Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism. Part Two.

A Talk with Valery Podoroga on Soviet Philosophy.

The article argues for contemporary relevance of "Cosmology of the Spirit" by the outstanding Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, and explores its historical and intellectual contexts. This short treatise was written in the first half of the 1950s, but only published posthumously in the 1980s as it was too heretical to be published in the author’s lifetime. The text was heretical because of its enormous speculative drive. Addressing the physicist idea of the “entropic death of the universe” and using a combination (...) of materialist dialectics and Spinoza’s concept of attribute, Ilyenkov claimed that thought is a necessary attribute of matter as it is able to prevent the terminal entropy of the universe. The paper uses the ideas of Ilyenkov’s cosmology in order to critically address contemporary currents of “speculative” philosophy. (shrink)

There are some notions which most of us think we know what they are and assume that others share the same or similar ideas. These can include ideas such as fairness, equality and justice. They are terms which are easy to use and to feel that we understand what we mean by them but notoriously difficult to explain to others, other than by appealing to common sense and asserting that ‘everyone’ knows what justice, fairness, equality and so on actually are. (...) Some terms, such as professionalism, are even best described by their absence. To define professionalism per se is notoriously difficult but unprofessional somehow appears easier, even if in reality unprofessional is more often exemplified than defined. In this morass of potential confusion, there are the phenomena which we recognise when we see them but would be hard put to describe in anything even vaguely resembling objective terms. Among these slippery concepts is the concept of education. Education is what might be termed an essentially contested concept. It is one with a vast range of definitions, none of which is totally satisfactory. For example, we have the common equation between education and school. In this case, what about higher education? Where does further education fit in? And, for that matter, where do we place things we teach ourselves? We can discuss education that includes all of these arenas for learning or we can exclude at least some of them. We may even do as Abbs does and claim that ‘education and school can refer, and often do refer, to antithetical activities’. Or we can go even further and align ourselves with Illich and assert that school is not only the antithesis of education but that its main function is to provide custodial day care for young people. This chapter has its function to consider what education might be. I intend to do this by considering a well-known attempt at defining education. I will then consider some of the things that education can be for and, lastly, I will consider what it might mean to be educated before briefly considering Education Studies itself. (shrink)

This essay explores the historical socio-cultural contexts that determine the contending epistemologies of post-structuralism and cognitivism. Debates between these paradigms have focused on a-priori philosophical premises. Synthesis between these premises has not materialised because each paradigm valorises a form of knowledge which its rival cannot match. This essay attempts to position these contested premises within a diachronic background in which theoretical claims can be tested, not merely against fixed deductive positions, but against specific socio-cultural contexts that manifest themselves in epistemology. (...) Post-structuralism and cognitivism can then be thought of as aggregates of thought reflecting broad political, social, philosophical and cultural contexts. (shrink)

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Postgraduate trainee teachers undergo profound ‘shifts’ in their pedagogical understanding and practices through the year that they are taught at a UK Higher Education Institution. This study ‘investigated, in a paired pre–post design, the espoused pedagogical beliefs of three cohorts of PGCE trainees, at two time points – at the onset and toward the end of their studies in a teacher education department in a major HEI in the UK, with corroborative results from a fourth cohort and from a wider (...) set of institutions. Using an adaptation of the ‘practices’ scale of Swan, trainees’ pedagogical beliefs were charted and described on a continuum running from transmissionist to child-centred through answering 25 items, and shifts from pre-course to post course were investigated on two fronts – individually and for each item. Two general principles are represented in the data: trainees seem to either make rather more radical shifts towards child-centeredness or more slight shifts towards a more teacher centred orientation - a significant trend towards a greater learner-centrism across the longitudinal study. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the key link between the development of a sophisticated personal epistemology and the concomitant emergent pedagogies of trainee teachers, as identified through research in this area, including empirical engagement with trainees on a PGCE primary teacher training course in the UK. The ensuing review of literature investigates the theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives and aims to theoretically underpin the methods used within the empirical research described. The conclusion is that it is of paramount importance that teacher training institutions (...) allow for the development of exactly these sophisticated personal epistemologies through explicit teaching and exposure to the specific reflective practices discussed in order to promote the best possible outcomes in terms of trainees’ pedagogical understanding and practices when immersed in authentic experiences in situated learning environments on school-based attachments, and retain appropriate levels of control over the contextual, environmental and experiential circumstances that their trainees encounter. (shrink)

The article aims to undertake an immanent critique of the two heterodox interpretations of Stalin, by Alexandre Kojève and Boris Groys, and their contextualisation in terms of recent theoretical debates on the idea of communism. The article argues that there are implicit correlations of those two interpretations made at different times – in 1930-1940s in France and 1980s-2000s in Germany – by the philosophers-émigrés who, in different biographical ways, had an insider’s perspective on Stalinism. Kojève’s famous concept of “the end (...) of history” was initially addressed to Stalin as “world-historical individual” and the USSR as “universal and homogenous” State, which he defines as a post-historical reality. He also presented Stalin as a post-historical “Sage” who is able to grasp the totality of contradictory positions. Groys radicalises these assumptions in his theory of “really existing” communism as a social formation founded not in the “rule of economics” but in language and in paradoxical thinking, far from any stereotypical views on Soviet theoretical dogmatism. Against the traditional Marxist view of communism as a society without the State, both Kojève and Groys insist on the notion of communism that is linked to an “altered” State – a “homogenous and universal State” in Kojève, and a paradoxical “non-State” in Groys. (shrink)

This paper examines the theme of duality in Baudrillard’s thought. It explores his many references to Manichaeism, a dualist religion which emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 3rd century and was closely related to both Christianity and Buddhism. Taking seriously Baudrillard’s claims that “the world is Manichaean; in it two orders are absolutely opposed” that “I wouldn’t have minded being Manichaean, heretical and Gnostic” and that “the dual form is indestructible”, this paper briefly distinguishes Baudrillard’s radical or “heretical” sense (...) of duality from the simplistic and pejorative use of the term ‘dualism’ which refers to thinking based on ordered and hierarchical oppositions. The paper then examines one of Baudrillard’s major themes: the principle of Evil. (shrink)