Claudia Schumann is associate professor in education at Södertörn University, Stockholm. Her work focuses on philosophical questions as they pertain to the field of education. She is particularly interested in the intersections of epistemology and social and political philosophy. In recent publications she has written on critical cosmopolitanism in education and reification, on feminist philosophy as well as on issues in aesthetics and Bildung theory.
Today's lecture
The discussion of the possibilities and the challenges which digitalization and technologies pose for education has certainly intensified following the Corona crisis and the ensuing changes in educational practice, also within philosophy of education. While the conditions of the crisis were exceptional, and often required make-shift solutions, numerous analyses draw conclusions from the digital experience of schools and universities during the Corona pandemic lockdowns for various aspects of a changing educational landscape shaped by increasing technologization and digitalization.
One concern has been regarding bodily presence as a precondition for protest and for political experience in educational settings, or as Arnold (2020) describes, that the digital attention afforded by the Corona pandemic cannot do justice to our bodily existence in relation to its world-relationship.
Emphasizing the educational dimension of physically gathering around a “something” to study, Masschelein and Simons (2021) similarly argue that the experience during pandemic highlighted the importance of the presence of the body (rather than just the mind) for learning. These philosophical attempts succeed to articulate an experience many of us shared during the pandemic, but they also have a tendency of overlooking the political and educational experience of some students. For example, they did not consider students who, independent of the pandemic, already had to rely on forms of “non-bodily presence” in their struggle with being recognized as political and educational bodies in ordinary classrooms. Also, they did not consider students who experienced the changed conditions, in all their unplanned imperfection, as an actual improvement of their possibility for inclusion in education, such as students on the autism spectrum or adult students on parental leave, and the political and educational aspects of their facilitated participation in the “crisis” classroom.
In the paper, I particularly want to look at how we can understand the educational and the political dimensions of the digital educational experience during the Corona crisis. Drawing on Butler, Manning and Sedgwick, I will try to develop a more nuanced understanding of the role of bodily presence in education, so as to also include the many-facetted experiences of vulnerable and marginalized groups with digital education during the crisis and beyond. Furthermore, this notion of bodily presence has implications for how to think the relation of education and politics. In this regard, it helps to. critically interrogate the recent proposal for a turn towards post-critical pedagogy (e.g. Vlieghe/ Zamojskj 2020) and its enshrining a form of neutrality and distance between education and politics which I find problematic both with regard to their definition of education as well as politics.
The lecture will have two commentators:
Torill Strand is a professor at the Department of Education at UiO. Her professional interests range from political philosophy of education to social epistemology, cosmopolitanism and semiotics. Strand works with ethical-political formation based on a critical reading of the French philosopher Alain Badiou.
Inga Bostad is professor of philosophy at IPED at the Faculty of Science, UiO and professor 2 at the School of Architecture and Design. Bostad leads the research group HumStud, humanities studies in education, and leads the comparative research project NordEd (The Nordic education model). She has published a number of books and scientific articles in fields such as educational philosophy, critical educational theory and basic educational questions, skepticism, disability and normality.
Practical information
The lecture will be in English.
The lecture is organized by the research group Humanities Studies in Education (HumStud), as part of the lecture series in philosophy of education and the PhD course on Political Philosophy of Education (UV9412).
This is an open lecture, no registration is required.
Welcome!