A space for ‘who’ – a culture of ‘two’: speculations related to an ‘in-between knowledge’

Abstract

Our western conceptions of knowledge still do not seem to have fully realised what Descartes had already stated in the seventeenth century, that we can no longer acquire full certainty. In education, knowledge is very often connected to that which we possess – what we know for certain. In this paper, my starting point is the argument put forward by Joseph Dunne that there is no action-guiding knowledge left in Arendt's notion of action, so that Arendt's notion of action lacks the kind of action-guiding knowledge that is phronesis. I am going to elaborate on two different aspects of human relations related to uncertainty and wonder as central aspects of human interaction. My two guides in this exploration are Hannah Arendt and Luce Irigaray. My speculations around knowledge are concerned with the possibility of opening up spaces where an in-between knowledge can emerge. My idea of an in-between knowledge is not meant to exclude other forms of knowledge, rather to discuss if humans in action, where they appear for each other as unique – as two – represent a space where knowledge can emerge without an appropriation into sameness. This relates to basic human conditions in education, since education is concerned as much with relations between humans as with content.