First coined by Miranda Fricker (2007), the term ‘epistemic injustice’ refers to both the problem of an individual failing to receive equal recognition as a ‘knower’ (testimonial injustice) and the lack of “collective interpretative resources” (1) to make sense of certain social experiences (hermeneutic injustice). Epistemic injustice is a form of discrimination from which many “secondary wrongs” (Fricker 2017), such as marginalisation, follow.

The implications of epistemic injustice have been discussed widely in the context of formal education, Remediating epistemic injustice in education is one of the key tenets of UNESCO’s report on the future of education (2021).

Fricker (2007) suggest that the hearer has a responsibility to cultivate epistemic virtues that counter prejudice towards individuals as epistemic subjects and allow diverse groups to contribute equally to the production of knowledge. One could argue that the task of education is to cultivate these epistemic virtues in students, for example by explicitly addressing the issue of epistemic injustice and offering counter-strategies. While I am not necessarily against such practices, here I am interested in exploring an educational philosophy that embodies epistemic virtue at a deeper level. Embracing a post-critical approach, rather than discussing the manifold ways in which education perpetrates epistemic injustice, or constructing a view of education as a means to combat epistemic injustice, I seek to consider what a pedagogy might look like that is not oriented toward remediation, but is fundamentally oriented towards the recognition of the other and their authentic being. Specifically, I will discuss a pedagogy centred around the Heideggerian notion of ‘dwelling’.

Dwelling describes a particular way of being in the world by partaking in its preservation and further construction. Importantly, construction that contributes to dwelling is not an imposition of predefined aims and categories; rather, it is responsive and attentive to what presents itself to us; it is a “letting dwell” (Heidegger 1971, 157), of the self and the other. Yet, dwelling is inherently precarious as the tendency to objectify the other and fit them into existing categories encroaches on our presence in the world. Forms of epistemic injustice clearly play a role here: as a lens, epistemic injustice highlights the fact prejudice and the inherently exclusionary nature of the available interpretative resources hamper openness and understanding. Cultivating dwelling in and through education, I argue, might be viewed as a genuinely educational idea and practice of epistemic justice. It foregrounds the need for radical openness to the other’s distinct otherness, an attunement to the other as a being that constantly brings itself forth, and the desire to help evolve the available interpretative resources that supports one’s own as well as the other’s authentic ‘presencing’. Heidegger calls this the poetic dimension of dwelling. Poetry, Heidegger (1971) writes, is “what first brings man onto the earth, making him belong to it, and thus brings him into dwelling.” (216) As such, a pedagogy oriented towards fostering ‘poetic dwelling’, I argue, is a practice of epistemic justice.

“The constitution of prejudice and structural inequality is different now than it was when such theories proposed radical contestation to the status quo – and achieved huge shifts” (Hodgson et al., 2017, p. 80). This encapsulates one of the core tenets of 'post-critical' pedagogy, which asserts the need for novel approaches to addressing injustice in education. How can we conceive the educational urge to work for a more equitable society outside the critical paradigm?Fundamental critical educators such as Paulo Freire (1970) and bell hooks (1994) based their proposal on the question of teaching to change the world and society. According to this tradition, education should be about teaching how to modify socially unjust situations and worldviews. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to a rethinking of the role of education in building a more just society. We propose to do so outside the paradigm of changing the world, guided by the idea that education today should focus on guarding the world. To do so, we will rely on the interaction of two different concepts: Michel Serres’s idea of ‘mingling’ with the world on one side, and Hartmut Rosa’s concept of ‘resonance’ on the other. According to Serres (1985; 1991), the very act of knowing does not rely on an observation of reality or on a form of appropriation of information - as western society traditionally implies - but on a ‘mingling’ with the world instead. Mingling involves a bodily exchange with the world, wherein neither the learner nor the world remains unchanged. Through this term, Serres encapsulates an ecological approach to knowledge, proposing a just relationship with the surrounding world as the foundation of knowledge. In a debate with the critical French theory of the seventies (see Serres 1994), Serres attempted to outline a different possibility for affirming the centrality of justice without adopting a critical stance. On the other side, with the term ‘resonance’ Rosa (2016) explores subjective relationships with the world, emphasizing how the educational experience is a process of living, reciprocal interaction between the individual and the world. The concept of resonance emphasizes the relationship between the individual and the surrounding world, considering this relationship as bi-directional (mutually transforming) and marked by a responsive relationship (not an echo, but two active poles). It delineates a specific manner in which individuals and the world engage in a relationship, ultimately shaping each other's form. Rosa's resonance theory offers a glimpse into how people construct connections of meaning between self and the world, reflecting on the quality of experience and living. In this sense, it fits into the perspective of a continuity between life and learning experiences, combining inner, social and ecological dimensions and offering a response that is not a priori, but grounded in the terrain of experience. We will build on these concepts in order to affirm a possible post critical approach to justice, generally conceived as a just relationship with the surrounding world.

In this paper, we are going to explore what a post-critical engagement with the question of inclusion—which is arguably one of the key ideas in contemporary educational debate—can look like. Our argumentation will develop at the crossroads of educational theory and philosophy, moral philosophy and sociological accounts of the “genesis of values” and the role of norms.

We will take our cue from the first principle of the Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy, which advocates “a shift from procedural normativity to principled normativity” (p. 15). To start with, we will object to the possibly unfortunate adoption of the “normativity” vocabulary by redescribing this shift in terms of a transition from the language of norms to that of values.

In this endeavour, we will build on Hans Joas’s (1999) distinction between norms and values. According to Joas, norms and values represent two different orienting factors for human action. While norms have to do with obligation and the limitation of possibilities of action, values are characterized by an ideal and inspirational function. In keeping with Joas's distinction, we will argue that limiting principled normativity to norms has undesirable consequences. Specifically, this limitation contributes to the excessive role assigned to normative critique which is decried by post-critical approaches.

Against this backdrop, we will zoom in on the question of inclusion. We will address it in reference to pragmatism and we are going to suggest two possible outlooks: a critical pragmatist view of inclusion, as exemplified by some insights of José Medina (2012, 2014), and a post-critical understanding, which we will outline in reference to Joas but also—via him—to the classics of educational pragmatism.

Famously, one of the main axes of the pragmatist stance is that of smoking out and defusing the either-ors that plague philosophy. In the final part of our paper, we are going to argue that critique and post-critique should not be engaged with in terms of either-ors nor even, to adopt a phrase of Dewey (LW 13: 5), in terms of “intermediate possibilities.” Rather, we have to do with a crucial distinction, which needs to be maintained in its ‘oppositional’ character. In other words, critique and post-critique should be taken as mutually exclusive. And, yet, we are going to preserve the pragmatist aversion to the either-or stance, by suggesting that critique and post-critique appeal to a quasi-Bohrian complementarity, which is not to be confused with any kind of Aufhebung or simple syncretism.

The argument I intend to present explores the conditions of possibility for the inclusion of the category of justice into postcritical educational theories.

By analysing the way in which the category of 'justice' functions in postcritical theories of education (Hodgson, Vlieghe, Zamojski 2018), one can come to the conviction that this way of theorizing education radically erase this category from its own field. The arguments used by the proponents of postcritical education theory in this regard tend to equate the notion of justice with emancipatory ideas, the concept of social equality, and politics per se. The latter, in turn, seems to be treated as a denial of the ‘proper’ nature of education as disinterested love of the world (Vlieghe, Zamojski 2020).

I see the proposal to erase the category of justice from educational discourse as a 'methodological provisional'. It marks the inside and outside of a dynamically constructed theoretical field of post-critical education theory and at the same time is a gesture of a radical transgression of the dominance of critical pedagogy in the landscape of education studies in the late modern era. I also see inspiration here from the concept of Hannah Arendt (1953), who opposes education to politics and advocates the defense of education against politics.

Nevertheless, I find it difficult to accept that the category of justice, as deeply rooted in the humanist tradition, seems not fairly represented in the field of post-critical education theory. The essential context for its understanding seems to me not so much politics (Weber 1965) or police (Ranciere 1999) but ethics - as I will try to justify, inter alia, with reference to the Aristotelian concept of universal justice (Aristotele 2002) where justice is about What We Owe to Each Other (Scanlon 1988). Such a concept – which denotes ‘justice’ as relation to others and relation to our common world - seems to be scattered across Hannah Arendt writings (even if she did not provide a systematic theory of justice). In the context of Arendt's writing, the ideal of justice is linked to such concepts as: human plurality and equality, freedom, action in the public sphere, and predominantly, responsibility and love for the common world. Therefore, the idea of justice can be seen as the very source of a postcritical conception of education. I intend to substantiate this claim drawing mostly on Hannah Arendt's concept of education as implied by love and responsibility for the world (Arendt 1993) and her concept of natality in its relation to the freedom of spontaneity, as pre-political possibility of political freedom (Arendt 1993, 2005). I will also refer to Jacques Rancière's (1999) perspective on the teacher-student relationship that promotes the idea of intellectual equality as well as Alan Badiou's (2012, 2015) stand for ethical engagement within educational practices.

My final reflections attempt to mediate between the ethical perspective on justice in education and the prospect of post-critical education which will also imply some moments of contradiction and disagreement.

This proposal aims to discuss what contribution the Post-Critical Pedagogy manifesto can offer to the interpretation of radicalization phenomena. In particular, we will reflect on how a post-critical pedagogy can suggest the use of research languages and postures capable of orienting prevention practices of radicalization phenomena (Schmid, 2013) that lead to violence. In the manifesto of post-critical pedagogy (Hodgson, Vlieghe, Zamojski, 2020) the positions of the scholars interested in launching the post-critical challenge appear clear: transition from procedural normativeness to principled normativeness (there are principles to defend!); the affirmation of pedagogical hermeneutics (the construction of a relational space is a possibility to be built, neither an 'a priori' nor a principle far from the here and now); affirmation of a pedagogy 'beyond criticism'. In particular, the idea espoused in this proposal is to see how the construct of 'radicalization' (Fabbri, Melacarne, 2023; Sabic El Rayess, Marsick, 2021) is often defined as external and outside a educational framework, in this sense losing along the way a fundamental question about the principles which orient 'radical thought', whether there is an education to and about 'radical thought' but above all how to read 'radical thought' and with what criteria of discrimination. What seems promising to us in a post-critical perspective is the challenge of getting back in touch with radical thought, with the positivity or negativity of the principles that fuel it, considering these phenomena as expressions of a world that must not only be 'corrected' or 'punished', or which must be revealed (critical pedagogy) (Latour, 2004). According to this approach, radicalization must not be deconstructed and broken down to be evaluated and understood within standards (Caramellino, Melacarne, Ducol, 2020). The most relevant question posed by the post-critical perspective, however, is the following. Education that deals with 'de-radicalization' or 'prevention' is based on the idea that there is nothing to save in the processes that generate these phenomena. It is an education in opposition to something that must be corrected, external, to be criticized in order to 'fight'. The post-critical perspective, paradoxically, would still invite us to take into consideration a perspective that is more open to considering what is positive about the radical process, even if only in some of its forms. A non-secondary solicitation concerns the question that post-critical pedagogy raises regarding the value of principles. It is a classic and interesting short circuit if thought about in the context of the debate on radicalization and social justice. Trust and hope in the present and in emerging phenomena push us to also open up to the study of radicalization phenomena which, although not manifesting themselves as aligned with an idea of normative or socially shared social justice, may incorporate hope of positive change. In our opinion, the post-critical perspective can help us to re-read the theories and methodologies for preventing radicalization processes within a more authentic and self-directed educational perspective.