Beyond peace education: Toward co-poiesis and enduring improvisation

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Abstract

Is it possible that the essence of peace is negated in peace education? And is it possible that even against its own will peace education calls for the negation of its negation? In peace education no serious attempts have been made to elaborate its most central concepts. 'Pacifism', 'violence', 'counter-violence' and 'emancipation', 'culture of peace', among others, have still not been probed. Peace education, actually, is a serious threat to human edification. Peace for the eternal Jew, for the enduring improviser, is a condition of the one who found his way: an endless path of a nomad that has Love but no other 'home', dogma or quest for 'home-returning' into thingness, the continuum or the Same. He will never find and never search for 'peace' as an end of Diasporic existence and terminality of the suffering of the nomad. He will be at peace with his mission of avoiding history within history, of overcoming the temptation to be part of the collective 'I'/consensus/pleasure machine/truth, and often he will be tired, ridiculed, punished or executed. But he will be also rewarded, each moment anew, for being at peace with his refusal of 'peace': he will be a freer and a richer improviser that his co-poiesis with the world, the Other, and he himself gives birth to Love. As such, the eternal improviser is mature enough to meet the alterity of other free nomads and Diasporic humans, as well as the gifts of other free-minded spirits. They too, as Nietzsche tell us, feel at home on the mountain, in the forest, and within their loneliness. But for the eternal improviser there is more and there is less than the rewards of the eternal Nietzschean nomad. This is so since the Nietzschean nomad is rewarded with presents and finally finds harmony in himself and the right path to the freedom of reason. The eternal improviser, however, is a more consistent Nietzschean than the Nietzschean nomad and is never appeased, domesticated or rewarded by any 'home'. Homelessness, eternal Diaspora and improvisation worthy of the name cannot offer any 'reward' or rest in the (right) paved way, be it 'external' or 'internal', transcendent or immanent. Here counter-education reintroduces peace as a realization of Love and worthy togetherness with the cosmos, with the Other, with worthy suffering and with one's self.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)315-339
Number of pages25
JournalPolicy Futures in Education
Volume8
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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