The event, the messianic and the affirmation of life. A post-critical perspective on education with Agamben and Badiou

Abstract

In this article, we read together the work of two philosophers, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as profound educational thinkers. This means that their philosophical approaches help us to articulate what is at stake in education today. As a starting point for this discussion we take their work on Saint Paul. This is because, throughout his Letters, Paul has found the appropriate words to think and speak about the fate of our world and about new ways of beginning with this world. Therefore, with their reading of Paul, Badiou and Agamben can be said to develop fresh ideas about the contemporary challenges of education. We argue that this joint educational reading of their work, opens a post-critical view on education. This is to say, the alternative we suggest is not just a criticism of the existing system, but an entirely affirmative one. It is about fidelity to an event which has the force to install a particular attitude towards life and which installs a messianic interruption of time. With Badiou and Agamben it can be shown that education is about the possibilities we have at our disposal to begin anew with our world – which turns education into an important political issue too. Following that thread, we give an ontological account of teaching, which defines the teacher not in terms of pedagogical expertise, but in terms of passion for a subject matter.