Alterity:: Reflections on the limits of pedagogical self-awareness

If one chooses Rousseau's civilized savage", i.e. man's incessant otherness in reference to the social order which defines him, as the starting point of modern pedagogical thought, then the question of its reality arises. It, then, seems nearly impossible to conceive of a pedagogical reality without referring to paradoxes - even if this has been attempted again and again. Utilizing Kierkegaard's theory, 1 show in this paper that - beyond human being's situatedness in social contexts - one can speak both of his inconceivable singularity as well as the basis of lawful order (a basis that cannot be provided by that very law) in a meaningful way. One can, therefore, think of a 'savageness' that transgresses 'civilization; i.e. a savageness which is not yet determined by civilization. In the following, 1 outline this location-less location of singularity, a location also situated beyond the attempts to classify alien cultures - be those attempts motivated by integration or exclusion. The indissoluble tension between the inevitable confinement of my point of view and the inaccessibility of the Other foreshadows a pedagogy which dismisses (however well-meant) pretensions of regulation and order.