Joris Vlieghe

Physical education beyond sportification and biopolitics. An untimely defense of Swedish gymnastics

In this article we try to think in new ways about the educational relevance of physical exercise at school, revisiting a concrete practice that is mostly seen as superseded, namely Swedish gymnastics. A phenomenological analysis of this ‘forgotten’ discipline will show that physical education might be taken in a very literal sense as the exercising of the body properly. Going against the criticism that this kind of gymnastics necessarily implies the subordination of corporeity to biopolitical regimes, we argue (referring to the work of Canetti and Agamben) that this practice might set physical activity free of any meaning whatsoever, and that it therefore might grant an experience of corporeal democracy. We argue furthermore that on this point Swedish gymnastics is opposed to other activities and especially sport, which have become dominant today. We hope that our analysis can stimulate the debate concerning the activities physical education-curricula should comprise.

Physical Education as ‘Means without Ends’: Towards a new concept of physical education

Abstract This article is concerned with the educational value of raising the human body at school. Drawing inspiration from the work of Giorgio Agamben, I develop a new perspective that explores the possibility of taking the concept of physical education in a literal sense. This is to say that the specific educational content of physical education (in contradistinction to organized sporting life outside school) resides in its concentration on the physical ‘as such’. This is not an obvious path to explore, because defenders of physical education as a rule have to compete against the (dualist) prejudice that this discipline is merely an instrument to train the body or to keep it fit, and that it therefore should not be considered as a serious endeavour. Therefore, more often than not, apologists try to justify the relevance of physical education on the very ground that it is a practice that is concerned with something ‘beyond’ the merely physical that is at stake in movement activity. I argue, however, that this line of thought excludes the possibility of conceiving an alternative approach that relates the concentration on ‘entirely physical’ activities (as opposed to ‘merely physical’ activities) to an experience of potentiality. I develop this idea on the basis of an analysis of repetitive, rhythmical and collective body-exercise (e.g. running in a group or basic callisthenics).

Traditional and digital literacy. The literacy hypothesis, technologies of reading and writing, and the ‘grammatized’ body

This article discusses, from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, the meaning and the importance of basic literacy training for education in an age in which digital technologies have become ubiquitous. I discuss some arguments, which I draw from the so-called literacy hypothesis approach (McLuhan, Goody, Havelock, Ong), in order to understand the significance of a ‘traditional’ initiation into literacy. I then use the work of Bernard Stiegler on bodily gestures and routines, related to different (traditional and digital) technologies, in order to elaborate and criticize the claims the literacy hypothesis makes. Bringing together insights from both the literacy hypothesis approach and Stieglers work, I defend the view that there exists an essential difference between traditional and digital literacy, and I try to argue for the introduction of a spelling and grammar of the digital in the educational curriculum.

Laughter as Immanent Life-Affirmation: Reconsidering the educational value of laughter through a Bakhtinian lens

Abstract In this article I try to conceive a new approach towards laughter in the context of formal schooling. I focus on laughter in so far as it is a bodily response during which we are entirely delivered to uncontrollable, spasmodic reactions. To see the educational relevance of this particular kind of laughter, as well as to understand why laughter is often dealt with in a very negative way in pedagogical contexts, this phenomenon should be carefully distinguished from humor or amusement. I build my argument for a smaller part on the basis of conceptual analysis, and to a greater extent on Bakhtin’s work on the transition from Medieval folk culture to Modern civilized culture, in which he claims that a reduction from laughing as a strongly physical experience to mere forms of amusement or humor actually implies that laughter no longer possesses its inherent equalizing and communizing potential. In a sense, laughter forms a threat to any organization of social existence according to similarities and differences in identity and position, and this explains why we usually try to suppress it, or why we try to render it functional in view of the continuation of a societal regime or pedagogical order. More positively formulated, laughter may be said to have an intrinsic educational meaning, because it allows a significant transformation of individual and collective existence.

Corporeality, Equality, and Education: A Biopedagogical Perspective

In this article I develop a new perspective on the role and the position of the human body in the world of education. The interest in the theme of corporeality is of course far from new, and this applies not only to the field of social sciences in general (where in the last two decades a corporeal turn has taken place, see Sheets-Johnstone 2009), but also to the field of educational theory. This (re)new(ed) interest in the body was welcomed by many scholars, because in education corporeality used to be dealt with in a condescending manner or it has been the object of oppressive measures (e.g., Bresler 2004; Estola and Elbaz-Luwissh 2003; Kraus 2008; Macintyre Latta and Buck 2008; O’Farrell, Meadmore, McWilliam, and Symes 2000; Watkins 2007; Zembylas 2003). As a result of the existence of dualist prejudices (i.e., the idea that we are essentially our minds and that the body solely is some vehicle) and an intellectualist view on the primary aims of education (viz. cognitive growth), these authors claim, the body used to be considered as either without real importance for education, or as a nuisance that interferes with these main objectives of education. Because of recent cultural, scientific, and theoretical evolutions, which I discuss in the first part of this article, it has become very difficult to defend such a view (although there are some hardliners who persevere in it, see e.g., Barrow 2008) and so more and more the body gets its fair share of attention and recognition, at least in current theories of education. I wholeheartedly support this recent appraisal of corporeality, but at the same time I want to raise some critical questions in regard with the way in which the relationship between the body and education is usually conceived. In the second part of this article I will raise two fundamental objections. The first is that to these so-called body-centered pedagogies, the corporeal appears in a stereotypical way, viz. as a source of intentionality and meaning we have forgotten about and which we should put at work again. This concerns a paradigm set by authors like Ryle (1945) and Merleau-Ponty (2002), which is still dominant today. My point is, paradoxically as it might seem, that this way of dealing with the body eventually results in an actual negation of the body. My second objection is that the proclaimed corporeal turn might have taken place in theory, but that in concrete pedagogical practices this is not the case at all: In the every-day world The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 36:320–339, 2014 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2014.938569

Infants, childhood and language in Agamben and Cavell: Education as transformation

In this paper we explore a new way to deal with social inequality and injustice in an educational way. We do so by offering a particular reading of a scene taken from Minnellis film The Band Wagon which is often regarded as overly western-centred and racist. We argue, however, that the way in which words and movements in this scene function are expressive of an event that can be read as a new beginning and that it is for this reason in and of itself educational. By drawing on Agambens and Cavells insights on childhood and what it means to acquire a language, we argue that in this scene a form of childhood is displayed which denotes a general condition for education to take place in children and grown-ups alike. Hence, education can be understood as a (temporary) interruption of existing power structures and as a transformation of ones existence.

Rethinking emancipation with Freire and Rancière: A plea for a thing-centred pedagogy

Abstract In this article, I critically engage with a vital assumption behind the work of Paulo Freire, and more generally behind any critical pedagogy, viz. the belief that education is fundamentally about emancipation. My main goal is to conceive of a contemporary critical pedagogy which stays true to the original inspiration of Freire’s work, but which at the same time takes it in a new direction. More precisely, I confront Freire with Jacques Rancière. Not only is the latter’s work on education fully predicated on the idea of emancipation. For both Freire and Rancière, literacy initiation practice can be seen as an archetypical model for understanding the emancipatory moment in education. For both, educational practices are never neutral, as they decide to a great extent on the fate of our common world. Reflecting on similarities and differences in both their positions, I will propose to conceive of critical pedagogy in terms of a thing-centred pedagogy. As such, I take a clear position in the discussion between teacher- and student-centred approaches. According to Rancière, it is the full devotion to a ‘thing’, i.e. to a subject matter we study, which makes emancipation possible. Over and against Freire’s defense of emancipatory education, I highlight with Rancière the importance of educational emancipation.

Education, Digitization and Literacy training: A historical and cross-cultural perspective

Abstract In this article, I deal with the transition from traditional ‘school’ forms of instruction to educational processes that are fully mediated by digital technologies. Against the background of the idea the very institution ‘school’ is closely linked to the invention of the alphabetic writing system and to the need of initiating new generations into a literate culture, I focus on the issue of literacy training. I argue that with the digitization of education, a fundamental transition takes place regarding what it means to be literate, but also what it means to educate and to be educated. I do so by developing a ‘techno-somatic’ approach, which means that I look at the use of concrete instructional technologies, and the bodily disciplines that are involved. I set out a double comparison in which I contrast existing, ‘traditional’ ways of learning how to read/write with the way in which literacy training looked like before the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and with the initiation into literacy in the Chinese/Japanese language, on the other hand. I argue that these comparisons shed light on the differences between traditional and digital literacy. More precisely, I show that in each case, a different relation toward what it means to produce script is involved. As such, both forms of literacy go together with different spaces of experience and senses of being-able, and therefore with altogether different ideas of what education is all about.

A Poietic Force That Belongs to No One: Reflections on Art and Education from an Agambenian Perspective

In this essay I explore the interrelationship between art and education from the perspective that in both spheres of life the capacity to bring newness into being is a central concern. With the help of Agamben’s genealogical account of Western art history I introduce an opposition between creation, an anonymous force to generate something that didn’t exist beforehand (‘poiesis’), and creativity as an individual and highly private characteristic which consists in an appropriation of this ‘poietic’ force. To make the importance of this distinction clear I turn to a particular period in Western art history, viz. Bracque and Picasso’s experiments with cubism. These can be seen as an answer to the crisis of representation which essentially consists in visualising on the canvas what it means that one can construct and create reality. This digression permits to draw some conclusions regarding contemporary tendencies in education to appropriate and suffocate this ‘poietic’ dimension.

Stiegler and the Future of Education in a Digitized World

In this chapter I introduce the work of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. I present his key ideas and terminologies, as well as the main influences on his thought. The focus is on the role which technologies – through processes of education – play in the constitution of subjectivity. I also zoom in on Stiegler’s analysis of the digitization of our contemporary world, and which role education has to play. I finish by considering the possibilities and limitations of Stiegler’s ideas for educational philosophy and theory.