Author:

Abstract:

In this contribution I would like to elaborate a new perspective on understanding educational processes. This approach starts from the idea that schooling, teaching and learning are above all corporeal realities. This is to say that the body shouldn’t be considered as a mere instrument that might hinder or promote the realization of established educational goals, but as a dimension that carries out of itself educational significance. To elucidate this point of view I turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben, and more precisely to his idea that bodily ‘gestures’ can be considered as ‘means without ends’, i.e. as forms of behavior which resist the actualization of concrete possibilities, but which grant in this way opportunities for a radical resignification of individual and collective life. It might be argued from this perspective that the physical presence of pupils and/or teachers, as well as concrete physical ‘styles’ of teaching carry meanings that are not as yet been discussed in pedagogical literature. This way of looking might furthermore have major implications for the issue of educational equality: approaching schooling from the standpoint of embodiment, it can be argued that certain occurrences and practices that go together with physical presence (which is lacking in digitally mediated contexts) can have serious implications vis à vis the power relations inside classrooms and schools, and that the way in which learning contents are presented and dealt with in concrete teaching practice can be seen as either more or less ‘democratic’. In that way the body in school has a major educational and societal relevance that should not be neglected.