This text has already been published in Studies in Philosophy and Education, Feb. 2018, n° 37, p.103–107.
As we all know it, writing and reading takes time. In the contemporary social and academic
context, often shaped by a destabilizing sense of acceleration and urgency, protecting the
moments required for such ‘time-consuming’ activities is not something that can be taken
for granted anymore. The way we commit to a specific task expresses as much about the
meaning it may carry that what we say or write about it. I am therefore particularly grateful
that Marianna Papastephanou accepted to read so carefully Time and the Rhythms of
Emancipatory Education. The relevance of her comments and questions make me feel that
she really understood what I have tried to accomplish in this monograph. As an embedded
watermark, the time ‘encapsulated’ in the writing of her text also reveals something about
the topicality of this theme for researchers in education. Among the numerous comments
and questions formulated by Papastephanou, I have chosen to focus on four issues that
appear to me as particularly crucial to explore : the importance of the concept of rhythm in
education ; the ambivalences and the rhythmicity of emancipatory education ; the fluctuating
nature of the relationships between individual and collective changes ; and the
recursive dimension of rhythmanalysis as a time to ‘negotiate’ the rhythms we live
through. [...]
