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Peters, Michael A. & Biesta, Gert.  (2008). Derrida, Deconstruction and the Politics of Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang Pp. 168         ISBN 978-1433100093

Reviewed by Elsie Szecsy
Arizona State University

June 25, 2009

I cannot help thinking that the present interest shown in educational theory is due in large measure to the very difficult social problems confronting us today in this country. Our educational science has apparently not helped us very much toward the solution of these problems. We are turning once more to the method of philosophy—the critical examination of assumptions.

William C. Bagley, 1932

Professor William Bagley’s words about the curriculum of the teachers college are a timeless reminder of an historic concern about difficult social problems and the bearing of education theory and philosophical methods on finding solutions to social problems domestically and globally. Throughout our history, inequity has been at the root of most social problems. In Derrida, Deconstruction and the Politics of Pedagogy we find tools to examine taken-for-granted assumptions about culture in schooling in a globalized context.

Introduction and Definition

In the Introduction and first chapter the authors orient us to Derrida and his work and invite us to participate in philosophical discourse with him through examination of key terms: logocentrism, deconstruction, invention, impossibility, understanding, translation, difference, and justice.

In the Introduction, The promise and politics of pedagogy, Peters and Biesta call us to challenge metaphysical assumptions that protect Western institutions. They encourage us to break free from logocentrism—the underlying thinking that privileges presence, the immediate, and univocity. They maintain that logocentrism governs a set of dualisms and oppositions that have helped us organize educational environments, but do not necessarily help in achieving the best of all possible worlds for education as a mechanism toward freedom.

In the first chapter, Deconstruction, justice, and the vocation of education, Biesta introduces the concept of deconstruction as a tool for examining commonly held assumptions. He defines deconstruction as analysis that includes an affirmation of what is wholly Other, not simply an affirmation of that part of the Other that we can see or wish to include. Given this more expansive scope of Otherness, we are challenged to extend our thinking about inclusiveness (which he names invention, and defines as coming-in) and impossibility (which he defines as that which cannot be foreseen). 

Given this foundation, Biesta also invites the reader to consider misunderstanding as constitutive of understanding (rather than in opposition to understanding) and the importance of taking misunderstanding into account when defining what is normal. This foundation also prompts a rethinking of the concept of translation from a reproduction of an original meaning to a response to an original meaning.

When we deconstruct definitions of Otherness, understanding, and translation, a deconstruction of the concept of difference follows.  Difference then is not something that the Other possesses alone. It is a concept that we share.  This leads us to a discussion of justice as relation to the Other:

Saying…that something is just or that one is just is a betrayal of the very idea of justice to the extent to which it forecloses the possibility for the other to decide whether justice has indeed been rendered. If justice is a concern for the other as other, for the otherness of the other, for an otherness that, by definition, we can neither foresee nor totalize, if justice, in short, always addresses itself to the singularity of the other…, we are obliged—in the very name of justice—to keep the unforeseen possibility of the incoming of the other, the surprise of the “invention” of the other open….That means, however, that the very possibility of justice is sustained by its impossibility. Justice is, therefore, “an experience of the impossible,” where…the impossible is not that which is not possible, but that which cannot be foreseen as a possibility. (p. 31)

Questions

The authors continue the discourse with the reader through discussion of a number of related concepts in the next six chapters. Each chapter relates to a particular question.

In the second chapter, Derrida as a profound humanist, Peters describes Derrida, a Frenchman of Jewish extraction, who was born and grew up in Algeria. He is portrayed as a controversial figure who has been attacked by conservatives and members of the radical left alike and who would have a lot to say about the concept of forgiveness. Peters reports on Derrida’s public lecture at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1999, “Forgiving the Unforgivable,” as well as on Derrida’s later meditations on this topic in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2002b) and “To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible,” which appeared in Questioning God (Caputo et al., 2001). Derrida asks the question, Can one only forgive when speaking or sharing the language of the Other?

Peters focuses on the place of subjectivity in the new order in the third chapter, Derrida, Nietzsche, and the return to the subject. One point raised in this chapter relates to counterbalancing cultural difference with universal rights in a liberal democracy. A democracy to come can no longer be contained within frontiers or depend on the decisions of a group of citizens or a nation, or a group of nations. Derrida proposes a new concept: the new International, and another question: What needs to be addressed in international law, which is rooted in Western concepts of philosophy, state, and sovereignty, to support the new International?

Biesta picks up from the themes of the third chapter through a discussion of critical thinking in the fourth chapter, From critique to deconstruction: Derrida as critical philosopher. The author recalls a question about the nature of critical thinking that has been challenged by those outside of the norm, Is the idea(l) of critical thinking neutral, objective, universal, and self-evident, or is it biased by culture, class, or gender?

In the fifth chapter, Education after deconstruction: Between event and invention, Biesta continues the thread through a discussion of the role of deconstructive analysis in finding out what is good or effective education. To find out what constitutes good or effective education prompts another question: What is education for?

Biesta explains a hierarchy of education that comprises three purposes: qualification (the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to do something), socialization (the acquisition of norms, values, and particular ways of doing and being), and subjectification (ways of being that hint at independence from the order; ways of being in which the individual is not simply a specimen of a more encompassing order). Most of us are familiar and comfortable with the first two purposes. We may not be as comfortable or knowledgeable with the third.  Biesta finds a possible source of this discomfort at its root in the Enlightenment concept of humanism and its relationship with education. Rational autonomy is an inherent part of human nature. However, Biesta points out a conundrum. Because children are not considered rational (because they are not fully educated), they are excluded from participating in achieving their own rational autonomy through subjectification. In essence, we do not affirm children, students, or newcomers who stand out from the norm.

Peters introduces the sixth chapter, The university and the future of the humanities, with a discussion of Derrida’s assertion that the modern university should have unconditional freedom to assert, question, and profess. From this line of thinking, Derrida sees a humanities to come, a revitalized humanities that among other things views (a) the history of man via the rights of man and woman and the concept of crimes against humanity; (b) the history of democracy and the idea of sovereignty as conditions in which the humanities and the university are supposed to live; and (c) a history of the professoriate articulated with presuppositions of work and of globalized confession.  Given a globalized context, the politics of research and teaching can no longer be reduced to a problematic centered on the nation-state. It must take into account multi- or trans-national networks in which they are situated:

If the invention of literature cannot be separated from the history of democracy—and if the connection between the development of a literary culture, a reading public, and civil society or the so-called public sphere cannot be broken—then, the connection must be made also between literature, democracy, and higher education. Literacy, national literatures as vehicles for cultural self-definition of the nation-state, and civil liberties, including freedom of speech, were associated with the gradual development and extension of a universal education. Indeed, the concept of literature in the modern sense becomes established only with the appearance of the research university in the early nineteenth century, when the study of literature becomes institutionalized and the mantle of responsibility for Bildung [education] is handed over from philosophy to literature. (p. 126)

With globalization and the technological transformation of communication comes the end of traditionally understood literature as representative of a particular nation-state. Globalization and technologization have redefined boundaries between inside and outside. The outside has reached inside through television, telephone, email, and the Internet and has profoundly altered the economies of the self, the home, the workplace, the university, and the nation-state’s politics. What was traditionally ordered around firm boundaries of an inside-outside dichotomy is no longer as natural a condition. No longer can the Other remain outside of our private space, and once in our private space, the Other challenges traditional ideas of the unified self and other institutions, such as literature, the university, and democracy.

This chapter is essentially about these questions: What role do the humanities play in the democracy to come? What form do they take?

In the final chapter, Welcome! Postscript on hospitality, cosmopolitanism, and the Other, Peters points out segregation, separation, and exclusion as social policy instruments that have been used to order relationships with the Other. What alternative constitutes hospitality in democratic schools to come?  Peters to Derrida for an answer:

…pure or unconditional hospitality does not consist in such an invitation (“I invite you, I welcome you into my home, on the condition that you adapt to the laws and norms of my territory, according to my language, tradition, memory, and so on”). Pure and unconditional hospitality, hospitality itself, opens or is in advance open to someone who is neither expected nor invited, to whomever arrives as an absolutely foreign visitor, as a new arrival, nonidentifiable and unforeseeable, in short, wholly other.

…In this context, hospitality…means the right of a stranger … not to be treated with hostility… when he arrives on someone else’s territory. (p. 137)

In summary, through Derrida’s work, Peters and Biesta raise this sequence of questions:

• Can one only forgive when speaking or sharing the language of the Other?

• What needs to be addressed in international law, which is rooted in Western concepts of philosophy, state, and sovereignty, to support the new International?

• Is the idea(l) of critical thinking neutral, objective, universal, and self-evident, or is it biased by culture, class, or gender?

• What is education for?

• What role do the humanities play in the democracy to come? What form do they take?

• What alternative constitutes hospitality in democratic schools to come?

All of these questions are essential to the discussion of educational reform in a globalized context, especially as it relates to the place of culture in education.

This book is useful reading for teacher leaders, administrators, teacher educators, professors, professional development specialists, and education policy makers working to increase education professionals’ capacity beyond cultural competence and toward culturally proficiency. Culturally competent educators see difference and understand that difference makes a difference (Terrell & Lindsay, 2009; Lindsey, Robins & Terrell, 2009). Culturally proficient educators see difference and respond effectively and affirmingly (Terrell & Lindsey, 2009; Lindsey, Robins & Terrell, 2009).

Peters’ and Biesta’s situating the discourse on a philosophical plane permits readers to consider the changing educational landscape and their own assumptions more critically. Keeping the discourse at that level shows promise for equipping education professionals to be proactive in the reconstruction of teacher and other education leader preparation institutions that have been altered radically through globalization and techno-science (Peters, 2007). These questions are excellent springboards for envisioning what education is to be and enacting that vision to the benefit of all. This book is an important contribution for the questions that it raises—even when they cause dissonance within and between us—as we work toward realizing democratic educational institutions and curricula with collaborators who may have previously been excluded, whose cultures and traditions may be unfamiliar; and whom we encounter without invitation and must embrace unconditionally.

References

Bagley, W. C. (1932, November 7). Philosophy in the curriculum of the teachers college. Teachers College Record, 33, 590-592.

Derrida, J. (2001). To forgive: The unforgivable and the imprescriptible. In John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley & Michael J. Scanlon (Eds.), Mark Dooley (Trans.), Questioning God (pp. 21-51). Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Derrida, J. (2002). On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness, (Mark Dooley & Michael Hughes, Trans.). New York: Routledge.

Terrell, R. & Lindsey, R. B. (2009). Culturally proficient leadership: The personal journey begins within. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Lindsey, R. B., Robins, K. N. & Terrell, R. D. (2009). Cultural proficiency: A manual for school leaders Third edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Peters, M. (2007). Knowledge economy, development and the future of higher education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

About the Reviewer

Elsie Szecsy is a research professional in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Dr. Szecsy is a seasoned educator who has developed curriculum for middle and high school languages other than English and taught courses in curriculum and assessment, philosophy and history of education in the United States, and introduction to research and evaluation in education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her current areas of interest include innovative practice in second language program administration and leadership; and engaging second language learning modalities, such as service learning, task-based language learning, and technology mediation. Additional research interests include intersections between language and globalization in education and language and equitable access to educational opportunity. Dr. Szecsy is proficient in Spanish and German.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Gustavo Fischman, Melissa Cast-Brede

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