Peace Education as Improvisation: Theory and Practice from Music and Bakhtinian Dialogue

• In Event: Highlighted session: Philosophical and pedagogical perspectives on peace education

Proposal

Introduction
In this paper I argue that peace education is necessary to promote coexistence and dialogue in a world increasingly characterised by global insecurity, ideological warfare and mistrust of the Other, but that there is an urgent need to address the lack of second-order reflexivity that hampers the best efforts of many in the field (Kester and Cremin, 2017). Peace education is limited by discourses of state-based modernity, and by monologism in the curriculum and elsewhere, so that I argue here for new approaches to peace education that promote dialogue and positive responses to globalised postmodernity.
One such approach to that I wish to expound in more detail here has been put forward by Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, who calls for ‘peace education as improvisation’. This is an intriguing departure from a social-scientific approach, grounding itself instead in an arts-based paradigm. Improvisation, which is mainly associated with drama and music, has been used in support of peace education in the past, but there is a lack of theorisation about how and why improvisation in drama and music might bring about peace (beyond the assumption that bringing together divided communities is a Good Thing). It is this gap in theorising that this paper seeks to address. It explores improvisation in peace education as philosophy, and not only as practice.
In this paper I will discuss Kanellopoulos’ linking of Bakhtinian dialogue to music improvisation through: the obligation of freedom; context and perspective-taking; and the unfolding of conclusions. Each will be explored in more detail in order to illuminate how peace education might flourish through drawing on musical improvisation.
The Obligation of Freedom
According to Kanellopoulos, the musical improviser working within a Bakhtinian tradition has a sense of obligation to surrender to the music created, both accepting the direction taken and deciding on future directions. In music education, this leads to students learning to pursue the unknown and being responsible for sustaining the search for it. For Kanellopoulos, improvisation is understood as musical dialogue which emerges when no single voice adopts a privileged position. It is a practice that creates, “a democratic micro-world”(111). This requires a particular kind of teaching relationship which confronts the inherent unevenness of teacher / pupil relationships, and enables joint decisions about how the music should progress. It is important to avoid reinforcing the monologism that pervades education, and that presents those in authority as bearers of truth who have no need for intersubjectivity. When done well, however, improvisation in music can show a way forward for improvisation in peace education, grounded in an obligation towards freedom.
Context and Perspective-Taking
In order to explain what he means by ‘othering otherness,’ in musical improvisation, Kanellopoulos (2011: 108) cites Bakhtin (1984: 59) who observes that in Dostoevsky’s art, “the genuine life of the personality takes place at the point of non-coincidence between a [man] and [himself]”. The same can be said to apply to musical improvisation, and indeed to peace education as improvisation. Both can only occur when a person enters into relationship with the other ‘as other’, someone who is essentially different and irreducible to herself. Othering otherness involves people maintaining fluid identities, and widening perspectives. It involves becoming more sensitive to context and history, as well as to the ideas and motivations of others. This leads to, “dialogicality that goes beyond mere interactivity” (106), and to the ability to be both inside the improvisation and to stand outside of it. In order for this to take place, both music and peace educators need to allow students to learn to create connections, not only between themselves, but also between themselves and the larger historical contexts in which they find themselves. This paradoxical ability to be on the inside and on the outside at the same time is key to both musical improvisation and to an aesthetic of peace education grounded in dialogue and improvisation.
The Unfolding of Conclusions
When improvising, the conclusion to the music is already there from the outset, just as new musical beginnings are always possible, even at the end. People care about the unfolding of the music, and their relationship with the other, as they search for a common guiding principle that underpins the whole endeavour. This leads to learning to reflect-in-action. In both musical improvisation and peace education as improvisation, the actors involved strive to reach a conclusion based on what is between them, and what is unfolding.
The role of audience is also key to the unfolding of conclusions. An audience brings about the need to perform within a particular context of time and space. In peace education dialogue, just like in musical improvisation, the main actors are accountable to each other, but also to others in the classroom and beyond who are part of culture, tradition and the wider community.
In musical improvisation, as Kanellopoulos points out, time takes on a particular quality. The present moment becomes all important, so that, “the distinctiveness of improvisation lies in its potential to create and cultivate a particular quality of attention to the unfolding present of musical moments”(95). It is this ability to remain in the moment, and to be aware of both self and other, that pervades peace education as improvisation.
Conclusion
The paper concludes by suggesting that peace education needs to take place in conditions of freedom, where the teacher adopts an anti-authoritarian stance, and enables young people to experiment and find their own solutions to the problems that they identify. Young people also need to be able to take a wider perspective whilst at the same time being fully immersed in a creative and dynamic process with each other. Finally, they need to be able to navigate context, culture and history - not to be constrained by these - but to take account of them in the natural unfolding of their ideas and conclusions. They are thus both contained within a process which has its own logic and conclusion, and part of a wider unending societal dialogue on the nature of freedom, peace, fairness and relationship.

Author

• Hilary Cremin, Reader, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge