CRITIQUE OR RATIONALITY: THE CONUNDRUM OF MODERNITY

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to contextualize the movement from positivism to critique to provide one way to be able think through the entanglement of reason and critique in modernity. Modernity with all its emphasis on rules and laws comes with rationality that changes the way societies have been ordered and structured. Schooling stands as an important site to understand some of these shifts where scientific rationality brings in the disciplinary apparatus that covers a wide range on systemic and epistemic violence. By delving on the paradox of modernity, the paper argues how critique as an idea emerged simultaneously with the ever-growing power of rationality. Kant in his famous critical project tried joining the two into a single constituent, yet critique kept coming back with the movement of Frankfurt school, where it distanced itself from reason. Subsequently with the work of Michel Foucault, critique was not completely taken over by the forces of modernity, and instead emerged as a response to modernity. This paper argues that the idea of critique provides us with an opening to some of the questions that education system in India is struggling with. These questions become significant to trace the anxieties of democracy, and provide a better vantage point to have a grasp on our political economy. By providing space to critique, the paper salvages it by using Foucault’s frame that becomes central to the project of desubjectification – central to education systems