July 2024
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In this chapter, I argue for the importance in education of space for bewildering questions: questions for which no-one yet knows the answer and where letting-go of certainty and acceptance of ambiguity is possible. This is especially important in this era of climate and ecological emergency where the emergence of new ways of thinking and being are urgently needed. In addition, there needs to be space for positive conceptions of ‘the wild’ and a be-wilder-ing of education processes themselves towards more demanding, rebellious, ruptive educational futures. This is a challenging move for Westernised pedagogy and its increasing desire to ‘sanitise’ knowledge. I examine how encouraging aporia —literally lacking a poros , a path—can contribute to opening up ruptural spaces which embrace doubt and see within doubt ‘the questions that make a new understanding possible’ (Burbules, 1997, p. 40, Aporia : Webs, passages, getting lost, and learning to go on . In Philosophy of education 1997: A publication of the philosophy of education society (annual) (pp. 33–43). Philosophy of Education Society). I then draw on a range of thinkers including Arendt, Buber, The Crex Collective and hooks to foreground encounters, creative entwinings and care-ful, attentive listening which can re-centre more-than-human voices and forge new relationships. I argue that such embodied practices have potential to open relationships based on ‘aimance’ (Khatibi, 1995, Le livre de l’aimance . Editions Marsam) and what Snaza (2020, p. 108, Love and bewilderment: On education as affective encounter. In B. Dernikos, N. Lesko, S. McCall, & A. Niccolini (Eds.), Mapping the affective turn in education: Theory, research and pedagogies (pp. 108–121). Routledge) calls ‘possibilities of love beyond the limit of the human’.