Inoperative Learning: A Radical Rewriting of Educational Potentialities

ISBN-13: 9781138227422 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 134 str.

Tyson E. Lewis

Opis

Inoperative Education draws upon the movement in educational philosophy towards a weak philosophy, which does not offer a set of solutions or guidelines for improving educational outcomes, but rather renders inoperative assumptions about the theory-practice coupling so popular in education today. This book presents a challenge to contemporary notions of education as learning, by arguing that such logic reduces education to merely instrumental ends, which can only be assessed in terms of predefined measurement tools. The goal of this book is to outline various forms of inoperative learning in which the goal-directedness of learning is temporarily suspended. From the perspective of learning, the suspension of progress, growth, and maturity would usually be seen as obstacles needing to be overcome on the path toward set goals. Yet Lewis argues that a serious investigation of inoperativity opens up possibilities that would be otherwise unavailable in a world fixated on the question of learning. In dialogue with philosophers such as Agamben, Benjamin, and Esposito, as well as authors such as Kafka and Walser, Lewis turns our collective attention to what remains when concepts such as learning, child development, teacher effectivity, and personal growth are left idle. What remains is precisely potentiality itself, the potentiality to be otherwise than. Inoperative Education presents a radical rewriting of educational possibilities. As such, the book should be of great interest to academics, researchers, philosophers and postgraduate students searching for alternative logics of education beyond learning. The book may also be of interest to educational policy specialists who are looking for new and innovative forms of critical discourse analysis.

Recenzje

Tyson E. Lewis dissolves the means-ends logic in the hierarchy "philosopher–teacher–student" that has held us captive since Plato. With constant reference to Italian critic Giorgio Agamben, Lewis plots ways of not-getting-educated—friends studying alongside one another, a student scattered in distraction, a teacher miming virtuous actions as if to say, "anybody can play at this." More than a philosophical critique of educational theory: this book also tells how to live joyfully within a finite frame. When there is no final, total "in-order-to," we receive the "gift of inoperativity." - Paul North, Professor Germanic Languages, Yale University, USA 

Spis treści

List of Figures  Acknowledgements  Preface (Fred Moten and Stefano Harney)  1. Inception  2. Divestment  Interruption 1: Sopa d’Europa  Interruption 2: "Coming of John"  3. Impersonality  Interruption 3: Berlin Chronicle  4. Inhumanity  Interruption 4: Going Feral  5. Impropriety  Interruption 5: "Bad Design"  6. Irresponsibility  Interruption 6: "The Test"  Interruption 7: "Absent Minded" Examiner  7.  Ineffectiveness  Interruption 8: A Comedic Sense of Teaching  Interruption 6: "The Test"  Interruption 7: "Absent Minded" Examiner  7.  Ineffectiveness  Interruption 8: A Comedic Sense of Teaching

O autorze

Tyson E. Lewis is Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of North Texas.