, called into question: “only the second

[age] can safeguard us from falling from the heights of the first

into the disaster of the third.” The disaster – specifically seen

in the move away from research towards forms of continuous

assessment – reduces this interruption to the transformable

parcel of a “single business”. What Deleuze and Guattari call

pedagogy here is therefore a form of resistance whose force

is directed against the historical course that would see the

concept delivered over to “universal capitalism.” By contesting

the inevitability of this transition and the “absolute disaster”

that it would, for thinking, imply, pedagogy may therefore be

considered that which maintains a relation to philosophy’s

future, a future from which it is otherwise closed off. As a form

of resistance a “pedagogy of the concept” keeps open a

resource for thinking: the imminent possibility of error as the

renewal of complexity against the transformation of thinking

into an “high-handed method”.

Our question then: how would a “pedagogy of the

concept” take place today? On the basis of what apparatus,

what set of relations, what series of functions? Can we

continue to say that the pedagogical act retains this capacity

for critique that Deleuze and Guattari unconditionally invest it

with? Can a distinction between pedagogy and “commercial

professional training”, “the viewpoint of universal capitalism”

continue to be drawn? If so, then by what means? And if not,

does this impinge upon the very possibility of critical thinking

itself?

If in the situation of “absolute disaster”, in which “the only

people left are administrators”, moments of singular creation

are outclassed by the constant improvement of logical

apparatuses, what can we expect from the institutions once

devoted to the “pedagogy of the concept”? While a certain

lexicon seems already to prefigure a change in paradigm,

what position will institutions take in the shift from a

“pedagogy of the concept” to “commercial professional

training”? Will the institution still formulate questions as to the

possibility of thinking?

This seminar series will pursue these questions through the

following forms:

I. Pedagogy and the Proper Name

With a view to interrogating the hierarchy inherent to the

pedagogical relation, participants will be invited to respond to

the following proposition: “No teaching without the proper

name; no teaching of the proper name.”

II. Pedagogy and Technics

The pedagogical act to be considered as a form of technics,

an instrument, tool, or supplement that cannot, however, be

categorically opposed to a supposedly natural form of being.

The risk of pedagogy becoming a completely autonomous

machine calls for a constant questioning of the relationship

between technocracy and pedagogy.

IV. Pedagogy and Institution: Method and Anti-Method

The pedagogical act is subject to an “immanent untruth”

Adorno writes in an essay on teaching. In what does this

untruth consist, and what are its consequences? In this

session, the ethico-political specificity of pedagogy encounters

the delimitations of the institution: questions for/from the

institution.

SUGGESTED READING LIST - Adorno, Theodor W. 'Philosophy and Teachers', 'Taboos on the Teaching Vocation' and ‘Notes on Philosophical Thinking’ in Critical Models (Columbia, 1998) - Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus (Stanford, 1990) - Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition (Athlone, 1994) - Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. What is Philosophy? (Verso, 1994) - Deleuze, Gilles. ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ in Negotiations (Columbia, 1995) - Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness (Continuum, 2005) - Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Future of Our Educational Institutions (St. Augustine's Press, 2004) - Rancière, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Stanford, 1991)