Verso una pedagogia radicalmente relazionale

Abstract

Post-human bodies experience and act upon (physical and/or psychological) identity modifications. These ‘novelties’ can be problematic provided we assign ontological priority to relata rather than relations. There are many different relational ontologies: Nagarjuna’s Buddhist thought, Rovelli’s relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, Ladyman’s ontic structural realism, Bateson’s theory, Barad’s new materialism, etc. What does it mean, from a pedagogical perspective, to adopt a radically relational perspective? To reason in terms of intra-actions, and no longer in terms of interactions? What are the ethical implications of the practice of Haraway’s ‘tentacular thinking’? These questions suggest the possibility of an openness to otherness, of resistance to indifference, of overcoming the solitudes peculiar to the individualistic paradigm. In conclusion, the question arises as to whether a radically relational pedagogical perspective can represent an alternative to Fisher’s hauntology: that ‘nostalgia for lost futures’ that characterises our time, and of which the world of education does not yet seem to have really become aware.