Against reconciliation: Constituent power, ethics, and the meaning of democratic education

Starting from autonomist theorist Antonio Negri’s concept of constituent power and from decolonial philosopher Enrique Dussel’s notions of obediential power and the ethics of exteriority, this study outlines key principles for democratic education in the present. The article contrasts these philosophical starting points with the work of John Dewey and offers a critique of his theory of democracy, showing that a critical conception of democracy should begin from the emphasis on relationality and collaboration that Dewey shares with Negri and Dussel, but should be developed in a way that is sensitive to the insurrectionary imagination and ethics that are foregrounded in the latter theorists. Specifying these emphases for the educational context, the author argues that we should rethink democratic education in the first instance in terms of trauma, rather than reconciliation; that we should look past familiar senses of criticality toward an affirmation of the agency of students and communities; and that we should center revolutionary desire within the framework of a pedagogy of longing