The antinomies of pedagogy and aporias of embodiment: A historical and phenomenological investigation

Abstract

That education is a field constituted by oppositions, paradoxes and tensions has its origin in the Maieutic of Socrates. It remains a field of hot debate today. This chapter begins by describing ways of thinking of educational theory and practice in terms of opposites, paradoxes and the tensions between them, looking at both traditional and contemporary sources. With reference to a video clip, this chapter then turns to an understanding of the lived or experienced body as articulated in the phenomenological tradition, based largely on Merleau-Ponty's account in 'The Visible and the Invisible.' It highlights and explores the striking isomorphism of the embodied and the pedagogical-both as fields and as processes.