FROM FREEDOM TO EQUALITY: THINKING POLITICS AND EDUCATION WITH JACQUES RANCIÈRE

ii Is there such a thing as an emancipatory education? If so, what does an emancipatory education look like? This is the question that motivates this dissertation. It is also a question that has motivated many other political reflections on education. In part, it is the prevalence of this common concern with the emancipatory capacity of education that inspired the first major claim of this dissertation: a general problematic of freedom and authority seems to frame much of our political thinking about education and this problematic has troubling consequences for our thinking and practice of education, and how we imagine education’s relationship to politics. In fact, our way of imagining emancipatory education often seems neither freeing nor radical, and certainly not democratic. Given this, is it possible to reimagine emancipatory education beyond the problematic of freedom and authority? I will argue that it possible, to a certain degree. Turning to the writings of Jacques Rancière, I will argue that his own rethinking of emancipation and politics translates or shifts us from an emphasis on freedom to a