Responsibility as the Welcoming of Difference: Thoughts on Levinas and a Teacher’s Experience

This work interweaves a discussion of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and the experience of an educator working in a cross-cultural context, to provide an opportunity for the reader to reconceive the idea of responsibility. Through this article, I develop the idea that responsibility can be understood as a welcoming of difference where a “language” of interruption, vulnerability, hospitality, and learning from the other exists. The notion of welcoming is offered as complimentary approach to other arguments advocating the necessity for educators to attend to anti-racist and social justice issues and perhaps offers another answer to doubts concerning the involvement of educators.Keywords: Levinas; responsibility; difference; social justice; anti-racism