Abstract

This article proposes that knowledge can be conceived as a process of inhabitation rather than construction. It motivates this shift by starting with a concrete pedagogical example: lower secondary school students subverting the logic of cheating by co-authoring a Manual for Cheating and Its Meaning, an act that reframes knowledge as a shared practice of solidarity. To interpret this example, the paper first critiques dominant Western epistemological framework that equates knowledge with individual possession—a logic materialised in standardised curricula and assessments. Drawing on Michel Serres’ genealogical critique of possession and the phenomenology of Raffaele Laporta, the paper argues that construction-possession nexus produces subjectivities bound by symbolic debt rather than emancipated through learning. The article then articulates an alternative grounded in Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘use’ in relation to Gert Biesta’s notion of the ‘inappropriable’ and ‘dissensus’. Central to this alternative is the concept of porous pedagogy, which treats knowledge not as a something to be constructed and enclosed, but as an ‘inappropriable’ relational space—a constitutive void that makes encounter possible. Drawing on Ingold’s work on weaving and knotting, I argue that porous pedagogy operates through interstitial relationality rather than solid enclosures. The article concludes by examining the ethical implications of these two pedagogical orientations, asking what kinds of subjectivities—debtor or inhabitant, owner or guest—educators wish to foster.