That “not yet” of the present

Educating to meaning

Abstract

The rhetoric of an education that has lost its way and is confined to the margins of epistemology now faces the need to move away from (solely) inquiring into the forms and specificities of its own questions. The dimension of the unexpected, the necessary revisiting of our representation of the future, and scenarios that appear to have no future prospects, have brought questions of meaning urgently back to the fore. To seek purely theoretical answers or shut down questions is to risk missing out on the bright light of inquiry, as well as on the poetic significance of an event that “signals and awaits us” (Deleuze,1973, p. 134).
The figure of exile, which distances us from the known and the obvious and allows us to rename, to act, to endow shape and direction, may offer, together with the act of poetry, a way to access meaning (Nancy, 2017). Which, if it is to be forward-looking, requires an education that is nourished by a sensitive logos, an education that is not detached from the world. And hope.
A philosophy of education that is attentive to aesthetic experience – viewed as a “breach of insignificance” (Bertin, 1974, p. 217) drawing us into a language with the power to “retell and re-found the world” (Cambi, 2010, p. 137) – concerns itself with situations underpinned by anxieties surrounding prophecies and the paralysis of history and narrative, and seeks to generate experiences that enable poetic space to become poietic through the speaking of words that are “laden with intent” (Zambrano, 2004, p. 29).