Giuseppe Annacontini, Side notes of a critical pedagogy on capabilities

The essay intends to focus the theme of personal capabilities in the age of individual risks and crisis, underlining possible drifts and “side effects”. Musil is certainly the best interpreter of this perspective by defining the modern man as “the man of opportunities”. Related to this, the enabling opportunities themselves may lead to side effects consisting of saturating educational and life environments, thus producing mediocre, low rank and regressive effects. For this reasons we believe that promoting a situation centered “capabilities enabling approach” shouldn’t aim at suggesting praxis and/or specific solutions, whereas it would be more suitable to define an accurate and relevant analysis of material, axiological and cultural systemic variables that can make life conditions, educational environments, concrete and symbolic situations able of being un-enabling.

Published on: The Wretched of the earth? N. 24 New Series – Year XII 2016