“I believe in progress not in development”. Some reflections on the relationship between pedagogy, economy and community starting from Pier Paolo Pasolini

Abstract

This contribution  intends to deepen the relationship between pedagogy, economy and community starting from Pier Paolo Pasolini's outdated reflections on two terms: progress and development, as reported in his 1973 article inserted in Scritti Corsari. Progress (economic and social) is desired by those who do not have immediate interests to satisfy, it is therefore a social and political notion opposite to development  which is instead a pragmatic and economic fact, since it concerns the production of goods and values related to consumption of those goods. The formation of the subject-person has to  have a teleological vision of the “common good”, of that sense of community that expropriates human beings, in part or totally, from their more intimate “property” but keeps them united by a “lack”, by a limit that works as an ethical-political link. Pedagogical reflection, if mainly linked to the economy, has the task of conveying laws and values related to democratic education: equity, gender equality, sense of limit, participation against standardizing and neoliberal market logics.