The Relational Power of Education: The immeasurability of knowledge, value and meaning

Recognizing the challenge of adequate evaluation in higher education, this essay introduces some of the critical, alternative-seeking conversation about educational measurement. The thesis is that knowledge, value, and meaning emerge in the relational dynamics of education, thus requiring complex approaches to evaluation, utilizing relational criteria. The method of the essay is to analyse two educational case studies à à à ¢ a travel seminar and a classroom course à à à ¢ in dialogue with educational literature and a process-relational philosophy of education. Building from this analysis, the essay concludes with proposals for relational criteria of evaluation: relations with self, community and culture, difference, earth, and social structures

Israeli and Palestinian stories. Can mediators reconfigure incompatible narratives?

The rise of further tensions and wars in the Middle East interconnects, oversimplifies and radicalizes narratives. The aim of the article is to question the scope and practical limits of the mediators’ power regarding parties’ representations of the past. The study is divided into four parts. The first describes the specific challenge faced by practitioners. The other parts explore the Israeli-Palestinian case, focusing on three distinct approaches to contradictory narratives. The first can be summarized by the formula ‘neither nor’ (neither the Israeli narrative, nor the Palestinian narrative). In concealing interpretations of the past, mediators try to do away with the ‘tyranny of the past’. The second approach takes into consideration ‘both the Israeli and the Palestinian narratives’. It tends to be inclusive and to consider all interpretations of the past. The third and last approach applies a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ reasoning in order to forge new interpretations of the past. At each stage of the research, the purpose is to question the actual impact of these approaches. Do they enable the parties to move on, or do they reinforce the deadlock? Do they open the minds of the negotiators or do they rather close them

Nostalgic memories and human rights: Integrating subjective experiences with universal needs

In this comment, I focus on the integration of memories and human rights. The claim for the “self-evident” declares the claim for human rights not only of minorities, or oppressed and forgotten groups but, more broadly, of the self and different others. I consider human rights as they emerge from the content of intergenerational nostalgic memories and are reflected on the right to remember, the right to forget, the right to long for the past, and the right to life. I give a brief account of studies on intergenerational nostalgic memories and I argue for remembering processes as a fundamental human right. Finally, I discuss theoretical implications of integrating memory studies and human rights debates