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This article is a philosophical investigation of the example's function as a didactic practice. In teaching, it is common to use examples to concretize, clarify and give students a knowability of the taught content, but this knowability also implies something. But this knowability also means something specific. The article specifically discusses religious education and religious diversity in a Swedish school context. In the article I argue, drawing on Giorgio Agamben's understanding of the example, how the example stands for itself, but which also, in its specificity and singularity, moves towards what is visible next to it. The example and its knowledge have a movement between two singularities – and not as a movement between a part and the whole, i.e., not between the particular and the general. It creates something, Agamben writes, which not only involves methodology (and subject didactic questions) but also ontology. The article argues that the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a didactic strategy, which also can have implications for students' subjectivity. Overall, the article is a theoretical contribution which show how the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a vital didactic strategy within teaching.

OBS Radioessä, P1. Sändes: 12 mars 2024.

Arena Essä

This book explores the pedagogical possibilities of testimony and witnessing. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, this book highlights the ultimate impossibility of witnessing and testimony: testimonies do not stand outside language, history, politics, or capitalist systems. Through analysis of different aspects of representation, subjectivity and emotions, this book illustrates how testimonies can be used as a way to control student emotions, perceptions and understandings. Testimonies used within teaching can work as a way to reproduce stereotypes of suffering, and can thus consolidate and reinforce exisiting power structures and identities. By exploring these difficulties, the author argues for the value of teaching historical testimonies of suffering that recognize both the impossibilities and possibilities of witnessing and testimony.​

In the paper presentation at NERA I intend to present a developed part of my PhD thesis, Det omöjliga vittnandet: om vittnesmålets pedgogiska möjligheter (Eskaton, 2017); a thesis on the educational possibilities of testimony and witnessing. In the thesis I investigate what testimonies and the act of witnessing can do in relation to education. More specifically, I investigate what kind of educational possibilities there are in witnessing and testimony, in relation to teaching as well as outside schools. I do this by focusing three different aspects, namely representation, subjectivity and emotion. Three aspects that relate to the phenomenon of testimony – but also have bearing on the daily life of teaching. In the paper presentation at NERA I will focus on one of these aspects, namely on emotions. Educational research shows how the use of testimony in teaching can carry on opportunities for students to create various teaching related positive values, such as a historical consciousness or an ethical approach to the world and other people, or how being exposed to various testimonies could bring about feelings and emotions – or even crises. These emotions or crises can be the starting point towards dealing with historical traumas, and through that be the basis for knowledge of history, including testimonies of those different from oneself and/or from other parts of the world. Testimonies carry the idea of being singular and to be “true” stories, this is why students and pupils exposed to testimonies are also considered of value when working with historical trauma and attempting to bring consciousness and personal ethical reflection. For example, Felman and Laub (1991) write how the encountering with the literary testimonies may involve a learning situation where students who are exposed to testimonies become emotionally involved, and by that, the students can be taught. Felman and Laub examine the relationship between students’ crises and pedagogy, and consider the emo

Kan en undervisning byggd på vittnesmål som vittnar om historiska sår bidra till att rätta det orätta? Det omöjliga vittnandet undersöker vad det finns för pedagogiska möjligheter i vittnandet och i vittnesmålet genom en filosofisk utredning av olika aspekter, närmare bestämt representation, subjektivitet och känslor. Det är en filosofisk studie som utgår från Giorgio Agamben, men också från The Latina Feminist Group, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sara Ahmed och Eduardo Glissant. Vad har vittnesmålet för pedagogiska möjligheter att förändra nuet? På vilket sätt kan vittnandet möjliggöra processer av subjektivitet? Vad kan känslorna göra i mötet med vittnesmål?, Det omöjliga vittnandet är en omarbetad version, med samma namn, av Marie Hållanders avhandling i pedagogik (2016).

ISSN 2244-9140.

The idea for this special issue developed during one of the yearly meetings of the Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA). A group of younger researchers interested in feminist and queer philosophical perspectives on education had gathered between the official network meetings and discussed the organizational division between a more narrowly defined philosophy of education, on the one hand, within the network of The Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education and on the other hand feminist philosophical perspectives within the networks Gender and Education and Post-approaches to education.

This article considers the common and shared world in teaching, by reference to the concept of profanation in relation to biopolitics. “To profane”, means to treat something (or someone) as worldly and as something “that can be played with”. The act of profanation has implications for how objects that are “put on the table” can be regarded in teaching and how these “objects” can become public goods. But what happens when things that are used in teaching are representations of social injustice and suffering? This article will give a critique of the idea of profanation, specifically discussing when teaching deals with social injustice and representations of suffering.

There is great interest in testimonies, both in society at large and as a theoretical concept. Within educational research testimony is used to understand and develop epistemological, political or ethical thinking. In this thesis I investigate what testimonies and the act of witnessing can do in relation to education. More specifically, I investigate what kind of pedagogical possibilities there are in witnessing and testimony, in relation to teaching as well as outside schools. Focusing on three different aspects (of these phenomena), namely representation, subjectivity and emotion I discuss different examples of testimonies. These are Collateral Murder, The Living History Forum’s book Tell Ye Your Children…, Gruva by Sara Lidman and Odd Uhrbom, and pictures with Alan Kurdi from 2015 taken by Nilüfer Demir. I examine the pedagogical possibilities of testimony and witnessing based on the idea that such possibilities are situated in human imperfection and lack of ability, where the knowledge is placed in the impossibility, in our not-knowing. This dialectical understanding, drawing on Giorgio Agamben, implies a different formulation than previous research, by highlighting the impossibility of witnessing and of testimony, for example by how the testimony does not stand outside the political, and in Western society more specifically, the capitalist system. Through the analyses of the different aspects (representation, subjectivity, emotions) I show how testimonies can serve as a way to control the students' emotions and perceptions (drawing on Sara Ahmed), and influence the perception of the society in which the students live. I have also shown how the act of witnessing can be done at the witness’ own expense (by drawing on The Latina Feminist Group). It can mean that testimonies work as a way to reproduce various stereotypes of different people's suffering and thus consolidate existing power structures and identities. The conditions surrounding witnessing and testimoni

In classrooms there are stories, as pedagogical content that tell that something wrong and exceedingly bad has happened. The stories differ, both in form and content; it may be a testimony from today's war-torn areas, or historical documents and witness stories of violence, misery and death. The paper’s aim is partly to focus on these types of stories, as testimonies, as an epistemological problem and from there on explore what significance these types of testimonies may have in relation to the understanding of difference. The aim is also to argue and make testimony a question for education. How can we understand the relation between the testimony and difference in an educational context? Rooted in philosophy of education, I will do this through a philosophical study and analysis of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s understanding of the testimony and the witness. When Agamben understands the witness - based on Primo Levi’s discussions and experiences on the authentic and complete witness - as the point where knowledge and ethics come together I find some interesting starting points for understanding the testimony as something central for educational practice. The paper will therefore pay attention to the testimony as an educational problem and based on this, argue that the testimony as a problem needs to be acknowledged in terms of respect for difference.