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Bearing Witness to the “Nothingness Now”: The Controversial Issue of
Questioning in Education
“The significance of questioning consists in revealing the questionability of what is
questioned...the sense of every question is realized in passing through this state of
indeterminacy, in which it becomes an open question” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 363).
“The mark of the question is ‘now’, now like the feeling that nothing might happen: the
nothingness now” (Lyotard, 1991, p.92).
“The avant-garde is endowed with the paradoxical duty of bearing witness to an
immemorial dependency of human thought that makes any promise of emancipation a
deception” (Ranciere, 2002, p. 148).
What exactly is a question? Is it not a form of utterance that demands the
addressee to supply information? And if so, how often do we think about the
questionability of the question before we ask and respond to questions? The fact
that we do not inquire about the questionability of the question signals that we
are being taught to ask certain questions and thus answer them in particular ways
as opposed to being taught to bear witness to the place where “true” questions
take us. The practice of questioning in education enacts educational authority
and domination and thus, in its stultification, has the dangerous potential of
producing deficit mentality. We can see how this stultification, a cultural
procedure inherent in educational questioning which convinces a person of his or
her inferiority, is necessary for the practice of pedagogy and educational
questioning. In this paper, I will aim to intervene on the practice of questioning in
education by exposing the false aim of these questions. I will attempt to do this in
four sections. The first section will inquire about questions and what they do in
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educational practice by looking at Bingham’s concept of the question as a
statement and comparing it to exclusive partiality. After revealing the falsity of
questioning in educational practice, in the second section I will turn to Gadamer’s
definition of what a ‘true’ question does and suggest that this definition is similar
to Lyotard’s notion of aesthetics. The third section will deal with the controversial
paradox of the ‘true’ question, as something that both requires and produces an
aesthetic sensibility, in relation to pedagogy. After exposing the paradox that
disables the pedagogue to ask ‘true’ questions, the concluding section of my
paper will explore who is capable of asking ‘true’ questions, and how their
abilities to ‘truly’ question have the potential to intervene and emancipate
educational questioning. I argue that in its emancipation, ‘true’ questioning has
the potential to crystallize the teachable moment of confronting one’s limits of
knowledge and allow for true learning to begin.
What is a Question?: Exposing the Falsity of Questioning in Education
In Bingham’s paper “The Hermeneutics of Educational Questioning,” he
looks at the practice of educational questioning using the philosophical
hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. He begins his investigation by simply
defining the question as something that is not a statement. He explains that at
first glance, questions are believed to exercise less authority than a pedagogy that
does not question, simply because it allows for dialectic dialogue (Bingham, 2005,
p. 554). When we think about asking questions or questioning something, the
process implies a critical engagement with that which is being questioned. The
objective of the question as we know it is to initiate an engagement with an
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emancipatory process, a process which pushes intellectual potential. However,
the fact that the question has to be initiated by someone, more specifically, by a
pedagogue, reveals the question to be something that predetermines the
engagement with the question and its answer, and therefore blocks the critical
potential of the question. Bingham goes on to understand that the question
actually contains a statement within it. The question, in its potential to open up
different possibilities, suggests the limits of possibility since it is something that
needs to be consciously initiated. This conscious initiation of a question is a mode
of orientation. Bingham explains that “the question orients us toward a field of
possible experiences. The question provides a framework for the sort of
experience that a group of interlocutors will be in position to think about”
(Bingham, 2005, p. 555). Thus, a question situates and limits its answers, and
therefore implies its own statement. To dismiss the way in which questions can
overdetermine their answers, one runs the risk of asking false and stultifying
questions. Similarly, in his essay “ The Question Concerning Technology,”
Heidegger makes clear that questioning builds a way, and therefore, we “have to
pay heed to the way” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 100). Paying heed, or paying exclusive
attention to questioning, frees the question from its statement.
So what is a false question then? A false question is one that does not
question its own questionability. A false question is similar to a statement in the
way that it overdetermines its answer. A false question blocks the critical and
emancipatory potential of questioning. False questions are political in their
stultification and thus practice a willing-not-to-know. To ask the questionability
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of a question threatens authority and standardized knowledge. False questions
produce spectators who “remain immobile in their seat, passive...separating them
both from the capacity to know and the power to act” (Ranciere, 2009, p. 2).
Thus, we can see how a false question inculcates and assumes the positions of
exclusive partiality, a position which is characterised “by a deliberate attempt to
induce students into accepting as correct and preferable a particular position on a
controversial issue through means that undermine an adequate presentation of
competing points of view” (Kelly, 2001, p.223). False questions direct students to
the “right” outcomes and produce a false sense of intellectual certainty. This
illusion of discovery and false achievement that false questions and exclusive
partiality produce is comparable to the Socratic Method, which Ranciere argues,
is the perfected form of stultification (Ranciere, 1991, p.29). According to
Ranciere, “like all learned masters, Socrates interrogates in order instruct...he
interrogates a slave who is destined to remain one” (Ranciere, 1991, p.29). The
Socratic Method asks false questions which give the illusion of discovery and
achievement. This illusion is necessary to sustain the relationship between the
pedagogue and the scholar, between the Master and the slave. The illusion that
exclusive partiality and false questions produce is an illusion of knowledge, when
in reality, “the demonstration of the student’s knowledge is just as much the
demonstration of powerlessness: he will never walk by himself, unless it is to
illustrate the master’s lesson” (Ranciere, 1991, p. 29). False questions deny
questioning and prevent the autonomous exercise of the student’s intelligence.
So how does one ask a question in such a way that its answer will not be
overdetermined? How does one reveal the questionability of what is questioned?
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What is a ‘True’ Question?: Bearing Witness to the Nothingness
Acknowledging the complexity of educational questioning, that in fact it is
more authoritarian than originally thought, Bingham turns to Gadamer’s account
of ‘true’ questioning. To better understand what Gadamer means by ‘true’
questioning, we should first be acquainted with his hermeneutic philosophy,
which Bingham does not go over in his essay. In short, Gadamer’s notion of
hermeneutics is essentially an extension of Heidegger’s concept of the
hermeneutic circle, a way of interpreting the whole in relation to its parts and
interpreting the parts in relation to its whole. Neither the whole text nor any
individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it
is a circle. Like Heidegger, Gadamer takes up this method of interpreting a text
and applies it to the existential understanding of being in the world. However,
unlike Heidegger, Gadamer asserts that we can reach the truth of being in the
world, we can step outside of the circular way of understanding our relation to
the world and the world’s relation to us, by understanding our experiences as
something that we create. In other words, we create new experiences by
stepping outside of the hermeneutic circle. By stepping out of the circular way of
understanding, we create new experiences that are understood in a new circular
way. Thus, Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy resembles a spiral as opposed to
a circle, where our experiences constantly change through understanding, forcing
us to spiral out of our initial understanding of being in the world. What sets us off
in this spiral movement, what momentarily throws us outside of the world in
which we be, are true questions. In other words, ‘true’ questioning can set us off
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into a spiral direction, helping us understand our hermeneutic positionality, which
requires being inside yet outside of the circle. Gadamer writes that “the
significance of questioning consists in revealing the questionability of what is
questioned...The sense of every question is realized in passing through this state
of indeterminacy, in which it becomes an open question” (Gadamer, 1975, p.
363). We must note that this “passing through the state of indeterminacy” is not
stepping out of a question, but rather, understanding its questionability, seeing its
essence while engaging with its hermeneutics. We can never escape this
hermeneutic circle in which we are the part of its whole. We can however
become alien to the hermeneutic circle. This alienation is a condition of
understanding.
Thus, a ‘true’ question asks something which is truly unknown, therefore
opening up both the question and what is in question. The question and that
which is being questioned is opened up to indeterminacy, a form of emancipation
that alienates the questioner, the question and the questioned from what
Heidegger calls “enframing,” or the subject’s hermeneutic relationship to the
world. To open up to indeterminacy, to be momentarily alienated from the world
of instructions and inscriptions, is comparable to a sublime experience. In his
book “The Inhuman,” Lyotard explains that to momentarily alienate oneself from
the world of thought, an agitation of the mind is required. This agitation, or the
mind that suffers, is only possible “if something remains to be determined,
something that hasn’t yet been determined” (Lyotard, 1991, p. 91). The strive to
determine this something, similar to questioning, is to inquire about the
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remainder, and “allow the indeterminate to appear as a question-mark” (Lyotard,
1991, p. 91). Thus, according to Lyotard, the mark of the question is being
present to the indeterminate. To reveal the questionability of what is questioned,
to be temporally present to indeterminacy, is to be in the here and now of the
sublime. The indeterminacy of the sublime and the ‘true’ question bears witness
to that which cannot be expressed and to the possibility of nothing happening
(Lyotard, 1991, p. 92). Thus, to dwell within indeterminacy, to be a stranger in
the world, is often associated with a feeling of anxiety. This feeling of anxiety
comes from being in the now of nothingness, from being outside of the
hermeneutic relationship to the world and fearing that nothing else will happen.
Another way to articulate being-thrown-out-of-the-world by the ‘true’ question is
to understand it as a crisis of consciousness. In her essay “Teacher as Stranger,”
Maxine Greene argues that in order to look inquiringly and wonderingly on the
world in which one lives, one needs to take a stranger’s vantage point. She
explains:
“When thinking-as-usual becomes untenable for anyone, the individual is
bound to experience a crisis of consciousness. The formerly unquestioned
has becomes questionable; the submerged has become visible...One is ready
to wonder and question; and it is in wonder and questioning that learning
begins” (Greene, 2001, p. 94).
We can see how the ‘true’ question “brings into the open,” an openness which
consists in the fact that the answer is not settled, in the indeterminacy of the
answer. To open up a question is thus opening up the subject matter in question
and, most importantly, the questioner herself. In other words, to emancipate a
question from its statement, the question needs to be questioned, needs to be
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alienated from the world of inscriptions. To ask a ‘true’ question simultaneously
alienates the questioner, emancipating her and giving her the autonomy of
exercising her intelligence. But can a ‘true’ question be an educational question?
Can ‘true’ questions be pedagogical? Can a teacher ask ‘true’ questions?
Can ‘True’ Questions be Pedagogical?: The Paradox of the Alienated Pedagogue
To ask a ‘true’ question, the questioner has to bear witness to the indeterminacy
and the “nothingness now” of the open question. To bear witness to the
questionability of the question, the questioner is consequently thrown-out-ofthe-world. Can a teacher bear witness to the anxiety-filled possibility of nothing
happening? According to Gadamer, the act of posing a ‘true’ question comes
apart when it comes to teachers who have curricular and educational ends
(Bingham, 2005, p. 556). Since teachers have an answer in mind when asking
students a question, their questions overdetermine the answers and thus block
the emancipatory potential for both the student and the teacher. According to
Gadamer, teachers choose questions with possible answers in mind, which in
turn, teaches the students to answer and question in a particularly pedagogical
way. There are expectations when a teacher asks a questions, expectations that
consequently stultify. That said, according to Gadamer’s logic, teacher’s can ask
open-ended questions, however, “it ceases to be pedagogy and becomes general
dialectic if the teacher does not intervene to steer answers in a direction that she
favours” (Bingham, 2005, p. 556). Herein lays the paradox with a ‘true’ question
being posed by a pedagogue: “the paradox inheres in the fact that the pedagogue
himself would have to disappear” (Bingham, 2005, p. 556 ). Similarly, in his book
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“The Ignorant Schoolmaster,” Ranciere explains that to ask a ‘true’ question, to
emancipate someone through ‘true’ questioning, it must be asked “by someone
who effectively knows no more than the student, who has never made the voyage
before him: the ignorant master” (Ranciere, 1991, p. 30). Thus, the ignorant
schoolmaster is not a pedagogue or anything like a formal teacher since s/he does
not know more than the student. Instead of “teaching” the student what the
teacher knows, instead of asking questions which overdetermine its answers, the
ignorant schoolmaster teaches what s/he does not know. Ranciere explains:
“to teach what one doesn’t know is simply to ask questions about what one
doesn’t know...the ignorant one can ask anything, and for the voyager in the
land of signs, his questions alone will be true questions compelling the
autonomous exercise of his intelligence” (Ranciere, 1991, p. 30).
Here, not only does Ranciere make reference to the sublime as the voyage into
“the land of sings,” but similarly to Lyotard, he argues that this voyage into the
sublime emancipates the voyager. To ask a ‘true’ question is to search for
something indeterminate. To ask a ‘true’ question requires alienation from
preconceived knowledge. Thus, teachers cannot ask ‘true’ questions. If they did,
they would no longer be pedagogues, but ignorant schoolmasters. So perhaps we
need to revise and revamp the role of the teacher as someone who has the
potential to be an ignorant schoolmaster, and therefore be capable of asking
‘true’ questions that question and emancipate. One way to do this is to look at
who can ask ‘true’ questions.
Who Can Ask ‘True’ Questions?: Concluding Remarks
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As we have already seen, the ignorant schoolmaster can ask ‘true’ questions since
what she does not know is equal to what her students do not know. According to
Ranciere, there is no hierarchy in ignorance. Ignorance, not knowing and bearing
witness to the “nothingness now” reveals the equality of intelligence. Ranciere
explains:
“Essentially, what an emancipated person can do is be an emancipator: to
give, not the key to knowledge, but the consciousness of what an
intelligence can do when it considers itself equal to any other and considers
any other equal to itself” (Ranciere, 1991, p. 39).
Thus, to ask a ‘true’ question is to be emancipated and to be the emancipator. To
ask a ‘true’ question, to open up the question to its questionability requires
consciousness of equal intelligence, whereas a false question believes in a
hierarchy of intelligence, thus stultifying the person to whom the question is
asked. The openness of a ‘true’ question unites the questioner and the
questioned. Both the questioner and the questioned, the teacher and the
student, bear witness to the “nothingness now.” In asking ‘true’ questions, both
the ignorant teacher and the ignorant student are united by what they do not
know. Ranciere puts it best when he explains:
“People are united because they are people, that is to say, distant beings.
Language doesn’t unite them. On the contrary, it is the arbitrariness of
language that makes them try to communicate by forcing them to
translate—but also puts them in a community of intelligence” (Ranciere,
1991, p. 58).
Thus, to ask a ‘true’ question is to engage in the arbitrariness of language,
emancipating both the student and the teacher. To engage in the arbitrariness of
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language, when one reaches the limits of one’s knowledge, understanding begins.
Gadamer puts it more wisely in stating that “language is by nature the language of
conversation; it fully realizes itself only in the process of coming to an
understanding” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 446). This coming into an understanding is a
practice of equality, that is to say, that there is no hierarchical relationship
between language and being. Bingham calls this ‘non-superficiality,’ where
“questioning and content are on the same ontological plane” (Bingham, 2005, p.
559). In other words, questioning is a particular linguistic form and practice that
insinuates itself into the very content that is being understood (Bingham, 2005, p.
560). What does this mean for educational questioning and pedagogy in terms of
asking ‘true’ questions? ‘Non-superficiality” and being conscious of equal
intelligence both produces and is produced by ‘true’ questions. By engaging in
issues that are controversial in nature and that do not have a “right” answer,
there is great potential for asking ‘true’ questions. In other words, by introducing
controversial issues in the classroom, issues that bring out the ignorance in both
the teacher and the students, ‘true’ questioning can begin to enact the issue at
hand.
The ignorant schoolmaster asks ‘true’ questions. One way to ask ‘true’
questions in educational practice is to bring out the ignorance in both the teacher
and the student. The ability to bear witness to “nothingness now” is also
recognized in artists. Artists, especially the avant-gardes, ask ‘true’ questions.
Instead of levelling out the intellectual interaction and assuming an equal
ignorance, the ‘true’ questions that avant-garde artists ask are entirely dependent
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on the viewer. The ‘true’ question opens up an experience of the sublime for the
viewer, an experience that forces the viewer to bear witness to the inexpressible,
to the “nothingness now.” In this case, the ‘true’ question belongs to aesthetics.
The artist is no longer the master of her message, but rather, is dependent on the
receiver. In the artist’s creation, the artist asks a ‘true’ question that asks what
makes one see. ‘True’ questioning is thus a kind of relational aesthetic, which
seeks to “transform and expand human relations. It focuses on blurring the
boundary between producers and consumers of art, and transforming the passive
spectator into an active participant” (Ruitenberg, 2011, p. 213). A work of art is
relational in its ability to shock, in its temporality and in its uncanny quality. In
order for it to be relational, or be a work of art for that matter, it requires an
active participant. Although the artist depends on the viewer in order for her
work to be a work, she assumes a kind of knowingness. The artist knows what
shocks, what gives a work its temporality and uncanny quality, and thus, has a
goal in mind when creating a work of art. The artist has an intention, but the
outcome, the content, is random and dependent on the individual viewer. Thus, a
`true’ question can be asked by a teacher and can be a pedagogical question, if
the teacher’s intention is to open up the question and to keep it in play, not
knowing exactly what the question’s outcome will be.
In order to ask ‘true’ questions in education, perhaps we need to first
question education. In doing so, we can see the way in which questioning opens
up and enacts the content being questioned, recognizing that in fact, education is
something that happens when one bears witness to “nothingness now” and
identifies one’s own ignorance. Education is ‘true’ questioning and vice versa.