Traversing the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, and political theory, this book develops a marxist theory of education that will be useful for academics and activists alike. The second edition includes two additional chapters as well as a new preface and revisions throughout.

In an effort to theorize educational logics that are oppositional to capitalism, this article explores what it means to study like a communist. I begin by drawing out the tight connection between learning and capitalism, demonstrating that education is not a subset but a motor of political-economic relations. Next, I turn to the concept of study, which is being developed as an educational alternative to learning. While studying represents an educational challenge to capitalism, I argue that there are political limitations (...) to studying for which we need to account. Specifically, studying is not in itself political, but only represents the possibility of politics. To make this claim and to address these limitations, I turn to Jodi Dean’s work on the communist Party. Dean posits the Party not as a master, director, or prophet, but as an infrastructure of affective intensity that maintains a gap in the order of things. I show that the Party is one way to organize and to defend study. Throughout the article, I illuminate the ways in which educational philosophers can contribute to political movement building by showing, developing, and refining the educational components of politics that many organizers and theorists neglect. (shrink)

This book is the first to articulate and challenge the consensus on the right and left that knowledge is the key to any problem, demonstrating how the left’s embrace of knowledge productivity keeps it trapped within capital’s circuits. As the knowledge economy has forced questions of education to the forefront, the book engages pedagogy as an underlying yet neglected motor of capitalism and its forms of oppression. Most importantly, it assembles new pedagogical resources for responding to the range of injustices (...) that permeate our world. Building on yet critiquing the Marxist notion of the general intellect, Derek R. Ford theorizes stupidity as a necessary alternative pedagogical logic, an anti-value that is infinitely mute and unproductive. (shrink)

This paper reads Marx’s distinction between the method of inquiry and presentation as distinct and Marxist pedagogical logics that take the form of learning and studying. After articulating the differences and their current conceptualizations in educational theory, I turn to different interpretations of the Grundrisse and Capital. While I note the differences, I maintain these result from Marx’s alternation between learning and studying, to the different weights Marx gives to both. Marx sought to understand, articulate, learn, and relay the precise (...) logics of capital, of its contradictions, and of how the working class has and can seize on these contradictions to institute the revolutionary transition to communism. At the same time, he knew he couldn’t do this because no one can fully delineate and learn about capitalism so long as it exists, as capital is by definition a dynamic social relation. I show how readings of both books are products and productive of Marx’s own pedagogical constellation through their content and form of presentation. The argument is that this is a political and constellational pedagogy that’s contingent and singular rather than resolvable and unifiable. (shrink)

Air is an immersive substance that envelopes us and binds us together, yet it has dominantly been taken for granted and left out of educational and other theorizations. This article develops a conceptualization of the pneumatic common in order to address this gap. The specific intervention staged is within recent educational literature on the common by Noah De Lissovoy, Tyson E. Lewis, and Alexander Means. This literature is surveyed and analyzed in relation to educational theory, curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. Claiming (...) that the air is a central feature of and paradigm for the common, I then concentrate on making the air conditions of the educational common explicit. I do this through a theoretical, historical, and sociological reading of air conditioning. While this explicitation is itself educational, I return to the educational common at the end of the article to ask how and what we can learn in, with, and from the air. (shrink)

In this article I bring Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘whatever singularity’ into critical pedagogy. I take as my starting point the role of identity within critical pedagogy. I call upon Butler to sketch the debates around the mobilization of identity for political purposes and, conceding the contingent necessity of identity, then suggest that whatever singularity can be helpful in moving critical pedagogy from an emancipatory to a liberatory project. To articulate whatever singularity I situate the concept within the work in (...) which it appears, and then take a detour into Agamben’s general philosophical project. I propose that, for critical pedagogy to take whatever singularity seriously, it must uphold a respect for the ineffability of being, which entails in part the suspension of dialogue. To help flesh out what I mean by this proposal, I turn to a fragment of Lyotard’s philosophy and his critique of democracy. I conclude by addressing a pressing ontological critique of Agamben, which leads me to argue for a materialist appropriation of the figure of whatever singularity, one that is held in tension with ontological concerns of identity. (shrink)

It’s not uncommon for people to make reference to atmospheres, including in relationship with educational spaces. In this article, we investigate educational atmospheres by turning to Western and Chinese literature on the air and wind. We pursue this task in three phases. First, we examine the Western literature to see the possible strings of thought that would help us reinvigorate the element of air/atmosphere as a foundational component of an educational sphere. Second, we historicize the Chinese notion of wind as (...) a style of reasoning which structures ancient Chinese cosmology, tempo-spatiality, teaching, and governing into a grid of intelligibility. Third, we argue for a bracketing of a trap of philology and a signifier-signified representational logic through reconceptualizing the atmosphere as a thing that blurs the material-figural boundary and that pushes into a new genre of educational life. (shrink)

Within educational philosophy and theory there has recently been a re-turn to the concept and practices of studying as an alternative or oppositional educational logic to push back against learning as the predominant mode of educational engagement. While promising, we believe that this research on studying has been limited in a few ways. First, while the ontological aspects of studying have been examined in a thorough manner, the affective dimension of studying has not yet been investigated. Second, while a diverse (...) range of theorists have been called upon to articulate studying, the philosophical resources out of which studying has been shaped have remained trapped within the western canon. We seek to address these limitations in this article by turning to some literature on affect theory, Daoist wind-stories, as well as the Yijing–Daoist Yin–Yang movement. In doing so, not only do we make contributions to research on studying, but we also contribute an educational understanding to affect theory and draw out important affinities between affective study and Daoist windstories. In other words, this paper moves to both articulate the affective dimensions of studying and illuminate a particular pedagogy of affect. More important, we move one step further to re-conceptualize learning and study, figuring them not merely as alternative or oppositional orderings, but as a Daoist Yin–Yang movement wherewith learning and studying, analogous to the Yin–Yang elements, always happen together, mutually informing, confronting, and transforming each other. (shrink)

While there was a flurry of articles throughout the 1990s in philosophy of education on Lyotard, there are still several key concepts in his oeuvre that have import for but remain largely underdeveloped or absent in the field. One of the most interesting of these absent concepts is Lyotard’s notion of the figural. In this paper, I take the figural as an educational problematic and ask what new educational insights it can generate in regard to the existing literature. As such, (...) this article begins with a survey and synthesis of educational literature on Lyotard and the primary work on which most of it is based, exploring the relationship between knowledge, performativity, the differend, and “the system.” I then examine conceptions of education oriented toward defending the differend and disrupting the system and claim that, while helpful, these conceptions are limited in that they do not mention how educators and students might engage the alterity that the system seeks to repress. I believe that it is here that Lyotard’s notion of the figural can be productively engaged. The next section of the paper performs a partial and educationally partisan reading of Discourse, Figure. After this reading I move to formulate a figural education, which is composed of three educational processes and modes of engagement: reading, seeing, and blindness. A figural education, I argue, holds each of these practices in an uncertain and unsettling relation and, in so doing, can help educators defend the figural and the differend against the discursive demands of the system. (shrink)

Through an educational reading of Édouard Glissant and Peter Sloterdijk, this article draws out and develops latent pedagogical philosophies that bear distinct relationships to colonialism and struggles against and beyond colonialism. In particular, it identifies two related educational philosophies that propel colonization and, in turn, proposes a theory of errant learning that might undergird decolonization. It focuses on Glissant’s minor remarks about different conceptions of understanding in order to identify the grasping drive as the educational foundation of the colonizing apparatus. (...) After articulating the other form of understanding he offers, giving-on-and-with, I point to a potential contradiction in this division as it relates to his overall project. By freeing grasping from the grasping drive, I reconfigure the relationship between grasping and giving-on-and-with in a way that allows for certain kinds of enclosures. This introduces the question of pedagogical form, a question explored in Sloterdijk’s sphereological investigations. Reading the colonizing phase of globalization through Sloterdijk’s notion of lordly imagining—which I link with the grasping drive—the article draws out how different educational processes produce different kinds of spheres. Finally, it articulates errant learning as a pneumatic process of grasping and giving-on-and-with that values opacity over transparency to produce foam formations with attention to the history of inequality and injury through immune deprivation. (shrink)

In her review of my book, Weili Zhao sheds a new light on what it means to study like a communist, particularly by focusing on the concept of the encounter and the dao movement. In this response, I build on her insights by proposing that the binary and the planar be heterogeneously blocked together. Rather than critical pedagogy, critical education, liberal education, and postmodern education, we need to see pedagogy and politics as hanging together in a confrontational negotiation.

We now live in a world where digital technology is no longer ‘separate, virtual, [or] “other” to a ‘natural’ human and social life’ (Jandrić et al., 2018, p. 893). Contemporary information and comm...

In response to contagion, competing and contradictory movements emerge that engender openness to new modes of life and reactionary defenses of old ones, that acknowledge mutual dependency and vulnerability and that heighten the policing and surveillance of borders. Through reading the Empire project, this article articulates these as struggles over measure that unfold on the terrain of sovereignty and biopolitical economy. We show that the passage from modern to imperial sovereignty hinges on the former’s inability to adequately impose calculatory regimes, (...) to which the latter’s flexibility and fluidity responds. This accompanies the passage from industrial to biopolitical command, from regulation through the wage to rearbitration through extractivism. Having articulated the contemporary coordinates within which the multitude finds itself, we then propose an educational weapon for the struggle against sovereignty and capital: stupidity. Turning to Jean-François Lyotard, we demonstrate just how fundamentally the rule of Empire depends on the outside of measure for its continual reproduction, and how Empire frames the communicative networks of biopolitical labor, a framing from which Hardt and Negri haven’t adequately broken. As the other of thought, as that which can’t be articulated, commanded, or absorbed by capital, stupidity remains totally useless and unproductive for Empire, which is exactly where its potency lies for the multitude. By critically engaging stupidity, we can refrain from reducing the pandemic to a need for heightened immunity and enclosure achieved through articulation. (shrink)

The Centre for Communist Studies, an academic research centre staffed by an artistic and comradely collection of early-career researchers, lecturers, educators and workers, started several years ag...

In the first monograph on Lyotard and education, Derek R. Ford approaches Lyotard's thought as pedagogical in itself. The result is a novel, soft, and accessible study of Lyotard organized around two inhuman educations: that of "the system" and that of "the human." The former enforces an interminable process of development, dialogue and exchange, while the latter finds its force in the mute, secret, opaque, and inarticulable. Threading together a range of Lyotard's work through four pedagogical processes-reading, writing, (...) voicing, and listening-the author insists on the distinct educational logics that can uphold or interrupt different ways of being-together in the world, touching on a range of topics from literacy and aesthetics to time and political-economy. While Inhuman Educations can serve as an introduction to Lyotard's philosophy, it also constitutes a singular, provocative, and fresh take on his thought. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions by creating (...) a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses. -/- Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood. -/- This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers. -/- Key Features: -/- Accurate, reliable and critically established text; The Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's system; Annotations provide an understanding of Reid's context; An Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

Thomas Reid (1710–96) is increasingly being seen as a highly significant philosopher and a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. This new edition of Reid's classic philosophical text in the philosophy of mind at long last gives scholars a complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry. The critical text is based on the fourth life-time edition (1785). A selection of related documents showing the development of Reid's thought, textual notes, bibliographical details of previous editions and a full introduction by the (...) editor makes this an important contribution to the study of this increasingly respected philosopher. -/- Key Features - Complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry accompanied by a judicious selection of manuscript evidence relating to its composition - Comprehensive Introduction providing an historical and philosophical account of the formation of the Inquiry - Detailed textual notes which include bibliographical details and allusions, translations, references to secondary literature and selected passages from Reid's manuscripts. (shrink)

Background: There is little research into medical students’ or doctors’ attitudes to abortion, yet knowing this is important, as policy makers should be aware of the views held by professionals directly involved in abortion provision and changing views may have practical implications for the provision of abortion in the future. Methods: We surveyed 300 medical students about their views on abortion, their beliefs about the status of the fetus and the rights of the mother, their attitude towards UK law and (...) their willingness to be involved in abortion provision as qualified doctors. Results: 62% of medical students were pro-choice, 33% pro-life and 7% undecided. Students’ views correlated with gender, year of study and holding a religious belief. Their beliefs about abortion, the status of the fetus and the rights of women significantly correlated with their attitudes towards the UK law and their willingness to be involved in abortion provision. Students’ willingness to be involved in abortion provision was related to their views on abortion, the extent of participation required, the circumstances of the pregnancy and the stage of pregnancy. Conclusions: The percentage of pro-choice students was lower than that found in research on general practitioners’ attitudes to abortion. It is unclear whether this is because students become more pro-choice as they progress through their medical career or because there is genuinely a change in attitudes to abortion. (shrink)

This paper considers whether the promotion of an environmental ethic in schools is compatible with the political liberal's commitment to ‘neutrality’. A new account of the implications of John Rawls's political liberalism for the ‘basic structure’ of education is developed. The prima facie incompatibility of political liberalism and the promotion of an environmental ethic is misleading. Rawls's political liberalism requires—as a matter of intergenerational justice—the promotion of the ‘sustainability virtues’. Moreover, it permits the promotion of ‘greener’ ideals.

This paper considers whether the promotion of an environmental ethic in schools is compatible with the political liberal’s commitment to ‘neutrality’. A new account of the implications of John Rawls’s political liberalism for the ‘basic structure’ of education is developed. The prima facie incompatibility of political liberalism and the promotion of an environmental ethic is misleading. Rawls’s political liberalism requires—as a matter of intergenerational justice—the promotion of the ‘sustainability virtues’. Moreover, it permits the promotion of ‘greener’ ideals.

It is estimated that there could be 200 million‘environmental refugees’ by the middle of this century. One major environmental cause of population displacement is likely to be global climate change. As the situation is likely to become more pressing, it is vital to consider now the rights of environmental refugees and the duties of the rest of the world. However, this is not an issue that has been addressed in mainstream theories of global justice. This paper considers the potential of (...) two leading liberal theories of international justice to address the particular issues raised by the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. I argue that neither John Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’ approach nor Charles Beitz’s `cosmopolitanism' is capable of providing an adequate account of justice in this context. Beitz’s theory does have some advantages over Rawls’s approach but it fails to take proper account of the attachment that some people have to their own ‘home’. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that forgiveness is a morally appropriate response only when it is grounded in the wrongdoer’s demonstration of genuine remorse, their offer of a sincere apology, and, where appropriate, acts of recompense and behavioral change. I then respond to John Kleinig’s suggestion (in his paper “Forgiveness and Unconditionality”) that when an apology is not forthcoming, there are at least three additional grounds that, when motivated by virtues such as love and compassion, could nevertheless render “unconditional forgiveness” (...) a morally laudable option. I argue that such grounds could indeed constitute or result in laudable responses to wrongdoing, but only if they are not conceived of or described in terms of forgiveness. (shrink)

It is well established that retrieval of names is harder than the retrieval of other identity specific information. This paper offers a review of the more influential accounts put forward as explanations of why names are so difficult to retrieve. A series of five experiments tests a number of these accounts.Experiments One to Three examine the claims that names are hard to recall because they are typically meaningless, or unique. Participants are shown photographs of unfamiliar people or familiar people and (...) given three pieces of information about each: a name, a unique piece of information, and a shared piece of information. Learning follows an incidental procedure, and participants are given a surprise recall test. In each experiment shared information is recalled most often, followed by unique information, followed by name. Experiment Four tests both the `uniqueness' account and an account based on the specificity of the naming response. Participants are presented with famous faces and asked to categorise them by semantic group. Results indicate that less time is needed to perform this task when the group is a subset of a larger semantic category. A final experiment examines the claim that names might take longer to access because they are less often retrieved than other classes of information. Latencies show that participants remain more efficient when categorising faces by their occupation than by their name even when they have received extra practice of naming the faces.We conclude that the explanation best able to account for the data is that names are stored separately from other semantic information and can only be accessed after other identity specific information has been retrieved. However, we also argue that the demands we make of these explanations make it likely that no single theory will be able to account for all existing data. (shrink)

This essay examines William James' view that pragmatic philosophy allows for theistic belief and compares it to Richard Rorty's argument that theistic belief is fundamentally incompatible with pragmatic philosophy. Theism is permissible for James because it is commensurate with his view of philosophy as inquiry. Theism is impermissible for Rorty because it incommensurate with his view of philosophy as conversation. James' arguments are shown to be too generic in their conception of the God in whom theistic belief may be placed, (...) and Rorty's arguments against the desirability of theistic belief are shown to run afoul of his own philosophical program. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermacher's theological anthropology re-articulated the Christian doctrine of sin in novel and important ways. Albrecht Ritschl, however, was very critical of Schleiermacher on this topic, claiming that the concept of sin became too individualistic. In the wake of contemporary critiques of individualistic conceptions of sin, this article examines the Schleiermacher-Ritschl anthropological debate in historical perspective and identifies areas of continued value for theological development.

In this article, I argue that the kind of suffering that prisons impose upon people who are incarcerated disregards their uniqueness and fails to meet their basic needs in a manner which violates their dignity and worth as human beings. Hence, the prison, as an institution, cannot be morally justified. But since the imposition of this kind of suffering is an integral element of a prison’s central function, it follows that a 'Correctional Ethic' is effectively an oxymoron, not dissimilar to (...) an 'Ethic for Slave-masters'. (shrink)

The human dimensions involved in the operational objectives of Restorative Justice demand the highest quality of program design and staff training. In this paper, I argue that this desideratum has yet to be fully realized in existing Restorative Justice programs, in particular, with regard to the facilitation of reconciliation. I begin by presenting the chief problems associated with the concentration on reparation in Restorative Justice programs, to the neglect of reconciliation. I then argue that this phenomenon is, in part, a (...) consequence of (i) the almost universal use of service-delivery criteria in the evaluation of Restorative Justice programs, and (ii) the absence of research on the interactional processes involved within the victim-offender encounter itself, using suitably designed methodological tools. (shrink)

This paper explores the feasibility of offering a restorative justice (RJ) approach in cases of domestic violence (DV). I argue that widely used RJ processes—such as ‘conferencing’—are unlikely to be sufficiently safe or effective in cases of DV, at least as these processes are standardly designed and practiced (Sections 1-6). I then support the view that if RJ is to be used in cases of DV, then new specialist processes will need to be co-designed with key stakeholders to ensure they (...) embody not only RJ principles, but also feminist theory and the concept of transformative justice (Section 7). (shrink)

In this article, I argue that guilt and shame are not distinctive emotions. Instead, guilt is best seen as a kind of shame. I present three reasons for this view: First, guilt cannot merely arise as a consequence of how we evaluate our behaviour, since how we act implicates the whole self. Second, guilt cannot be relieved by taking responsibility, apologising and making amends unless it is a kind of shame. Third, the empirical research that seems to show that ‘shame’ (...) and ‘guilt’ are distinct can be explained by re-interpreting the data. (shrink)

In his paper, “The Relevance of Rawls’ Principle of Justice for Research on Cognitively Impaired Patients” (Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 23 (2002):45–53), Giovanni Maio has developed a thought-provoking argument for the permissibility of non-therapeutic research on cognitively impaired patients. Maio argues that his conclusion follows from the acceptance of John Rawls’s principles of justice, specifically, Rawls’s “liberty principle” Maio has misinterpreted Rawls’s “libertyprinciple” – correctly interpreted it does notsupport non-therapeutic research on cognitivelyimpaired patients. Three other ‘Rawlsian’ arguments are suggested by (...) Maio’s discussion –two “self-respect” arguments and a “presumed consent” argument – but none of them are convincing. However, an alternative argument developed from Rawls’s discussion of “justice in health care” in his most recent book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, may justify certain kinds of non-therapeutic research on some cognitively impaired patients in special circumstances. We should not expect anything more permissive from a liberal theory of justice. (shrink)

In my paper “Moral Grounds for Forgiveness,” I argued that forgiveness is morally appropriate only when a sincere apology is received, thus ruling out the three grounds for unconditional forgiveness suggested by John Kleinig in his paper “Forgiveness and Unconditionality.” In response to his reply “Defending Unconditional Forgiveness,” I argue here that my terminology, once clarified, does not undermine my construal of resentment; that conditional forgiveness is just as discretionary as unconditional forgiveness; and that what we choose to take into (...) account when we forgive must be a morally appropriate grounding for that particular end, but that only a sincere apology could satisfy this condition. I end by conceding that the three grounds suggested by Kleinig nevertheless play an essential role in the process of (conditional) forgiveness insofar as they facilitate a willingness to forgive and an openness toward accepting an apology. (shrink)

This paper is a reconstruction and analysis of Thomas Reid’s epistemology, based upon an examination of his extant manuscripts and publications. I argue that, in Reid’s view, a certain degree of “evidence” (or, as I shall say, ‘epistemic justification’) is that which distinguishes mere true belief from knowledge; and that this degree of justification may be ascribed to a person’s belief if and only if (i) the evidence upon which her belief is grounded is such that she holds it with (...) “certainty”; (ii) she has a “sound understanding”; (iii) she has a distinct conception of the object of her belief; and, finally, (iv) she has formed her belief “without prejudice”. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the feasibility of a restorative justice service in the context of work‐related deaths, specifically in Victoria. Section 1 provides a brief summary of restorative justice and the kind of processes that are most likely to be used in the context of work‐related death. Section 2 discusses an issue for the use of restorative justice in this context that is similar to the problem of whether it is fair or reasonable to assign personal criminal liability for (...) corporate fault. Section 3 looks at what it is that restorative justice can offer a bereaved family. Section 4 presents a range of suggestions as to how restorative justice could be used in this context—informed by real cases wherever possible. Section 5 presents a brief proposal regarding what may be the most effective and efficient strategy or model, in terms of developing a pilot restorative justice service in this area. Section 6 offers some preliminary guidance for a further consultation that would involve all the key stakeholders. (shrink)

This book looks at what it means to be wronged, and why we react to wrongdoing in ways that can cause us more suffering and pain. An alternative approach called 'restorative justice' is proposed as a safe and effective way of avoiding these reactions whilst honouring our values and our common humanity.

Criminal justice is primarily designed to serve the public interest in relation to criminal acts. Restorative justice is designed to address the harm-related needs of individuals in the aftermath of wrongdoing. These distinct aims require such different processes and priorities that any attempt to integrate restorative justice within the criminal justice system will almost invariably undermine the quality and effectiveness of both. In this book, the author argues that the optimal relationship between the two should therefore be one of maximum (...) independence: the instruments of the state should not be used to impose or enforce the decision to participate in restorative justice, any component of the restorative justice process or its outcome. It is also suggested that, in the absence of legislative innovation, this kind of separation is likely to require that restorative justice is situated after a case has actually exited the justice system, or after it has, in legal terms, effectively done so, as in a post-sentence context. [Note: The publisher offers a 40% discount on this book (conditions apply). Please see the author's website: "Relational Approaches" for details.]. (shrink)