Loving the Letter, Teaching the Truth: Creating a Community of the Question in the English Education Classroom

Abstract

This article suggests that, in order to reduce the numbing sense of divisiveness permeating the public sphere of our lives and classrooms, it is necessary to create the solidarity of a community of difference borne of affirmation and respect for others, rather than a simple celebration of a community of differences where subjects are perceived to exist more-or-less independently of each other as the multiple sites of isolated or marginalized selves. It is within the affirmative ethics of a “community of the question” and the multiple sites of literacy that arise from within it that a synthesis of the negative values of difference as a foundational concept of democratic education can occur. This will provide a philosophical and methodological means through which to rethink the ground of the principle of educational equity beyond the competing distinctions of either/or categories.