Towards Authentic Education: Lecture notes

∗

P.Madhu

Discussions on authenticity go astray because often they are essentialist argu-ments. Also, arguments of authenticity are clouded around the notions of ‘self’.Searching for authentic self is futile because there is nothing authentic about‘self’ itself. Arguments of selves are merely egological statements. Self is thor-oughly social. Therefore, searching for authentic self would not lead one beyondthe augmented biases of the world. The self as a rule is a

res-publica

, somethingmade in public space.Neither one can ﬁnd any authenticity in the ‘being’ as

dasein

Dasein

is a being-entity that travels from birth to death, could be either authentic or inauthenticrelative to it avoiding immersion into

theyness

and having its own self-generatedresoluteness through answering to the

dasein

’s “call of conscience.” Though it ap-pears sophisticated, the argument is as egological as the ‘authentic self’ one. Thishas been well studied from different perspectives by Sartre and Levinas.Levinas counters Heidegger’s position of authenticity by inversing the notionof

dasein

with that of

alterity

. For him, the substitute for authenticity is ‘inﬁniteresponsibility to the other’. The inﬁnite responsibility argument, though appearsa better alternative to the self-immersed resolute authentic

dasein

one, it commitsthe double blunder of essentializing self and the other in a sharply dualistic fash-ion. Besides, his compassionate ‘other sensitive’ person is more of a paternalizingagency involved in the futile act of understanding the inﬁnitely regressive imme-diate and distant others. Like ‘self’ the ‘other’ too is a

res-publica

having nothingof its essence. Ironically, being sensitive and inﬁnitely responsible to the otherwould be nothing other than indulging in one’s own representations of the other.Further, the ‘inﬁnite responsibility’ argument privileges the privileged, dumpingthe reaction of the marginalized against the position of the privileged as if it wereirresponsibility.Being authentic is shirking off inauthenticity, the

’bad faith

’. Being authenticdoes not presume either a

dasein

like entity nor a permanent state of authenticity.Being authentic is

evental

where the event is the swarming attack by the potency,vibrant undercurrent, the swirl in the making, the silent and unrecognized null seton the existing complacent setting. It is the event in which existing inauthenticityis swirled out. Authenticity could be better understood from Badiou’s position:“A subject that becomes

authentically

subject to the degree that it shakes off theforces that objectify and compromise.” Authenticity like subject and truth, seen

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Lecture notes prepared for the presentation of a lecture titled “Towards and Authentic educa-tion: A methodological framework. The lecture was delivered at the “School of Social Sciences”,Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam on 9th July 2009. The lecture was part of a 5 days work-shop titled as “Capacity Building Programme Under Human Development in Higher Education”from 7th to 11th July 2009 under the joint auspices of the School of Social Sciences and KeralaState Planning Board, Thiruvananthapuram.