Abstract
This paper explores the limitations of empathy for the formation of community, particularly within social justice education. I begin with a discussion of the major tension within the idea of community — that it is founded at once on commonality and difference. Building in particular upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the paper articulates an understanding of community as a signifying encounter with difference that is not founded upon knowledge about the other, but upon a being-for and feeling-for the other. Focusing upon the explicitly educational commitment to working out forms of relationality conducive to establishing community and social justice across social differences, I ask how might teaching with ignorance, as opposed to teaching for empathy, bring us closer to the being-for others that marks our ethical engagement with other people and engenders our responsibility to the collective?
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Todd, S. Teaching with ignorance: Questions of social justice, empathy, and responsible community. Interchange 35, 337–352 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02698882
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02698882