Conference Agenda

Demonstrating knowledge does not indicate that the student actually knows. In educational institutions, students' knowledge is typically assessed through measurable parameters compared to predetermined standards. The question, then, is: how can teachers discern their students' thinking and learning processes, understand them, and respond effectively and accurately in ways that will deepen their thinking?

Edmund Husserl (1938-1985) sought to establish phenomenology as a "science of phenomena" - a discipline investigating what presents itself to consciousness. He founded phenomenology as distinct from other sciences, which rely on scientific theoretical assumptions, aiming to redirect focus from factual information about objects to their essence, within the framework of lived experience (Erlebnis). Husserl argued that true seeing occurs only in an immediate and unmediated way and thus, wanted to recognize this primary seeing as knowledge. Following this, he developed the phenomenological reduction, a method that suspends the natural attitude, meaning all scientific, philosophical, cultural, and everyday assumptions, as well as the question of the existence of the object in space and time. One of the central methods of the reduction is 'bracketing' (Einklammerung). It means putting the object in brackets, thereby isolating it and setting aside the usual judgments of consciousness. It also allows us to shift our attention from the object itself to the way it appears in our consciousness in the moment of lived experience.

Theatre maintains a special relationship with lived experience and phenomenological reduction. Unlike other art forms, theatre typically works with the physical bodies of live actors on stage. In fact, it is a medium designed to transmit performative knowledge embodied in their bodies. Hence, theatre works with the actor's vitality and material presence - in short, with life itself. Its principal achievement is not merely to represent the world but to participate in it, enacting a negotiation between consciousness and the density of lived existence in the present moment. Additionally, just as Husserl suspends doubt about the world, theatre involves an essential condition known as the "suspension of disbelief," which entails temporarily setting aside skepticism about what is presented on stage and accepting it as real. In both cases, the observed phenomenon is temporarily released from the conditions that usually bind it to the world as a merely existing thing. In other words, theatrical performance is itself a mode of phenomenological inquiry.

Theatre, beyond being an artistic form, serves as a distinctive educational medium for learning diverse content. Through this practice, participants represent their inner feelings outwardly in real time, focusing on processes that encourage them to explore, create, experiment, and discover. The fields of knowledge in which theatre is used span from language, history, and literature to less predictable areas like the exact sciences. Role-playing practices, improvisation, and collaborative creation are used to dramatize historical events or bring to life scientific phenomena. These practices are not necessarily aimed at perfecting acting skills but are rather focused on liberating participants from preconceptions, developing creativity, and fostering spontaneous, authentic expression. Hence, students must engage with complete physical and mental presence, incorporating their body, voice, and diverse modes of self-expression. This requires spontaneous, attentive, and uninhibited action and reaction, unrestrained by basic assumptions about their familiar social dynamics or preexisting knowledge.

Theatrical pedagogy transforms knowledge into a subject of embodied inquiry that requires students' personal interpretation of the material. Through this embodied process, knowledge becomes integrated into students' lived experience and may motivate them to action. Moreover, the theatrical practice of suspending everyday assumptions, akin to Husserl's phenomenological reduction allows new dimensions of somatic, affective, and intersubjective knowledge to emerge, making students' understanding visible to teachers.

School and the museum are commonly perceived as two profoundly different institutions. The former is primarily intended for children, is often noisy and crowded, and presupposes regular attendance; the latter is associated with an adult audience, with quiet contemplation, and with occasional visits. Despite these differences, this paper proposes an analogy between the two. Rather than following the extensive literature on museum education (Falk and Dierking 2012; Hein 1998; Hooper-Greenhill 2007), which tends to emphasize the unique challenges of such education, I turn to the writings of the philosopher and curator Boris Groys (2008) to argue that there are significant structural similarities between school and museum, and that these similarities offer important insights into the relationship between institution and “newness”, as well as into the role of the teacher.

Both the school and the museum have long been criticized as outdated, rigid, and irrelevant institutions. Just as the school has been the target of a persistent discourse of “deschooling” (Illich 2000), the museum has faced, at least since the early twentieth century, accusations of being a “graveyard of art” (Groys 2008, 24): an unnecessary gatekeeper separating art from the public, which must be dismantled in order to allow new and free art to emerge (Crimp 1993; Malevich 1971). One influential defense of the school, following Hannah Arendt (1961), maintains that the school is necessary to introduce the new generation to what has value in the world. Schooling is indeed conservative, but this conservatism is precisely what allows novelty to appear as novelty. In a parallel argument, Groys claims that “only the museum gives the observer the opportunity to differentiate between old and new, past and present… only the museum can serve as the site of systematic historical comparison that enables us to see with our own eyes what really is different, new, and contemporary” (2008, 21). While the museum cannot prescribe what the new should look like, it nevertheless provides a negative criterion – a sense of how the new should not look (27).

Within this analogy, the teacher does not correspond to the artist but to the curator. Like the curator, the teacher does not create new objects or values, but mediates between artistic artifacts and an audience, placing them within a structured space in ways that provide context and meaning (Groys 2008, 43). The etymology “curation” is linked to care and cure: the curatorial process, Groys writes, “cures the image’s powerlessness, its inability to present itself” (46). Yet this healing is also a pharmakon in Derrida’s (1981) sense – both cure and poison – since curatorial mediation inevitably intervenes in the image, altering it by embedding it within a particular narrative.

The importance of the curator, and by analogy the teacher, becomes especially clear in light of the internal logic Groys identifies in modern art: that of “equal aesthetic rights for all artworks” (2008, 14). This logic is expressed in the ongoing expansion of what can count as art, as ever more objects and modes of representation are recognized as legitimate. In practice, however, inequality among images persists, and hierarchical value judgments continue to exclude certain forms of expression from the recognized art world. Good art, therefore, is art that works toward aesthetic equality under conditions of inequality. Correspondingly, the curator’s task is to remind the public of “the egalitarian projects of the past” from which we can “learn to resist the dictatorship of contemporary taste” (Groys 2008, 22). In the “conclusions” section, I draw on these insights to reconsider the school as an institution and to rethink the educational role of the teacher.

In this paper, I explore relations, encounters and spaces with multiple forms of living, while calling anthropocentrism into question. The purpose is to render visible, re-configure and re-negotiate more-than-human imaginaries of education, with specific focus on intentionality, subjectivity and the maps of education.

Imaginaries of anthropocentrism affect multiple forms of living in ways that might not be desirable, neither for themselves nor future generations of living (in which human living is included) (---, 2025). Building on my earlier research (2016, 2018, 2025), I maintain that the educational question stretches towards ecological and ethical dimensions too. In line with ecofeminists, I argue that questions about ecological, animal and feminist issues are crucial to attend to simultaneously (Adams & Gruen, 2014).

Derrida (2008) has re-formulated the traditional ‘question of the Animal’ to criticise the premises of this question. In re-posing such a question, Derrida notes that it can risk another kind of essentialism in identifying ‘the Animal’ as a homogeneous group as distinct from ‘the human’. For Derrida, such abstraction generalises the plurality of animals into a unified category. It is in this way that anthropocentrism functions to articulate human specificity over and against other beings that threaten to undermine that very specificity (Calarco, 2008). Given this human-centredness of the predominant image of educational becoming, I argue that it is important to advance further the examination and discussion of the very premises and underlying philosophical support of education.

The first part focuses on intentionality. Through our encounters with others (human and non-human alike), Todd (2014) maintains we shift the borders of our self understanding. Todd (2014), brings forth that, as relationships occasion transformation and becoming—in line with Castoriadis—and further, that one can speak of the pedagogy of a film or a text—in line with Lusted—the relationships, rather than the teacher, should be in focus. Unlike the pedagogical aspects of a relationship between, for instance, friends, lovers or colleagues, according to Todd (2014), the relationship between teacher and student is doubly so, since it rests upon an educational intentionality, or ‘demand’ for change (Todd, 2003). Todd’s (2014) task to reimagine educational relationships as specifically pedagogical ones, requires moving beyond our intentionality. To move beyond or to bracketing off intentionality, would lead to uncover the aspects of relationality that occasion one’s becoming, according to Todd (2014).

It is discussed how the concept of educational intentionality is underpinned by the metaphysical tradition of human subjectivity. Sensing and imagining the aspects of relationality, expressed as encounters and spaces between ‘humans’, ‘non-human animals’ and ‘nature’ contribute to criticising anthropocentric imaginaries of education. Further, highlighting these doubly pedagogical aspects call into question what kind of change that is demanded and in what ways such change is desirable, in relation to multiple forms of living.

The second part focuses on subjectivity. First, the subject as centered is explored, with focus on stability and identity. Second, the subject as de-centered is explored, with focus on dynamicity and becoming. Third, a re-centering of the subject is explored, with focus on relation, space and the question of how the subject exists. In my earlier work (---, 2018), I argued that there is a need to ‘shake the ontological categories’ out of which the living is classified into, as such categories are rooted in the idea of human subjectivity. A qualitative shift of perspective is needed that does not presume nature as passive and a consciousness that is human per definition, according to Braidotti (2002). This encompasses a sensitivity to how the distinction of bios-zoë comes into play, and further, how the boundaries between multiple forms of living are taken into account in various contexts.