Politicising Executive Education
September 17, 2006
Derrida’s response to Rorty, taken from Deconstruction and Pragmatism (page 77 to 88, translated from French by Simon Critchley) concerning the politicising qualities of deconstruction speaks of the potential of a deconstructive reading & writing of exec.ed. promising a political acuity hitherto dormant.
“To move on to a question that Rorty raised in discussion concerning the weakening of the political left in the United States, this would demand a great deal of analysis and perhaps Rorty is right in seeing such a weakening. But even if Rorty is right, my hope, as a man of the left, is that certain elements of deconstruction will have served or-because the struggle continues, particularly in the United States-will serve to politicize or repoliticize the left with regard to positions which are not simply academic. I hope – and if I can continue to contribute a little to this I will be very content – that the political left in universities in the United States, France and elsewhere, will gain politically by employing deconstruction. To a certain extent, and in an unequal way, this is a movement that is already under way.”
Executivezen feels confident that it is not trying to philosophise its way into a political relevance for exec.ed.
September 30, 2006 at 10:04 am
[...] This means what, exactly? It seems to be a truism that management and leadership education (exec.ed) is not a fixed entity; obviously, programmes of education, learning, development, arise from the conditions of the client organisation and as such are contingent and not fixed or immutable (though, perhaps, this is less true of programmes of formal, curricula-bound, education such as an MBA or MSc). However, executivezen is not sure this holds true of programmes of espoused ‘customised’ education and is certainly of the belief that these programmes are not politically neutral. By programme, executivezen means a defined system, structure and agenda, in this case pertaining to education: the term programme of education refers as much to a perceived lack of education that may form the basis of the commissioning of a piece of education, up to scheduled instances of formal classroom education. All programmes belie an agenda, a postion formed in advance that makes a programme political in nature. Programmes of education are political in nature (see Politicising Executive Education and Exec.ed and Politics posts). At some point, the programme of a programme of education falls back into stasis, which in this case is back to the political agenda implicit in that programme of education. Posted by executivezen Filed in leadership, poststructuralism, Jacques Derrida [...]