ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses in more depth on the intricacy of thinking about (human) subjectivity and the possibility of opening spaces in which other as yet unforeseen and unforeseeable subjectivities can appear in educational settings. Such subjectivities have potential to challenge dominant European (Western) philosophies which frame the world as stable and separate and which decide in advance that the subject is a rational autonomous being and to open new ways to be and be together in the world.
The chapter considers the issue of who has subjectivity and also problems arising in theorising about subjectivity. It then engages with two very different contemporary Western thinkers – Biesta and Braidotti – who explore subjectivity in ways which respond to these challenges. Biesta’s ‘pedagogy of interruption’ and Braidotti’s thinking on the nomadic subject and on posthumanism and the posthuman are discussed. The chapter outlines aspects from these thinkers to be taken forward in this book. It considers Arendt’s thinking on opening ‘spaces of appearance’ and on natality and how these concepts can contribute to sustainable and democratic education which seeks to encourage complexity, emergence and allowing students opportunities to begin and become something new: a necessary move in the era of the Anthropocene.
