Judith Butler and the Public Dimension of the Body: Education, Critique and Corporeal Vulnerability
(2010) Journal of Philosophy of Education — Vol. 44, n° 1, p. 153-170 (2010)
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- Abstract
- In this paper I discuss some thoughts Judith Butler presents regarding corporeal vulnerability. This might help to elucidate the problem of whether critical education is still possible today. I first explain why precisely the possibility of critique within education is a problem for us today. This is because the traditional means of enhancing a critical attitude in pupils, stimulating their self-reflective capacities, contributes to the continued existence and strengthening of the current societal and political regime. A way out of this deadlock is offered from within a Foucauldian perspective. Criticality here refers to an experience of exposure and expropriation of the self. This kind of limit-experience is also of a central importance in the most recent work of Judith Butler. She links this experience to the corporeal condition of susceptibility. Our bodies have a public dimension as we are inescapably exposed to one another. The main argument of my paper has to do with whether this appeal to corporeal vulnerability might offer a new way of thinking about the public realm and about the possibility of critique, especially within the field of education. I conclude the paper by showing the originality of Butler's thought in this respect and the possibilities it opens for thinking in a radically new way about critical pedagogy.
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Vlieghe, J. (2010). Judith Butler and the Public Dimension of the Body: Education, Critique and Corporeal Vulnerability. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 44(1), 153-170. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2010.00746.x (Original work published 2010)