Elisabet Langmann

Representational and territorial economies in global citizenship education: welcoming the other at the limit of cosmopolitan hospitality

In this article, I argue that any success a discourse on cosmopolitan hospitality might have in global citizenship education depends on how it deals with its own limits, and I propose a way of responding to these limits that takes the cosmopolitan commitment to openness to the other seriously. Following Jacques Derrida, my point is that to teach global citizenship on the basis that we already can know who the other is risks counting some persons ‘in’ while leaving others ‘out’, which forecloses the possibility of welcoming something new and unforeseen at the limit of our cosmopolitan selves.

Facing ambivalence in education: a strange(r's) hope?

This article explores how our understanding of ambivalence would shift if we saw it as an inherent and essential part of the ordinary work of education. Following Baumans sociology of the stranger and Derridas deconstructions of hospitality, the article unfolds in three parts. In the first part we discuss the preconditions of modern education which since the Enlightenment has been guided by the postulate that there is and ought to be a rational order in the social world. In the second part we consider the intolerance of strangers the modern will-to-order has caused. Since the stranger appears as a liminal category that falls between the boundaries of already established social categories, she can only be viewed as an antithesis of a well-ordered society. In the third part we ask how educational spaces hospitable to strangers can be opened up, and argue that we would do better not to construe living with ambivalence as a problem, but as a quest for humanity and justice.

Where Are You? Giving Voice to the Teacher by Reclaiming the Private/Public Distinction.

In a time of cultural pluralism and legitimation crisis (Habermas), there is an increasing uncertainty among teachers in Sweden about with what right they are fostering other peoples children. What does it mean to teach ‘common values’ to the coming generation? How do teachers find legitimacy and authority for this endeavour, not as family members or as politicians, but as teachers? To respond to this uncertainty, the paper takes the public/private distinction as a starting-point for rethinking the place of the school. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, it argues that the school is an in-between place—a place that transforms values into ‘common goods’ and turns fostering into a teaching matter. The overall purpose of the paper is to sketch out the consequences of this ‘in-betweenness’ for what it means to find ones voice as a teacher in fostering the coming generation.

My Way to You: How to Make Room for Transformative Communication in Intercultural Education.

As populations around the globe become increasingly culturally diverse, just inter-personal relations seem dependent on our ability to find new ways of communicating with people from other cultures whose values and linguistic strategies may vary from our own cultural practices. Hence, in the increasing body of literature on intercultural education, intercultural education means helping students to acquire the right language and communication skills for enabling mutual understanding and transformation between cultures. However, several post-colonial scholars have pointed out that there is a tendency to homogenise differences and neglect relations of power and the culturally untranslatable in the Western conception of language. This paper explores some implications of the post-colonial critique of intercultural education by following Luce Irigarays writings on language and communication. Taking as its point of departure the Western ‘common sense’ conception of language as an instrument for communication and transfer of information, the paper first elaborates on the importance of exploring new ways of relating to language if we want to speak and listen to the other as other. It then offers a close reading of Martin Heideggers existential analysis of the nature of language as Saying-Sowing and of Irigarays response as she develops it in two of her later works. By way of conclusion the paper discusses how a more poetic and attentive listening could open up for a transformative and non-hierarchical communication in difference, and considers what implications this has for the promotion of social justice and pluralism in intercultural education.

Pedagogical postures : a feminist search for a geometry of the educational relation

Abstract Inspired by Adriana Cavarero’s recent work on maternal inclinations as a postural term, the overall purpose of this article is to seek out a geometry of the educational relation that is alien to the masculine myth of the ‘economic man’. Drawing on Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’s critique of the marketization of education, reading their giving ‘shape and form’ to the scholastic school through the geometry of Cavarero’s ‘maternal inclinations’, the article shows how images and metaphors associated with the posture of rectitude infuse the scholastic model of the school. At the same time, we argue, it testifies to a geometry of an inclined subject and, in doing so, it offers an opening for recovering the significance of the feminine and maternal to educational theory. Affirming this opening, the paper makes a shift of emphasis from scholastic techniques to educational postures.