Elodie Guillemin

• Fernández, Florencia & Guillemin, Elodie (2026). Scholè as suspension: a political project? Journal of Philosophy of Education. ISSN 0309-8249. doi: 10.1093/jopedu/qhag023. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract In this article, we explore the notion of scholè as suspension, central to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simon’s work on the publicness of school, with the aim of addressing the position that scholè as suspension can be conceptualized as non-political. We begin by discussing Masschelein and Simons’ idea. Further, we suggest a contrast with the understanding of suspension put forward in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, ou de l’éducation. This alternative account challenges the centrality of schools in enabling suspension and shows that embracing the school as the pre-eminent site of the scholè can run the risk of perpetuating injustice. Then, through childist and decolonial perspectives on schooling developed by Tatek Abebe and Tanu Biswas, we show how a certain form of schooling can hinder other ways of living and being, rather than promoting free time from the tyranny of (capitalist) society and the unequal family order. Finally, we discuss Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s notion of black study in order to expand the notion of scholè by exploring its political gesture. In contrast to the classroom understood as a moment of free time from society, we insist that the classroom is a contested space, where educational suspension nevertheless happens/can happen.

• Guillemin, Elodie (2025). Biesta's world-centred education: subjectification revisited? Journal of Philosophy of Education. ISSN 0309-8249. 59(2), p. 274–289. doi: 10.1093/jopedu/qhae057. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores Biesta’s recent revisiting of his iconic and at times contested notion of education as subjectification. First, I look at how Biesta presents his notion by attending to his answers to the criticisms it has faced concerning elusiveness, oversimplification, and self-centredness. Then, going beyond the declarative level, I explore a concrete example of education as subjectification from Biesta’s 2022 book, World-Centred Education. Analysing the example of Homer Lane and Jason, I examine the ambivalence between Biesta’s explicit statements on subjectification as a form of spontaneous and noncoercive teaching aimed at cultivating freedom and the more complex picture that emerges from a close reading of the original story. From this analysis, I find important conceptual limitations to education as subjectification: it could conceal part of the institutional context of education and the teacher’s active role, and also reduce freedom to an individualistic concept. I thus conclude by suggesting that the language of subjectification should always be engaged with critically—but never in isolation—and with a stereoscopic optic in mind.

• Guillemin, Elodie (2021). Emancipation, Knowledge and Power. Pedagogisk profil. ISSN 0805-5610. p. 16–19. doi: https:/www.uv.uio.no/livet-rundt-studiene/pedagogisk-profil/pp21-2/2111-pp-5.pdf. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Emancipation through education. The project seems legitimate. But is it actually possible to make someone free from a position of authority, or is it just a paradox? In the following, I examine two different visions of the method of emancipation: the one displayed by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000), and the one proposed by Jacques Rancière in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991). More precisely, I ask the question: how can emancipation emerge from a teacher-student relationship? Emancipation can be defined as “the act of freeing somebody, especially from legal, political or social controls that limit what they can do” (Oxford learner’s Dictionary). In that sense, emancipation implies independence from exterior constraints. It indicates an enhanced capacity to exert agency. And, not only do the two authors have this theme in common, but they also view it from different perspectives, something which might help the comparison to be fruitful. While Rancière gives voice to the 19th century pedagogue Joseph Jacotot and narrates his story (Rancière, 1987, p. 7), Freire’s political approach is explicit: it is a matter of class struggle and overcoming oppression (Freire, 2000, p. 44).  

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• Guillemin, Elodie (2025). ANMELDELSE: PRATIQUES D'EXPÉRIMENTATIONS. Salongen.no. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Radikal likhet og eksperimentering er noe den norske politiske filosofen Anders Fjeld forsøker å kartlegge i Pratiques d'expérimentation – Cartographier les possibles avec Jacques Rancière [Eksperimentelle praksiser – Kartlegging av det mulige med Jacques Rancière]. Boken er langt fra å være Fjeld første utforskning av Rancière sine tanker og tekster, da han allerede i 2016 forsvarte avhandlingen om «L’expérimentation de n’importe qui: Du défi de Marx à la cartographie ranciérienne des formations sociales» [Enhvers eksperiment: Fra Marx' utfordring til Rancières kartlegging av sosiale formasjoner] ved Paris Diderot Universitet. Fjeld har siden det publisert flere artikler om Rancière, og denne boken speiler Fjelds dype og reflekterte lesning. Det finnes selvsagt mye sekundærlitteratur om Rancière i Frankrike og internasjonalt. Bokens verdifulle bidrag er imidlertid at den ikke kun utforsker Rancières komplekse tanker, men forlenger dem og forankrer dem i konkrete eksempler.

• Bostad, Inga; Guillemin, Elodie & Hogstad, Kjetil Horn (2024). Demokrati og anarki. Full text in Research Archive
• Hogstad, Kjetil Horn; Bostad, Inga; Lie, Elin Rødahl; Kvamme, Ole Andreas; Kvernbekk, Tone & Harboe, Turid Løyte [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2024). Humaniorafagenes perspektiver kan styrke utdannings­forskningen. Full text in Research Archive
• Guillemin, Elodie (2023). Invited comment on Gert Biesta's open lecture: Putting the World in the Center of Education. Full text in Research Archive
• Guillemin, Elodie (2023). Democracy, Education and Climate: A reconfiguration of the sensible. Full text in Research Archive
• Guillemin, Elodie (2022). An investigation of education as subjectification: Biesta's use of example. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this thesis, I explore the question of what Biesta’s idea of education as subjectification consist in when it is seen in light of its examples. I first present my theoretical approach as belonging to philosophy of education and as related to philosophical hermeneutics. And, because I understand my methodological approach and my theoretical framework as being interrelated, I explore Lyons’ and Korsgaard’s theoretical insights in how examples were used and how they are still used today in relation to education. Drawing from Lyons, I explore the ideas of examples used as instantiations of particular claims and as being in excess in relation to what they exemplify. And drawing from Korsgaard, I examine three different ways in which examples can be used in relation to education: First, examples can be used to gain understanding of a particular phenomenon in studying instantiations of some of its features. Second, examples can be used as “entryways” arousing the student’s curiosity for understanding complex subject matters. And third, examples can work as prompting emulation through the admiration of exemplary persons as well as being used in the formation of educational judgment. From this exploration, I outline three hypotheses about Biesta’s use of examples: (1) examples are instantiations of particular features of education as subjectification, (2) examples do not instantiate particular features of education as subjectification. On the contrary, they are always betraying what they exemplify, they show the reader how education as subjectification happened in a particular and unique way in the past. And (3), examples are rhetorical tools that guide the reader towards a particular axiomatic interpretation, which could foreclose different ways of thinking about ambivalent phenomena. In the second part, I present Biesta’s idea of education as subjectification as it appears in his work with an emphasis on how it is presented in his latest book: World-Centred Education. Then, I examine some of the criticisms that Biesta’s idea of education as subjectification has been exposed to. These criticisms are oriented toward the normativity and elusiveness of Biesta’s idea, the oversimplifications that Biesta’s framework seems to imply, and the imbalance in the importance of the world and the self in the idea of education as subjectification. In the third part, I propose to analyze the seven examples of education as subjectification as they occur in Biesta’s latest book. I thoroughly describe the context in which those examples occurred and, when it is possible, I gather information on the original context the examples have been taken from. I supplement this description with insights from Lyons’ seven characteristics of examples which allowed me to go more in depth about the different aspects of the examples used. Finally, I discuss the three research questions that this thesis is concerned with in light of the analysis of the examples: (1) What roles do examples have in Biesta’s latest book? (2) What are the relationships between the examples and what is exemplified? (3) What are the implications of the examples used for education as subjectification? This discussion leads to intricate interrogations about what education as subjectification consists in. I suggest that seeking to understand education as subjectification through an analysis of the examples that are used brought a layer of complexity to Biesta’s own account of education as subjectification. I suggest that the examples used have a rhetorical power which could conceal disputable premises and partial descriptions of reality, which could lead the reader to take the examples as commonsensical and simplify complex realities. I also explore the idea of examples as inviting reflections from the reader, an idea that I moderate by the fact that the contradictory elements of the examples are left out. Yet, I also suggest that some other examples worked as openings due to their lack of expressive references to something tangible and unequivocal. Then, drawing from Lyons’ and Korsgaard’s theoretical insights, I propose to describe the relationship between the examples and what they exemplify as a relationship between instantiation and excess. Indeed, I point out that some characteristics of the examples used are in tension, even sometimes in contradiction with what they were supposed to exemplify. Here, I argue that the analysis of examples could raise deep questions about what Biesta’s idea implies. On the one hand, I explore the idea of the internal tensions between the different examples and claims as potentially constitutive of education as subjectification. If education as subjectification is approached as something unreproducible and unforeseeable, as something that is given here and now, then some examples could be seen as representing education as subjectification in the only way they can, with all their excess and contradictions. On the other hand, I suggest that other examples lead to deep interrogations about the clarity of some of Biesta’s general claims about education. Examining those claims through the prism of exemplification allows me to explore the tensions between what we say, how we say it, and how we show it. In Biesta’s text, I underline that the meaning and implications of ideas such as “reality check” and “external control” become unclear, and that it raises questions about Biesta’s understanding of freedom.

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