Education and Non-domination: Reflections from the Radical Tradition

Judith Suissa

doi:10.1007/s11217-019-09662-3

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of a radical republican conception of freedom as non-domination, rooted in the anarchist tradition. In discussing both the non-statist theoretical frameworks and the practical educational experiments associated with this tradition, I suggest that it can add a valuable dimension to recent critical work in philosophy of education that draws on the republican idea of freedom as non-domination.

Highlights

A number of recent works in philosophy of education, including some publications in this journal, have drawn on the republican tradition, the republican notion of freedom as non-domination, in defending arguments about education
Taking the anarchist and radical republican tradition seriously would demand a critical engagement with the statist assumptions in the work of political philosophers and philosophers of education, questioning whether the state itself can really offer the best framework for enabling non-dominating social relationships
If the aspiration is to challenge all forms of domination and to imagine and pursue a different political organization based on non-domination, the question becomes not whether or not the existence of private schools enhances or inhibits the just distribution of educational goods, but whether or not a space can exist, within any educational sites, where alternative political forms can be enacted and imagined

Summary

Introduction

A number of recent works in philosophy of education, including some publications in this journal, have drawn on the republican tradition, the republican notion of freedom as non-domination, in defending arguments about education. While anarchist theorists such as Proudhon, offer a theory of property that allows us to see how dominant liberal conceptions of property are linked historically and conceptually with the capitalist state, the existence of radical democratic educational spaces outside the state system allows children and teachers to explore and imagine, through embodied experience, what such alternative “conceptual life” would look like.

Results

Conclusion