Schooling in the Margins of the State: Exploring the Vicissitudes of Violence

The present research attempts to examine the nature of violence and the manner in which it is experienced in schooling practices. By investigating the everydayness of schooling practices to capture the manifestation of violence, it aims to understand the experiences of marginality by locating it on the state-school continuum. The research has used an ethnographic approach for carrying out field work in a state-run primary school. The data are interpreted in the context of systemic violence in schooling and its interlinkages with marginality which is explored vis-à-vis the nature of state power. The relationship between the state and its margins is conceptualised through the writings of Veena Das and Giorgio Agamben, subsequently examining state’s role in exacerbating the violence. Experiences of the teachers and children in the everyday practices of the school would be studied to understand the indifference of the state. This indifference is then examined in terms of apathy and othering and finally analysed in their relationship to exclusion and violence. The relationship of exclusion to membership and belonging is studied, and it will be argued that the nature of violence that shapes the schooling practices is a product of the indifferent power of the modern state—violence that emerges from doing nothing when there is an urgent need to do something. It is this apathetic indifference of the state and its relationship to violence and exclusion that would be examined in this article.