Out of the Dark Night by Achille Mbembe
In October long-time Reading Network member Dr Rowena Azada-Palacios introduced Out of the Dark Night by Achille Mbembe. Rowena is a philosopher of education currently based in London. Her most recently completed work is on the teaching of national identity in postcolonial contexts, and she is also currently involved in a number of philosophy and interdisciplinary research projects related to the concept of educational attunement, critical social theory from a Philippine lens, social justice and mathematics education, and citizenship education in post-conflict settings. She teaches in Ateneo de Manila University, University College London and London Metropolitan University.
Rowena offered the following questions to open out discussion:
What does Mbembe mean when he says that the task of creating a better democracy requires that we “rediscover the body and face of the other”?
p. 111: “Here, it is perhaps necessary to begin my rediscovering the body and face of the other, inasmuch as they represent not only the speaking traces of the other’s existence, but also that which makes the other if not my neighbor [prochain] then at least my fellow [semblable]. This is perhaps the condition for carrying out the task of political refiguration of the social, which can no longer be deferred…. This politics of the world rests on our concern for the unicity of every one, expressed by the face of every one. Thus, responsibility for others and for the past will set in motion discourse on justice and democracy and our practices of them.”From pages 79 to 80, Mbembe criticizes a decolonial approach that theorizes multiplicity as “difference,” as “that which separates and cuts off one cultural or historical entity from another,” and as an act of “disconnection and separation.” In contrast to this, he argues that difference should not be a “secessionist gesture,” but rather, “a particular fold or twist in the undulating of the universe–or in a set of continuous, entangled folds of the whole.” What does he mean by this metaphor, and to what extent do we agree with him?
What are the educational implications of his ideas? How might these ideas challenge or even alter our educational practice?
