Bak masken

This article explores how Emmanuel Levinas’s conception of ethical responsibility can illuminate pedagogy under late-modern conditions. The analysis begins by outlining how contemporary sociological mechanisms and social structures, understood in a critical realist sense, shape relational practices in education. Drawing on sociological perspectives, the article describes a late-modern mask culture in which identity is increasingly organised through performativity, visibility, and continuous self-presentation. Against this backdrop, Levinas’s ethics is introduced as a counter-perspective. The epiphany of the face signals a pre-reflective call that precedes roles, categories, and institutional positions. To clarify how this call may break through even highly regulated interactions, the article develops a heuristic comprising three modalities through which the face “leaks” beyond the mask. The third moment examines the ambivalence of language and shows how communication can both convey and obscure the ethical demand. The article argues that pedagogy, understood as critical inquiry into actions and the structures that enable or constrain them, requires conceptual resources that can safeguard the singularity of the Other within late-modern institutional settings.