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reinterpret Bildung?
Robert van Boeschoten (University for Humanistic Studies)
Introduction
This paper addresses the issues around a renewed interest in Bildung in
education. It builds an argument for using the notion of individuation from
Simondon and later Stiegler to be used for education as clarification of what
should be indicated by Bildung as a process in education. Through individuation
education can be seen as a life long project that could be of central value to
organisations.
Keywords: Individuation, Imagination, Bildung, Transduction, Pharmacology.
In academia there is growing concern for more attention for what should be
central to shaping the minds of students. There is criticism on the so-called
efficiency rhetorics or accountability based on purely financial gain. Universities
see themselves as companies having to prove their value for society by showing
a positive balance sheet. Students and teachers alike are protesting against such
strategies on the grounds that they feel that education should be based on
personal development in order to help them find a purpose in life that stimulates
a growing interest in each other. Education should contribute to the society at
large and not only to specific economic targets. What is needed to this purpose is
imagination, for a future that is still not clear and not framed by short-term welldefined goals. In this debate by educators the term Bildung pops up regularly.
There it implies something like enabling students to grow up and be responsible
citizens and have richly developed skills to deal with the challenges of society.
To be a responsible citizen implies having great skill at continuous learning since
our environment physically and socially is developing rapidly, mainly because of
technological innovations. Life long learning is the relatively new catchphrase.
Universities, just like many organisations, expect continuous development and
training of all involved. In these educational institutes this means that students,
teachers, professors and management alike are part of this process. The
assumptions in this ideal is that of a kind of universal human beings who have
potential that, through education, is developed.
Bildung has been part of the discourse on education for decades but nowadays it
has a renewed interest by people who look for notions that help them against a
pure economic perspective on learning. It used to be a term describing a
curriculum for all people who would be considered responsible citizens when
they had completed it. The content of this type of education gives you a general
background in all matters of society. Lately different interpretations of Bildung
become more dominant. Education should be concerned with continuous
development, and a need to discipline yourself to realise such development.
The criticism implied in this notion is that there is no longer one image of the
educated person who can be part of society. Education is concerned with many
ideals related to a great variety of practices people are involved with. There is
not one society but many. The term Bildung related to a single ideal is no longer
appropriate. Marli Huijer states that it is therefore not wise to keep on using this
term. It still has too many references to one ideal you can strive for as the perfect
goal for education or upbringing. The term refers to issues in the 18 th and 19th
century and those times were fundamentally different from ours. By applying
their notions of forming and educating to our times we make them too general to
be politically active. They do not give us the guidelines to inform us about where
we are and want to go, they are too broad and thus lack clear consequences of
(political) responsibility. It could make us into obedient servants of the state
without any concern for what our practical public life asks for.
What kind of education is needed?
Marli Huijer interprets our current situation in Western industrialised countries
as one of abundance, and argues that we need to find constructive new forms of
discipline (2013). Our culture offers so many things that we need to discipline
ourselves in order to find out what we really need or want. She suggests self
discipline is not well understood and should be conceived relationally. Not
simply training yourself for yourself, but training yourself in order to develop
meaningful relations. In order to be part of a system or society you need to
choose for a certain responsibility. Based on Arendts notion of selfdiscipline
Huijer does not imply sovereignty but a need for supportive inter-subjective
networks, possibly even mediated by technology.
A similar call for reshaping the individual is made by Peter Sloterdijk , who
proposes in Du Muss dein leben andern (2009) a lifeproject. Your identity is not a
given, not a fixed entity, but calls for continuous maintenance. The forms in
which you need to put yourself in order to be recognized as something and
therefore allegeable for creating meaning in society, are shifting. Meaning is
related to the way it is being expressed, so therefore to form. In our
contemporary culture communication networks are mostly digital which has its
specific form. If I interpret Sloterdijk well this means that you have to learn how
these networks are interpreted and how this affects you. Sloterdijk sees the
school as immune system that does not bother itself with daily problems but
concentrates on the upbringing of people for the future. Education should help
people to be ready for future challenges, in part by taking some distance from
short term crises and delusions. Efficiency as a guideline for education is
considered damaging to the students and the society as well. The concern is for
creating imagination that helps overcoming daily issues and gives moral
direction to where we as citizens want to go. This needs to be done by training in
different fields of expertise. School is the place of freedom where people can
practice in mental and practical challenges. This refers to its original meaning of
skole, where school was meant to be a place free of work for lecture and practice
(Gude, van Stralen, 2012). Education is the place where you can explore your
ambitions and can find out what part your want to play in society.
When Stiegler calls for a concern for future generations, he also refers to this
ability to practice and be free from direct instrumental relations. Upbringing has
to do with taking care for the imagination of the future. Dealing with the
problems of change asks for a broader perspective then just learning how to
solve an issue. Change in our society mostly involves the implementation of
digital technologies. Most of our interaction and communication is based on
software so therefore the relationship between this technological environment
and our imagination should be of interest to educators.
Technics and education
Individuation
The term individuation was used by Simondon to indicate a process of
becoming. People are not complete, are not entities that can be affirmed as one
identity. We cannot claim that we are, by simply stating that. If we want to
understand the world and our experience of the world we need to postpone any
claims on what should be a ground for making this understanding possible. The
human as an entity is not given anymore. If we say I or we it is not clear on
how the two relate to other entities. The I presumes a we and visa versa
according to Simondon.
His goal is to understand the process of being as something that unfolds in time.
It cannot be affirmed by itself it needs something outside to realize its being.
At the moment that you can start talking about the individual you realize the
community as well. Not only through language (the means of the community by
which you realize meaning), but by making a distinction between yourself and
the other. Understanding yourself is realizing that you become in the process of
interaction. This is what Simondon describes as individuation; as a
communication process within. You make a difference inside by presupposing
yourself as belonging to a certain form (the social) but creating this form at the
same time (Scott, 126). This is what language does as medium. It takes
experiences as impressions and then frames these as notions in language. In
language the impressions get meaning. Language is the form but the notions you
use to express the impressions are not fixed. They get their meaning by relating
them to these impressions. The form is open to change or is in fact created in the
process of giving meaning to impressions. Form and content are both not fixed
entities but come about in the process of interaction (Scott, 33)
This is Simondons critique on Aristoteles notion of hylomorphism. In his
metaphysics every form presumes a certain singular unity that fits this form as
an independent attribute. (Scott, 30). To attribute a quality of being to something
means that there are at least two things in relation to one another that constitute
each other. It is as if organisation theory presumes organisations to be there as
something that exists by themselves. The theory as subject is naming the
organisation as some thing. But there is no subject independent of the object as
in a dialectical sense, both are created at the same time. This relational aspect of
things being formed in a certain way is the ground for understanding Simondons
notion of individuation. Matter is not in form, or informed but forms itself
through interaction (Scott, p.30). The way in which we can create meaning is by
technologies like language. Living organisms differ from things in the sense that
they are singularities but no identities. Becoming happens in many forms since it
is grounded on a tension within itself as something that needs to develop but
specifically in living organisms also open to its environment, which creates
another ground for change. A living organism is in constant confusion, the
tension with its environment is expressed in an interaction process of
communication which is in itself another form of becoming. It searches for
structures to create meaning. The process of creating meaning is what
Simondon describes as transduction resulting in individuation. Everything that
medium is the message (1965) or We shape our tools and therefore our tools
shape us (1971). Meaning is depending on how we relate to the technology we
use and how this technology is part of the imagination of a society or group of
people.
Stiegler explains these relations as twofold, both having to do with how we
create and use memories. Every technique creates a memory and all objects
coming from applying this technique as well. Take a picture from a camera. As a
technique it refers to how we are able to represent a moment at a certain place
to be framed by using a technological object. The camera clicks and a technical or
chemical process takes place that results in a representation on a piece of paper
or a screen. The whole process of making this representation is based upon years
of research and skill that resulted in the camera. This was a development by a
group of people who took this challenge of making a better representation at
heart. They developed a logic of representation, resulting in a technology that
enables people to use cameras. Time in this process can be described as on the
one hand related to the intensity of the imagination of the developers and on the
other hand based on their skill of cooperation. Both being forms of interaction, of
communication that is referred to by Simondon as transduction.
The other notion of time is related to the picture itself for the individual who
looks at it. It brings us back to a moment in time that we see on this image. Not
only the content makes us remember but the technical artefact itself as well. Its
texture and the way things are represented on it make us relate to a certain past.
It feels as if you have to cross time in order to recreate meaning in the present
when you get impressions of the image. The object enables you to make yourself
present as an entity of becoming. It presents you with the opportunity to project
yourself in the future.
This process is based in imagination by projecting a future on the ground of ones
experience. That is, on the ground of some interpretation of ones past, but also
the experience that is still in the body. When you have learned how to use the
camera, it becomes possible to make realistic projections about something you
want to picture. On the ground of these experiences we project possibilities for
ourselves and use them to work on our goals, ideals, etc. Being skilled means
being capable of such projections.
quality in education. The software program that organises these scores becomes
the leading means for managers to evaluate their work and the way that they
interact with others in the organisation. The transduction process where
different forms of imagination collide based on different tools for evaluating
quality in education is hindered. The tools or technology that enables people to
interact become biased in the interaction. Since people depend in their
development on the way they can stimulate their imagination through the use of
technology, the process of transduction need to be open. Transduction becomes
in Stieglers terms no longer a term merely describing an ontological process but
is made in to a normative process.
communities to educate its people related to the needs and values of this
community is not part of the evaluation. How to interpret the scores based on
PISA becomes problematic in the sense that goals related to these scores are not
automatically linked to these needs and values. The systems of accountability are
not taking account of the values of this community. This also applies on an
organisational level in higher education. Educators are asked to organise their
work in such a way that it produces the right figures for certain programs. These
figures produce automatically statistics that indicate an average output that
make comparisons possible. The values educators have in relation to their
educational goals are not into consideration. The system of accountability is only
focussed on how to produce valuable outcomes for a computer programme. The
way in which these figures are produced depend on certain software to which
you have to make yourself familiar, which takes time. Every year management
introduces new software that demands adjustment again and thus takes more
time. Educators normally do not get this time to get to know the programme and
adopt it. This means that the output of these programs can not be made part of
their ambitions and imagination. This characteristic of ICT in education and
organisations in general, is that it speeds up processes of change within the
organisation. The reason why software programs are regularly updated is
because they need to be more encompassing and more efficient. Management
has found in ICT a means to desire or imagine ever more transparency and
efficiency, bringing the whole organisation into the realm of clear and specific
targets as part of management goals. Originally in education ICT was used to
measure results of pupils but very soon it started to measure others forms of
output as well. Educators have to work with systems to which they are
subordinate. In Flussers terms these educators become mere operators (Flusser,
2011). According to Stieglers such use of ICT makes educators only
heteronomous. Within the parameters of continuous learning, educators are not
able to learn to apply new technology for their purposes and ambitions. Their
imagination is cut short to behave as mere consumers of this information
technology. The poisonous effect of this technology is predominant.
This let some educators to picture their position as that of coolies (Jansen,
2009), indicating the darker side of being an educator in contemporary society.
The educator becomes a subaltern; on the one hand doing administratively what
is demanded of them by the organisation, but on the other hand trying to achieve
recognition for their educational goals with their students.
Educators need their skill in order to be able to facilitate transformation
for themselves and their pupils. This form of education is an ethical ground for
taking care of next generations as Stiegler frames it (2010). Being skilled means
being able to judge the consequences of your actions, at least to a minimal
degree. Having to work with new tools thus brings a situation in which an
educator is not capable of producing so called good work (Ewijk and
Kunneman, 2013) in an ethical sense, even if the result fits the goals the tools
were used for. If you cannot foresee the effects you produce, you cannot act
ethically. Skills and imagination go hand in hand with this concept of
individuation as part of education. Organisations need this type of education to
create the imagination of their professionals. They need to organise a ground for
dialogue within the organisation to make clear how skills produce meaning and
ambition.
Why a normative form of individuation in organisations?
Bildung and individuation can go together as notions for an organisation in their
development programme as long as the connotation in bildung to one perfect
goal are being set aside. Dealing with change and life long learning means that
we continuously have to learn new skills and be able to evaluate these skills
related to the goals of our organisation. Simondons notion of individuation can
help understand where imagination resides within the organism. Central
questions in making this notion applicable have to do with how we communicate
with what media, or tools and what notions of understanding are formed by
them, that give direction to the imagination in the organisation. On the one hand
this development is inevitable; it is the way organisation develop, but on the
other hand it also shows where development has choices or could get stuck
according to Stiegler. When it gets stuck individuation becomes individualisation
in which case members of the organisation have been made into mere
consumers of a production line. Where in the mid 20th century the concern was
for estrangement due to dull repetitive work in large factories on conveyer belts,
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