13. Philosophy of Education
Long Paper
The Place of Memory: race, belonging and Bildung in the North American African diaspora
Noemi Bartolucci
UCL, Institute of Education
Presenting Author: Bartolucci, Noemi
This paper explores the relationship between race, place and Bildung, specifically the problematics of Black American identity and the troubled concept of America itself, and the fatefully compromised roots of this modern democracy (“We the People!”—but which people are we?). The paper employs works by Ralph Ellison (namely, Invisible Man) and Langston Hughes as an opportunity to think about Bildung, the Bildungsroman and other literary works associated with the struggle that is Bildung as a means to explore different facets of identity, or the ways in which ‘identity’ is showcased in this kind of literature.
It also explores the significance of place for our ‘becoming’ as human beings, and the way that coming into relationship with place is an inherent aspect of education. This relationship being essentially conflicted in the Black American context of the mid- 20th century. Ideas about place are developed through Heidegger and humanist geographer Edward Relph, who enrich and subvert our understanding of ‘place’ as something that is not only physical or material (i.e. a geographical location) but also ontological and existential; a place becomes a place through patterns of meaning. Additionally, the work is guided by William James Booth’s The Color of Memory, which deals more explicitly with the violence of identity formation in these colonial contexts.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedMy method of approach is philosophical. To be specific I engage a method that arises out of the substance of my enquiry: the central theme I am concerned with is Bildung, and the particular aspect I highlight is the Bildungsroman. In a sense, this literary form is in itself an attempt to explore and expand on what Bildung might be, and it is one way in which the concept and the ways of living to which it refers have been advanced.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsMy paper is an argument that explores Bildung in the North American African diaspora, and endeavours to show the essentially conflicted nature of the relationship between place and Bildung. In taking this specific case the paper reconsiders the image of a classical Bildungs-journey in which the constructs of place manifest a sense of national belonging that does not feature as readily in the experiences of black people in America in the mid-20th century. This is explored through Ralph Ellison’s modern Bildungsroman ‘Invisible Man’, in which the retrieval of a national memory through the reaffirmation of a nation’s harrowing past (of colonialism, slavery, and segregation) is crucial for the black diasporan community to engage in practices of self-formation: as I conclude that the self is embedded in the way a place is remembered. I believe this has significance for our thinking about the role of place in our becoming and how reworking our relation to place also becomes a reworking of ourselves. I hope this paper can provide a basis for further enquiry into the significance of place for our Bildungs-processes.
ReferencesBooth, W. J. (2008). ‘The Color of Memory: reading race with Ralph Ellison’, Political
Theory, 36/5: 683-707. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591708321034
Ellison, R. (2001). Invisible Man (1952). London: Penguin Books.
Ellison, R. (2011). The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. J. F. Callahan (Ed.). New York: Modern Library.
Ellison, R. (2012). ‘Harlem is Nowhere’ (1948). In T. E. Robinson, A City within A City: The Black Freedom Struggle in Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 241–247. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Emerson, R. W. (1983). ‘Circles’ (1841). In Emerson: Essays and Lectures, pp. 401–414. New York: Library of America.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E. Trans.; 1st ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Hughes, L. (1995). “Harlem” (1951). In A. Rampersad (Ed.), The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 387–409. New York: Vintage/Random House.
Inwood, M. (1997) Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP.
Joyce, J. (1992). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). London: Wordsworth
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Larkin, P. (1988). “The Importance of Elsewhere”. In A. Thwaite (Ed.), Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber.
Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness. London: Sage.
Seamon, D., and Sowers, J. (2012). ‘Place and Placelessness (1976): Edward Relph’. In P. Hubbard, R. Kitchin & G Valentine, Key Texts in Human Geography, pp. 1-14. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446213742
Soja, E. W. (1997). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and- Imagined Places. London/New York: Verso.
Tocqueville, A. (1991). ‘Voyage en Amérique’.In A. Jardin (Ed.), Oeuvres. Paris: Gallimard.
Tuan Y. F. (1977). Space and Place: the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wollan, G. (2003). 'Heidegger’s philosophy of space and place', Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 57/1: 31–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/00291950310000802
13. Philosophy of Education
Paper
Bildung and the Pedagogical Function of Higher Education
Johannes Rytzler1, Gunnlaugur Magnússon2
1Mälardalen university, Sweden; 2Uppsala university, Sweden
Presenting Author: Rytzler, Johannes;
Magnússon, Gunnlaugur
In this paper, we address the question of Bildung and its place in the modern university, especially in relation to teaching and the concept of Didaktik (cf. Sjöström & Tyson, 2022). We are particularly interested in the relation between higher education’s societal and scientific functions as well as in its possibilities for each student to develop intellectually and emotionally, thus increasing their opportunities to live a good life. The main questions that we ask are: What is knowledge, what do we do with it and how can it help us to get ahead and navigate in our lives? With support from Nordic conceptions and interpretations of the concept of Bildung (e.g. Bernt Gustavsson, Michael Uljens, and Sven Nordenbo) as well as some contemporary interpretations of Herbart's concept Bildsamkeit (e.g., Siljander et. al 2012), we discuss how teaching in higher education can be a place where Bildung and knowledge, through the practice of study (Schildermans 2019), lie in the center.
On the one hand, Bildung can be understood as an elitist idea of knowledge as something exclusionary, politicized, and conditioned by power, that is, knowledge as an identity and class marker. On the other hand, and more in line with German and Nordic conceptualizations, Bildung can be seen as a process where the individual subject grows in interaction with different knowledge areas and traditions as well as together with other people. Bildung is a concept that is often contrasted with the concept of education. Bernt Gustavsson (2003) believes that Bildung in its broadest sense is the development process that every person goes through during their life from child to mature person, a process characterized by the dynamic relationship between the familiar and the unfamiliar. In the encounter with the unknown, man is forced to reflect on his own perception of himself and the world (Gustavsson, 2003) and it is in this encounter that humans develop in a continuous movement. While Bildung should be a free and open process, there are always goals, set by society or ourselves, that steer the process in a certain direction. With the modernization of society, the concept of Bildung has come to face new demands, such as meeting the need for constantly renewed living conditions and challenges as well as the need for new expedient and/or meaningful knowledge. However, something that must always be a prerequisite for education to occur at all is that it is based on human activity and creative imagination and has a personal connection (Gustavsson, 2003). In an educational context, the notion of Bildung will always in some way or the other be connected to the practice of teaching, and therefore needs to be understood pedagogically and didactically. From a Didaktik-perspective, grounded in the triadic relationship between teachers, students, and subject-matter, teaching is about showing and sharing something with someone else, with some kind of intention. If in the teaching context we tend to place this something within the framework of a subject, a subject discipline or area, this didactic choice is always both subject-centered and world-centered (Vlieghe & Zamojskij, 2019). While the teacher points to the content, the content points to the world, either by representing a part of the world or by being drawn from the world. As such, the triadic relationship is not limited to teaching, but occurs in all interpersonal contexts that have meaning making, understanding, and interest in relation to a content as a goal.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe paper is constructed as a philosophical argument, building on conceptual analysis and central concepts, mainly from the tradition of continental educational thinking.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsDrawing on Benner (2015), Uljens (2023), Fichte (1796/2000) and Herbart (1908), educational praxis and encounters take place within a domain of coexistence, based on both human “imperfection” (we are born with a potential for development)and human “incompleteness” (we become people in relation to other people, when we are addressed as subjects by the other). From these basic educational principles, we can see both opportunities and challenges for human development and Bildung. Bildung occurs when the surrounding world calls us or invites us as independent and autonomous subjects in a specific context. In this context, we always have a choice to either respond or to ignore this invitation.In the final parts of the paper, we summarize our argunent by discussing how the educational dimensions of teaching can be acknowledged within higher education as a place for working with students' intellectual and emotional development, as well as a place that offers them opportunities to live a good life together with other people (cf. Magnússon & Rytzler, 2022). However, rather than seeing this place as pre-defined, in terms of learning goals and learning outcomes, we believe (in line with Bergdahl and Langmann, 2018) that education in higher education must develop a pedagogical language, rooted in the educational tradition, that pays attention to the dynamic, bodily, relational, and existential dimensions that characterize life in all educational contexts, higher education included. This by seeing the educational process as an exchange where, on the one hand, students are addressed by and themselves address the world, as itself is expressed through various subjects and scientific traditions, and, on the other hand, by allowing these traditions to be challenged and developed through the didactic interplay between students, teacher and the specific topics of study.
ReferencesBergdahl, L., & Langmann, E. (2018). Pedagogical postures: A feminist search for a geometry of the educational relation. Ethics and Education, 13(3), 309–328. doi: 10.1080/17449642.2018.1477088.
Gustavsson, B. (2003). Bildning i vår tid: Om bildningens möjligheter och villkor i det moderna samhället. Wahlström & Wistrand.
Gustavsson, B. (2017). Bildningens dynamik: Framväxt, dimensioner, mening. Bokförlaget Korpen.
Klafki, W. (1995). Didactic analysis as the core of preparation of instruction (didaktische
analyse als kern der unterrichtsvorbereitung). Journal of Curriculum Studies, 27(1), 13–30.
Nordenbo, S. E. (2002). Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(3), pp. 341-352.
Schildermans, H. (2019). Making a University. Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Study Practices. (Doctoral thesis). Faculty of psychology and educational sciences. Laboratory for education and society. Belgium: KU Leuven.
Siljander, P., Kivela, A., Sutinen, A. (Eds.). (2012). Theories of Bildung and Growth. Connections and Controversies between Continental Educational Thinking and American Pragmatism. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Sjöström, J., & Tyson, R. (2022). Didaktik för lärande och bildning. Liber.
Uljens, M. (2023) (Ed). Non Affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung. Springer.
Vlieghe, J., & Zamojski, P. (2019). Towards an Ontology of Teaching. Thing-centered Pedagogy, Affirmation and Love for the World. Springer.
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