@phdthesis{discovery10006476,
            note = {.},
           title = {'Bringing me more than I contain': Levinas, ethical subjectivity and the infinite demands of education},
            year = {2010},
          school = {Institute of Education, University of London},
        abstract = {Emmanuel Levinas' s reorientation of ethics as preceding ontology and his radical
presentation of responsibility, justice, consciousness and knowledge are of clear
relevance for education. It is therefore not surprising that in the last decade we have
seen a number of studies ofLevinas by educational theorists.
Much of this work has focused on Levinas's relevance for issues of ethics, social
justice, multiculturalism and moral education. This thesis draws on this previous
research, but aims to take educational readings of Levinas in another direction
through considering how his presentation of discourse, language and subjectivity, as
dependent on an infinite ethical demand, troubles several dominant orientations
within educational discourse that treat education in ways that can become totalising
and instrumentalist.
I begin by offering a philosophical analysis of how Levinas describes the scene of
teaching and the nature of subjectivity. I then interrogate how this reading of Levinas
disturbs some current understandings of education: first, the way that, within
liberalism, education can be conceived instrumentally as the site for the development
of a certain kind of individual (a rationally autonomous chooser, etc.), and second, the
way that neoliberal educational ideologies have privileged managerialism,
performance and the market, with Religious Education providing a case study of the
implications of Levinas's interruption. I then consider how this leads to new
understandings of community and political subjectivity within education.
In this way, I explore how responding to Levinas, and reading his work together with
criticisms addressed by Badiou and others, leads us not just to a richer vision of the
meaning of education, but also to a more motivating understanding of the ethical
subjectivity of both students and teachers, which is dependent on a deepening and anarchic
responsibility, and which invites us to work for a better education extending
beyond the straight line ofthe law.},
             url = {http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.529175},
          author = {Strhan, Anna Harriet Block}
}