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Abstract

This article outlines the concept of tender public pedagogy, which refers to the educationally saturated care for a fragile common good: the commonality shared by humans and non-human others. The deficit of such spaces is experienced as a planetary catastrophe. Drawing on the thoughts of Olga Tokarczuk, the article presents the concept of the fourth-person narrator as foundational for tender public pedagogy. This pedagogy is outlined through four antecedents. The central question is not what such pedagogy is, but under what circumstances it can occur. Methodologically, the text unfolds as a pedagogical story about a regenerative and more sustainable world, theorized in line with a non-anthropocentric reconstruction of Norbert Elias’ relationism and his concept of figurations. Here, tenderness is seen as a key tool of regenerative transition, and is related to an ontology of the fragment and François Jullien’s concept of gap (écart) that doubles as a bridge.

Keywords

public pedagogy tenderness more-than-human public space fragment

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Tender public pedagogy: Being fragments in more-than-human figurations of public space

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