ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author raises some fundamental questions about the notion, language and discourse of 'learning' and argues that there is a need for an interruption in order to reclaim the emancipatory potential of education. He begins with the discourse of learning, indicating, on the one hand, the ongoing 'learnification' of the discourse of education and highlighting, on the other hand, some problems with the very idea of 'learning'. The author looks at shifts in the 'field' of lifelong learning in order to explore some aspects of a politics of learning that is working through it. He then turns to the question of emancipation in order to explore how we might think of and 'do' emancipation outside of the confines of a politics of learning. What such an emancipation-without-learning might look like is something which the author illustrate through the work of Michel Foucault.
