Between Body and Spirit: The Liminality of Pedagogical Relationships

Journal of Philosophy of Education 48 (2):231-245 (2014)
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Abstract

This article explores the pedagogical, transformative aspects of education as a relation, viewing such transformation as occurring in the liminal space between body and spirit. In order to explore this liminal space more thoroughly, the article first outlines a case for why liminality is of educational and not only of pedagogical concern, building on James Conroy's notion of the liminal imagination and his emphasis on the importance of metaphor for calling our attention to the ontological spaces that make up educational practice. I then use this metaphor both substantively and methodologically, offering a reading of Clarice Lispector's novel The Stream of Life as a performance of the liminal imagination in its attempt to put into focus the embodied and transcendent aspects of becoming, both of which I see as central to defining what is pedagogical about human existence. The article then turns to developing how different metaphors may be mobilised to signify the particularly relational quality of becoming, drawing on Luce Irigaray's work to explore more closely the corporeal and spiritual aspects of becoming in relation. I then turn my attention to a more fulsome discussion of the significance of approaching pedagogical relationships in education in this way and what this signifies for the teacher-student encounter in particular

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Citations of this work

Education Incarnate.Sharon Todd - 2016 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 48 (4).
Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?Alistair Miller - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 50 (4).
Rancière, music, and the musicality of teaching.Johannes Rytzler - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 57 (3):678-694.
The regenerative liminalities of Global Citizenship Education.Nicholas Palmer - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 59 (1):95-107.

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References found in this work

Totality and infinity.Emmanuel Levinas - 1961/1969 - Pittsburgh,: Duquesne University Press.
What is Philosophy?Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari - 1991 - Columbia University Press.
Experience and education.John Dewey - 1998 - West Lafayette, Ind.: Kappa Delta Pi.
An Ethics of Sexual Difference.Luce Irigaray - 1984 - Cornell University Press.
World in fragments: writings on politics, society, psychoanalysis, and the imagination.Cornelius Castoriadis - 1997 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Edited by David Ames Curtis.

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