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In this chapter, "Re-imag(e)ining the Cosmopolitical: Deconstructing the Other", proffers another view of normativity within contemporary higher education and the specific field of peace education. Bryan Wright explores the problematic of subjectivity through Levinasian theory to deconstruct commonly received notions of self and other in the Western paradigm, which critically structure issues of peace and peace education within educational contexts. Through a destabilising inversion of subjectivity, the self and the other as conceptual foundations arising from the metaphysical ground of deconstructed modern ideologies open to questions of human relationship, responsibility, and cosmopolitanism. Relocating the other and self through différance disrupts the fundamental conceptions we hold about human nature and our simultaneous a/di- synchronous (non-) relation. The question of the kosmopolitês and the antinomies of cosmopolitanism reveal the onto-teleology of contemporary higher education and its import for peace and peace education. In this examination, the veil of syncretism that masks understanding of the dis-con-nections between demos, ethnos, and episteme within an evolving (post-)critical peace education for the present age is rent exposing our understanding(s). Challenging epistemological boundaries in the interest of peace education towards the noble end to promote cultures of peace in our increasingly globalised existence is a twofold process that requires simultaneous deontological analyses of form and process along with historicized contextualisation of social relationality.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3945-3_3

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