The Mirror That Lies: A Pedagogical Escape in Times of War (and Peace)

Pushkin's famous fairytale “The Tale of the dead princess and the seven champions” features the all-knowing mirror whose value of the image is timeless and absolute. The only way to alter its gaze is to do violence to those who stand in its way, or, conversely, to look beyond its frame in creative contemplation with other. Bakhtin's 1940s notes, written in the heat of war, likewise explore the mirror as “the lie that warms” (Rhetoric, 1943, p. 209)—one that clouds the image and demands allegiance through control. To free oneself is to exceed its objectifying bounds and thus reclaim subjective co-experience. Reflecting on the mirror in contemporary times of war (and their reverberations at times of so-called peace), this article, with the inspiration of Bakhtin's War time notes and associated works overtime, sets forth a dialogic route for education as a means of transcending the entrapment of the mirror through “philosophical wondering” and, more explicitly, “visual surplus.”