In this article I discuss how Jacques Rancière’s thought invites us to re-conceptualize the education–emancipation nexus. The primary goal of traditional approaches to emancipatory and anti-oppressive education has been to empower the oppressed so that the latter can (re)gain their voice and transform their situations. Building on Rancière’s ideas, I argue that the processes of empowering the oppressed imply that one has the power to empower the other, and thus start with an assumption of inequality. I conclude the article with (...) a call for a pedagogy of ignorance. Grounded in Rancière’s thought, this pedagogy is ignorant of any division and hierarchy of intelligence. (shrink)

I feel uneasy stepping into the great territories opened up by Nancy Moules and Kate Beamer at the tail end of last year’s Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. It is not a territory I have endured as deeply. That bracketed “yet” is little more than a feeble attempt at trying to remember not to forget what surrounds us all, whatever its proximity.