Introduction

In the philosophy courses I teach, both undergraduate and graduate, my aim is to broaden the perception of the students. By “perception,” I don’t simply mean opening their eyes; this way of thinking about perception is too ocular-laden. Pedagogically, my aim is to un-suture how they have come to be-in-the-world, which includes critically engaging their taken-for-granted assumptions, habitual modes of social transaction, rigid affects, procrustean ways of dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” binary categories, and commonsensical ways of thinking about (and living) what it means to be an ethical human being. To un-suture within a pedagogical context means being open to be touched, to be vulnerable, to be open to be wounded, where that wound functions as a site of growth—even as that wound is a space for a deeper wounding, a deeper capacity to be touched. In short, in the language of Martin Luther King, Jr, my aim is to encourage my students to feel that something has gone terribly wrong if they feel adjusted, sutured, whole. In the language of Paulo Freire, I seek to inspire them to challenge the idea that they are already “complete,” “finished,” “happily contented.” In the language of Peter Berger, I aim to incite a deep suspicion (a hermeneutic fissure) that the world is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “fine,” “okay.”

I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to racial segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few…. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence.

Martin Luther King, Jr ¹

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality.

Paulo Freire ²