The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to ‘unschooling in schools’ as a mechanism for resisting (...) the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education. (shrink)

Introduction -- Logics of extraction -- Materialism & critical materialism -- Methodological parrhesia: truth-telling -- Methodological materiality: towards productive social change.

The authors in this edited volume reflect on their experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy-as students, as teachers, as researchers-and how these experiences were often at odds with their backgrounds and/or expectations.

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide (...) a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system. (shrink)

Introduction -- Being/becoming material -- Knowledge & class: coming to process -- Truth-telling, inquiry, and affirmative ethics -- Relational inquiry as radical cartography -- Higher education and the governance of things -- Refusal & resistance.

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide (...) a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system. (shrink)