ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to offer a new starting point for educational philosophy—one that calls into question the ontological claims underlying the discourses and practices of learning. It reexamines the common sense belief that education is about pinpointing a student's potentiality, helping the student actualize this potentiality, and assessing what has been actualized. It returns to Aristotle in order to pry open the "infallible" logic of learning, revealing a secret violence that adheres to its central ontological commitments. This violence pertains to potentiality, which must always sacrifice something in order to pass into any given actualization. To recover that which is sacrificed calls for a shift from educational actualism to educational potentialism. Potentialism offers an inoperative notion of learning that returns one to the aporias of potentiality, to a melancholic community that prefers not to partake in the productive society, and to an identity that remains not only undesirable but also almost invisible within a learning framework.
