Abaddon Has No Covering - A Girardian Reading of Undifferentiation, Lockdown Education and the Anti-Festival

David Lundie, University of Glasgow

This essay reflects on the longer-term challenges posed for societal, political and educational sectors following the imposition of a shutdown of face-to-face schooling and universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Rene Girard's mimetic analysis of festivals as concealing originary violence, and drawing on multimedia sources, it poses the question of what role remains for education under undifferentiated conditions, amnd whether an authentic differentiation can be recovered without the logic of enclosure.

Bio: David Lundie is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Glasgow and Associate Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education. His monograph "School Leadership Between Community and the State" is published by Palgrave Macmillan and due out in 2022.