People’s Universities and Proletarian Nights. Simone Weil and Jacques Rancière on Education and Emancipation

This article uses the lens of Jacques Rancière’s work to come to a more profound understanding of the educational ideas of Simone Weil. The first section provides an overview of Weil as a critical pedagogue, followed by a section in which I discern a fundamental similarity between the work of both thinkers, namely, the importance of attention in education. A Rancièrian critique of Weil’s educational ideas is used as a basis for my argument in the third part of this article that Simone Weil’s educational thoughts can be deemed critical, but not emancipatory. The remaining part of this article draws conclusions from Weil’s and Rancière’s educational ideas for academic practices and solidarity, as both engage to overcome the dichotomy between thinking and acting.