How is Education Possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education

The following text is the result of our ongoing discussions about the notion of intersubjectivity and its significance for an understanding of the process of education.Rather than merging our sometimes diverging ideas into one single line of argument, we decided to try if we could make the movement of divergence and convergence of our thoughts visible in the text itself. Although we definitely explore different pathways, these pathways lead to a similar insight.This is, that it is not the educator who educates, but that it is the educational ‘situation’—a situation constituted though not determined by the interaction between the educator and the student—which educates.This educational situation, which one of us describes as an ‘in between space’, emerges from the interaction between the educator and the student.In this respect we can say that it results from the difference between the partners in education.The in-between space of education is an emerging reality, which not only comes into existence as a result of the difference between the partners in education but in fact only exists in this difference. It is precisely in this respect that the form of the following article provides an example of what we want to say about the process of education.The point is, to put it briefly, that this article contains or expresses a meaning that results from the difference between the two texts, but this meaning is neither something that can be attributed to the two texts as such (in this sense this emerging meaning is constituted though not determined by the two texts), nor—and this is crucial—is it something that can be articulated in any positive way in a third text.The interaction between our two texts therefore creates a reality that results from the difference between the texts and only exists in this difference.The order of authorship expresses the fact that the first author wrote the left column and the second author the right column.