For Education:
The College Classroom as Concrete Utopia
ABOUT:
If we assume the capture of the American university by the “national economic dogma,” as Nietzsche called education in the service of money-making careerism, what concrete actions might a change-minded instructor take? This is the question driving For Education.
My conclusion is that consequential action can indeed be taken; but unlike most texts on this topic, I am not advocating action at the macro level of administrative reform. Rather, by implementing certain pedagogical practices at the ostensible heart of the university—in the classroom—instructors can substantively reflect and enact larger-scale social changes that, I further argue, are desirable. The strategies I have in mind derive mainly from socialist and anarchist thought. They include; the political theory of prefiguration; the concept of concrete utopia; the social theory of the spectacle, the pedagogical practice of unlearning; and the ethics of the worst necessary.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction
2 The Divided Pathway of the Humanities
On the Right
3 Subject to the Spectacle
4 Subject to Another World
On the Left
5 The Force of Prefiguration
6 The Space of Concrete Utopia
7 The Pedagogy of Unlearning
8 The Ethics of the Worst Necessary
9 Conclusion
About the Author
Incite Items: For Educational Iconoclasm 1
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