“Modes of existence" as a theoretical-conceptual device: contributions of Michel Foucault and Étienne Souriau to educational research

Abstract

The study focuses on the field of educational research, discussing the nature of the work of thought through research problems. From Michel Foucault and Étienne Souriau, it approaches the theoretical-conceptual device "modes of existence", highlighting how both authors produce the implication between a thought of the arts and a philosophical thought for the treatment of the issue. The article aims to demonstrate how this procedure confers to the modes of existence a strategic condition of a theoretical-conceptual device, thus overcoming the areas of problematization in which they were forged. Foucault discusses modes of existence from a problematization of subject and experience, suggesting, within the horizon of a radical dis-subjectivation, an experience of impossibility. Souriau discusses modes of existence from a problematization of the aesthetic work, evoking, in this work itself, the singular movements of instauration and unfinished. Because of the treatment of both thinkers on the question of modes of existence, it becomes possible to construct an indissociably political, ethical and aesthetic approach, aspects that activate strategic implications in the field of education and, particularly in the context of research in education, once that a problematization of the modes of existence operates in favor of a problematization of the mode of existence of a problem of investigation.