Conference Agenda

Failing is an integral part of educational and pedagogical phenomena. When pursuing educational or pedagogical ambitions, there is no guarantee of success. Students and teachers, educational programs, and educational institutions can and often do fail to achieve their goals. (Bellenberg/Klemm 2000, Schäfer 1991). Education thus proves to be uncertain and risky.

In educational research, however, this aspect is often reinterpreted positively; for example, in the context of learning or “Bildung”, where negative experiences are regarded as productive for processes of formation or transformation of world-self-relations (Buck 1989, Rödel 2017, Koller 2023). Within these concepts failure refers not only to the failure of “old” notions and world-self-relations, as an event that initiates the process, but also to the possibility that nothing new replaces the old. Especially in relation to ‘Bildung’ failure characterizes a part of the process, insofar as the alienation of a former world-relation involves the risk of losing oneself (Humboldt 1793/1960). Yet despite these considerations, in most educational studies, failure and its effectstend to be overlooked (Rieger-Ladich 2013). Since ‘Bildung’ is an internationally discussed theorem, the findings of our paper are relevant to educational science and theory in general.

Therefore, in this paper we explicitly focus on failure and how it can be further understood. Rather than equating it with the mere non-achievement of predefined educational goals or reframing it as merely a learning opportunity, we understand failure as an integral moment of educational processes, practices and relations, that affects the subjectivity of those involved. It occurs when educationally relevant intentions or ambitions collapse in such a way that not only the intended goal is missed, but trust in one’s own ability is at least temporarily suspended (Rieger-Ladich 2013), and is therefore perceived as a loss of autonomy by those experiencing it (Junge 2004). This also means acknowledging that educational contexts are highly precarious, as from this point of view, failure is not merely a temporary setback but something that can lead to the loss of social status and “failed” biographies (Rieger-Ladich 2012).

To explore this blind spot, we turn to literary texts. Drawing on findings from our joint research project, which investigates the failure of pedagogical ambitions as reflected in contemporary literature, we argue that literary narratives offer access to dimensions of education that are difficult to capture using traditional research methods. As contemporary literary texts are not bound by the need for coherence or normative justification, they may express contradictory or morally ambiguous positions and explore what tends to be suppressed (Casale 2005). In this sense, they potentially reveal discrepancies between educational aspirations and the actual consequences of pedagogical engagement (Koller/Rieger-Ladich 2013). We therefore comprehend literary texts to be particularly well-suited to exploring failure within educational contexts. This turn toward literature is not without precedent. Over the last twenty years, the use of literary texts as the object of educational research has become more established (Koller/Rieger-Ladich 2005, 2009, 2013).

Following these contributions, we analyze literary texts regarding failure. The paper proceeds in two steps. First, we outline the theoretical and methodological principles guiding the analysis, referring to existing educational concepts of failure as well as prior approaches to the educational reading of literary texts. We then present a comparative analysis of selected novels, examining how the failure of pedagogically (relevant) ambitions is portrayed within these texts. Who or what fails under which conditions? How is this failure experienced and how is it dealt with?

Post-critical pedagogy has emerged as a response to the dominance of critique and ideological suspicion in educational theory (Hodgson, Vlieghe, & Zamojski, 2018). Rather than approaching educational practices primarily as carriers of hidden ideology to be exposed, post-critical work seeks to redirect attention to what practices make possible in and through their enactment. This shift has opened space for affirmation and for renewed attention to the intrinsic value of educational practices. At the same time, it raises a persistent philosophical challenge: how can questions of power, dependence, and emancipation be addressed without reverting either to ideological unmasking or to naïve affirmation that downplays constraint and domination?

This paper contributes to post-critical pedagogy by exploring the ontological implications of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) for educational thought (Harman, 2018). It argues that OOO provides conceptual resources to move beyond the opposition between critique and affirmation by reconceiving educational practices as a plurality of irreducible wholes whose reality exceeds both critical diagnosis and affirmative endorsement.

To explore this, the paper introduces a hypothetical classroom vignette. Two children, Yasmin and David, stand on opposite sides of an illuminated globe, naming countries and continents. From an OOO perspective, educational situations consist of a plurality of wholes. In this vignette, Yasmin, David, and the globe may each be understood as distinct wholes. These wholes, however, are not limited to physical representations. Activities, interactions, and emergent constellations may also be understood as wholes. With this ontological orientation in view, we return to the case.

As the interaction unfolds, Yasmin announces that she is the captain and David is a deckhand, and together they embark on an imagined journey to the North Pole. In this moment, the globe no longer functions merely as a representational object marked with borders and names, but participates in the enactment of an explorer world. The children are no longer only pupils, but sailors navigating risk, danger, and uncertainty. A new whole emerges—a globe-explorer world—that cannot be reduced to the children, the artefact, or their relations taken separately. This world has its own coherence, dynamics, and possibilities.

Central to OOO is the claim that wholes are irreducible and possess a withdrawn dimension: an inexhaustible reality that cannot be fully accessed, explained, or exhausted by interpretation, use, or critique. Educational practices, understood as worlds, therefore always exceed what can be said about them. Critique and affirmation are not properties of practices themselves, nor normative positions to be adopted, but modes through which pedagogical worlds may appear. A post-critical pedagogy grounded in OOO resists both critical reduction and affirmative closure, attending instead to how these dynamics emerge, interact, and recede within educational worlds.

From this perspective, the globe-explorer world illustrates how educational practices cannot be exhausted by either oppressive or emancipatory interpretations. Hierarchical roles such as captain and deckhand introduce asymmetries that organise participation and may reproduce relations of subordination. Yet this world simultaneously affords possibilities of inquiry, imagination, adventure, and risk that exceed the globe and the children as separate entities. Following OOO, these possibilities arise from the emergence of a new world. OOO, as a form of speculative realism, provides a way of approaching this hidden world without collapsing it into domination or liberation. What is educationally at stake is the world’s ontological surplus—an excess that withdraws from full access and therefore can only be approached speculatively, opening possibilities that resist prediction and control.

This ontological reorientation allows post-critical pedagogy to move beyond the opposition between critique and affirmation.