Paul Ricoeur

This open access book employs Paul Ricoeur's methodologies to identify, challenge, and replace with responsible language the many continuing abuses of power, including in the university curriculum and in the international discourse of right-wing populism. Using Ricoeur's philosophy, the book provides a meta-frame for current debates about the university and a pragmatic micro-frame for supporting staff and students to develop important conversations on campus. It introduces the Community of Inquiry approach and describes its use to engage with complex ideas on which society has recently become silent. By contrasting Ricoeur's work on Algeria and his work in Chicago, USA, .a bias blind spot is revealed in his desire for dialectical balance and reciprocity. This prevented him (and for some years the author) from accepting the connections between colonialism, slavery and racism and the urgent need for reparative justice.

With Ricoeur, the readers can think differently: howto recognize and tackle racism and the democratic deficit, how to reduce epistemic injustice by learning how to speak out, how to move away from forced polarities and develop a pedagogy of hope as well as an acceptance of provisionality and the intractability of certain existential problems.

Offers literature on Ricoeur and his approach on university education Provides a pragmatic micro-frame for supporting staff and students to develop important conversations on campus Is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Auteur
Dr. Alison Frances Scott-Baumann is Professor of Society and Belief in the Law, Media and Gender Department at SOAS, University of London and Principal Investigator of an AHRC project on Communities of Inquiry. She speaks on BBC Radio 4, has written for the Guardian and several higher education blogs, and she applies modern philosophy (Ricoeurian) to social justice issues. She is also conducting a deep mapping of curricula and extracurricular provision for Jewish and Israeli studies in the Bloomsbury universities, to establish excellence, gaps and room for improvement. With politicians, Alison has established an All-Party Parliamentary group (APPG) in Westminster called Communities of Inquiry across the generations and an advocacy group that brings together policy makers, politicians and academics and also provides the secretariat for the APPG.

Contenu

1. Introduction.- 2. The idea of the university.- 3. Communities of Inquiry.- 4. Ricur's early language, activism and Algeria.- 5. 1968 and campus shock at Nanterre.- 6. Challenging 'bad infinity'.- 7. The politics of pedagogy leading to polity praxis.- Conclusion.