Between the Walls of Recognition, a Philosophical Analysis of the Film The Class (Entre les Murs)

This paper discusses the film The Class (Entre les Murs) from a philosophicalcultural point of view. The paper argues that, contrary to an intuitive interpretation of the film, an educational failure is performed by the class teacher, which mainly is due to a lack of reflection on and consciousness of the discourse practices within the class. These practices negate the student's concept of self or at least exemplify the lack of such an active acknowledgement. All this, of course, causes a crisis up to a failure of teacher-students' relationships. By analyzing scenes from the film, using Hegel's concept of mutual recognition, and his model of master-servant, the paper shows how the teacher tragically fails. All this with regard to the conceptual discourse set up by thinkers like G. F. Hegel, Plato, F. Nietzsche, A. Honneth, S. Hall, C. Taylor, H. Bloom and P. Bourdieu.