Spirituality as Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education (SMSC): Using Julia Kristeva to rethink a spirituality of education

Spirituality is impossible to define, but numerous, common themes can be discerned. I suggest a model of spirituality based upon the oeuvre of Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian/French philosopher, semiologist, and psychoanalyst. She is an atheist who has a great respect for belief. Her therapeutic work...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: O'Donnell, Kevin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2023
In: Journal of Religious Education
Year: 2023, Volume: 71, Issue: 2, Pages: 109-122
Further subjects:B Postmodernism
B Spirituality
B Psychic space
B Kristeva
B SMSC
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Spirituality is impossible to define, but numerous, common themes can be discerned. I suggest a model of spirituality based upon the oeuvre of Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian/French philosopher, semiologist, and psychoanalyst. She is an atheist who has a great respect for belief. Her therapeutic work reveals compassion and a desire for the creation of a safe, psychic space between analyst and client. This is only possible with the existence of language, the love that can face oneself and recognise the Other. Also, without a sense of the beyond-the-self, then the other three themes could not work together. Language is a human construction, and a Kristevean model of spirituality is derived from poststructuralism/postmodernism. There needs to be a constant reminder that we do not possess fully objective truths or a private language. Language is formed by both the social contract and the interior desire to think, feel and wonder. The inner life is impossible without external relationships, a reality that can only ever be filtered through our interpretation. To use terms of my own coinage, there is "interiority with reciprocity", where events are "encounters through interpretation". Such an inclusive interplay, in a Kristevean model, is spirituality, allowing the Moral, the Social and the Cultural to be part of the dynamic of spirituality. What "spiritual" might mean in SMSC is a form of interiority, but this is inseparable from inter-relationship. Modelling SMSC as spirituality can have creative effects on not only Religious Education (RE) but the whole curriculum.
ISSN:2199-4625
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of Religious Education
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s40839-023-00199-9