The Air Conditions of Philosophy of Education: Toward a Microsphereology of the Classroom

Abstract

IntroductIonEducational theory -and critical educational literature more generally -has demonstrated an increased interest in the role of space in philosophy and education.1 This follows a broader spatial turn in social science that has been galvanized by theorizations and processes of globalization, advances in critical geography, and more nuanced conceptions of the production of space.Interestingly, however, the subject of air has largely been absent from these theorizations in education and in the social sciences -at least in explicit formulations.This is surprising because air is such a fundamental element of life and thought, of speech and sound.It is that which, by filling space, makes space inhabitable.In this essay, I want to argue that philosophy of education should begin taking air and atmospheric conditions of the classroom and the globe into consideration.The entry point for this project is the recent work of Peter Sloterdijk, in which Sloterdijk has constructed a grand narrative of spatial ontologies.While Sloterdijk forefronts the constitutive role of space and common air, his analysis leaves open several questions about how air conditions subjects and spaces.To answer some of these questions, and to gesture toward some components of a microsphereology of the classroom, I turn to Luce Irigaray, Marshall Berman, and Teresa Brennan.

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