Abstract

Education theory has been exhibiting a renewed rejection of education’s instrumentality to political and economic influences against a policy trend that implicitly considers education a mere pragmatic tool. This paper suggests an ontological investigation that goes beyond normatively supporting or rejecting the instrumentality of education. It looks at instrumental relationships as a form of prosthesis supplementing the ontological incompleteness of its involved subjects. This incompleteness is argued for through Laclau and Mouffe’s understanding of antagonism and Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technics. The contribution problematizes the ethical consequences such reading may have, manifested in the ethical ambivalence of instrumental ends. Then, it contends that a democratic approach to the instrumentality of education should acknowledge an inherent indeterminacy of education and what it is instrumental for and advocate a democratic coexistence with this ontology. This echoes Freud’s concept of mourning as a healthy response to the loss of a natural essence, in contrast to melancholia, which refuses it. Such a position is developed by interrogating different theoretical positions and regarding the quest for education’s (anti-) instrumentality as a performative discourse by many populist discourses.