Shifting Focus

Strangers and Strangeness in Literature and Education

Peter Roberts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317527312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

There is a long history of interest in 'strangers' and 'strangeness' in the West. Literature lends itself particularly well to an exploration of the strange in its richly varied forms, having often contained portraits of outsiders. These portraits depict people who are strange in their unusual appearance or demeanour, their out-of-the-ordinary actions or attitudes, their defiance of convention, their marginalisation from society, or their resistance to dominant structures and practices, as well as those who come from strange worlds.

Each contribution in this collection focuses on a novel, story or play. The essays engage works by Shelley, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Grazia Deledda, Kafka, Beckett, and Camus, all of whom have much to offer the central theme of 'strangers and strangeness'. This book demonstrates that there is considerable value in encountering, experiencing and reflecting upon that which is strange. Education is, amongst other things, a process of learning to see the world otherwise, and literature has the capacity to promote this form of human development. This book allows readers to re-experience the ordinary, and to learn that what at first seems strange is rather closer to us than we had previously imagined.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy & Theory.

Introduction: Educative strangeness

PETER ROBERTS

College of Education, University of Canterbury

There is a long history of interest in ‘strangers’ and ‘strangeness’ in the West. Over the past 100 years, the concept of the stranger has been analysed by philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists, among others. One influential account was provided by Georg Simmel (1950), who spoke of the stranger as someone who, in relation to a group, is both near and far at the same time. For Hortense Powdermaker (1967), the ‘way of the anthropologist’ was to be both a stranger and a friend. More recently, Richard Kearney (2003) has argued that ‘strangers, gods and monsters’ have played a powerful role in shaping our cultural unconscious. In literary terms, the theme of ‘strangers and strangeness’ might be said to date back to Homer’s Odyssey, with a wandering hero (Odysseus) who spends many years of his life after the Trojan War in strange lands, meeting strange creatures, on an epic journey to return home, only to find that when he reaches his final destination he is himself a stranger among those formerly closest to him (Homer, 1991). Literature lends itself particularly well to an exploration of the strange in its richly varied forms. In novels and plays across the centuries we often find portraits of outsiders—men and women who are depicted as strange in their unusual appearance or demeanour, their out-of-the-ordinary actions or attitudes or ideas, their defiance of convention, their marginalization on the edges of society, or their resistance to dominant structures and practices. In addition, literature furnishes many examples of encounters with strange worlds, particularly in the genres of science fiction and fantasy and in works of a utopian and dystopian kind, but also in creative reconstructions of ‘everydayness’.

Attention to these matters in education is less common. There is a substantial body of critical educational work on ‘the Other’, particularly among intellectuals working in post-structuralist and post-colonial theoretical domains, with links to Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Bhabha, Spivak, Said and other thinkers. But ‘the Other’ is not an equivalent to ‘the stranger’ and a focus on strangeness can differ from a concern with otherness. An encounter with the Other may, for example, involve active engagement not with those who are ‘strange’ but with those who are most familiar to us. Otherness is usually viewed in relation to people; strangeness may be evident in places, events and experiences. There is, to use the Wittgensteinian terminology (Wittgenstein, 1958), a family resemblance between these concepts, but they also have their own distinctive connotations, discourses and intellectual trajectories. The related ideas of ‘strangers’ and ‘strangeness’ have yet to be given their due in educational philosophy.

Among the exceptions, Maxine Greene’s classic work Teacher as stranger stands out. Published in 1973, at a time when analytic philosophy of education was in its heyday, Teacher as stranger was an exemplary text in several senses. Greene did not provide a conceptual analysis of teaching in the style of the London School led by Peters, Hirst and Dearden. Instead, she took a much more holistic, humanistic, ‘stranger’ approach, addressing the educational process, teacher–student relations, and modes of human experience and being in a highly original manner. She drew on an eclectic range of different sources, synthesizing ideas from existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism and other traditions. Significantly, in developing her argument, she referred not only to non-fictional works of philosophy and educational theory but also to novels and poems. Greene was a leader in taking literature seriously as a potential source of educational insight.

This collection builds on Greene’s pioneering example, taking her references to fiction and poetry one step further by making literary works the starting point for philosophical and educational investigation. Each contribution to this volume has as its central focus a novel, a story or a play. The works examined here have been chosen carefully with the organizing theme of ‘strangers and strangeness in literature and education’ in mind. Collectively, the articles gathered in this text demonstrate that there is educative value in encountering, experiencing and reflecting upon that which is strange. Education is, among other things, a process of learning to see the world otherwise, and literature has the capacity to promote precisely this form of human development. By attending to particulars—the concrete details of setting, relationships, interaction, conversation, deliberation, struggle and triumph—novels and plays can teach in ways that are either difficult or impossible through conventional non-fiction texts (Siegel, 1997; Roberts, 2008a, 2008b). Literature, a substantial body of work shows, has a part to play in character development, the deepening of moral understanding, the education of the emotions and the advancement of public life (Gribble, 1983; Solomon, 1986; Nussbaum, 1990, 1995; Palmer, 1992; Cunningham, 2001; Barrow, 2004; Carr, 2005; Jollimore & Barrios, 2006; Roberts, 2008c).

Literature can unsettle and disturb; it can leave us, as Paulo Freire (1997) would say, feeling less certain of our certainties and more open to new ways of understanding ourselves and the world. Education is arguably meant to make people feel uncomfortable and an encounter with strangeness is one way of facilitating this. To be committed to education is to be willing to accept risks, to be challenged and to change. Novels and plays allow us to enter hitherto uncharted worlds, including the inner worlds of human consciousness, and encourage us, if read and pondered and discussed in certain ways, to ask new educational questions. From Dewey and others we have learned the importance of re-experiencing the ordinary; from works such as those considered in this volume, we can gain a renewed appreciation of the strange. Engagement with demanding novels and plays brings to life the tension between nearness and distance analysed so well by Simmel, and through this we often come to learn that what at first seems strange is rather closer to us than we had hitherto imagined.

The first article, by Claudia Rozas Gómez, examines an archetypal portrait of ‘the stranger’ in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Composed when Shelley had barely reached adulthood, this classic work paints a moving picture of a misunderstood figure (known as ‘the Creature’) and his creator, the scientist Victor Frankenstein. Drawing on the work of the influential Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire, Rozas Gómez focuses on what Shelley’s novel has to teach us about knowledge and human relationships. She argues that knowledge should enable us to connect with others and the world; when it does not, the results, as Frankenstein shows, can be tragic. The next piece, by Richard Smith, complements this discussion nicely. Smith too addresses matters of epistemology, discussing the idea of ‘knowingness’, and its relation to alterity, in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Smith notes that if we are strangers to ourselves, the very idea of trying to understand our strangeness is called into question. Through Dickens, and with reference to philosophers such as Plato and Rorty, Smith analyses the concept of knowingness as a kind of excessive certainty of belief. There is a risk, Smith points out, of becoming ‘too knowing about knowingness’. If knowingness is to be explored as a significant part of our alterity, an indirect approach, as exemplified in Dickens’ novel, can sometimes be more helpful than systematic philosophical investigation. Nesta Devine examines Charlotte Brontë’s novels Jane Eyre and Villette for the insight they can offer in understanding teaching. A teacher herself, Brontë depicts through her literary work some of the challenges that must be faced when a new educational environment is entered. Preferred pedagogies may have changed over the centuries but some of the tensions addressed in Brontë’s novels—between romantic ideals and the demands of reason, for example—remain relevant to the present day. As Devine shows, Brontë gives us a better appreciation of what it means to be a stranger in one’s own classroom.

Few nineteenth century novelists have been more influential or more prophetic in their thinking and writing than Fyodor Dostoevsky. My own contribution to the collection discusses Notes from underground, a short novel that provided a philosophical stepping stone to the great works of Dostoevsky’s maturity: Crime and punishment, The idiot, Demons, and The brothers Karamazov. The article shows that getting to know the Underground Man is by no means an easy process. He is one of Dostoevsky’s tortured souls, self-absorbed, obsessive and vindictive yet also, in some respects, more honest and perceptive in his reflections than many with whom he associates. I argue a case for a compassionate stance towards the Underground Man, recognizing that in his frailties, contradictions and despair, he is not unlike many who read Dostoevsky’s work. Reading Dostoevsky, I suggest, can be an uncomfortable but educative experience, awakening the ‘stranger within’. Elias Schwieler investigates the idea of ‘being’ via Joseph Conrad’s story ‘The secret sharer’. Often viewed as an initiation tale, ‘The secret sharer’ can, according to Schwieler, be seen as an allegory for different forms of inaccessibility in understanding ‘being in command’ and ‘being in education’. More than this, Conrad’s story allows us to see how difficult it is to determine the meaning of the text itself. ‘The secret sharer’ uses the literary device of ‘the double’ to show how learning is tightly connected with a sense of strangeness and being a stranger.

John Freeman-Moir provides a close reading of Grazia Deledda’s Canne al vento (Reeds in the wind). Drawing on the work of Marx, Dewey and others, Freeman-Moir pays careful attention to the concrete particulars of estrangement, as exemplified by Efix, the servant in Deledda’s novel, and his relations with three sisters. In the life of Efix, Freeman-Moir argues, we see the interplay of sorrow and hope, illustrating the dialectic of estrangement in an oppressive class society. Ruyu Hung examines Franz Kafka’s famous tale The metamorphosis, in the light of ideas from Alphonso Lingis. At the start of The metamorphosis, the central character Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous bug. From this memorable beginning, Kafka fashions a deeply affecting story of increasing estrangement between Gregor and other members of his family. Hung considers whether, why and how one ought to care for a stranger. Building on Lingis’s work, she challenges the commonplace view that there is a distinction between ‘my community’ and ‘the stranger’s community’. Hung argues that contrary to our typical view of relations with others who seems strange, ‘I am the stranger and the stranger is me’. Therefore, Hung concludes, to care about a stranger is also to care about oneself.

Alan Scott reflects on Samuel Beckett’s well-known play Waiting for Godot as a significant contribution to the literary tradition of making the ‘strange familiar and … the familiar strange’. Waiting for Godot, Scott notes, is one of the pivotal works in what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd. Scott recounts his personal experiences with the play, engaging Beckett’s work as an educative illustration of strangers and the strangeness of the world. Scott draws a comparison between Beckett and Brecht on the nature and purpose of theatre and considers some of the limits and possibilities in plays, and in education, for social transformation. The collection finishes with Aidan Curzon-Hobson’s reading of Albert Camus’s The stranger. Camus created a sensation with this short novel, published while he was still relatively young, and he went on to become one of the key figures in twentieth century literature. This article serves as a logical companion to Scott’s, for Camus was also centrally concerned with the concept of the absurd. Curzon-Hobson takes this idea as the starting point for his discussion of The stranger. He argues that in Camus’s corpus we witness a dedication to the stranger, hope and humility. Curzon-Hobson analyses Camus’s work in relation to notions of doubt, ambiguity, dialogue, solidarity and creativity, among other themes.

References

Barrow, R. (2004). Language and character. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 3, 267–279.

Carr, D. (2005). On the contribution of literature and the arts to the educational cultivation of moral virtue, feeling and emotion. Journal of Moral Education, 34, 137–151.

Cunningham, A. (2001). The heart of what matters: The role for literature in moral philosophy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogy of the heart. New York: Continuum.

Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as stranger. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Gribble, J. (1983). Literature and the education of the emotions. In Literary education: A revaluation (pp. 95–113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Homer (1991). The odyssey (D. C. H. Rieu, Trans.). London: Penguin.

Jollimore, T., & Barrios, S. (2006). Creating cosmopolitans: The case for literature. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 25, 263–283.

Kearney, R. (2003). Strangers, gods and monsters. London: Routledge.

Nussbaum, M. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum, M. (1995). Poetic justice. The literary imagination and public life. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Palmer, F. (1992). Literature and moral understanding: A philosophical essay on ethics, aesthetics, education, and culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Powdermaker, H. (1967). Stranger and friend. New York: W.W. Norton.

Roberts, P. (2008a). Bridging literary and philosophical genres: Judgement, reflection and education in Camus’ The fall. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40, 873–887.

Roberts, P. (2008b). From west to east and back again: Faith, doubt and education in Hermann Hesse’s later work. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42, 249–268.

Roberts, P. (2008c). Teaching, learning and ethical dilemmas: Lessons from Albert Camus. Cambridge Journal of Education, 38, 529–542.

Siegel, H. (1997). Teaching, reasoning, and Dostoevsky’s The brothers Karamazov. In H. Siegel (Ed.), Rationality redeemed? Further dialogues on an educational ideal (pp. 39–54). New York: Routledge.

Simmel, G. (1950). The stranger. In K. Wolff (Trans.), The sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 402–408). New York: The Free Press.

Solomon, R.C. (1986). Literacy and the education of the emotions. In S. de Castell, A. Luke, & K. Egan (Eds.), Literacy, society, and schooling: A reader (pp. 37–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Educative strangeness
• 2. Strangers and Orphans: Knowledge and mutuality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• 3. A Strange Condition of Things: Alterity and knowingness in Dickens’ David Copperfield
• 4. Spectral Strangers: Charlotte Brontë’s teachers
• 5. The Stranger Within: Dostoevsky’s underground
• 6. Being a Stranger and the Strangeness of Being: Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ as an allegory of being in education
• 7. The Servant: Class estrangement as experience in Grazia Deledda’s Canne al vento
• 8. Caring About Strangers: A Lingisian reading of Kafka’s Metamorphosis
• 9. A Desperate Comedy: Hope and alienation in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
• 10. Confronting the Absurd: An educational reading of Camus’ The stranger
• Index