An Ethico-onto-epistemological View on Learning: Dialogue With Laozi and Barad

• In Event: 25.039 - Pedagogy of Heart, Being, and (Non)Action

Abstract

Ever since modern schooling emerged in Europe in the seventeenth century, learning has been understood as the acquisition of knowledge. This modernist notion of learning is predicated on the assumption that someone knows and someone does not know. However, postmodern understandings of learning suggest that it is not only about the acquisition of knowledge, but also about relations, being and ethics. By interrupting the binaries of teacher and student; human and world, matter and meaning, this research examines new conceptions of learning from an “ethico-onto-epistemological” (Barad, 2007) approach by bringing Laozi from Chinese philosophy and Karen Barad from new materialism into conversation.

Author

• Shaofei Han, Louisiana State University