| This paper proceeds from the argument that prevailing educational discourse, particularly that which maintains the traditions of Freire-inspired "critical pedagogy," remains philosophically and ideologically tied to a conception of subjectivity which is rooted in Enlightenment notions of immanence and sovereignty, and that those ties impose limits on the practice of pedagogy itself, consigning it to the performance of a social politics characterized by domination, appropriation, and colonialism. Through the articulation of a critique drawn between the discourses of literature and philosophy---from Nietzsche, through Deleuze, Nancy, Derrida, and others---this paper approaches a sense of learning conceived as a process of intersubjective differentiation rather than subjective integration, in which the encounter with difference is not submitted to the generalizing laws of knowledge and discourse, but is regarded as a singular opening of a relational space in which those laws themselves are thrown into question. |
