Abstract: Paulo Freire's pedagogy is rooted in his belief in social justice through liberation of the oppressed. His problem-posing pedagogy is the primary vehicle to raise critical consciousness whereby the ethical project of social justice can be realized. Central to that pedagogy is a view of human beings as change agents and a constructivist view of knowledge development. By reading Freire through a framework inspired by Emmanuel Levinas, the article uncovers a central tension between Freire's ethical project of justice and the language of freedom that is supposed to bring it about. Specifically the article explores how the concept of freedom in Freire's constructivist epistemologyconstituted as agentive, spontaneity-based action — is in tension with his ethical project of a pedagogy for justice, one based in responsibility and non-indifference. Resolution ofthis tension means situating the subject as an active epistemological agent in the context of an ethical construal of the subject. This means reconceptualizing the grounding notion of the subject beyond a modernist one of spontaneity to the more Levinasian one of responsibility. It also means situating Freire's still modernist notion of knowledge as grasping within the Levinasian-inspired idea of an ethically situated epistemological relationship with reality as other. Levinas's notion of alterity is the key to this re-envisioned grounding of epistemology and human subjectivity. RESUME: La pedagogie de Paulo Freire s'appuie sur sa confiance en justice sociale a travers la liberation de Journal of Educational Thought Vol. 35, No. 2, 2001, 129-148. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.76 on Tue, 06 Dec 2016 19:37:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 130 CLARENCE W. JOLDERSMA l'oppresse. Sa pedagogie ou l'on part du probleme est un moyen primordial pour soulever la conscience critique a l'aide de laquelle le projet ethique de la justice sociale peut etre realise. La notion des etres humains vus comme des agents qui changent, de meme que la perception des connaissances en tant que developpement constructif, constituent l'essentiel de cette pedagogie. En lisant Freire a travers la structure cree par Emmanuel Levinas, l'article decouvre la tension centrale entre le projet ethique de la justice de Freire et le langage de la liberte qui devrait le realiser. Plus precisement, l'article s'efforce d'explorer la tension entre la notion de la liberte incluse dans l'epistemologie constructive de Freire constituee en tant qu'action d'agent basee sur la spontaneite et son projet ethique de la pedagogie pour la justice s'appuyant sur la responsabilite et non-indifference. La resolution de cette tension consiste a situer le sujet comme un agent epistemologique actif dans le contexte de la construction ethique de ce sujet. C'est une reconceptualisation de la notion fondamentale du sujet en dehors de la spontaneite modernisee en s'approchant vers la responsabilite de Levinas. C'est aussi considerer la notion toujours modernedes connaissances de Freire en tant que comprehension a l'interieur de l'idee de Levinas ou elle est presentee par rapport a la realite. C'est la notion de la transformation de Levinas qui constitue une cle importante pour revoir la base de l'epistemologie et de la subjectivite humaine. Part I: Freire's Epistemology The Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, may well have been the most well known educational activist and theorist in the world at the time of his death in May 1997 (Elias, 1994; Weiler, 1996). Although not as well known (or regarded) in North America, even here many educational theorists have been influenced by his work. This is especially true in the critical pedagogy approach of theorists such as Donaldo Macedo, 1994; Ira Shor, 1992, 1996; Henry Giroux, 1997; Pepi Leistyna, 1999, and Peter McLaren, 1999.1 However, perhaps because of these authors' admiration for Freire, if not their "reverence of disciples" (Weiler, 1996, p. 354), their works do not make a concerted assessment of Freire's philosophical framework.2 Yet it would seem that examining Freire's philosophical assumptions about reality, humans, and This content downloaded from 157.55.39.76 on Tue, 06 Dec 2016 19:37:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE TENSION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND FREEDOM 131 knowledge would help evaluate better Freire's critique of school and society as well as his vision for overcoming his social and educational concerns. In this paper I wish to take a critical look at Freire's epistemology as it grounds both his critique of pedagogy and his vision for a more normative alternative. My criticism of Freire's pedagogy will be that it is grounded in a tension. On the one hand its epistemological assumptions include the modernist conception of the subject as an active constructor of knowledge.3 Central here is the notion of active agency, one that relies heavily on the idea of freedom. On the other hand Freire's epistemology is at bottom meant to constitute an ethical project, centered on the role of knowledge in bringing social justice. By reading these two epistemological strands through the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas,4 it will be my contention that they constitute a tension. A notion of knowledge promoting justice is in conflict with an epistemology rooted primarily in agency and freedom. I will suggest that an epistemology oriented to justice requires an outlook on the nature of knowledge that includes Levinas's conception of alterity, that is, irreducible otherness or strangeness (Davis, 1996). This Levinasian-inspired critique, I believe, will recover a deeper notion of knowledge, one that aligns more closely to bringing about social justice, the central feature of Freire's particular ethical stance. Thus a Levinasian reading will make more explicit what I believe to be the ultimate faith-based root of Freire's

Abstract: Derrida has been rather frequently acclaimed for his conception of alterity, which we are told is irrecuperable and beyond the dialectic However, this essay will argue that his attempts to instantiate an ethics of responsibility to the “otherness of the other” are more problematic than is commonly assumed Much of Derrida’s work on alterity palpably bears a tension between his emphasis upon an absolute and irrecuperable notion of alterity that is always deferred and always ‘to come’, and his simultaneous insistence that the other is somehow always already within the self These two aspects of his treatment of alterity do not necessarily contradict one another, but they represent an important tension between a Levinasian inclined account of alterity (the other is that which can never be known), and a more traditionally phenomenological conception of alterity (ie the imperialism of the same, in which the other is always partially domesticated by the self’s horizons of significance) Derrida’s philosophical career seems to gradually move closer and closer towards adopting the first position at the expense of the second, which emphasises that alterity must always, at least to some extent, be dependent on and relative to the self Indeed, while “Violence and Metaphysics” criticises Levinas’ rather absolute conception of alterity, it will be argued that Derrida’s own eventual position in the Gift of Death and in his theorising of the messianic, is actually rather similar His notion of responsibility towards the other prioritises the aspects of them which are forever elusive and resist any encroachment with the self Though such aspects of responsibility are important, this essay will argue that they also need to be counterbalanced by other more phenomenological considerations (ie a relational conception of alterity), and perhaps ones more closely aligned with the chiasmic ontology that Maurice Merleau-Ponty theorises

Abstract: Abstract This paper seeks to create a linguistic space in which a discussion of the environment might occur through an appeal to conceptions of alterity. It seeks to challenge our thinking on alterity by exploring the limits of language in our relations with the other, best epitomized through our relationship with the natural world, and in particular the non-speaking animal kingdom. To explore our moral relationship with the other we turn to Heidegger’s conceptualization of dasein, thus illuminating the limits of language. Contrasts are then drawn between the technocratic administration epitomized by Pinchot’s early administrative practices and those espoused by Aldo Leopold, deep ecologists, and ecofeminists. Administering anti-administratively is offered as afruitful middle ground between the two discourses, with alterity as the centerpiece of administrative practice. Exploring alterity through an environmental lens exposes the territoriality of contemporary public administration (PA) discourse, and seeks to challenge the exclusion of environmental concerns from both public administration theory and practice.

Abstract: The dimension of alterity as process and trajectory between absolute alterity and relative alterity is the subject of this article. The dimension of alterity as process of engagement between Self and Other that can potentially make continuity out of the antinomies of absolute and relative alterity will be shown to reveal itself in the arena of conflict enactment and resolution between two feuding factions. I propose that Self as agency is an approximation, the Other as absolute a misnomer; and that when Self and Other engage in a process of resolution of conflict, an ambiguous play space opens up fostering an exchange of representations of Self and Other.

Abstract: Taking Another Look at Levinas on Love Set me as a seal upon your heart. For love is as strong as death. Shir Hashirim [Song of Songs] In "Questions to Emmanuel Levinas," Luce Irigaray criticizes Emmanuel Levinas's conception of love by claiming that for Levinas, "to caress consists not in approaching the other in its most vital dimension, the touch, but in the reduction of that vital dimension of the other's body to the elaboration of the future for himself."1 That is, Irigaray interprets Levinas's conception of love as that which needs to be redeemed by fecundity and which is only redeemed for the man. Levinas 's work, she charges, does not account for the female experience in sexuality, degrades the woman by rendering her experience in sexuality as that which is devoid of the divine, and finally, it maintains a structure that privileges heterosexuality. Irigaray's analysis of Levinas's work points to what might be considered the most damning elements of Levinas's thought, and her view needs to be taken seriously. However, I think there are alternative readings of Levinas's conception of the "feminine" in general and his description of love in particular. My goal in this essay is to re-examine Levinas's conception of love that we find in Totality and Infinity,2 while being mindful of Irigaray's worries about this conception. This task is completed in part by taking seriously Levinas's claim in the preface to Totality and Infinity that Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption is "a work too often present in this book [Totality and Infinity] to be cited" (TI 28/xvi).3 The Labor of Love In contrast to the ethical relationship, Levinas identifies the love relationship as a return to the same. Yet for Levinas, the role the feminine plays in making transcendence possible extends beyond the dwelling and into the erotic relationship. Following a structure that we find in both Sartre and Rosenzweig, Levinas's description of the love relationship is a relationship wherein what the lover wants is not just to love the other [the beloved], but to have the Beloved love him back.4 Love both presupposes the exteriority of the other while also going beyond this exteriority of the other, of the beloved (TI 254/232). Taking up the Aristophanes myth in Plato's Symposium, Levinas's view of love is a mixture of immanence and transcendence (TI 254/232). Levinas disagrees with the implication of fusion signaled by the myth.5 However, he does find compelling the ambiguous notion of love not only as a relation in which there is a return to the self, but also as a relation in which the self is transcended. The face of the other-of the beloved-reveals within it what is not yet. It reveals the future that is never future enough, a future that is "more remote than possible" (TI 254-55/232-33). Finally, the ambiguity of love lies in the possibility of the Other to appear as an object of need and yet still retain its alterity, "the possibility of enjoying the Other, of placing oneself at the same time beneath and beyond discourse." The love relation is ambiguous precisely because the ethical has not disappeared. Rather, the face of the Other is hidden by the erotic, by the intimacy of love. In the "Phenomenology of Eros" Levinas tells us that "love aims at the other; it aims at him in his frailty [faiblesse]" (TI 256/233). Love aims at the tenderness of the Beloved. For Levinas, the tenderness is not something added to the Beloved. Rather, the Beloved "is but one with her regime of tenderness" (TI 256/233).6Levinas's analysis continually uses language that presents the image of the Beloved cast below while the lover is taken to new heights. The Beloved is "dark," "nocturnal," "clandestine," "deep in the subterranean dimension" (TI 257/234). The Beloved equivocates between virginity 7 and profanation (or solicitation), between modesty and immodesty (TI 257-58/234-35), between hiddenness and exposure. …

Abstract: En reponse a l'article precedent de P. Lewin, l'A. reaffirme le lien entre rhetorique et subjectivite qu'il etablit dans sa these de la formation esthetique du sujet, d'une part, et rejette l'identification de la notion d'auto-persuasion avec le concept cartesien de conscience.

Abstract: Beginning in the 1930s, Emmanuel Levinas called into question the totalizing priorities of the Western metaphysical tradition and developed a dramatically original description of how subjectivity is constructed in the context of what he terms a face to face encounter with an absolute Other. This destabilizing experience is presented in terms of a summons that demands an ethical response in the form of unqualified moral responsibility for the well being of the Other, without any expectation of reciprocity. In a series of profoundly challenging works, Levinas analyzes the different stages in the development of this relationship, expressed in masculine oriented terms, and he contrasts the nobility and generosity of ethics with the intimacy of eros and the welcome of the feminine in a protected domestic site. Levinas insists on the impossibility of fusion and possession in both the ethical and the erotic relationships and seeks to disengage his discourse from essentialist, gender based interpretations. Nevertheless, he privileges terms associated with masculine subjects and likewise seems to endorse stereotypical interpretations of the feminine as fragile and frail, inviting either pity or tenderness. The fact that eros is based on an equivocation between need and the desire for something absolutely Other, which does not depend on any lack, prevents it from attaining the same stature as ethics. And by leaving the feminine out of his discussion of ethics, Levinas at least downplays the possibility for feminine subjects to respond to the summons of the face to face encounter and accept the risk of living other than in the metaphysical dwelling of Being. The questions raised in Levinas’ works concerning eros, ethics, and the feminine assume different configurations and lead elsewhere when explored in proximity to J.M.G. Le Clezio’s emblematic saga La quarantaine. Similar in many ways to Levinas’ philosophical trajectory, Le Clezio’s literary undertaking details the disjointed stages of a journey from the self-contained solitude of Being to an exposed elsewhere in what Levinas calls the “au-dela de l’etre.” The multi-layered text of La quarantaine fictionalizes the crisis that caused Le Clezio’s great-uncle to be erased from family history and depicts the transgenerational effects of that disappearance. The originality of Le Clezio’s work stems from the double inscription of the alterity of both eros and ethics in an Other who is gendered female. His text explores the process of rupture and exposure that Levinas valorizes, but it does so in a way that reveals how a female subject, who both welcomes discreetly and imposes herself indiscreetly, challenges what Levinas calls the “egoite tragique” of the other protagonists. Le Clezio’s arrestingly beautiful prose serves as a kind of textual face that expresses concretely the complexity of Levinas’ preoccupations and summons us as readers to exceed our capacities and live otherwise.

Abstract: This article details the shift in the nature of cultural representations of the Mongols that were articulated in Europe from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth centuries by means of literary ...

Abstract: This paper examines the concept of alterity in the traditional Arab Jordanian culture as revealed in Jordanian rural areas. The question is ‘how alterity, the social other, is formed, defined and conceived in such a culture on the various levels of social organization?’ For this purpose I used data gathered during fieldwork that I carried out with the help of my students of anthropology in Shatana, a village in Northern Jordan in 1995. The method used to gather the data is participant observation strongly supported by focused interviews with carefully selected informants. A careful analysis revealed that alterity in the Jordanian traditional rural culture is defined on the basis of considerations relating to life chances and the mechanisms which society, small or large, produced to secure them: socialization, education and religion. Religion and church adherence came to play an important role in implementing perceptions of alterity at the local level. Alterity proved to be bound to the situation unlike other concepts such as image and stereotypes.

Abstract: This critical attitude is not new; students of ethnicity in China are well aware that at least among some minorities, people commonly express discontent with their status and how their group is represented in mainstream culture. But in voicing such an attitude publicly and directly in nationally distributed media, Teng Ge’er marked a significant shift in the role that minorities play in general culture in the PRC and particularly in how their ethnic identity is represented in that culture. My purpose in this article is to explore that new role and its complex implications. Recent studies on minority identities in the PRC have recognized, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the Chinese state has a privileged and dominant role in constructing and representing those identities.

Abstract: Abstract Hermeneutic theory is always concerned with historicity and with the horizons, prejudices, and purposes that determine and give urgency to the act of interpretation. So let me begin with a few remarks about the situation in which I find myself, and which leads me to this tentative and open-ended query of my own philosophical activity.