Democratic education and curiosity

ABSTRACT

Curiosity is not prominent in investigations on democratic development. Nor is curiosity discussed in democratic education discourses. However, this article contributes to the present Special Issue the idea that the connection of curiosity and democracy should not be ignored. First, I show that curiosity’s connection with democracy has, regrettably, been largely bypassed in fields related to democratic theory and pedagogy. Then, I elaborate on how the emerging scholarship on curiosity’s intricacies makes it easier to perceive how fruitful the study of curiosity’s role in democratic theory and education would be. In light of this recent rethinking of curiosity, I claim that studying a complex and ambiguous notion of curiosity (along with an equally complex and ambiguous epistemic restraint) is important for studying and advancing democracy and for enriching democratic citizenship education.

KEYWORDS:

• curiosity politics
• citizenship
• restraint
• education
• public space
• totalitarianism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Thought through, this critical point also outlines how I mean democracy in this article.

2. On the neglected significance of epistemic restraint and its connection with curiosity and education see Papastephanou (2016).

3. Methodologically, I would suggest that a conception of curiosity that would do justice to curiosity’s ambiguities and complexities be developed through an interplay of deconstructive and reconstructive as well as perspectival and stereoscopic techniques. Some indication of this will be given sporadically in this article, but any fuller unpacking of these techniques is beyond the article’s limits.

4. The assumption of scientific disinterestedness had blocked the prospect of grasping the political operations of curiosity, some of which have been repugnantly colonial and anti-democratic all along, from antiquity to the present (Papastephanou 2019, 2022). The focus of theoretical accounts of curiosity on individuals had also blocked explicit theorizations of the possibility of curiosity being social, as we shall see later on.

5. Cho’s critique of Freire’s ontology of curiosity (and Lewis’ endorsement of this critique) could be contested from Zurn’s (2023a) perspective and alternative reading of that ontology, but this is beyond the scope of this paper.

6. However, neither Huysmans (2016) theorizes the connection of curiosity and democracy beyond issues of surveillance. Moreover, he uses the adjective ‘democratic’ to qualify curiosity somewhat axiomatically, and a risk in this is that premodifiers such as ‘democratic’ may sanitize curiosity and obscure some of its bad politics.

7. For this point, I am indebted to the journal’s anonymous reviewers. On the prospect of a rethought curiosity becoming conducive to a rethought democratic education that will benefit from both disruptive and deliberative models of democracy, see also my comment on Leiviskä (2020) in another section of this article.

8. As I have discussed this point elsewhere (Papastephanou 2023a), here I will leave at that.

9. Huysmans (2016) uses ‘democratic curiosity’ as a good thing and, though he avoids turning into a slogan, the risk of other theories developing a hollow rhetoric around it remains, if the vigilance and caution that I am suggesting here is missing.

10. On the meaning and theoretical significance of the extitutional in relation to ‘democratic curiosity’ see (Huysmans 2016).

11. For more on how I define the stereoscopic in more detail and how I apply it to the complex notion of justice, see Papastephanou (2021).

12. Discursive justice denotes a proper provision of discursive space to all positions, that is, one’s giving attention to, and treating fairly, the claims of all people affected by an idea, a measure or a practice.

13. Certain questions are not asked not quite because the questions are unworthy or show an idle or dubious curiosity but because asking them comes with a social and scholarly cost and unfair labelling or awkward silence that most researchers are not willing to shoulder.

14. This comprises “questions such as: ‘What is the world?’ ‘What is the philosophical, theological, and political history of this concept of world”’ (Derrida 2005, 107–8).

15. One such totalitarian risk is disturbingly also evident when Europe and its states now handle in a despicably punitive and unacceptably legalist way, not only preposterous or reactionary views, but even views that are progressive, rational and defend democratic human rights. Such a totalitarian attitude is noticeable in the decision of Cyprus to extradite the Kurdish activist and politician Kenan Ayaz to Germany. Germany has demanded (issuing a European warrant), again to totalitarian effect, this extradition on supposed terrorism charges, although Ayaz has only aired views in support of freedom and human rights against violations of them occurring in Turkey. Media all over Europe have met the event of his extradition with a most telling silence, and the whole issue has not managed to excite the curiosity of European ‘cosmopolitans,’ ‘progressives’ and activists of all kinds. Because there is no space here to argue out the case of Ayaz, see https://www.andrej-hunko.de/presse/pressespiegel/5545-europaabgeordnete-fordern-freilassung-von-kenan-ayaz.

16. Kalli Drousioti (2022b) provides an informative account of the Cyprus issue and its context as well as offers a pertinent critique of relativist and poly-prismatic arguments, hence I refer to this source and proceed with the illustration presently.

17. In a democratic life, and from a psychological and ethical perspective, tolerance is also needed toward the ‘incurious,’ those who are indifferent to, unwilling to know about, a claim of justice.