"Thought of the outside", knowledge and thought in education: conversations with Michel Foucault

Abstract

This study aims to discuss the supposed virtuous constitution of education and knowledge originated from a certain cultural heritage of Western modernity. The study's problematic is anchored in the diffuse but insistent question which echoes in the educational field: "what is the act of thinking in education in contemporary times?". Studying the current conditions of thought as a problem of educational research calls into question the historical relationship between knowledge and reflective thinking, and it forces the confrontation of certain pedagogical amalgams dear to the modern educational field. Such confrontation takes place in the company of the thinkers Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche, given the strategic importance of their writings, particularly about language, the production of truth and their implications for the ways of knowing and thinking. I attempt to operate a critique of the language toward a critique of the thought in education, in the key of an ethical and political problematization. In this work, such analytical platform configures itself with Michel Foucault's discussions - both in relation to the matter of the thought of the outside, as developed by Maurice Blanchot, and the thought of difference, as formulated by Gilles Deleuze. I suggest that the exploration of this debate can be an exercise of exteriority or of differential thinking in the game with the knowledge and the reflective thinking present in the educational field - both in the ambit of school everyday pedagogical practices and in the field of the production of educational research.