Rooted and Rootless, Exiled and Belonging: Camus on Education, Ethical Dilemmas, and the Questions of Justice

• In Event: Alterity, Others, and Teaching

Abstract

The concept of justice is deeply rooted in our everyday scene of teaching and learning. In many ways, education and justice are inextricably entwined, as the idea of justice is what is promised by our educational imperatives; its possibility is what keeps us as educator patient and hopeful. Yet justice is a complicated and political subject that the language of justice is often riddled with paradoxes. In this paper, I suggest an alternative educational reading of Camus’s parable “The Guest” while also trouble the concept of justice using Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the ethical philosophy. Reading "The Guest," I take ethical tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas in our everyday teaching and learning as the starting point in considering education’s ethical power.

Author

• Jungah Kim, Borough of Manhattan Community College - CUNY