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Democracy, Bildung and Play: Aesthetic Matters in Education (Aflyst)

CHEF Talk by Herdis Toft, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 12 November 2019,  at 12:00 - 13:00

Location

CUDiM, Campus Aarhus, building 1483, room 656. Video-link to Danish School of Education (DPU), Campus Emdrup, room D120.

Play processes support democracy and Bildung, that is, formation/self-cultivation and human growth in social communities. A main purpose for (Danish) day care and educational institutions is education for democracy. This aim can be fulfilled through awareness of how democracy and Bildung are closely connected to forms of play representing aesthetical matters, that must not be neglected in education. I am inspired by (1) Rancière and his understanding of the relation between democracy and aesthetics, both matters that relate to the ways in which divisions and subdivisions in the social take place; (2) Agamben and his critique of the way in which contemporary individuals are ascribed definite identities, thereby losing their freedom to not being someone predetermined within existing social and symbolic (educational) order; and (3) Nietzsche and his distinction between aesthetic processes as Apollonian and Dionysian stylizing that are vital regarding human growth.