Revolutionizing maieutics: Literary, philosophical, and political pedagogies in a time of disaster

Sol Jackson Neely, Purdue University

Abstract

In my dissertation, I aim to recover what I call, following the work of Søren Kierkegaard, maieutical traditions of pedagogy, by which I mean the existential traditions that call for a passionate care for one’s self and one’s relations found in the literary and pedagogical insights of what we can identify as “prophetic traditions.” Since Plato and Aristotle, the literary is seen as a moment within philosophy, and the impact of this prioritization is such that Western and European epistemological priorities privilege truth over ethical value and teaching. The consequence of this subversion of the literary within philosophy is a neutralizing of the prophetic possibilities that the literary tends to offer. To recover a priority for the prophetic from the literary is to fundamentally shift the starting point of pedagogy. In this project, I make the case that pedagogy, as the foundation of community, can help restore the possibility of a redemptive healing among communities scored by violence, exile, war, and oppression. I thus work through three pedagogical modalities: the literary, the philosophical, and the political. First, I look to alternative experiences of the literary from certain Judaic and post-Holocaustal perspectives found in the writings of Maurice Blanchot, Edmond Jabès, and Emmanuel Levinas. Second, I work through the existential and postsecular turn in Continental philosophy in order to bring these insights to bear on literary criticism so that we might begin defining a postsecular turn in literary theory and cultural studies. Finally, I turn to the political field to explore ways by which the ethical insights of this postsecular turn in literary theory can help organize greater possibility for liberation struggles around the world. In this latter regard, I turn specifically to the globalized indigenous struggles such as those emerging from the Latin American context as well as those articulated in the poetics of Native American struggle.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Goodhart, Purdue University.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature|Native American studies|Judaic studies

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