Educational Studies in the Light of the Feminine

IntroductionHistory of Thought

I.1. An introductory framework

Arendt’s text “La brèche entre le passé et le futur” (“Between Past and Future”) (1972) poses questions of knowledge transfer and raises issues about childhood and adulthood: essentially, it is a reflection on the loss of experience leading to a crisis of knowledge transfer, understood as an inability to allow oneself to tell a story that carries meaning for others. These questions are at the heart of the reflections in this book: one’s commitment to others, the common good and the safeguarding of human values are a treasure to behold, in the words of Char (1983a).

What has given impetus to the experience and value of the treasure of those who have lived through the 20th Century, faced with perils, violence and disasters, is the intertwining of life and politics, of the singular and the general, and of the small and the big.

Tragedy, poiesis and creation (including of the self) are therefore some of the reference points from which we will approach questions of development, accompaniment and change in the French higher education working space, which is to be repositioned in a wider world and in specific socio-professional contexts.

It is in this way that we propose a reflection, seeking to shape and share the experience of women working in French higher education at the beginning of the 21st Century. From our vantage point as successors of a certain legacy, the duty that falls to us and the challenge that we take ...