¿Autoridad emancipatoria? Una aproximación desde El maestro ignorante de Jacques Rancière

Abstract

Authority and emancipation are two notions that, at first sight, appear to us asopposites. While the first presupposes a dissymmetry, equality is inherent tothe second; while obedience and submission are related to the first, freedom isa synonym of the second. But is it possible to find points of contact between thelinks of authority in the field of education and the intellectual emancipation ofindividuals? Or is there such an emancipatory authority? In this article, we facethis problem by recapturing the history of a nineteenth-century French pedagogue,Joseph Jacotot, and the reading that the philosopher Jacques Rancieremakes of it in his work The ignorant schoolmaster. We begin the journey witha conceptual tracing of the notions in question in order to identify featuresand elements of each one, without neglecting the paradoxes that both bringwith them. The authority will admit different figures or manifestations that gofrom the tight relation command/obedience, to the generativity of the auctor.Emancipation will be defined by the principle of equality of intelligences andthe hypothesis of trust. Subsequently, we maintain that Jacotot officiated as afigure of authority, first, by the type of pedagogical relationship he held withthe students of the University of Louvain, and second, because in his path heproduced books, founded a teaching method, created a newspaper and reapeddisciples. Thus, in him converge not only the phenomena of authority andemancipation, but also the different ways in which authority manifests itself.