BEYOND MEANING
AGAMBEN AND MERLEAU-PONTY ON THE BODY AND EDUCATION
Joris Vlieghe
Laboratory for Education and Society
University of Leuven (Belgium)
joris.vlieghe@ppw.kuleuven.be
In this paper I develop a perspective on the interconnectedness of education and
corporeality that allows to analyze concrete school practices in a way that has not been
explored so far. After briefly explaining why the body is an important issue for
educational research, I explore more extensively a school of thought, which goes back to
the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and which has monopolized the way in which we
are inclined to think about corporeality and education, whenever the body is considered
as having (some) value. I argue that this particular perspective, contrary to what might
be expected, doesn’t take the body seriously. Therefore I turn to the ideas Giorgio
Agamben has formulated in connection with gestures and the potentiality of movement,
in order to conceive a radically alternative view on the role of the body in education, and,
for that matter, on the meaning of education itself.
The corporeal turn in education
Schools and other educational institutions are, at least to an often heard analysis (e.g.
O’Farrel et al., 2000; Estola & Elbaz-Luwissh, 2003; Bresler, 2004; Macintyre Latta &
Buck, 2008), places where people interact with one another without fully realizing that
they are also embodied creatures. It is a common belief that this follows from deepseated prejudices regarding the nature of humankind and the true aims of teaching and
learning. For a very long time we cherished the idea that we are essentially our minds
and that the body is solely a container for this mental substance. The concrete
organization of school life and fleshing out of curricula reflected perfectly this dualist
account. Education was believed to be aimed at developing cognitive capacities, and this
implied that the body was only considered to be an irrelevant dimension, or a nuisance
that interferes with the real objectives of education (cf.: Watkins, 2007; Zembylas, 2007).
In view of these opinions, the body became the object of repression and drill (youngsters
should learn to concentrate on math problems instead of thinking about food and sex all
day long), as well as of hygienic and orthopedic measures (youngsters should learn to
follow a sound diet or to keep themselves physically in shape, in view of the idea that a
sound mind requires a sound body, Cf. Deacon, 2005).
As the result of a paradigm-shift in the humanities, it has become more and more
evident to say that, if we leave the body out of consideration, we run the risk of taking no
notice of potentially significant dimensions. Amongst the pace-makers of this call for a
body-centered pedagogy we find figures such as John Dewey (1938) and Gilbert Ryle
(1945). Ryle, for instance, introduced the opposition between knowing that and knowing
how. With this he showed that many important things we learn cannot be explained in
terms of mere cognition. Much intelligent behavior does not follow from an intellectual
grasping of reality (e.g. knowing that there are certain rules one should obey when
entering in a rational dialogue). It rather results from embodied habits and
susceptibilities, which pupils can only be said to possess when they are actually capable
to demonstrate that they know how to participate in such a dialogue (e.g. that they pose
the right kinds of questions, i.e. critical interventions that are fair and square, but never
rude or deceitful). Knowing how requires a kind of sensitivity that cannot be
intellectuality fathomed: it resides as it where in the spontaneous responses our
(speaking and thinking) bodies have become accustomed to give. Therefore teaching and
learning methods that take the body into account are required.
The most important impetus to this ‘corporeal turn’ is however the work of MerleauPonty (Peters, 2004). More than anyone else Merleau-Ponty (2002) has wiped the floor
with the intellectualist and dualist prejudices that stood for a very long time in the way
of taking seriously that we also are our bodies. Defending a position that is even more
radical than Ryle’s, Merleau-Ponty claims that all meaningful human behavior has its
roots in embodied practices. Even very abstract ways of relating to the world, e.g. on the
basis of mathematical concepts, actually presuppose the body (Moore & Yamamoto,
1988; Merleau-Ponty, 2002). We prefer for instance a decimal system because
mathematics originated in the embodied practice of counting on ten fingers. And, we
stick to this system even if, on theoretical grounds, it might turn out that a hexadecimal
system is much more efficient. Therefore, mathematics has a practical and embodied
ground. This means that it is the body that shapes the mind.
This is to be explained by the fact that the body has its own pre-reflexive
intentionality. Our bodies relate in and of themselves in meaningful ways to the world,
and this happens without any support of conscious activity. Mental representation is no
necessary condition for being able to grab a pen that is lying on our desktop: the body
itself has knowledge of the geography of the desk we are working on – just in the way
that the body knows the distribution of the keys on the querty-fingerboard (whilst our
‘mind’ doesn’t). The body is therefore no inert vehicle for the mind, but is itself a source
of meaning and even forms a condition of possibility for relating to the world in a
meaningful way. That is also why Merleau-Ponty (2002, p. 137) claims that the basic
modality of consciousness is not ‘I think that’, but ‘I can’. It is the practical relation
between ourselves and the world we can put at use that forms the very basis of all
intentional behavior. All conscious activities find in the end their origin in the
actualization of concrete projects the embodied subject (‘corps-sujet’) undertakes.
In his later work (1979) Merleau-Ponty even argues that human beings are never
separate and self-identical entities: we are fully ‘intertwined’ with the materiality of the
world and of others. This also means that the whole of reality itself should be conceived
in a ‘corporeal’ way (rather than seeing it as an inert material substance). In this
context, he introduces notions like ‘intercorporeality’ and ‘flesh of the world’ to refer to
this body-like foundation of everything that exists. Even if this claim might at first sight
seem far-fetched, Merleau-Ponty only describes at a phenomenological level (i.e. at the
level of what we actually experience) what in more recent times has been discovered by
‘hard’ natural science. The idea that consciousness is fundamentally embedded in the
‘flesh of the world’ follows, amongst other things, from the observation that we perceive
others’ behaviour immediately, i.e. without first having to reflect upon it or to interpret
visual stimuli. In their pioneering neurophysiological research regarding ‘mirror
neurons’, Rizzolatti and Craighero (2004) have discovered that the specific parts of our
brain that are responsible for the perception of other people’s motor behavior are
actually identical to the very neurological basis for the execution of our own movements
and gestures. This discovery accounts for the spontaneous inclination to imitate each
other’s behavior and for the foundational role of mimesis in primary learning processes.
Merleau-Ponty’s ideas have proven to be quite influential in the field of educational
theory. Next to the possibility to rethink in a much more body-centered way the practice
of science education (Pozzer-Ardenghi & Roth, 2007), or physical education (Whitehead,
2007), this line of thought also granted alternative approaches to less obvious domains,
such as dealing with students suffering from mental disorders (Stinson, 2003, p. 157158) or with developing social justice courses. In regard with the last, Sherry Shapiro
(1999) uses Merleau-Ponty’s ideas in order to criticize the standard way in which schools
deal with issues such as racism or homophobia. As a rule, teachers restrict courses to
merely transmitting knowledge about conditions that lead to a discriminatory attitude.
This has, however, turned out to be a very inefficient pedagogic approach (Hogan, 2006).
Social justice education will only be successful if teachers appeal to ‘physically livedthrough’ feelings one experiences when belonging to a minority and being offended for
that reason. To Shapiro, we should come to see that intolerant attitudes result from a
corporeal insensitivity towards discrimination. As long as one hasn’t gone through a
bodily lived sensation of
being discriminated, issues such as racism, sexism or
homophobia have only little meaning, in the same manner that (some) colors have no
meaning to people afflicted with color blindness (Cf. Shapiro, 1999). Inviting a
xenophobic student to change her attitudes on the basis of rational arguments alone is as
pointless as trying to explain the difference between sour and sweet to someone born
without taste buds.
In a similar way Richard Shusterman holds a plea for ‘somaesthetics’ in education
(Shusterman, 2004, p. 57). He argues that the aversion vis-à-vis mathematical formulae
many students share, as well as xenophobia are habits that result from concrete
(traumatic) events in one’s personal life. These often concern deeply embodied
experiences, accompanied by tight muscle contractions. This gives cause to a conditioned
behavioral pattern to react in a inhibitory way to specific situations. A successful social
justice education should take this insight into account and should stimulate students to
detect having these corporeal feelings, offering the possibility to retrain these
(undesirable) habits of conduct. I should point out that Shusterman also raises objections
to the Merleau-Pontian approach, because it opposes, in his reading, reflection and lived
experience in an exclusionary way, preventing the possibility of a rich ‘lived corporeal
reflection’ (Shusterman, 2005, p.165). I suggest to read his remarks as a conceptual
refinement, rather than as a real criticism of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas. Anyway, in my view
this way of thinking illustrates very well how a (broader) Merleau-Pontian framework
has turned corporeality into a major educational issue.
The reduction of corporeality to a meaning-constituting resource
In this paper, I would like to rise a more fundamental criticism to the Merleau-Pontian
take on educational issues that is completely different from the point Shusterman brings
forward. This school of thought claims to have taken away the burden of a long standing
intellectualist and dualist tradition in educational theory and research, and to have set
the body free. On a closer look, however, here are two reasons for doubting whether this
approach is really interested in a prioritization and emancipation of the body. First, the
body is considered to be educationally relevant, but only in so far it supports established
goals of schooling and education. Corporeality appears, to this approach, as a factor of
importance because it is a helpful tool for optimizing the outcome of educational
processes: after having discovered that the body is a source of meaning itself,
educationalists are well advised putting it at use to impart knowledge or to influence
attitudes in a more efficient way. The body is thus regarded as a resource we didn’t
realize to possess and as an instrument for achieving educational objectives that in the
end have nothing to do with corporeality itself. Therefore, in my view, the body has a
functional and therefore only a secondary role to fulfill.
To be clear, I am not denying that a more body-centered math training or social
justice education, as proposed by the Merleau-Pontian school of thought, might be more
efficient than traditional approaches. I am also not claiming that this approach is totally
unimportant or irrelevant to educational theory. My main concern is that this particular
way of looking rules out the possibility that the body might be in and of itself
educationally significant. More specifically, I argue in the next paragraph that, at the
precise moment at which the body can no longer be reduced to a resource or an
instrument, we might possibly find that the body has an intrinsically educational
meaning.
Before going deeper into this, I have to discuss a second objection to the idea that the
Merleau-Pontian line of thought really prioritizes the body. This view essentially defends
a more body-centered approach on the basis of the argument that the body possesses a
pre-reflexive intentionality and that it is the source of all meaning-constitution. This is
to say that the significance of corporeity is understood in exactly the same terms that
were essential to the intellectualist and dualist view. In doing this, Jean-Luc Nancy
comments , “we turn the body into a soul in the traditional sense: the signifying body,
the expressive body […]. In saying this, we put the body in the place of the soul or the
spirit.” (Nancy, 2008, p.133) Therefore, the body is regarded as (educationally) important
as far as it is capable of performing precisely these activities that for a long time were
supposed to be the privilege of the solemn life of mind. Therefore I argue that this view is
in the end still relying on the account of humankind it was supposed to be critical to, and
that is therefore contradictory.
The main concern of this contribution is, however, not to go deeper into the
(in)consistencies typical of the Merleau-Pontian school of thought, but to point to the fact
that this perspective precludes a way of dealing with corporeality in a much more
straight-forward manner. Perhaps we should take the idea that we are intertwined with
the ‘flesh of the world’ in a much more literal way. This is to say that there are bodily
dimensions that exceed the realm of intentionality and meaning (we are just flesh, or
even better: we affirm to be entirely ‘flesh’). And, furthermore, that these dimensions
might be of a great importance for education. In my view, the Merleau-Pontian approach
confronts us with the false dilemma of either taking for granted a body-mind dualism or
accepting that the body is itself a carrier of meaning. However, it seems to me very
legitimate to draw attention to yet another, third, approach that pays tribute to the body
such as it is and that takes into account bodily experiences that are ‘beyond’ meaning
and intentionality, but that does not fall into the pitfall of dualism.
The body ‘beyond meaning’: Agamben’s philosophy of human action
In this section I deal with the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and
more precisely with his reflections on the nature of human action, in order to
substantiate the claim that there is a register of human activity (‘pure means’) that
cannot be reduced to a meaning constituting resource, but that is nevertheless
educationally significant. This concerns a form of action which cancels out all human
intentionality and which is emptied of all functional meaning. Making two even stronger
claims, it might be said, first, that the educational meaning of the body I am after
precisely resides in this interruption of intentionality and functionality, and, second,
that this Agambenian view takes the body far more seriously than the Merleau-Pontian
approach.
In an essay on gestures, Agamben (2000) defies the common view, which goes back to
Aristotle, to categorize human activity as either ‘praxis’ (activities that are intrinsically
worthwhile) or ‘poiesis’ (activities that have their meaning outside themselves). Whereas
the first category refers to behavior whose end lies in itself (autotelic activity), the
second category refers to a behavior that is a mean that addresses an end (instrumental
activity). When we walk, for instance, we are inclined to consider this activity either as
in itself meaningful (e.g. walking for walking’s sake on a sunny afternoon, without any
further goal in mind) or as meaningful in relation to an extrinsic goal (e.g. to have one’s
daily walk in order to keep fit). At times one and the same activity might of course be
intrinsically gratifying and serving a purpose that exists independently from what one is
doing. Sticking to this classification we run the risk that any behavior that is devoid of a
concrete purpose is immediately considered as ‘praxis’. And this might preclude the
possibility that we take notice of a third way to relate to what we are doing, viz. that we
might experience our actions as ‘means without end’ or ‘pure means’ (Agamben, 2000, p.
58). With this phraseology Agamben refers to activities that are potentially aimed at the
realization of a goal (and that are thus not just autotelic), but that remain temporarily
devoid of any purpose whatsoever. This suspension of teleology allows that an activity
might be experienced as such.
Tics form a good example. Striking one’s own chin when attending a lecture, for
instance, is usually not intrinsically gratifying (‘praxis’), neither is it necessarily
expressive of one’s state of mind (‘poiesis’). Of course, this gesture might have been
expressing boredom or deep concentration and might have been therefore a purposeful
means (viz. a body-language), and this is exactly the point. Because this gesture is
executed for no particular reason, and therefore disinvested with meaning, it precisely
has the capacity to show something that is always presupposed in every bodily behavior,
but that also normally remains implicit, i.e. the fundamental presupposition that
gestures might convey meaning. When disinvested with outer and inner teleology, this
activity is entirely displayed ‘as means’: it has become pure communicability (at the
precise moment that any possibility for communication is suspended). The same applies
to making doodles. These are nonsensical drawings produced when our attention is
wholly focused on another difficult task, which typically takes place when we are on the
telephone and happen to have pen and paper at our disposal. Taking an example from
the history of literature, consider Gertrude Stein’s practice of ‘automatic writing’, which
consists in isolating the technical art of writing from meaning formation via acts of
distraction (Will, 2001, p. 170).
Of course, an obvious explanation is to interpret all these phenomena as conveying a
deeper, unconscious meaning. When we are performing a difficult task that demands our
full attention, unconscious processes (so called ‘primary processes’) might take
possession over other registers of behavior that temporarily escape our control. And so,
tics, doodles and unintentionally composed poems might reveal what is taking place in
the non-accessible parts of our psychic system. Like dreams, they express what we really
fear and desire (without being conscious of it) and thus possess, in spite of their
seemingly nonsensical character, a deeper meaning. When we are constantly drawing
sharp angles or arrows when talking with someone on the phone, this might reveal an
unconscious aggressive attitude towards her. In view of this, our actions can be said to
express a clear intention after all, and therefore they should be considered as a poietic
activity.
However, just like the Merleau-Pontian school of thought I criticized, this kind of
interpretation is again excluding the possibility of a register of corporeal behavior that is
‘beyond meaning’. It is as if everything the body is capable of doing must have a definite
significance. And therefore, if we don’t succeed in providing a conscious intention to
make our behavior intelligible, we are tempted to construct an unconscious system of
meaning-production behind it. So, Nancy’s criticism to Merleau-Ponty might equally
apply to psycho-analytical explanations: ‘we put the body in the place of the soul or the
spirit.’ (Nancy, 2008, p.133). Otherwise stated: we do not take the body seriously.
Following Agamben’s ideas on this matter, I suggest to develop an entirely
alternative approach. There is a significant portion of bodily experience that is
disinvested with any clear meaning or fixed purpose and that precisely for this reason
allows for an experience of ‘pure’ capability (of movement, in the case of tics, or of
writing, in the case of drawing doodles or automatic writing) (Cf. Agamben, 1999, p. 177184). We experience in a literal sense what it means that we can move, draw and write.
Because the expressions ‘pure’ and ‘beyond meaning’ might suggest things that have
nothing to with an Agambenian point of view, it is important to make some further
clarifications at this point.
To begin with, ‘pure’ is not to be understood in a romantic sense. It is not as if we are
allowed a blissful moment during which we return to a more authentic or edenic state of
existence that is uncontaminated by the impositions of culture and convention. ‘Pure’ is
solely meant as a descriptive category: it refers to the possibility, which is always
present, that human activity is experienced as ‘means without end’. For instance, we no
longer experience to write this or to write that, but we experience writing as such. This
implies, furthermore, that the suspension of meaning that takes place here is not to be
seen as the mere opposite of a ‘standard condition’ in which we are in control of the
meaning of what we do. ‘Beyond meaning’ is thus not synonymous with ‘meaningless’: it
concerns a situation that is precisely beyond meaningfulness and meaninglessness.
When we for instance make a slip of the pen and do something that has ‘no meaning’,
this event still has sense against the background of intentional processes of meaningcreation. Otherwise we couldn’t define it as a mistake. In contradistinction to this, what
is at stake in producing doodles or automatic poems is not so much an experience that
the things we write down lack meaning, but all the more that we might experience for
the first time what writing is all about. Again, this experience normally remains hidden
from view: when our hand caresses the face of a beloved one, or when we write a poem to
express our tender feelings for her, this always presupposes that we are able to express
meaning. However, that we can write is only experienced when our actions no longer
convey any meaning whatsoever. When we find ourselves in situations that are ‘beyond
meaning’, we might live strong experience of potentiality (Agamben, 1999).
This idea should however not be confused with an assumption that forms the
background of a common strain of thought in educational theory and that is also
essential to the Merleau-Pontian view I criticized. Opposing dualist and intellectualist
prejudices concerning teaching and learning, this school of thought argues, as I
explained, that the basic modality of consciousness is not to be situated at a cognitive
level (‘I think that’), but at the level of a pragmatic relation between ourselves and the
world, and more precisely that it consist in the bodily lived experience that we are able
to influence the world and to realize our projects (‘I can’). This is to say that even the
most abstract activities should be reduced, according to Merleau-Ponty, to the successful
interaction between our bodies and things-at-hand, as the example concerning the
origins of the decimal system shows. Potentiality, in the Agambenian sense, has however
nothing to do with this: it is precisely at the moment that we no longer succeed in
bringing concrete possibilities to actualization, that we might experience what it means
‘that we are capable’ in the first place. Potentiality is always related to impotentiality.
A further, but most important clarification to be made, concerns the subject of the
experience of potentiality: the ‘I’ in the expression ‘I can (see)’ is not referring to a subject
in the traditional sense of the word, viz. as a foundational principle behind that which
we experience. Experiencing potentiality never results in a strengthening of our subjectposition, in the sense that we might appropriate the concrete possibilities we bring into
actualization as a sort of private possession or gain. On the contrary, the very possibility
to relate to ourselves as private and self-possessed beings (as subjects, traditionally
defined), is temporarily suspended: we go through an experience of expropriation.
Potentiality does not belong to anyone in particular. It does not refer to a register of
experience through which one might realize oneself, but rather to the absence of this
possibility. This is the most fundamental reason why Agamben claims that potentiality
is always impotentiality. And this is also the reason why Agamben calls this experience
an ‘experiment’ (Agamben, 1993, p. 4): in its original Latin sense, ‘experiri’ exactly
means ‘putting oneself at risk’. What is at stake is thus a desubjectivating experience.
And this clearly points to a fundamental difference between Agamben’s view and a
traditional phenomenological approach (which, although it stresses the relation worldsubject rather than presupposing a ‘closed subjectivity’, nevertheless leaves the private
and self-possessed character of the subject intact).
An Agambenian approach to the issue of corporeality and education
The same idea might be formulated in a more positive manner. Experiencing potentiality
also means experiencing in a strong and direct way that there is no necessity in any
existing order of things and that all can begin anew.
So, Agamben’s claim that
potentiality concerns fundamentally a moment of impotentiality and desubjectivation
could also be understood as a criticism of a limited and simplistic conception of what it
means that we, as humans, are creatures of possibility and that a true change in the
course of history can take place. This simplistic, though quite commonly endorsed view
consists in defining ability in terms of the mere actualization of possibilities (i.e. that the
impossibility to realize ourselves is absent). This is to say that we define ourselves as
subjects with a substantive identity and with an interest in a clear position vis-à-vis
other subjects (Agamben, 1999, p. 180). This is however also to say that all
transformation is actually reduced to a mere continuation of something that already
exists. We are not really changed (as subjects).
Applied to education: we are usually inclined to define education in terms of the
preparation of a new generation for an already existing society. This is to say that
schools and other pedagogical institutions see it as their most important goals to get the
right wo/man at the right place in future society, on the basis of each student’s talents,
possibilities and invested efforts. This means however that education is viewed in an
essentially conservative way: even if it is (sometimes) implied that students develop
themselves in new ways, what is at stake is that they fully realize their own capacities
and strengthen their own position in life, and at the same time that society’s optimal
functioning and flourishing is secured. That we are all subjects interested in such a
sustentative identity or that we should organize our communal existence according to an
existing distribution of positions and roles is, however, never questioned.
In that sense it might be claimed that a real transformation of personal and
collective life is precluded. Precisely for this reason Agamben’s reflections might show
their relevance for educational theory and research. Experiencing potentiality might
upset any existing societal order, because we are in a sense experiencing a potential for
change that is no longer linked to a private, self-possessed subject. It also means that
any pedagogical order is interrupted: any attempt to structure and regulate communal
life according to a logic of fixed identities and clear positions (which is safeguarded by
schools and other pedagogical institutions) is invalidated. This is to say that the
experience of potentiality might grant a significant emancipation from the existing order
of things and, moreover, that it is in and of itself educational.
This would of course imply, that education is no longer defined in terms of a
preparation for a future social life, but as the (perhaps only momentary) possibility that
we experience individual and social life in such a way that identity and position no
longer matter. And that therefore the possibility of new and unforeseen ways of
coexisting is granted. The future might be radically different. Coming back to the central
issue of this paper, viz. the interrelatedness of education and corporeality, it might be
claimed that certain bodily experiences possess this power to interrupt the pedagogical
order. These are, more specifically, related to embodied life as far as it is ‘beyond
meaning’, because they might grant a sense of potentiality that is no longer related to
the self-possessed, intentional subject.
This explains, on the one hand, the situation I took as the beginning point of my
considerations on corporeality, viz. that the body is more often than not ‘absent’ in the
world of education. Because of its insurrectionary power vis-à-vis any pedagogical order,
it becomes intelligible why the body is regularly considered as a nuisance. On the other
hand, this also explains why the so-called body-centered approaches (of the MerleauPontian type) never take the body seriously, but put it at use for more efficiently
realizing already existing pedagogical goals. It is as if, when the body is allowed to have
a role of significance, the insurrectionary power that is inherent to corporeality is
immediately neutralized by turning the body into an instrument.
Although I have limited my analysis thus far to examples such as automatic writing
and tics, the same holds for concrete occurrences and practices that might take place at
school. Take for instance laughter. Leaving beside phenomena such as smiling or
scorning, and concentrating on situations in which laughter just happens and in which
we are literally overpowered by it, one might say that laughter consists in a response
that is completely beyond our control and that renders us completely ‘out of position’
(Plessner, 1961,). We no longer answer the situation we find ourselves in as selfcontained subjects in control over existence. It is rather as if ‘the body answers in our
place’ (Ibid., p. 155). When we are taken by laughter we experience to coincide entirely
with our bodies, and to such a degree that we live a moment beyond intentionality and
meaning. In that sense laughter, which is typically a communal experience during which
we (as students, but also as teachers) are exposed to one another, is a strong experience
of potentiality.
But again, as a rule the insurrectionary power of laughter is fended off: either
laughter is banned from schools (schools might be defined as places of seriousness par
excellence), or – if it is allowed – laughter is immediately put at use: it gets employed as
a tool for furthering motivation, creativity, social cohesion, learning to cope with loss and
adversity, etc.
That is also the reason why in the existing educational research on
laughter, all attention goes to humor, rather than to the strong physical experience
laughter also is (coinciding with the rhythmical spasms of midriff and facial musculature
which are completely beyond our control). However, educational research might take
laughter far more seriously, meaning that laughter, as an entirely bodily event, is
intrinsically educational: we might live through an affirmative experience of embodied
life that suspends all social order and regulation, and opens the possibility of an
unforeseen way of living together.
Repetitive activities in school (exercising and practicing) might be seen from the
same viewpoint. Take for instance the performance of basic calisthenics (stretching,
bending, rotating the various body parts), in group and under the command of a teacher
who imposes a fixed rhythm. In view of progressive pedagogies such activities are, more
often than not, disregarded: they seem to be all about disciplinarization and to prevent
intrinsic motivation in students (because of their dreary and simple character). Or, if
they still have a place in the physical education-curriculum, they have at the most an
instrumental value, i.e. they serve as a mere preparation for things that really matter,
such as sport and athletics (during which students might express and realize themselves
in movement). However, from an Agambenian view, these activities might be seen as
granting an experience of potentiaility. Because of their basic, repetitive and collective
character, they suspend the possibility that we relate to what we are doing from an
intentional point of view. In a sense we coincide, again, with our bodies. We experience
just ‘to move’, and this amidst an aggregation of bodies that all act the same at the
precise same moment. Therefore, movement appears as ’pure means’: movement is
experienced as movement. And so, it might be said that basic calisthenics has a properly
educational value: what is at stake is that we might experience potentiality for
movement – with all its insurgent force.
A similar case could be made for other forms of exercising and practising. Even if it
concerns things that have at first sight little to do with the body, such as rehearsing in
group the multiplication tables, it might still be argued that it concerns a typical ‘school’
activity (meaning that it is unlikely that we do such things one our own at home or
during on-line learning-activities), and thus a collective activity of bodies gathered
between the four walls of the classroom. I have no place here to go deeper into this, but
focusing on these practices as bodily activities, they might even be seen as linked to an
experience of potentiality (in this case, the potentiality of counting), rather than
immediately viewing them as obsolete practices, as mostly happens today. In this way, I
hope to have given some concrete illustrations of what an Agambenian approach towards
concrete school practices might look like and why a one-dimensional focus on the body as
resource and/or source of meaningful behavior precludes fruitful ways to explore the
educational meaning of corporeality.
References
Agamben, G. (1993) Infancy and History. The Destruction of Experience (L. Heron,
Trans.). London: Verso
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