I loved Javier Cercas’ book, and I wondered whether my teaching style makes me close to his protagonist
In The Impostor, Javier Cercas tells the true story of Enric Marco, a Spanish man who for many years pretended to be who he was not: a fierce partisan during the Spanish civil war and even an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp. Thanks to his charming personality and alluring story telling skills (and capacity for lying), he managed, in the confusing times after the end of Franco’s dictatorship, to be appointed to some relevant public positions, including the leadership of an anarchic trade union, the coordination of a regional association of parents, and eventually – his masterpiece – spokeperson of the association of the former inmates of the concentration camp of Flossenburg, where he falsely claimed to have been inprisoned. At the peak of his popularity he was invited to speak at the Spanish parliament on the day of memory of the Holocaust, where his chilling survivor stories and heartfelt “never again” pleas brought politicians and audiences to tears.
The book by Cercas tells the story of Marco, but also the story of the author himself, struggling to decide whether to write the book or not (should I give this compulsive attention-seeker even more visibility?), as well as reflecting on the moral import of the impostor’s actions. True, I did make up some stories – was Marco’s consistent line of defence – but I did more good than harm. I have contributed to raise attention to the horror of the Nazi camps, I have fueled the political debate on the importance of public memory of historical tragedies, I have inspired hundreds of students with my talks in schools. I have worked hard for the organizations I have represented, and I have never made any money out of it. Finally, the author keeps on wondering: where is the line between fiction and imposture, are writers imposters, after all, letting people believe that they are heroes, while they are just good story tellers? Was Marco, after all, just someone who turned his life into a novel?
Unfortunately I am not an accomplished fiction writer, and fortunately I am not a liar or a conman. Still, for some reason, this story deeply resonated with my personal experience (maybe I am a compulsive attention-seeker…). As a teacher of philosophy in the last, say fifteen years, I have always performed to engage students: told stories, cracked jokes, provoked reactions, tried to raise emotional responses, used my body and voice to fill the void and the silence of the classroom, exploited my personality to engage students. I have often tried to teach by empathy and example, that is showing my passion, commitment, sharing with students the things I care and love to let them care too. I have hardly ever been taught or trained to do so, and it has always come through my natural inclination and personality, and my experience as amateur musician and stage performer. It also been reinforced by the need to engage audiences of students who have often not freely chosen to attend my classes or had any formal philosophical training (I have always taught in high schools and technical universities). I have always had fun, and often been praised by students for my capacity to engage and motivate them. I have often seen good results, but I have never known the theory behind what I was doing, nor even knowing whether what I was doing was right. I have never seriously wondered whether this style would suit all students’ learning styles. Never investigated what theoretical or practical reasons there would be against this style of education. I can imagine some objections though: the students should get motivated by the content of the discipline not the personality of the teacher. The teacher is not an entertainer but a scientist, who should let the science speak. To everybody their profession. Performing is playing with emotions and teaching by performing is manipulating students. It’s like bringing cake to the class, cute but not a serious teaching method. It is not fair to let students believe you are so committed to something, when you may not be able to leave to those standards yourself. Am I like the imposter Enric Marco after all, letting students believe I am who I am not, for the higher goal of motivating them to do think and do good? (By the way, back in my glorious Italian days divided between high-school teaching and amateur singer-songwriting, I used to perform in multimedia stage performances for schools on various remembrance days, educating students about the horrors of historical and political tragedies, from the Shoah to the Balkan wars. Was I Enric Marco after all? Spoiler – I don’t think so, but I am not really sure and hey I thought this was a catchy intro anyway)
So far for the personal and literary stories. But there are some serious research questions I find fascinating here, and I have been exploring them so far mainly through the work of Rancière and Freire, and the fantastic book by T.E. Lewis, The Aesthetics of Education: Theatre, Curiosity, and Politics in the Work of Jacques Ranciere and Paulo Freire. I should also give credit to Chiara Cappelletto for sparking my interest in post-modernist approaches to education through the introduction of her book In Cattedra (in Italian):
- From an epistemological perspective: what kind of knowledge are we teachers sharing in the classroom? Clearly not a neutral, objective, good-for-all-the-occasions one, but one that is situated, continuously negotiated with students based on specific contexts, and educational goals. What is the role of the personality of the teacher in creating this knowledge?). (I guess: embodied, situated knowledge? And I am sure there is a lot of work on this)
- What can and should be the role of rhetoric in teaching (moral) philosophy? To what extent can we use rhetoric and emotions to motivate, engage, convince students, and at which point does this become manipulative? Compare the use of rhetoric in political debates – is it the essence of democratic debates but at which point does this become a dishonest trick? To what extent is the political metaphor more than just a metaphor – aren’t we teachers in humanities mostly educating students to be active citizens in the democratic space after all? What is the role of teachers and students in this new perspective?
- What is the connection between the artistic performance and the lecture? They are both actions that can deeply affect the mind and behaviour of audiences or students; convince them to take some issues seriously through the engagement of the lecturer/performer. If this is the case, should teachers more trained like performers, and artists more present in our curricula? How to achieve this? Creating “performance lectures”? (more simple things, e.g. library of art works /performances to be used in teaching)
- What should be the (epistemological) role of imagination and humour in philosophy? Imagination is a key theme in radical pedagogy (Paul Freire), in political activism but also in recent forms of critical design, future studies. Should we connect more with these disciplines? What should be the role of imagination in moral philosophy?
- Is humor a radical for of thinking and acting, breaking the rules of conversation, allowing to say and to see things that would not normally be accepted (speaking the unspeakable)? Should philosophy take humor and imagination more seriously? (I am sure there is stuff about this in post-modern philosophy and I just fond out that Paulo Freire used to call his pedagogy of the oppressed a “padagogy of laughter”).
Filippo Santoni de Sio 
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