This paper focuses on the intersections between Jacques Derrida’s thinking of teletechnology, virtualisation, mondialisation and the role that education and the ‘university to come’ can play in coping with the changing landscapes of our increasingly digitised world. This analysis also addresses what I call the pragmatist critique of Derrida, which accuses deconstruction of being incapable of offering any prescriptive norms for how we can actually achieve systemic political change and what those changes should look like beyond a vague or unrealistic (...) utopian hope for an undefinable, unanticipatable ‘event’ to come. I argue, in contrast, that Derrida’s thinking on teletechnology provides one of many examples of the practical implications of deconstruction and can help explain Derrida’s account of how the politico-economic outside functions and conditions the university. Moreover, I explain Derrida’s argument that the ‘how’ of interrupting or breaking the vicious cycle of technoeconomic power structures cannot be solved by a mere list of preprogramed objectives and thus must necessarily be left open to uncertainty, further determination and the possibility of the unknown. At the same time, however, this resistance to preprogramed objectives does not entail an outright rejection of political resistance or education about the power structures at work within various domains of life. (shrink)

The “Philosophy for Children” program has different goals, one of them being to foster creative thinking among students. The educational approach of the program is designed to transform the classroom into an innovative and philosophical environment that encourages students to develop creative thinking. At the beginning of this article, I discuss a concept of art as a creative activity that requires strong active involvement by the person who creates the work of art as well as the person who perceives, observes (...) or enjoys that work. Moreover, we also consider art not to be an activity exclusive of those we call artists, but rather we contend that all of us have the capacity to make works of art. In this light, one of the most important goals of our educational practice is to transform the class itself into a work of art in which all participants bring to bear the best of themselves, thereby making a valuable educational experience that demands from them and from the teacher the practice of complex and high-level thinking: a critical, creative, and caring way of thinking. (shrink)