Practising as a fundamentally educational category

Joris Vlieghe

pp. 227-240

in: Malte Brinkmann, Marc F. Bück, Sévérin S. Rödel (eds), Pädagogik - Phänomenologie, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

The article revisits Bollnow's 1978 study on practising. The practice of practicing is regarded as defining what school education is (or has been) essentially about, and therefore I Bollnow's phenomenological analyses are used in order to develop a view on the meaning of school practices, i.e. to flesh out their particular educational relevance. Bollnow's idea on this matter is followed up to a certain point, but the analysis also shows that his account is not fully satisfactory. As such, this contribution tries to think school practices with and against Bollnow. Inspired, by the work of Giorgio Agamben, the article argues that we need to take up one of Bollnow's basic insights in a new direction. Developing the tension between ability and incapacity, which is central to Bollnow's own analysis, the article defends – with the help of Giorgio Agamben – the view that practising consists of a transition from a situation of possibility to one of what he calls impotentiality. This will also offer a critical argument against the learnification of education as we witness it today.

Cited authors

Agamben Giorgio