Questioning (as) violence: teaching ethics in a global knowledge enterprise

Abstract

This article seeks to address the contemporary politics and ethics at work in the teaching of ethics in higher education. It will do so by addressing the stakes inherent in the translation of certain ‘urgent reformulations’ of teaching ethics in a contemporary Asian university, in light of a ‘demise of politics’ due to corporatisation. Using Derrida's reading of Levinas’ ideas on ethics, the article claims that the debate on teaching ethics engenders an acceleration of the ‘aporia of hospitality’. The article concludes that, since the corporate-managerial reformulation of the university as well as the call for reviving ‘real’ critical thought both labour under the mark of a growing sense of moral urgency, they are both also violent. This points to the instability of the academic institution, making the Asian university's complicity in colonialism and neo-liberalisation precisely the moment where the promise of philosophy gets intensified, thus allowing students in that Asian university to ex-propriate the European idea of justice.