Tarc, A. M. (2005). Education as humanism of the other. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(6), 833-849. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2005.00161.x

Subjects and Subjectivity

Drawing from Jacques Derrida’s processes of deconstruction, Aparna Mishra Tarc’s (2005) inquiry into how human subjectivity emerges through humanities education questions the stability and legitimacy of its “classical” subject. Because the philosophical underpinnings of discourses within the humanities are linked to “humanism,” Tarc contends, the subject formation they engender is rooted in notions of a particular kind of subject. Precisely white, male, and Western, this “classical” subject becomes the legitimizing norm upon which other subjectivities are written. Thus, canons of knowledge and their discourses generate a version of humanness that both affirms the stability and structural integrity of the subject and reduces otherness to the category of the same. Deconstruction, however, reveals gaps and fissures within the subject’s structural integrity, pointing to its inherent instability and enabling as yet unthought possibilities for subjects and subjectivity to emerge.

Critical Education and Irreducible Subjectivity

As dominant, canonical discourses are legitimized through educational institutions, they necessarily contribute to the formation of subjectivity, and in effect, suture other subjectivities onto the “classical” subject. Such dominant discourses include not only canonical texts but also, methods of interpretation and analysis—which, in the case of literacy, refers to not only what is read but how it is read. For Tarc (2005), critical orientation toward the question of how one reads has the capacity to destabilize status quo ways of thinking as well as making space for other subject positions, concomitantly dismantling the conceptual architecture that makes it possible to think of the subject as fixed. This is important because canonical knowledge within the humanities, endorsed by educational institutions, demarcates what and whom may be considered legitimately human.

According to Tarc (2005), critical education must move beyond replacing one totalized, stable version of subjectivity with another (p. 839). This involves creating conditions of radical openness toward the Other which necessarily cannot be known in advance. Following Derrida, the Other cannot be categorized a priori, and as such, deconstruction must be a responsibility to others. Turning outward and away from stable notions of the self creates conditions necessary to respond to the call of the Other. If education is to become a response to others, it cannot take “normative being” as its measure as this works to transform the elusiveness of human subjectivity into an object of knowledge (p. 836). Critical education, then, involves a continuous negotiation between educators and students and the texts they engage, attending to ways subjects are created through texts.

Ethical Implications and Reparative Practice

Like Derrida, Tarc (2005) does not call for an eradication of the canon, but rather, to disrupt the formation of the normative subject through the inclusion of counter texts as well as modes of reading that engage processes of deconstruction. As deconstruction exposes tensions within structural integrity, the process concomitantly generates space to question the legitimacy of so-called normative subjects and how they are affirmed through canonical texts and educational institutions. Processes of deconstruction are necessarily open-ended in order to respond to contexts and subjects that are never stable and complete; in this way, they have the capacity to destabilize and reorient education away from classical humanist structures that continuously digest the Other to legitimize themselves.

Significantly, for educational research to move toward an ethics of the Other, it is critical that such research attend to relations between the humanist subject and its Others. Tarc (2005) reminds us such relations are complex, emerging through encounters between the West and the global majority that are often violent (p. 846). Referring to the concept of reparation, Tarc (2011) further develops notions of the Other’s incalculable, irreducible existence and the educational and ethical implications of these notions. Through the process of reparation, attending to the Other requires a deconstruction and reconstruction of subjectivity, as the subject moves into the unknowable space of the Other’s experience. Tarc (2005) highlights Spivak’s desire to “displace the violence within the self/other dichotomy” with “radical alterity” through pedagogical practices that situate readers in the presence of ‘Others’ to “provoke a re-shattering of what it means to be human or self” (p. 843). In a similar vein, reparation, as Tarc (2011) has it, calls for radical openness to alterity that is not yet known. Extending from deconstruction, then, reparative work engages a continuous process that makes it possible to bear one’s own experience and attend to the irreducible existence and expression of the Other.

References

Tarc, A. M. (2005). Education as humanism of the other. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(6), 833-849. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2005.00161.x

Tarc, A. M. (2011). Reparative curriculum. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(3). 350-372. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-873X.2011.00554.x