Educational Theory in the Fifties: The Beginning of a Conversation (original) (raw)
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Editors' Introduction to Forces of Education
Forces of Education: Walter Benjamin and the Politics of Pedagogy, 2023
The pleasure of teaching is an act of resistance. " bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress I It is no coincidence that we propose considering the German Jewish critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin a seminal thinker of pedagogy at the precise moment when our pedagogical institutions seem radically put to the test. If Benjamin's eighth thesis "On the Concept of History" holds "that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule, " this historical diagnosis must be fathomed to include the educational circumstance. 1 Given the countless calamities pedagogical institutions are facing two decades into the twenty-first century, the statement that education is "in crisis" reads less like a proposition of true diagnostic value than the citation of an analytic cliché whose appearance within a critical discussion of the state of pedagogy is simply expected if not prescribed. Looking back at its recent history, we observe not only that the university has undergone grave transformations in terms of its self-understanding and institutional structure, but also that it appears as a site of active ruination and perpetuated calamity. 2 Reminding the reader of the birth of the modern university through Wilhelm von Humboldt's humanist visions seems like a tasteless joke if we consider the neoliberal agenda that the university, first and foremost in Anglo-American countries, has come to fulfill. Humboldt saw universities as Freistätte, that is, places of freedom, whose task it was to host nothing but the spiritual life of humanity. 3 An affirmation of such freedom and its profession-in the declarative sense of to professcan be discerned in Jacques Derrida's 1999 prospect of a université sans condition. 4 The rather triste reality of our current situation, however, makes these conceptions seem like increasingly distant fantasies. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the global educational landscape in unprecedented ways, the university had lost touch with its ideal. While the European Union instituted the so-called "Bologna
For those new to this series, Wrecking Ball Education (WBE) highlights people and/or ideas that have in some way either had a devastating effect on true education or, conversely, those that suggest pathways for knocking down false reforms and restoring opportunities to teach and learn substantively. At Resounding Books, we're not interested in playing it safe. We don't publish sanitized thoughts. You may not agree with us on everything you read on our blog...but we're pretty sure you'll at least find nuggets worthy of consideration...things you didn't know, interesting connections you hadn't previously recognized, or reasons to examine the alreadyfamiliar from a new angle.