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Being human or being a citizen? Rethinking human rights and citizenship education in the light of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty
Ruyu Hung
a a

Department of Education, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan Available online: 21 Feb 2012

To cite this article: Ruyu Hung (2012): Being human or being a citizen? Rethinking human rights and citizenship education in the light of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty, Cambridge Journal of Education, 42:1, 37-51 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.651202

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Cambridge Journal of Education Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2012, 3751

Being human or being a citizen? Rethinking human rights and citizenship education in the light of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty
Ruyu Hung*
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Department of Education, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan (Received 21 February 2011; nal version received 8 December 2011) This paper argues against a trend of human rights education, where human rights are taught in the form of citizenship education. In my view, citizenship education and human rights education cannot be taken as replaceable for each other. Underpinning the idea of citizenship is a distinction between politically qualied and politically unqualied persons. This distinction implies a violation of human rights in the name of social solidarity and security. This paper will argue that citizenship education could imply discrimination/exclusion although it claims to promote solidarity and human rights. Furthermore, the qualication of having rights is not dependent on citizenship but simply in human life itself. Three educational implications are discussed. Firstly, human rights and citizenship education cannot be seen as equivalents. Secondly, educators should be alert to the dangers of possible exclusion implied in citizenship education. Finally, this paper proposes different suggestions for human rights and citizenship education separately. Keywords: Agamben; bare life; body-subject; citizenship; human rights; Merleau-Ponty

Introduction In recent decades, human rights have been widely recognised as an important theme for education. Among various ways of promoting human rights education, citizenship education is taken as an effective means and as a substitute. This paper will argue that the place of human rights education cannot be taken by citizenship education since the underpinning ideas of citizenship education and human rights education are different. The most important goal of human rights education is to promote and protect human rights through imparting of knowledge and skills and the moulding of attitudes (United Nations, 1997, p. 5). The most prominent idea of human rights is recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (Article 1). It is unconditional for any human being to have rights according to the UDHR: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind (Article 2). As the cogent denition given by Jack Donnelly (2003) states, being human gives one rights. Therefore human rights education is supported by the following idea: a human being has rights merely because he/she is
*Email: ruyuhung@yahoo.co.uk, hungruyu@mail.ncyu.edu.tw
ISSN 0305-764X print/ISSN 1469-3577 online 2012 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.651202 http://www.tandfonline.com

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human; human rights education is aimed to protect and promote the rights of every human being. In the real world, education for human rights is often translated into or depends heavily on education for citizenship. Citizenship education is taken as a parallel or substitute subject for human rights education (Banks, 2005; Kiwan, 2005; Lynch, 1992; Osler, 2000; Osler & Starkey, 1996). A human being is dened in terms of a citizen; therefore, ones rights are protected and promoted owing to his/her status of being a citizen. This view might result from the most inuential exposition of the postwar conception of citizenship which is dened in T.H. Marshalls terms of the possession of rights (Kymlicka & Norman, 1994, 2000) and will be discussed later. The UDHR proclaimed in 1948 is interpreted as composing the three categories of rights. And as such, human rights are equal to citizenship and thus human rights education can be replaced by citizenship education. This is questioned by this paper. Nonetheless, I do not mean that the concepts of citizenship and human rights are in conict or citizenship education is incompatible with human rights education. Rather, neither these two concepts nor these two learning subjects can be simply seen as equivalent to each other. Dina Kiwan (2005) has argued that there is a divergence between citizenship education and human rights discourses since the former is located within a particular frame of reference while the latter within a universal one. I agree with her view in part. Furthermore, I aim to expose a more deeply hidden difference underpinning this divergence, which is the difference between being human and being a citizen. This difference makes it a mistake to conate these two educational subjects even when the citizen is located within a very broad, or in Kiwans term, universal context the so-called global world. The confusion of citizen and human being is quite common and may potentially lead to a neglect of the private, idiosyncratic and individualised lived experience of individuals. This may enhance indifference and exclusion of the people who are taken as unqualied citizens. These people can be seen as the other. On some conditions, they may be taken as citizens. The unconditional (or fully qualied) citizens are often taken equivalent to perfectly complete or full human beings and the conditional citizens and non-citizens as imperfect, decient and unqualied human beings. Agambens and Merleau-Pontys philosophies illuminate the belittlement of humanity and violation of human rights implied in this construction, which will be discussed. Their thoughts help us to criticise the prevailing understanding of human beings as citizens and to reconceive a dialectical meaning of human beings as esh body-subjects who are human beings with no condition. The thesis of this paper is: a human being is a human being without any condition. Moreover, the conception of human being embraces all possibilities of a person while the conception of citizen does not and can not. This conception of human being can be understood in terms of Merleau-Pontys idea of bodysubject and Agambens bare life. Merleau-Pontys body-subject has been acknowledged by many authors as helpful for conceiving a pedagogy highlighting lived experience (OLoughlin, 1994, 1996; Van Manen, 2007). The concept of body-subject and the implied lived experience are difcult to be fully embraced in the idea of citizen. Moreover, Agambens categorisation of forms of life, which includes the political life (or the politically qualied human beings) and the bare life or homo sacer (or the unqualied human beings), helps us to examine exclusions implied in the process of normalisation or socialisation. Some may

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claim that education for global citizenship can achieve global inclusion. Agambens view may reveal that global citizenship education is indeed an exclusion of the unqualied citizens who are seen as bare life in the name of creating global citizenship. To establish global citizenship in some sense embraces the planetary view of world-state and the common entitlement of citizens. Hence, education for global citizenship still enforces exclusion as education for national citizenship does, but is different in scope. In the following parts I aim to explore the idea of citizenship and the differences between being a citizen and being human from the perspectives of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty. The exploration will show that the meaning of citizenship is limited within a denite boundary. Some authors attempt to broaden the boundary of citizenship by locating this concept within a global context since a global context might provide the widest territory. This attempt, however, might be futile because the boundary correspondingly shifts (but does not disappear) with the emergence of the newly contextualised concept of citizen. Moreover, in my view, the concept of citizen can never denote the meaning of an on-going, indeterminate, open-ended process of life the meaning of human being. This point will be argued in the later sections. Thus human rights education cannot be replaced by citizenship education. Based on the above, the following section will discuss the meaning of the concept of citizen and the implying problems. The problems include the ignorance of the other who are conditionally qualied citizens and non-citizens and the indifference of violation of their rights. Therefore, human rights education cannot be replaced by citizenship education because they have different underpinning ideas: the human being who is a living person without any condition whereas the citizen who is a person under particular conditions. The meaning of the living human being will be explored in depth by means of Merleau-Pontys body-subject and thereby a more desirable version of human rights education based on the above can be contrived. Rights on behalf of human beings or citizens? The meaning of citizen or citizenship has been under intense discussions during the past decades (Kymlicka & Norman, 1994; Osler, 2000). As Kymlicka and Norman (1994) pointed out, in the 1970s and 1980s, citizenship is intimately linked to ideas of individual entitlement and of attachment to a particular community. As mentioned, the most inuential exposition of the postwar conception of citizenship is dened in T.H. Marshalls terms of the possession of rights. Marshall divides citizenship rights into three categories: civil rights, political rights and social rights. If the state can secure peoples civil, political and social rights, they can feel like full members of the society, otherwise they will be marginalised and would not be able to be part of the social life. Kymlicka and Norman (1994, p. 355) describe Marshalls view as passive or private citizenship because of its emphasis on passive entitlement and the absence of any obligation to participate in public life. According to Kymlicka and Norman (1994), the concept of citizenship can be understood as composing two aspects: citizenship-as-legal-status and citizenship-as-desirableactivity. Marshalls citizenship focuses mostly on the aspect of legal status, in short, as full membership in a particular community (Kymlicka & Norman, 1994). In consonance, Audrey Osler (2005) has dened citizenship as status, feeling and

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practice. She admits that citizenship-as-legal-status is exclusive since there is a clear-cut distinction between those who have this status and those who do not (Osler, 2005, p. 12). Yet citizenship is much more than status, it also involves feeling and citizen participation and engagement, what can be termed the practice of citizenship (Osler, 2005, p. 12). Oslers practice can be understood as what Kymlicka and Norman term the citizenship-as-desirable-activity, which is paid more attention by many authors in the post-Marshall time. The concept of citizenship-asdesirable-activity is related to the civic virtues and responsibility the characteristics of a good citizen. Citizenship education is thus understood as aiming for shaping pupils into good citizens who are willing to take part in public life, to support the shared identity and to care for and be responsible for public affairs. According to James Lynch, a good citizen can be characterised by a propensity for considering opinions different from ones own, a tendency to espouse democratic rights for all members of society, an awareness of societal problems and a concern to improve them, a certain degree of skill in critical thinking, and a positive self-image (1992, p. 37). The above exposition demonstrates a greatly popular view of citizenship that is interpreted as comprising a thick conception of citizenship as activity or practice and a thin one of citizenship as status. However, whether citizenship is dened by status or by activity, this concept assumes a principle that citizens are members of communities. As a passive status, citizenship characterises citizens for their entitlements to civil, political and social rights in communities. As an active practice, citizenship emphasises citizens obligations to participate in public life. What is implicitly assumed is that one must be a member of a particular political community in order to qualify as a citizen. Based on this, if one is willing to be a good citizen, hoping to build the community, of which he or she is a part, into a better or more desirable community, he or she will commit himself or herself to more engagement and participation of the public life. The point here is that the passive legal status and active practice are necessary but not sufcient conditions for one to be a citizen in a particular community. For example, residents of one place do not necessarily enjoy the same rights, e.g. the right to vote in local or national elections or the right to work. Those who are lawful permanent residents and nationals can deservedly enjoy the right to vote while those who are temporary immigrants do not. As for lawful immigrants, their right to work may depend on their individual situation or the position of work. Some civil service work may not be granted for all lawful immigrants in many countries. Apparently, it is not just because one is an individual human being, one is a citizen. One cannot be entitled to citizenship rights (or full citizenship rights) unless he or she is a citizen already. As Dina Kiwan (2005, p. 47) points out, citizenship is always dened in terms of membership within a political community. Also based on this, Kiwan argues that human rights and citizenship are conceptually different. There are many different political communities states, countries and regional nations like the European Union (EU); it is obvious that there are many different kinds of citizen and citizenship. Some authors suggest that citizenship can be contextualised in a broad community to reconceptualise the most tolerant and inclusive citizenship. Here, the global world is seen as the broadest context and the global or cosmopolitan citizenship the agenda for education. For example, James Lynch (1992) claims that global citizenship has emerged due to multiple social, economic, political, and cultural changes

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since World War II. Communication has shrunk our world to a global village. The conception of citizenship needs to be construed within the context of globalisation. As mentioned, a citizen is a member of a particular community. A universal community can include everyone as a member as well as a citizen. Some authors thus claim that the global citizen can be understood as the universal human being and thereby global citizenship can include universal human rights. However, it is questionable whether the global village can provide such a universal context to include everyone without discrimination. There are two problems that may arise from this concept of global citizenship or cosmopolitan citizenship. Firstly is the neglect of the other who are non-citizens and secondly, the indifference of the violation of their rights. These problems can be understood from the respect of groups and individuals. Firstly, the so-called global community that includes all human beings and their differences only exist on the theoretical level. The formation of the global community so far remains within the international and regional contexts. The inclusion of some people as members is indeed an exclusion of others. For example, the establishment of the EU distinguishes European citizens from non-European citizens. Paradoxically, not all non-European citizens are non-Europeans since the EU does not include all European countries as member states. According to Etinne Balibar (2001), the birth of the EU with the appearance of the concept of Civis Europeanus results in the uneven access to citizenship and nationality through three very subtle metamorphoses: turning foreigners into aliens; turning protection to discrimination; and turning cultural difference to racial stigmatisation. He thus describes the phenomenon amongst the European people as European Apartheid. The establishment of an international community distinguishes members from non-members. Even the biggest international organisation the United Nations (UN) does not include all states in the world. The application of Taiwan as a UN member has been declined on many occasions since its legal status has not been recognised. But recognised by whom? That the recognition of Taiwans status is not determined by the Taiwanese themselves shows the illusion of universal equity in the global world. Moreover, there is a hierarchy in the UN organisation privileging certain members. For example, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), one of the principal organs of the UN, consists of ve permanent members and 10 non-permanent members. Besides, the other states that are members of the UN, but not of the Security Council, may join the discussions but have no power to vote afrmatively or negatively on any substantive matter. The purposes of this international global community are
to maintain international peace and security to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. (Article 1, Charter of the United Nations)

These purposes are targeted at a global community within which indiscriminative equity and respect for human rights can be widely realised. Yet in reality the UN functions on the basis of distinction, exclusion and hierarchism. This can also be said of the other regional political communities and their organisations.

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Secondly, in respect of the individual, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has highlighted the mechanism of homogenisation and exclusion implied in the process of politicalisation. This view helps us to problematise the evaluation of the concepts of citizen and human being as equals and to expose the implied exclusion. Agamben (1998) takes up Foucaults (1978) idea of biopower and Arendts (1958) distinction between zoe (natural life) and bios (political life). The relationship between these ideas may be articulated as follows: biopower turns zoe or natural life, into bios or political life, through dening a realm of bare life. Bare life denotes at the most basic level a living human being. Foucault views a human being as the product of a series of procedures conducted on life as a site of regulation. Resonating Foucaults idea, Agamben points out that the human is produced by the exclusion of the inhuman. The human denotes a politically qualied form of life, i.e. bios or citizen, and the inhuman the zoe and the bare life. The distinction between the human and the inhuman is drawn by means of the politicalisation of natural life. Politicalisation is a process of distinction between those who can be included and those who cannot.
The realm of bare life which is originally situated at the margins of the political realm, and order gradually begins to coincide with the political realm. And exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoe, right and fact, enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction. (Agamben, 1998, p. 9)

This process of politicalisation is executed through abandonment of natural life to an unconditional power of death, that is, the power of sovereignty (Mills, 2006, p. 5). Moreover, [i]t is in this abandonment of natural life to sovereign violence and Agamben sees the relation of abandonment that obtains between life and law as originary that bare life makes its appearance (Mills, 2006, p. 5). The mechanism of abandonment of natural life is executed by authoritys demarcating a realm of bare life as well as a state of exception within which individuals are bare life, who no longer live inside or outside of the political realm, neither alive nor dead, but survive in suspension. Concentration camps, refugee camps and prisons, for example, are such zones of exception. People who are living in these places are bare life. They are entitled neither to citizenship nor to human rights. This zone is a realm of indeterminancy, within which are lives whose legal status is undecided. [T]he state of exception is neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and the problem of denite it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other (Agamben, 2003, p. 23). Agambens ideas of bare life and the state of exception shed light on our understanding of human being and citizen, the qualied and the unqualied or the right one and the unright one. According to Agamben (2003), the state of exception is a paradigm of government whose sovereignty can be shown in its authority to decide the scope of legislation and jurisdiction. In other words, the sovereign demarcates the legislative and juridical sphere and also decides who are and who are not within this sphere. People within a particular community are the objects to which laws and rules are to be applied. They have the membership of a certain group. This can be understood as citizenship. Lynch (1992, p. 10) describes citizenship in its simplest sense as having to be equated with nationality and membership of the nation state. However, the denition of the scope of group changes with

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time. Lynch (1992) gives a brief introduction as follows. In ancient times, the membership indicated residency in a city or city-state or empire as in the case of civis romanus. In medieval Europe citizenship was belonging to local city-republic or petty princedom (Lynch, 1992, p. 10). As the age of nationalism developed, so did people believe that membership of a nation-state justies citizenship and their rights to be defended against other nation-states. In this sense, nationality is the basis for one to be entitled to citizenship and rights under the protection of a nation-state. In a similar tone, Balibar (2001, p. 18) states, We discovered that political rights, the actual granting and conditions of equal citizenship, were the true basis for a recognition and denition of human rights. In light of Arendt, Balibar points out that citizenship and nationhood are shaped as closely associated through the process of institutionalisation of nation-state. However, the distinction between nations and states are undeniable, which marks the difference between citizens of different countries. After World War II, the boundary of the community justifying citizenship was challenged by multifarious factors and so was relocated within a context wider than the framework of nationality. There also appears the concept of global citizenship, which is located within an international or a cosmopolitan context. This concept of citizen and citizenship seems for many to be more open and inclusive to accept more people as members of a community. If the whole world is taken as one global community, everyone can be included as an equal member. In that case, everyone in this world has as equal membership and citizenship as any other and thereby has equal entitlement to human rights. This view to me is too optimistic to be true. There are two points that I intend to propose to object to the view of global community. First of all, a global community which includes everyone and everything is a collectivist and totalitarian utopia within which the multifarious differences among people could be underestimated and reduced. Secondly, the inclusion and tolerance of the other that can be allowed only exists within the boundary of this group, which seem to indicate minimal tolerance and inclusion of the other that does not belong to our group. In respect of the rst point, we may nd that, as the biggest international and global community, the UN does not include and treat all countries with equal respect and thereby people do not enjoy equal rights. Although the UDHR claims: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (Article 1), the practices of the UN seem to translate the Declaration of Human Rights into a Declaration of Citizens Rights since one must be a citizen, a member of a community (e.g. a country or a nation-state) that is recognised by the UN, in order that his or her rights can be recognised and protected. People who are not members of such states or whose countries are not recognised, in Agambens terms, are living in a state of exception. The Taiwanese, in this sense, are people in a state of exception. Their nationality and the validity of their passport are questioned by people in different countries and, sometimes, by themselves. They are human beings but not citizens since Taiwanese citizenship is put into question when Taiwanese nationality is still in limbo. Besides the Taiwanese, prisoners, refugees, migrant workers, homeless or asylum seekers are the people in the state of exception (Agamben, 1998). The stateless, homeless, migrant workers, asylum seekers, prisoners and refugees are those who are taken as non-citizens and not entitled to rights. In Balibars (2001, p. 25) resounding words, these people are taken as garbage humans, to be thrown away, out of the global city. They are the people to be seen as xed in their homelands, i.e., their mere existence, their quantity, their movements

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because they look the same (Balibar, 2001, p. 26). Implied in this taken-forgranted practice is a neglect of individual difference and idiosyncrasy people are recognised by their membership of a particular group, especially nationality, not by their own personal characteristics. The establishment of a global community includes everyone at the risk of reducing individual difference. In respect of the second point, the intention of establishing a completely global community for global citizenship could imply maximal inclusion, on the one hand, and, on the other, the greatest exclusion. As Iris Marion Young (1989, p. 252) has pointed out, The ideal of public realm of citizenship as expressing a general will, a point of view and interest that citizens have in common which transcends their differences, has operated in fact as a demand for homogeneity among citizens. This suggests that a person who neither can be homogenised nor belongs to this community will be expelled (and labelled as not qualied). One must be a member of the community or he/she cannot be recognised as a qualied person a citizen. Theoretically, no one should be excluded. Practically, those who cannot or will not be assimilated in the group that most people belong to are expelled into the state of exception. According to Agamben (1998), the means which is often used to distinguish qualied people from the unqualied ones is the juridico-political system executed by the sovereign authority. The measures of homogenisation, in my view, can be addressed in Balibars (2003) terms of security practices which are designed to differentiate civilised peopled from barbarians, humans from subhumans, legal residents from illegal transients. Although Balibars (1991, 2001, 2003) main concern is on the framing of citizenship in Europe, his discussion on the construction of the European identity and the resulting violence and discriminating imposition of borders between Europe and non-Europe can be extended to the wider context and echoes my understanding of Agamben. The sovereign authority decides who can or cannot be members of a community, who can or cannot be politically qualied citizens under the control of the juridico-political system. The function of the sovereign exception is continually to delineate a threshold between inside and outside that makes law possible (Spinks, 2001, p. 27). People who are classied as outsiders, e.g. aliens, prisoners, and refugees, cannot enjoy all the privileges under domestic and normal rules and laws. They are not one of us. They are not entitled to citizenship. These people could be put into the zone of exception such as state of exile, detention or emergency. They are subject to criminal laws. Agamben (1998) points out that people who are taken as bare life can be killed without trial for the crime of homicide. What is more important here is that bare life does not have the right to the recognition everywhere as the person before the law as claimed by the UDHR (Article 6). The UDHR is allegedly to be applied to all members of the human family, and accordingly no one can be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile (Article 9). Thus people who are in the state of exception, e.g. war, camps, or emergency, are not taken as members of our human family. Agamben reveals that some people are judged as bare life and as such deemed not fully human being and without rights. Agambens view illuminates the mechanism of distinction among people and reveals the implied intolerance. Yet his terms might be confusing. In my view, as long as one is a member of the species Home sapiens, he or she is a human being and a full human being. No one shall be seen as a half or partial or improper human being. Agambens terms of bare life and political life can be articulated

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as politically unqualied human being and politically qualied human being. Therefore, human rights are acknowledged as the rights that one has simply because one is a human being They are inalienable rights: one cannot stop being human, no matter how badly one behaves nor how barbarically one is treated. And they are universal rights, in the sense that today we consider all members of the species Homo sapiens human beings, and thus holders of human rights (Donnelly, 2003, p. 10). Following this, everyone must be entitled to human rights but not necessarily to citizenship. The sovereign authority overturns the relationship between being human and human rights. The condition being a member of the species Homo sapiens should be sufcient for a person to be entitled to human rights, but is misused de facto as a necessary condition. Furthermore, the membership of a particular group, such as nationality, is taken as the second necessary condition for a human being to have rights. The idea a human being is entitled to human rights including citizenship is reversely modied as a citizen is entitled to citizenship including human rights. Hence as Donnelly (2003, p. 16) points out:
Human rights constitute individuals as a particular kind of political subject: free and equal rights-bearing citizens. And by establishing the requirements and limits of legitimate government, human rights advocates seek to constitute states of a particular kind.

The membership of a particular political community is the prerequisite of the entitlement to rights. In other words, ones submission to the control of political mechanism is necessary. That is why Agamben (2003, p. 86) argues that the juridicopolitical system not only examines people but even transforms itself into a killing machine. The sovereign distinguishes the politically unqualied people from the qualied ones by expelling them into the state of exception. Unqualied human beings are thus renamed the inhuman (the enemy, the pariah, the untouchable, or in Balibars term, garbage human) who are not entitled to full human rights, for whom inhuman treatment is allowed. In this view, formal citizenship education is one of the means for institutionalising the mechanism and its distinction. As Henry Giroux (2001, p. 170) states, Citizenship education became entwined in a cultural positivism, one that displayed little interest in the ways in which schools acted as agents of social or cultural reproduction in a society marked by signicant inequities in wealth, power and privilege. The above discussion reveals a prevalent confusion where human being is mistakenly seen as synonymous with citizen; and so is seen the related confusion of human rights education and citizenship education and the implied political distinction, discrimination and exclusion. If the purpose of human rights education is to cultivate the idea that all human beings are born equal and free in dignity and rights and therefore every human beings rights need to be protected and improved, a basic understanding of human rights education should be human beings are human without condition. All human beings should have rights merely because they are born members of Homo sapiens, rather than being justied by any form of membership. In this respect, every human being is entitled to his/her rights regardless of his/her membership of a group, community or a country. That every human being is equal to each other is based on a simple fact: everyone is a living body.

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The living body or in Agambens term, bare life, describes this simple fact of living common to all living beings. This commonality is the minimal and thinnest description of all human beings rather than a substantial and thick denition of human nature. The concept of bare life or living body denotes a minimal commonality of all human beings regardless of their individual differences or in Agambens term, various forms of life. Based on this, human rights can be universal since all human beings are equal and yet different in every possible way. All human beings are entitled to human rights simply because they are members of the species Homo sapiens rather than members of any particular community based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status (Perry, 1998, p. 59). Overall, the concept of bare life assumes a thinnest commonality among human beings regardless of their membership. This point implies a very wide tolerance of individual difference. Nonetheless, it seems to imply an individualistic and solipsist view of the human being since the social or collective connection is unnecessary for legitimising the status of a human being. Yet I attempt to argue that the bare life can be an ontologically independent individual but should not be mistaken as a windowless monad which is self-closed and disconnected from each other. In my view, every human being as a bare life is a living body that has grown with the other. Yet the process of growing-with or being-with is a process of active living rather than of the merely passive endurance of politicalisation or institutionalisation of the society or community. Merleau-Pontys idea of body-subject may be helpful for us to understand bare life in more vivid and potential terms. Bare life as a body-subject living with the other The above discussions show that the bare life or natural life should be entitled to human rights merely as a member of the species Homo sapiens rather than a member of any particular social or political group. This minimal condition seems to suggest that the process of human living develops individually and thereby is irrelevant to others. However, this section aims to explain that although every life is a unique process, it develops and is developed through various interactions with the world. Life is unique and different from person to person; meanwhile, it shares and interacts with others through the process. Thus the bare life is living interdependently. In this respect, Merleau-Pontys thought can help us to formulate the meaning of bare life. One of Merleau-Pontys inspirations is the notion of body-subject. Merleau-Ponty, in his well-known work Phenomenology of Perception (1962), introduces the body-subject as transcending the opposition of body and spirit, intellectualism and empiricism, the subjective and the objective. The human body has a dialectical relationship with the surroundings. The body as the centre of the world perceives and constructs the meaning of the surroundings. Meanwhile, the body as a part of the world grows and develops during the process of experiencing the surroundings. The body and the world are interdependent and continuously interact with each other. The meaning of the world is constructed and always being constructed through the living process of the body. This does not mean that the world is arbitrarily invented by the body since the body is also a part of the world. Every human being is a living body-subject which is characterised by its interacting with the world during the process of living. The body and the world are both constructed during the process;

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neither of them is prior to the other intellectually. But this does not mean that the body-subject is determined and moulded by the world completely; rather, the bodysubject is inuenced and constructed through its interaction with and inter-construction of the world. OLoughlin (1997) perceptively describes the body-subject as the placed-constructed, immersed in environment, ecological subjectivity for it is inseparable from the surrounding world without being fully determined by it. As Merleau-Ponty states:
My body and the world are no longer objects co-ordinated together by the kind of functional relationships that physics establishes I have the world as an incomplete individual, through the agency of my body as the potentiality of the world, and I have the positing of objects through that of my body, or conversely the positing of my body through that of objects, in a real implication, and because my body is a movement towards the world, and the world my bodys point of support. (1962, p. 350)

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Merleau-Ponty describes a body-subject as an incomplete individual, which seems contradictory to my claim in the former section that no one shall be seen as a half or partial or improper human being. The point here is that the incompleteness of the body-subject characterises life by a process full of on-going, dynamic and continuous actions. The individual is incomplete because his/her process of life can never stop until the moment he/she dies. Yet whatever and however this body-subject acts during this process, his/her human being cannot be denied or discounted. From this view, life is always under construction and the human being is always becoming. The bare life as body-subject is an intelligent, holistic process which directs, carrying out behaviours in a uid, integrative fashion (OLoughlin, 1997, p. 25). This body-subject creates and constructs different representatives in different situations. For example, citizen is constructed to represent the particular relation of subject in a group. The invention of the role citizen depends on the social, juridical and political systems and thereby the understanding and the denition of citizen could be changed in different societies in different times. Viewed in this light, being-citizen is one of many states of existence and cannot be taken as the fundamental state of being. Any kind of membership or citizenship is only one section of the network of relationships and cannot be taken as the equivalent of the whole process of life. Overall, the idea of body-subject presupposes the other and the surrounding world as its primordial ground. To be human is to live through/of ones body, to be a body-subject, and vice versa. In terms of Merleau-Pontys body-subject and Agambens bare life, the concept of human being can be understood as the primordial and sufcient condition of human rights, on the one hand, and, on the other, it justies the individuality and beingness with the other and the surrounding world. The qualication of having rights does not consist in citizenship or the other membership of a particular group but simply in human life itself. Concluding remarks The concluding section of this essay aims to explore the educational implications of the above discussions. In the previous section I put into question the mainstream view of human rights education which takes human rights education as replaced by citizenship education. Yet the underpinning idea of citizenship education citizen

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is conceived on the basis of the institutional and political measures to categorise people into different kinds, such as politically qualied ones and unqualied ones, citizens and non-citizens, the right people and the unqualied ones, the lawful and unlawful ones. This could direct people to promote human rights values in a very limited way. The previous exploration has shown that many social, political or legal measures aim to establish democratic and free community by means of making distinctions between people; however, these measures tend to become an instrument of oppression, and violation of human rights. One important reason is that any kind of political discrimination implies exclusion and intolerance (Agamben, 1998, 2003). The formation of citizenship in a particular state is one of the typical means of politicalisation. Many forms of discrimination are recognised by the legal system on different scales of context, such as national, regional and international ones. Underpinning the legal discrimination is a distinction between people who are regarded as (qualied) human beings and those who are not, between citizens and non-citizens, between political life (entitled to rights) and bare life (not entitled to rights). It is inconsistent for human rights advocates to aim to enhance universal recognition and respect of human rights, on the one hand, and set criteria to discriminate right people from un-qualied ones, on the other, since every individual human being is a body-subject that lives its irreplaceable life through continuous and various interactions with the world (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Human lives are unique and incomparable; hence human beings cannot be measured and classied. The uniqueness, irreplaceability as well as the openness and receptivity to the world and other people can be found in the idea of body-subject. Overall, ones entitlement to rights is simply because he or she is human, not because who is a qualied, right or correct one. Also, the uniqueness and interdependence of individuals are able to create a borderless world abundant of diversity and differences. The above discussion may help educators to reect and reconceive the meaning of human rights education and citizenship education. First of all, human rights education and citizenship education cannot be seen as equivalents since their underpinning ideas being human and being a citizen are very different. On the one hand, being human or human being is an openended process and a state of existence that cannot be decided by others. Being human is to live through ones own body, to embody ones life. On the other hand, the idea of citizen must be located in the particular historical, cultural and social context where its membership is approved by the political or legal system. The existing citizenship education aims to pass on to younger generations the common knowledge and attitudes which are required to be qualied citizens in this society and to distance them from the repudiated knowledge and attitudes. Although the socalled global village is suggested by some to broaden the scope of group or community, as is the concept of global citizenship, there is always a state of exception external to the global village. Some people are never approved to be members of this group, such as refugees, stateless people or people belonging to a country whose political status is not recognised by the other countries, like Taiwan. The socalled global community is not as comprehensive as it is claimed to be. The understanding and denition of the global community could be inconsistent among people. It is doubtful whether citizenship education can achieve a common understanding of global membership, let alone promote universal (understanding of) human rights.

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Secondly, educators should be alert to the dangers of possible exclusion and discrimination implied in the process of citizenship education. Citizenship education in general aims to raise amongst pupils the common sense of identity and the feeling of belonging to the national state, in a word, to build membership and solidarity. In the eld of education, citizenship is claimed to be compatible with the values of democracy, freedom and liberty. These values promote citizenship education in turn. Yet the ideal of pursuing a citizens utopia could become an excuse to discriminate among people. As John ONeill (1970, pp. 8485) says, the exercise of power succeeds best as an appeal to freedom rather than as an act of violence which only reinforces itself through the aggression which it arouses. In Agambens (2000, p. 4) words: The state is a community instituted for the sake of the living and the well living of men in it. Merleau-Ponty (1969, p. 5) also states: it was precisely in order to liberate man that he had used violence against some men. The attempt to establish a utopia could lead to the oppression of difference and violence: human aggression is not simply a conict of animal or physical forces, but a polarity within a dialectics of intersubjective recognition or alienation. Political power never rests upon naked force but always presumes a ground of opinion and consensus within a margin of potential conict and violence that is crossed only when this common sense is outraged (ONeill, 1970, p. 84). The discriminating measures of social systems could efface individual differences which are signicant for contributing towards being human as a living body-subject. In other words, the categorisation or classication has the effect of impersonalising a human being, ignoring his/ her esh-and-blood uniqueness but focusing on a certain historical, physical, or ideological feature or features that the individual shares with the other members of a group. When people are classied, some are included and some excluded by the discriminating measures used to distinguish people into groups of oppositions, such as the politically qualied ones and unqualied ones, citizens and non-citizens, the educable and the uneducable, and those who can be sacriced and those who cannot. Finally, I propose different suggestions for human rights education and citizenship education separately. For human rights facilitators, the teaching and learning should take the diverse and dynamic life process of individuals into consideration. Educators should bear in mind that being human is an individual, unique and irreplaceable living process, which needs to be realised in every moment of acting, living and learning. Every human being is entitled to human rights, no matter whom and what he/she is, no matter how he/she acts. I do not mean to provide a monadic or solipsist perspective for the understanding of education for human rights but only suggest a body-subject-related and intersubjective perspective. This view includes surroundings and the other as parts of our process of living, as parts of our being human. Being human as living through/with/of ones body is the minimal, humble but sufcient condition for one to enjoy human rights. Human rights educators should teach pupils to respect and improve human rights based on the minimal condition common to all: every human being deserves rights simply because he or she is a member of the species Homo sapiens. Regarding citizenship education, educators should be aware of the intolerance, discrimination and exclusiveness implied in the idea of citizenship. The aim of citizenship education is to build membership and solidarity, which is important in a community and cannot be denied. The point is that there are always people who are outsiders, foreigners, or strangers. Those who cannot be domesticated or

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institutionalised could be non-citizens but should not be taken as half or unqualied human beings. What is more important is to recognise that the denitions of citizen and citizenship are results of temporary consensus of the society; they are changing all the time and people, who are not suited to them, can always be found. Drawing on the Dutch political theorist Herman van Gunsteren, Balibar proposes an insightful understanding of citizenship and the contextualised community: [A]ll political communities today are communities of fate They are communities already including difference and conict, where heterogeneous people and groups have been thrown by history and economics next to each other (2001, p. 28). Based on this, citizenship or civility is a concept under construction, in the making, rather than a xed legal status and should not be taken as a certain criterion for imposing discrimination. All in all, I suggest that educators engage themselves in a form of pedagogy by acknowledging, even welcoming difference and otherness rooted in living processes not only of human beings but also of all kinds of living beings. Schools are not conceived as static sites for the normalisation, standardisation, socialisation and politicalisation or citication of young generations, but rather a exible space within which individual embodied, dynamic engagement and participation can freely take place, a site within which individuals are encouraged to challenge and confront the established bounds, limits and stereotypes imposed on people. The previous exploration points towards an approach to education implying going beyond tolerance: welcome for a broader range of differences in real situations. This understanding might lead education for human rights as well as for citizenship towards a wider, more open and freer future. Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the editor and the reviewers for their very helpful suggestions for improving this manuscript. This manuscript is funded by the National Science Council Taiwan, Grant Project NSC 98-2410-H-415-001-MY2. Notes on contributor
Ruyu Hung is professor in philosophy of education at the Department of Education, National Chiayi University, Taiwan. Her interests are in the elds of phenomenology, ecological thinking, post-structuralism, human rights education and the interrelations between them. Some of her recent publications are: Learning nature: How the understanding of nature enriches education and life? published by Common Ground Publishing; Citizenship with/in or without lifeworld? A critical review of contemporary perspectives of citizenship, Policy Futures in Education, 9(2), 172182; and In search of affective citizenship: From the pragmatist-phenomenological perspective, Policy Futures in Education, 8(5), 488499.

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