Experiencing (im)potentiality.
Bollnow and Agamben on the
educational meaning of school
practices
Joris Vlieghe
Laboratory for Education and Society
KU Leuven
Overview & aims
• Focus of this presentation: ‘the practice of practising’
(German: ‘Üben’, Dutch: ‘oefenen’, French: ‘s’exercer’)
• Examples: getting to know the text of a poem by heart while
reciting it over and over again; mastering the tables of
multiplication by repeating again and again the appropriate
mathematical formulae (‘four times nine is thirty-six’); reiterating
sets of the most elementary bodily movements during gym
class; learning to play the recorder by unremittingly retaking a
piece of music
• Main objective: analysing these practices as typically ‘school
practices’, showing their specifically educational relevance
Overview & aims
• As
a rule, practising is seen as
- an obsolete activity (which hinders deep forms of
learning, long-term study effects and genuine selfdevelopment)
- an activity that has no intrinsically educational
meaning (merely a support or instrument for things
that really matter)
• Exceptions to this rule:
- Otto Friedrich Bollnow (1978): Vom Geist des
Übens.
- more recently: work of Peter Sloterdijk and Malte
Brinkmann
Overview & aims
• Philosophical analysis of the meaning of these practices, without
immediatelly denouncing them as old fashioned or unproductive
• Revisiting the classic work of Bollnow, showing that his analysis is
insufficient
• Supplementing this analysis by elaborating the basic intuition behind
Bollnows juxtaposing of ‘learning’ and ‘practising’ with the aid of the
work of Giorgio Agamben
•This is NOT a plea for reintroducing obsolete school practices
•The idea is RATHER to start from the ‘practice of practising’ as
something that is/was a typically ‘school practise’ and to go deeper into
it from an Agambenian perspective
Practising as a typical ‘school practice’
• Although similar activities might take place outside the
four walls of the classroom, there exists a form of
practising that is characteristic for schools (because
of the strictly repetitive, rhythmical and collective nature
of these practices, which requires certain spatial and
temporal conditions, as well as the presence of a
‘master’ who watches over the precise execution of that
which is commanded)
• Stronger claim (Foucault, Stiegler): it might be argued
that this activity is (or has been) constitutive for the
very institution ‘school’ as a historically and
geographically situated phenomenon.
Practising as a typical ‘school practice’
•
“It might seem pointless to recall this fact, which nevertheless
deserves to be recalled and thought over again: there is no school
before the practice of writing and reading. Mere processes of transition
or initiation are not in themselves typical school activities. This is to
say that the school ceases to exist when writing and reading loose
their central position, when writing and reading have become just one
set of [...] technologies next to many others […] Writing and reading,
as far as it regards techniques that I embody, are before anything else
a gestural mechanics, and the school is before anything else a bodily
discipline in this respect. The schooling of bodies is not only
concerned with learning to sit still for one or two hours, it is also
concerned with learning to sit still in order to draw (graphein, which is
the origin of the word gramma): to leave behind traces, as well as
generating them. It is also concerned with learning to sit still when
listening attentively: the school is a school of attention. Societies
without schools don’t allow for obtaining this particular kind of attention
(they, quite the reverse, generate other types of attention).” (Stiegler,
2007, p. 174-175)
Practising as a typical ‘school practice’
3 important claims:
• Not all institutions that are involved with preparing the young
for a future societal life are necessarily ‘schools’
• the school is a particular (western) invention that is
essentially related to the installation of a corporeal regime
(‘gestural mechanics’), viz. the collective and bodily repetition
of letters, words, numbers, movements, etc.
• This ‘gestural mechanics’ allows for a particular form of
attention for these things (or more broadly formulated: ‘care’
for the world)
Practising as a typical ‘school practice’
• In view of this, the question arises what practising
precisely consists in (consisted in) and what its
educational relevance is (or was).
• Once more: no plea for returning to the ‘good old days’
• ‘Obvious’ place to look: Bollnow, Vom Geist des Übens
(detailed phenomenological analysis of practising)
Bollnow: Vom Geist des Übens
Learning
Practising
- Matter of Wissen (knowledge)
- Matter of Können (skill/ability)
-‘All or nothing’: either one knows or
one doesn’t
- Always ‘in between’ ability and lack
of ability (never ending process)
- One cannot perfect one’s
knowledge
- Constitutive ‘disability’:
Können = Nichtkönnen
- Repetition is accidental
- Repetition is essential
Problems with Bollnow’s view
(practising ≈ continuous improvement/perfection)
• This analysis is only relevant for distinguishing plain learning
(livre = book) from exercising complex cultural activities
(athletics, music, archery)
Therefore: the distinction he makes doesn’t help to
understand typically ‘school’ practices (such as rehearsing
the alphabet)
• What is really at stake in Bollnow’s definition is that
practising is ultimately a form of self-exercise
Therefore: that what is exercised (the subject matter)
ultimately doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that
the matter is no so easy to master as the alphabet
A more adequate view
• In my view there is a most valuable intuition behind the sharp
bifurcation Bollnow introduces between learning and practising.
• But, his reference to ‘Wissen’ (knowledge, that one either definitively
possesses or completely lacks ) as opposed to ‘Können’ (skill, which
is always only partially possessed) obfuscates the issue
• I suggest that what is really at stake is the difference between
‘Können’ and ‘Nichtkönnen’
• Learning = an activity through which students reinforce themselves,
viz. enhancing their position in life by adding something to themselves
that they formerly didn’t possess (didn’t know/were not able to)
• Practising = an activity during which students relate to something
they already possess (even if they possess it partially)
A more adequate view
• Otherwise stated:
- learning
- practising
=
=
NICHT-KÖNNEN → KÖNNEN
KÖNNEN → NICHTKÖNNEN
• This is the reason why practising is essentially repetitive (whilst
learning might happen with or without repetition): we relate to something
that we already know or that we are already able to do
• This is also why it concerns a typical school activity: it presuposes a
certain organisation of time and space (as well as the presence of a
teacher) that allows for the repetition of a subject matter in a collective
and strongly embodied way (‘gestural mechanics’).
•‘We’ all do the same at the same moment (no longer as intentional
subjects, interested in a stregthening of individual positions, but as an
aggregation of bodies)
A more adequate view
• In sum: school-practising concerns a particular, bodily and collective,
activity that brings about an unusual way of relating to the world:
instead of shifting from lack (Nicht-Können) to self-affirmation
(Können), what is at stake is a shift from a situation of possession
(Können) to a dispossession of the self (Nichtkönnen).
• Mind the difference between Nicht-können (the starting point of
learning) and Nichtkönnen (the end point of practising): what is at
stake in the last expression (without hyphen) is still a form of ability,
but perhpas in its ‘purest’ form
• To elaborate this idea I turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben and
more precisely to his analysis of the experience of what it means to
say of oneself ‘I can’ (i.e. hat we are creatures of possibility)
Agamben on (im)potentiality
• Whenever I bring a concrete potential into actualization, it is implied
that ‘I can’ (perform a specific activity), but I never experience this
possibility as such (i.e. ‘potentiality’): I only experience that I can do
this or that I can do that
• If our analysis remains at the level of concrete actualizations of
possibilities, we will only develop a superficial and even tautological
conceptualization of what it means that we are creatures of
possibilities (I can X = impossibility is absent)
• In its ‘purest’ form, possibility is only experienced, when it doesn’t
pass into a concrete actualization, i.e. when the relation to defined
contents or purposes is (temporarily) suspended.
Agamben on (im)potentiality
• EX. 1: “I can see”: experienced only on condition that I cannot see
≠ that I am blind/blinded (eye = defective means)
= e.g. in dark room (eye= pure means): the eye still has the possibility
to descry this and that, but this possibility is suspended
→ Looking up the limits of language, Agamben claims that in the end
potentiality is impotentiality
• EX. 2 : “I can speak” → PASCOLI’s attempt to ‘experience the
originary event of speech’
≠ the most personal expression of the most personal emotion
(romantic idea)
= employment of certain techniques that show the creation of
meaning as such (i.e. what it means that we can express meaning)
Agamben on (im)potentiality
• Pascoli’s first experiments: writing in a dead language (Latin)
• Second experiments: playing with the difference that seems essential
to define that which is propper to human language (as opposed to
animals’ systems of communication): LINGUA versus VOX
(1) GLOSSOLALIA: words that sound like Italian, but that have no
meaning in this language (‘gronchio’, ‘palestrita’):
→ No lingua and yet more than vox: manifestation of the very
possibility to signify; phonemes are experienced as pure phonemes.
(2) ONOMATOPOEIA: words that imitate the voice of animals, but
that are still ‘words’ and no mere sound (‘fru’, ‘videvitt’):
→ The vox of nature is no mere sound (like the crackling of the fire),
and yet is also not meaningful lingua
≠ interruption of grammatical language by pregrammatical
language
= ‘purely and absolutely gramatical’
An Agambenian analysis of practising
•
E.g.: the practice of reciting the alphabet
•
To the common point of view, it should be regarded as a convenient
instrument for learning the basic elements of a written language.
This is to say that this practice has no real meaning in and of itself and that
it might easily be replaced by other methods, that are perhaps more
effective, but in any case more stimulating than just rattling off an arbitrary
string of graphemes
•
From an Agambenian point of view, however, it might be argued that this
practice has significance in and of itself. This is because students are
asked to relate in a completely uncommon way to language, which
prevents an immediately self-actualizing use of language (impotentiality):
letters are experienced as pure letters (‘pure means’). This also means
that the very potentiality of (written) speech might be experienced (i.e. a
strong experience of ‘I can’ – potentiality). In that sense it concerns a
practice that has a relevance of its own
An Agambenian analysis of practising
• Analagously, repeating multiplication tables concerns a way
of relating to numbers that is so elementary and disinvested
with purpose and meaning that we might experience the very
possibility to create numbers out of other numbers. We
experience that we can count or that we can multiply (which
is precluded when we use the same formulae to solve a
mathematical problem)
• Similarly, we might experience that we can move, when
performing the most basic and ‘meaningless’ movement
forms (merely stretching, bending, rotating, etc.) during
collective callisthenic practice, or that we can sing when
rehearsing simple songs in group (an exercise during which
the aim is not to express ourselves but to sing together
exactly the same notes, simultaneously, … )
Important remarks concerning this analysis
• Experience of potentiality (pure letters, pure movement, …)
≠ return to an edenic condition (romantic idea)
= Nichtkönnen: possibility as such (under conditions of the
impossibility to actualize this possibility)
• NOT a theorethical insight, BUT an ‘experiment’ (something
existential: we put ourselves at stake)
• Experience that ‘I can’ (rather than that ‘I can this’ or ‘I can that’)
≠ foundational subject that realizes itself through concrete things
The only thing that remains is an anonymous, though affirmative
experience of possibility that ‘I’ can never appropriate
In that sense, perhaps a better and less ambivalent expression
might be ‘things can be written’(instead of ‘I can write’)
The educational sense of practising
• So,
practising has nothing to do with the extension of a field of
concrete possibilities (I can do this or I can do that)
• It has all the more to do with an interruption of the usual
course of things (which is based upon a logic of selfstrengthening): things (numbers, letters, songs, movements, …)
appear as ‘pure means’
• This uncommon way to relate to the world (Stiegler/Arendt:
‘attention’, ‘care’) is dependent upon the ‘school’ quality of
these practices, i.e. upon a ‘gestural mechanics’ (repetitive,
collective and strongly embodied activities) which brings about
a situation of self-exprorpiation.
The educational sense of practising
• What is at stake is thus an uncommon way to be
attantive for the world, which is sustained by particularly
‘schoolish’ activities: they might foster an experience of
(im)potentiality related to ‘pure’ numbers, graphemes,
movements, etc., and therefore a real change in our
individual, but perhaps also inour collective life
•In that sense, this practice might be called intrinsically
educational: it allows for a transformation of an existing
order (opening a new future).
•Final remark: is this kind of educationally relevant
practice still possible in online learning-communities ??