Resumo

QUINTILIANO, Aimberê. Parrêsia and subject constitution: democracy and education. child.philo [online]. 2012, vol.8, n.16, pp.379-404. ISSN 1984-5987.  https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2012.16379.

In this article we will study the constitution of the subject as described by Foucault in L'Herméneutique du Sujet and we will try to establish the relation between this constitution and the political gesture - called Parresia in Le courage de la Vérité-- which irrupts in everyday life and which sets subjectivity in opposition with the actual culture or society. The parresiastic act, which disrupts the social order by its affirmation of subjectivity, is a risky act, which puts the subject in the limit situation of a self-affirmation that goes against that which we may understand as a social or political act. It frees the subject from local and cultural conditions so that it can seek a realization of the highest freedom of expression and action. The subject of such an act takes this position as its own reference, allowing it to acquire a character that reveals the issues of a civilisation while at the same time becoming the representative of an emancipated and free humanity. Democracy, understood in its most rigorous sense in this perspective, depends on the possibility of parresia, which effect is to open a dialogue between society and the political subject. The importance of such phenomenon is immense when we try to think about education and its social and political effects. The relation between education and democracy is the condition for true democracy, one in which the citizen is included in the community in total freedom and is aware of her participation in the common task. But, as suggests Foucault's analysis, this political and social insertion, which is also a cultural insertion that depends on education, doesn't happen as a natural and linear process which would correspond to the simple fact of going to school or being present in socially formed groups. On the contrary, it's in rupture, in opposition, in the violent and irrevocable subjectivity's affirmation, against what is generally admitted, that the subject erects itself upon the immediate situation to defend what it estimates as outside the range of established social rules and historical conditions. We want to indicate here, and if possible understand better, this paradox of a subject that realises itself against a society to which it belongs, but through acting in such a way, opens the possibility to free its members from the weight of institutions which could be denatured or corrupted, constituting and founding an opening which would make possible a new social structure, one which is more democratic and which respects the nature of humanity. If parresia really possesses the needed notes for the constitution of democracy how can we apply it to an educational domain? How can we conciliate knowledge transmission, the learning of social rules and usages, with the possibility of a free action, independent from these same rules? These questions will be raised to open a discussion upon the relation between subjectivity, society and education.

Palavras-chave : Education; Parresia; Subjectivity; Politics.

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