giving a voice to those who don't have one: montaigne and rancière, for educational and philosophical emancipation

Abstract

Teaching is often conceived in terms of a distribution of placement, roles and status: benefiting from the legitimacy and recognition of the institutional framework, the teacher asserts himself in the posture of the scholar, while the pupil slips into that of the ignorant, and the excluded remain outside the places of knowledge. ‘Liberating the real stage of discourse’ does not simply mean giving them a voice, but blurring the division of places, freeing the speech and bodies of those who had no say in the matter. Emancipation is about building the practical skills of each individual to engage their intelligence and put it to work. This is the assumption that I have been given to experiment with and confirm in my teaching. It is in terms of the equality of intelligences, to use Rancière's expression, that we need to think about the integration of those who are not heard, not because they have nothing to say, but because they have never been given a proper place to speak. The restricted fields of experience that are workshops or collaborative projects have the virtue of gradually opening up the space of  a community of equals.