Abstract
In this chapter, we focus on Benhabib’s (The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens, Cambridge University Press, 2004) conception of democratic iteration, as being at the core of democratic education. We posit that the premise of democratic iterations is not to alter the normative validity of practical discourses, but to determine the legitimacy of particular processes of opinion and will formation. In this regard, we focus on two examples: one commonly referred to as the French scarf affair and the other involving the prohibition of ‘black languages and hair’ in South African schools. We argue that it would be unjustifiable to delink democratic education from rational articulations and rearticulations and emotional will formation.
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Notes
- 1.
Commonly referred to as a politico-cultural debate or conflict, the scarf affair has become a generic reference to the controversial decision by a number of European liberal democracies to regulate the dress code of Muslim women—specifically, to compel Muslim women not to wear their head scarves in the public sphere.
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Davids, N., Waghid, Y. (2019). Democratic Education and Iterations: On the Emotion of Talking Back. In: Democratic Education and Muslim Philosophy. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30056-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30056-2_2
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