EDUCATING HUMANS: EMBRACING VULNERABILITY AND RESISTING DECADENCE

Abstract

Césaire called a civilization incapable of solving the problems it creates a decadent civilization and Gordon, in his Disciplinary Decadence, demonstrates the decadence of modern disciplines of knowledge production.  In their insistence on completeness, anything outside of those totalizing systems are, by definition, problems.  This creates problem phenomena: aspects of reality that are therefore not properly understood as reality.  Gordon demonstrates that, in order to dismantle the systems of justification that produce intractable problems by denying reality, it is not enough to simply change the content of our education – we must also change the methodology that produces a warped view of reality that cuts us off from all social reality, including the social aspects of ourselves. Gordon’s diagnosis of disciplinary decadence has implications for not just what we teach, not just who teaches but, more fundamentally, how we must teach and how we must learn, in order to facilitate liberation.

Keywords: decadence; pedagogy; maturity; embodiment; vulnerability.