Against the Spell of Modern Knowledge: Education as Multiplicity or the Need for Focused Arbitrariness

Abstract

Calvino’s apology of multiplicity starts with the exposure, revealed by his take on typically modern novels, of some fundamental contradictions underlaying the modern quest for knowledge, which are definitely not alien to our day education. Then, when Calvino goes on to explore how twentieth century literature transcended those difficulties, he provides us with a valuable inspiration for how education could cope with its ambiguous relation to knowledge, still deeply rooted in the modern approach. Guided by Calvino’s readings, we are shown that literature can succeed in its epistemological (r)evolution. Meanwhile, education, as it seems, is still struggling to overcome its entanglement with the unreachable goal of teaching everything about everything, to cope with the infinity and complexity of that everything, making reflecting upon education’s epistemological stance in the twenty-first century very much a necessity, one that I will try to pursue in the following pages After a methodological introduction, the paper starts by placing Calvino’s examination of beautiful, yet unsuccessful literary attempts at an exhaustive account of the world in the context of education, to show how their unattainable ambitions are mirrored in pedagogical practice, pointing out to the “modern spirit” underlying both the aforementioned novels’ and contemporary education’s relation to knowledge. Then, with the help of J. Rancière’s take on education, I will try and make educational sense of Calvino’s account of Bouvard and Pécuchet failed quest to know everything there is to be known, and relate it to the particular model of knowledge at work in education, one that needs to be questioned. Finally, I will draw on Calvino’s praise of “the contemporary novel as (…) a method of knowledge” (SM, p. 105), and particularly on his analysis of Perec’s masterpiece La Vie mode d’emploi, and his rehabilitation of the idea of arbitrariness, to outline some reflections about how an educational multiplicity, where “everything is in everything” could come to life (Rancière, 1991, p. 26).