It is common in contemporary, progressive educational circles to believe that it is important for... more It is common in contemporary, progressive educational circles to believe that it is important for students to "learn from their mistakes." Instead of punishing mistakes, mistakes present learning opportunities. This approach destigmatizes mistakes, offering up the reassuring moto "try again, fail again, fail better!" Likewise, within the flexible economic model of neoliberalism, the entrepreneurial self must continually recoup all mistakes in order to engage in self-initiated lifelong learning. While apparently very different in nature-the former advocating individual, exploratory, constructivist learning and the other economic adaptability and responsiveness-both share a common educational imperative: mistakes must be made operative, made functional for promoting development of the learner. The mistake can never be simply a mistake, but must be absorbed back into the progressive structure of learning. Indeed, one might even go so far as to suggest that for learning theory today (on the left and right of the political and economic scales), the outside of learning (mistakes) is not so much antithetical to learning so much as learning's newly minted motor. The external, nonfunctional, seemingly miseducational byproduct of learning (mistakes) have been incorporated back into the system of learning as its essential mechanism for enhancing the overall learning experience. But this is not the only way to approach mistakes in educational theory and practice. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach, one that does not value mistakes for their functional role in a learning economy. Instead of transforming mistakes into operative drivers of further learning, I offer an inoperative understanding of mistakes, or rather mistakes as mistakes. To do so, I find educational use in the awkwardness of the mistake, and argue that awkwardness should not be overcome in order to correct course. In short, my analysis shifts from assessing the value of mistakes in terms of learning outcomes to recognizing in the mistake something that cannot be incorporated back into
For the first time, Walter Benjamin’s critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steine... more For the first time, Walter Benjamin’s critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner are examined in depth. In particular, Benjamin detected protofascist themes within Steiner’s seemingly progressive notion of child-centered, arts-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood education. But this does not mean that Benjamin completely rejected Steiner’s work as mere ideology. Instead, we can find the subtle trace of Steiner’s influence in Benjamin’s own reflections on childhood. Here Tyson E. Lewis calls for a dialectical approach modeled by Benjamin that allows us to critically interrogate Steiner’s progressive education for protofascist tendencies, while also redeeming various insights into the lives of children. This dialectical approach to understanding the complex relationship between progressive education and fascism is now more urgent than ever before.
international Journal of Education Through Art , 2024
This article outlines three dominant ways in which the concept of potentiality is discussed in ar... more This article outlines three dominant ways in which the concept of potentiality is discussed in art educational literature, and in particular the connections between actualizing potentialities and creation. It then pivots to the works of Giorgio Agamben in order to problematize some of the basic ontological assumptions embedded within the three dominant views of the potentiality–actuality–creativity relationship. Agamben focuses his analysis on the (im)potential remnant of potentiality that remains within any given actualization and highlights the role of such (im)potentiality in creative acts. To illustrate this role, the article offers four ways that (im) potentiality exhibits itself in various art forms before concluding with implications for imagining the artist’s studio as a space and time for (im)potential acts of creation.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies , 2024
Once again, fascism is back in the news. After a long period in which the notion of fascism seeme... more Once again, fascism is back in the news. After a long period in which the notion of fascism seemed historically irrelevant to contemporary political, social, economic, and educational problems, pro-and anti-fascist discourses have returned with a vengeance. Throughout social media, it is now common to hear political rivals on the right and the left call each other "fascists" in order to delegitimize or humiliate various political agendas. Fascist rhetoric is openly used by political figures like Trump to rouse passions for patriotic nationalism while denigrating immigrants by calling them "vermin. " Mainstream, political commentators are now issuing warnings against a rising tide of fascism that is threatening to eclipse democracy (Albright & Woodward, 2018; Maddow, 2023). And in the academy, a host of critical theory and sociology books have been publishing within the last ten years on the topic of fascism (
Critical phenomenology argues that privilege and discrimination live in and through preconscious ... more Critical phenomenology argues that privilege and discrimination live in and through preconscious habits (Ngo, 2017), ways in which bodies extend into space (Young, 1990), and bodily orientations (Ahmed, 2006). In this literature, scholars call for educational experiences in which such embodied and embedded modes of being-in-the-world breakdown, become disoriented, and/or suddenly attune themselves to their own implilcit political dimensions (Yancy, 2014). For this article, we argue that the critical phenomenological project needs to be anchored in and through engagements with visual arts. Although phenomenology has deep connections with the visual arts as important resources for understanding embodiment and perception (Johnson, 2009; Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 1992; Wiskus, 2015) critical phenomenology has not yet fully developed the educational potentialities of art and art making to reveal how structures of oppression, discrimination, marginalization, and privilege are lived through experience, and how encounters with the visual arts and art making can induce breakdowns in accepted modes of embodiment. Likewise, while scholarship in art education has acknowledged the importance of the arts to facilitate these sorts of breakdowns (Acuff, 2016; Knight, 2006; Wilson, 2019), there has not been sufficient attention paid to how these disruptions affect the preconscious modes of embodiment that differentially and asymmetrically anchor individuals to the world (Link, 2024). In the following article, we provide a possible theoretical framework for conducting research into phenomenological breakdowns of the white, male, colonialist gaze through 1246064Q IXXXX10.
This article returns to the work of Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman to theorize the spatial im... more This article returns to the work of Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman to theorize the spatial imaginary of fascism, a dimension missing from existing analyses of the social psychology of the authoritarian personality. The fascist spatial imaginary can be defined in terms of a Manichean sense of world space, a dominance of spatial binaries such as inside versus outside, mythic/romantic spatial imagery, a paranoid mood, and finally, spatial projection in which internal contradictions are externalized. As a historical case study, the article charts the rise and fall of the American fascist compound and its replacement by more flexible and mobile terrorist cells, connecting this change in fascist spatial formations to underlying shifts in the composition of capitalism. In conclusion, the article turns to Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben to argue that, in the last instance, the fascist spatial imaginary cannot conceptualize thresholds, states of indistinction where the inside‐outside binary blurs, and that dwelling within the threshold (rather than closing it) might be a tactic to disrupt the power of fascist spatial logics.
sACrEd night of study tyson E. lEwis There is a figure in Western thought that is as persistent a... more sACrEd night of study tyson E. lEwis There is a figure in Western thought that is as persistent as it is silent: the studier. Hidden away under a veil of night, scribbling notes and occult symbols in the margins of books, flipping through well-worn tomes, mumbling with hushed breath. How to capture a glimpse of this strange, nocturnal creature lurking in the shadows? It would seem that one can only approach the studier obliquely, through some kind of indirect manner that, if one is lucky, can catch the trace of the studier. Take, for instance, the stunning book Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark (2019) by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, which provides an intricate mapping of the dark paradoxes of night. He begins his book by stating, "To study night, one must stare into what one already realizes intuitively as a paradoxical object: that night is where horror thrives, and also infatuation; that night hides certain acts, but that things are also said to 'come out at night'" (1). Over the course of the next several chapters, Mohaghegh traces the various spaces, times, and actions that take place in the shadows, in sleep, in nightmares, and in visionary dreams. He also provides a detailed catalog of the various questionable agents that occupy the night.
Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education , 2023
This article presents a theoretical framework justifying the articulation of descriptive forms of... more This article presents a theoretical framework justifying the articulation of descriptive forms of critical phenomenology with experimental and poetic forms of research-creation. Through an engagement with Merleau-Ponty, the article argues that aesthetic concerns are ontological concerns. In particular, Merleau-Ponty defines embodiment not in terms of essences so much as in terms of stylizations. The focus on style opens the phenomenological description of embodiment up for research-creation through poetic experimentation. While critical phenomenology has greatly expanded the understanding of the politics of bodily stylization, this discourse has yet to fully explore the possibilities for imagining new modes of writing that are equal parts vivid description and poetical restylization of how bodies interact and perceive. Emphasizing the need for creative, transformative, and collective forms of writing, Gloria Anzaldúa's work serves as a foundation for research-creation grounded in a critical phenomenology of bodily stylistics.
Review of Education Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 2023
Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develo... more Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply the critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth.
This article explores a phenomenology of joyful experimentation in art education through a series... more This article explores a phenomenology of joyful experimentation in art education through a series of pedagogical flashpoints. Flashpoints are educational moments when implicit knowledge carried in the body suddenly appears and makes itself part of conscious experience, often in shocking, disturbing, traumatic ways. In this article, we offer another possibility for exploring the educational value of flashpoints with a shift toward a postcritical orientation that considers the role of art education in facilitating these pedagogical moments. By using a postcritical approach that emphasizes joyful moments of collective liberatory efforts, our intention is to acknowledge the force of structural inequalities while also highlighting how art education can create solidarity with joyful acts of collective empowerment and experimentation in these radically dystopian times.
Western philosophical traditions from Descartes on have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis... more Western philosophical traditions from Descartes on have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis which centers the unique capacities of the human in an interior mental life. This particular feature of the human separates it in kind (rather than degree) from non-human, purely mechanistic lifeforms. Thus, the intellectualist thesis is supported by two founda-tional assumptions: first, that humans can be defined in virtue of their minds, and second, that having a mind separates humans from non-human animals. Phenomenologists have complicated the first assumption by emphasizing the embodied and embedded nature of existence: Husserl revealed the importance of the lifeworld, Heidegger added equipment and das Man, Levinas added the other, de Beauvoir added gender, and Merleau-Ponty added the body. Although these thinkers have complicated the Cartesian sanctity of the mind, there is nevertheless a tendency in phenomenology to remain fully within a human-centric research paradigm. Phenomenological research seems to suggest that animals do not have a world, or if they do, it is deficient. 1 This article will explore the possibilities of a posthuman phenomenology for unsettling this deficiency and suggest that certain forms of performance philosophy are the most effective methods for investigating this new terrain. 2 Performance is effective in overcoming human exceptionalism in the tradition of phenomenology through its emphasis on a lived practice of philosophy that is embodied, and entangled with other non-human animals. Jokob von Uexküll (2010) and Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec (2012) offer provocative suggestions for a new, speculative biology, but their methods remain largely imaginative-indeed Flusser and Bec refer to their work as a "fable." Although many insights can be gleaned from this approach, we will refer to some examples of posthuman phenomenol-ogy, and in particular the work of Charles Foster (2016), which shift from imagining alternative, non-human ways of being, to performing them. Researchers such as Foster begin with the recognition that to understand what it is like to be a non-human animal, the human body itself must be transformed. They explore their curiosity by attempting to "be" a non-human animal-to inhabit the world of the non-human other by augmenting their own bodies, habits, and ways of being in the world. Moving beyond mere mental speculation, Foster performs the human body differently, and in the process , touches upon a non-human excess that is not reducible to mere anthropocentric projection. Abstract Western philosophical traditions have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis supported by two foundational assumptions: first, that humans can be defined in virtue of their minds, and second, that having a mind separates humans from non-human animals. Many phenomenologists have complicated this thesis, but there is nevertheless a tendency in phenomenology to remain fully within a human-centric research paradigm. This article will explore the possibilities of a posthuman phenomenology for unsettling this human-centeredness and suggest that certain forms of performance philosophy are the most effective methods for investigating this new terrain.
Jane Bennett's book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things has two overlapping and mutuall... more Jane Bennett's book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things has two overlapping and mutually supportive aims. First, she has a philosophical project: to problematize and hopefully overcome a major bias in Western philosophical thinking that separates life and death, activity and passivity, vibrancy and inertness. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Bennett proposes that brute matter exerts its own power that exists below the human world. Focusing on the "vitality" of things means coming to terms with the "capacity of things. .. not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own" (viii). This philosophical project is linked directly to an over-arching political hypothesis. Bennett argues that one of the causes of the destruction of the natural world and the impending ecological disaster is precisely the Western belief that matter is inactive, a mere resource for human consumption. But, if we see matter as vibrant and powerful then perhaps we will not instrumentalize it or uncritically consume it. Here I do not want to review possible criticisms of these two projects or their underlying assumptions and arguments. Instead I want to bracket off these lines of inquiry in order to expose and think through another project of this book, one which Bennett only indirectly gestures toward but is nevertheless essential for forming a bridge between the philosophical and political poles of her overall aim. This other project concerns the possibility of an aesthetic pedagogy of things-a new educational practice that would route our collective attention away from issues of cultivating human-centered knowledge, skills, and aptitudes toward a perceptual receptivity and attentiveness to things that fall outside our worldly concerns. I call this an "aesthetic pedagogy" first Cultural Critique 98-Winter 2018
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2023
This article argues that hope is not an adequate affective response to dread. Indeed, hope and dr... more This article argues that hope is not an adequate affective response to dread. Indeed, hope and dread are more closely aligned than either critical or postcritical forms of educational philosophy would like to admit. The article proposes a shift from hope to joy as an under appreciated educational affect. To make this claim, the author pivots to Spinoza's emphasis on joy as an affect that increases one's potential to think and act in a world with others as a new starting point for education in dreadful times. The article also offers a Spinozian reading of Freire that unlocks the joyful dimensions of his work, especially through his reflections on laughter. In conclusion, a hopelessly joyful affective orientation is called for as a form of passionate educational experimentation with the potentiality of the world.
Interest in Walter Benjamin's thoughts on education have increased exponentially in the last seve... more Interest in Walter Benjamin's thoughts on education have increased exponentially in the last several years. 1 One important contribution to this body of literature is Howard Eiland's conceptualization of education as awakening in remembrance and expectation. 2 In this article, I return to this basic proposition both to support Eiland's claims and to further our understanding of the relationship between education, sleep, dreams, and awakening that is implied in his formulation. To do so, I will turn to one of Benjamin's underappreciated, early essays, "Outline of the Psychophysical Problem." This essay is crucial for understanding the psychophysical underpinnings of education as awakening. In particular, Benjamin's discussion of nearness and distance in relation to the state of sleep will offer a unique entry point for mapping out four different modalities of education found in Benjamin's work and how each modality is, or is not, conducive to awakening. First, I will provide a brief interpretation of "Outline of the
It is common in contemporary, progressive educational circles to believe that it is important for... more It is common in contemporary, progressive educational circles to believe that it is important for students to "learn from their mistakes." Instead of punishing mistakes, mistakes present learning opportunities. This approach destigmatizes mistakes, offering up the reassuring moto "try again, fail again, fail better!" Likewise, within the flexible economic model of neoliberalism, the entrepreneurial self must continually recoup all mistakes in order to engage in self-initiated lifelong learning. While apparently very different in nature-the former advocating individual, exploratory, constructivist learning and the other economic adaptability and responsiveness-both share a common educational imperative: mistakes must be made operative, made functional for promoting development of the learner. The mistake can never be simply a mistake, but must be absorbed back into the progressive structure of learning. Indeed, one might even go so far as to suggest that for learning theory today (on the left and right of the political and economic scales), the outside of learning (mistakes) is not so much antithetical to learning so much as learning's newly minted motor. The external, nonfunctional, seemingly miseducational byproduct of learning (mistakes) have been incorporated back into the system of learning as its essential mechanism for enhancing the overall learning experience. But this is not the only way to approach mistakes in educational theory and practice. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach, one that does not value mistakes for their functional role in a learning economy. Instead of transforming mistakes into operative drivers of further learning, I offer an inoperative understanding of mistakes, or rather mistakes as mistakes. To do so, I find educational use in the awkwardness of the mistake, and argue that awkwardness should not be overcome in order to correct course. In short, my analysis shifts from assessing the value of mistakes in terms of learning outcomes to recognizing in the mistake something that cannot be incorporated back into
For the first time, Walter Benjamin’s critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steine... more For the first time, Walter Benjamin’s critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner are examined in depth. In particular, Benjamin detected protofascist themes within Steiner’s seemingly progressive notion of child-centered, arts-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood education. But this does not mean that Benjamin completely rejected Steiner’s work as mere ideology. Instead, we can find the subtle trace of Steiner’s influence in Benjamin’s own reflections on childhood. Here Tyson E. Lewis calls for a dialectical approach modeled by Benjamin that allows us to critically interrogate Steiner’s progressive education for protofascist tendencies, while also redeeming various insights into the lives of children. This dialectical approach to understanding the complex relationship between progressive education and fascism is now more urgent than ever before.
international Journal of Education Through Art , 2024
This article outlines three dominant ways in which the concept of potentiality is discussed in ar... more This article outlines three dominant ways in which the concept of potentiality is discussed in art educational literature, and in particular the connections between actualizing potentialities and creation. It then pivots to the works of Giorgio Agamben in order to problematize some of the basic ontological assumptions embedded within the three dominant views of the potentiality–actuality–creativity relationship. Agamben focuses his analysis on the (im)potential remnant of potentiality that remains within any given actualization and highlights the role of such (im)potentiality in creative acts. To illustrate this role, the article offers four ways that (im) potentiality exhibits itself in various art forms before concluding with implications for imagining the artist’s studio as a space and time for (im)potential acts of creation.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies , 2024
Once again, fascism is back in the news. After a long period in which the notion of fascism seeme... more Once again, fascism is back in the news. After a long period in which the notion of fascism seemed historically irrelevant to contemporary political, social, economic, and educational problems, pro-and anti-fascist discourses have returned with a vengeance. Throughout social media, it is now common to hear political rivals on the right and the left call each other "fascists" in order to delegitimize or humiliate various political agendas. Fascist rhetoric is openly used by political figures like Trump to rouse passions for patriotic nationalism while denigrating immigrants by calling them "vermin. " Mainstream, political commentators are now issuing warnings against a rising tide of fascism that is threatening to eclipse democracy (Albright & Woodward, 2018; Maddow, 2023). And in the academy, a host of critical theory and sociology books have been publishing within the last ten years on the topic of fascism (
Critical phenomenology argues that privilege and discrimination live in and through preconscious ... more Critical phenomenology argues that privilege and discrimination live in and through preconscious habits (Ngo, 2017), ways in which bodies extend into space (Young, 1990), and bodily orientations (Ahmed, 2006). In this literature, scholars call for educational experiences in which such embodied and embedded modes of being-in-the-world breakdown, become disoriented, and/or suddenly attune themselves to their own implilcit political dimensions (Yancy, 2014). For this article, we argue that the critical phenomenological project needs to be anchored in and through engagements with visual arts. Although phenomenology has deep connections with the visual arts as important resources for understanding embodiment and perception (Johnson, 2009; Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 1992; Wiskus, 2015) critical phenomenology has not yet fully developed the educational potentialities of art and art making to reveal how structures of oppression, discrimination, marginalization, and privilege are lived through experience, and how encounters with the visual arts and art making can induce breakdowns in accepted modes of embodiment. Likewise, while scholarship in art education has acknowledged the importance of the arts to facilitate these sorts of breakdowns (Acuff, 2016; Knight, 2006; Wilson, 2019), there has not been sufficient attention paid to how these disruptions affect the preconscious modes of embodiment that differentially and asymmetrically anchor individuals to the world (Link, 2024). In the following article, we provide a possible theoretical framework for conducting research into phenomenological breakdowns of the white, male, colonialist gaze through 1246064Q IXXXX10.
This article returns to the work of Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman to theorize the spatial im... more This article returns to the work of Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman to theorize the spatial imaginary of fascism, a dimension missing from existing analyses of the social psychology of the authoritarian personality. The fascist spatial imaginary can be defined in terms of a Manichean sense of world space, a dominance of spatial binaries such as inside versus outside, mythic/romantic spatial imagery, a paranoid mood, and finally, spatial projection in which internal contradictions are externalized. As a historical case study, the article charts the rise and fall of the American fascist compound and its replacement by more flexible and mobile terrorist cells, connecting this change in fascist spatial formations to underlying shifts in the composition of capitalism. In conclusion, the article turns to Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben to argue that, in the last instance, the fascist spatial imaginary cannot conceptualize thresholds, states of indistinction where the inside‐outside binary blurs, and that dwelling within the threshold (rather than closing it) might be a tactic to disrupt the power of fascist spatial logics.
sACrEd night of study tyson E. lEwis There is a figure in Western thought that is as persistent a... more sACrEd night of study tyson E. lEwis There is a figure in Western thought that is as persistent as it is silent: the studier. Hidden away under a veil of night, scribbling notes and occult symbols in the margins of books, flipping through well-worn tomes, mumbling with hushed breath. How to capture a glimpse of this strange, nocturnal creature lurking in the shadows? It would seem that one can only approach the studier obliquely, through some kind of indirect manner that, if one is lucky, can catch the trace of the studier. Take, for instance, the stunning book Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark (2019) by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, which provides an intricate mapping of the dark paradoxes of night. He begins his book by stating, "To study night, one must stare into what one already realizes intuitively as a paradoxical object: that night is where horror thrives, and also infatuation; that night hides certain acts, but that things are also said to 'come out at night'" (1). Over the course of the next several chapters, Mohaghegh traces the various spaces, times, and actions that take place in the shadows, in sleep, in nightmares, and in visionary dreams. He also provides a detailed catalog of the various questionable agents that occupy the night.
Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education , 2023
This article presents a theoretical framework justifying the articulation of descriptive forms of... more This article presents a theoretical framework justifying the articulation of descriptive forms of critical phenomenology with experimental and poetic forms of research-creation. Through an engagement with Merleau-Ponty, the article argues that aesthetic concerns are ontological concerns. In particular, Merleau-Ponty defines embodiment not in terms of essences so much as in terms of stylizations. The focus on style opens the phenomenological description of embodiment up for research-creation through poetic experimentation. While critical phenomenology has greatly expanded the understanding of the politics of bodily stylization, this discourse has yet to fully explore the possibilities for imagining new modes of writing that are equal parts vivid description and poetical restylization of how bodies interact and perceive. Emphasizing the need for creative, transformative, and collective forms of writing, Gloria Anzaldúa's work serves as a foundation for research-creation grounded in a critical phenomenology of bodily stylistics.
Review of Education Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 2023
Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develo... more Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply the critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth.
This article explores a phenomenology of joyful experimentation in art education through a series... more This article explores a phenomenology of joyful experimentation in art education through a series of pedagogical flashpoints. Flashpoints are educational moments when implicit knowledge carried in the body suddenly appears and makes itself part of conscious experience, often in shocking, disturbing, traumatic ways. In this article, we offer another possibility for exploring the educational value of flashpoints with a shift toward a postcritical orientation that considers the role of art education in facilitating these pedagogical moments. By using a postcritical approach that emphasizes joyful moments of collective liberatory efforts, our intention is to acknowledge the force of structural inequalities while also highlighting how art education can create solidarity with joyful acts of collective empowerment and experimentation in these radically dystopian times.
Western philosophical traditions from Descartes on have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis... more Western philosophical traditions from Descartes on have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis which centers the unique capacities of the human in an interior mental life. This particular feature of the human separates it in kind (rather than degree) from non-human, purely mechanistic lifeforms. Thus, the intellectualist thesis is supported by two founda-tional assumptions: first, that humans can be defined in virtue of their minds, and second, that having a mind separates humans from non-human animals. Phenomenologists have complicated the first assumption by emphasizing the embodied and embedded nature of existence: Husserl revealed the importance of the lifeworld, Heidegger added equipment and das Man, Levinas added the other, de Beauvoir added gender, and Merleau-Ponty added the body. Although these thinkers have complicated the Cartesian sanctity of the mind, there is nevertheless a tendency in phenomenology to remain fully within a human-centric research paradigm. Phenomenological research seems to suggest that animals do not have a world, or if they do, it is deficient. 1 This article will explore the possibilities of a posthuman phenomenology for unsettling this deficiency and suggest that certain forms of performance philosophy are the most effective methods for investigating this new terrain. 2 Performance is effective in overcoming human exceptionalism in the tradition of phenomenology through its emphasis on a lived practice of philosophy that is embodied, and entangled with other non-human animals. Jokob von Uexküll (2010) and Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec (2012) offer provocative suggestions for a new, speculative biology, but their methods remain largely imaginative-indeed Flusser and Bec refer to their work as a "fable." Although many insights can be gleaned from this approach, we will refer to some examples of posthuman phenomenol-ogy, and in particular the work of Charles Foster (2016), which shift from imagining alternative, non-human ways of being, to performing them. Researchers such as Foster begin with the recognition that to understand what it is like to be a non-human animal, the human body itself must be transformed. They explore their curiosity by attempting to "be" a non-human animal-to inhabit the world of the non-human other by augmenting their own bodies, habits, and ways of being in the world. Moving beyond mere mental speculation, Foster performs the human body differently, and in the process , touches upon a non-human excess that is not reducible to mere anthropocentric projection. Abstract Western philosophical traditions have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis supported by two foundational assumptions: first, that humans can be defined in virtue of their minds, and second, that having a mind separates humans from non-human animals. Many phenomenologists have complicated this thesis, but there is nevertheless a tendency in phenomenology to remain fully within a human-centric research paradigm. This article will explore the possibilities of a posthuman phenomenology for unsettling this human-centeredness and suggest that certain forms of performance philosophy are the most effective methods for investigating this new terrain.
Jane Bennett's book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things has two overlapping and mutuall... more Jane Bennett's book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things has two overlapping and mutually supportive aims. First, she has a philosophical project: to problematize and hopefully overcome a major bias in Western philosophical thinking that separates life and death, activity and passivity, vibrancy and inertness. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Bennett proposes that brute matter exerts its own power that exists below the human world. Focusing on the "vitality" of things means coming to terms with the "capacity of things. .. not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own" (viii). This philosophical project is linked directly to an over-arching political hypothesis. Bennett argues that one of the causes of the destruction of the natural world and the impending ecological disaster is precisely the Western belief that matter is inactive, a mere resource for human consumption. But, if we see matter as vibrant and powerful then perhaps we will not instrumentalize it or uncritically consume it. Here I do not want to review possible criticisms of these two projects or their underlying assumptions and arguments. Instead I want to bracket off these lines of inquiry in order to expose and think through another project of this book, one which Bennett only indirectly gestures toward but is nevertheless essential for forming a bridge between the philosophical and political poles of her overall aim. This other project concerns the possibility of an aesthetic pedagogy of things-a new educational practice that would route our collective attention away from issues of cultivating human-centered knowledge, skills, and aptitudes toward a perceptual receptivity and attentiveness to things that fall outside our worldly concerns. I call this an "aesthetic pedagogy" first Cultural Critique 98-Winter 2018
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2023
This article argues that hope is not an adequate affective response to dread. Indeed, hope and dr... more This article argues that hope is not an adequate affective response to dread. Indeed, hope and dread are more closely aligned than either critical or postcritical forms of educational philosophy would like to admit. The article proposes a shift from hope to joy as an under appreciated educational affect. To make this claim, the author pivots to Spinoza's emphasis on joy as an affect that increases one's potential to think and act in a world with others as a new starting point for education in dreadful times. The article also offers a Spinozian reading of Freire that unlocks the joyful dimensions of his work, especially through his reflections on laughter. In conclusion, a hopelessly joyful affective orientation is called for as a form of passionate educational experimentation with the potentiality of the world.
Interest in Walter Benjamin's thoughts on education have increased exponentially in the last seve... more Interest in Walter Benjamin's thoughts on education have increased exponentially in the last several years. 1 One important contribution to this body of literature is Howard Eiland's conceptualization of education as awakening in remembrance and expectation. 2 In this article, I return to this basic proposition both to support Eiland's claims and to further our understanding of the relationship between education, sleep, dreams, and awakening that is implied in his formulation. To do so, I will turn to one of Benjamin's underappreciated, early essays, "Outline of the Psychophysical Problem." This essay is crucial for understanding the psychophysical underpinnings of education as awakening. In particular, Benjamin's discussion of nearness and distance in relation to the state of sleep will offer a unique entry point for mapping out four different modalities of education found in Benjamin's work and how each modality is, or is not, conducive to awakening. First, I will provide a brief interpretation of "Outline of the
In Education Out of Bounds, Lewis and Kahn argue for a new critical theory of the monster as an i... more In Education Out of Bounds, Lewis and Kahn argue for a new critical theory of the monster as an imaginary "other" on the margins of the human and the animal. Through a unique combination of critical, posthumanist, and educational theories, the authors engage in a surreal journey into how social movements are renegotiating the boundaries of community through expressions of posthuman love. Their cultural studies experiments both extend and challenge the critical theories of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Paulo Freire, and others concerned with questions of teaching and learning beyond the global cultural logic of capitalism. Part philosophy of imagination, part political theory, and part pedagogical critique, this book is a twenty-first century bestiary--a catalog to navigate the monstrous world in which we live.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
These Monstrous Times: From Bestiary to
Posthumanist Pedagogy 1
Intermezzo
Marxism and the Bestiary 17
1 Victor, The Wild Child: Humanist Pedagogy and
the Anthropological Machine 41
2 The Reptoid Hypothesis: Exopedagogy
and the UFOther 73
3 Faery Faiths: Altermodernity and the Divine
Violence of Exopedagogy 101
Conclusion
A Monstrous Love Affair:
The Ethics of Exopedagogy 129
Notes 151
Bibliography 165
Index 179
From the inside flap:
The Boarman
This guy's no tame pig.
No even-toed ungulate or woodsy
grubber, he's the spear-skinned
hound, the boar-dog root and thistle
who kills the young and carries
mourning, hung cross a stick.
He looks at you and his Neptune
eye is a bent spoon of absinthe,
a gilled shadow that sees--then,
whorls ear and pupil into one. His
fossil jaw is the mollusk-dyed shade
of Tyrian emperor, ornate bruise pig-
ment, violet and feathered grackle.
The swine's got snout. He's all
beetle root and bone, horned with
the forest beard, a spiral of moth bristle,
victim of the crimson hog typhoid.
When he sleeps, tonight, in his bed
or sty, listen for the human moan
of dream, a purred sorrow, wet air
loosed from fang lock.
--Anne Keefe
From the Back Cover
"By engaging an encyclopedic range of figures from the philosophical tradition and popular culture, Lewis and Kahn lead us on a fascinating journey to discover the monsters that populate our posthuman world. We are confronted by horrible and fearsome beasts of violence, exploitation, and destruction, but we also recognize ourselves in creative monsters that blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman life. Most impressively, Lewis and Kahn propose paths to train the monsters of our world, a monstrous education, a pedagogy for the beautiful monsters we can become."
--Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth
"Our cultural fascinations with the monstrous and its omnipresence in our contemporary Western imaginings play center-stage in this provocative exploration of a zoöphilic exopedagogy. From the feral, to the alien, to the faery, Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn put pressure on our affective comfort zones by asking us what it means to love the monstrous amidst and within us. The answer comes through their theoretically vast and conceptually rich exploration of a radical democratic pedagogy of the unrepresentable."
--Davide Panagia, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University, Co-Editor of Theory and Event, and author of The Political Life of Sensation
About the Authors
Tyson E. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Educational Philosophy at Montclair State University. He is the co-editor of Marcuse's Challenge to Education (2008), and his articles have appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Culture, Theory, & Critique and Educational Theory. He is also author of a forthcoming book on aesthetics and education.
Richard Kahn is the author of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010), as well as of the forthcoming, Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011); and he is the Founding Editor of Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. His work has been collected in a wide variety of books and journals, including The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd edition); The Blackwell Companion to Globalization; and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. He is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles. For more information about him and an archive of many of his writings, visit: richardkahn.org."
Uploads
Papers by Tyson Lewis
education. But this does not mean that Benjamin completely rejected Steiner’s work as mere ideology. Instead, we can find the subtle trace of Steiner’s influence in Benjamin’s own reflections on childhood.
Here Tyson E. Lewis calls for a dialectical approach modeled by Benjamin that allows us to critically interrogate Steiner’s progressive education for protofascist tendencies, while also redeeming various insights into the lives of children. This dialectical approach to understanding the complex relationship between progressive education and fascism is now more urgent than ever before.
in creative acts. To illustrate this role, the article offers four ways that (im)
potentiality exhibits itself in various art forms before concluding with implications for imagining the artist’s studio as a space and time for (im)potential acts of creation.
education. But this does not mean that Benjamin completely rejected Steiner’s work as mere ideology. Instead, we can find the subtle trace of Steiner’s influence in Benjamin’s own reflections on childhood.
Here Tyson E. Lewis calls for a dialectical approach modeled by Benjamin that allows us to critically interrogate Steiner’s progressive education for protofascist tendencies, while also redeeming various insights into the lives of children. This dialectical approach to understanding the complex relationship between progressive education and fascism is now more urgent than ever before.
in creative acts. To illustrate this role, the article offers four ways that (im)
potentiality exhibits itself in various art forms before concluding with implications for imagining the artist’s studio as a space and time for (im)potential acts of creation.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
These Monstrous Times: From Bestiary to
Posthumanist Pedagogy 1
Intermezzo
Marxism and the Bestiary 17
1 Victor, The Wild Child: Humanist Pedagogy and
the Anthropological Machine 41
2 The Reptoid Hypothesis: Exopedagogy
and the UFOther 73
3 Faery Faiths: Altermodernity and the Divine
Violence of Exopedagogy 101
Conclusion
A Monstrous Love Affair:
The Ethics of Exopedagogy 129
Notes 151
Bibliography 165
Index 179
From the inside flap:
The Boarman
This guy's no tame pig.
No even-toed ungulate or woodsy
grubber, he's the spear-skinned
hound, the boar-dog root and thistle
who kills the young and carries
mourning, hung cross a stick.
He looks at you and his Neptune
eye is a bent spoon of absinthe,
a gilled shadow that sees--then,
whorls ear and pupil into one. His
fossil jaw is the mollusk-dyed shade
of Tyrian emperor, ornate bruise pig-
ment, violet and feathered grackle.
The swine's got snout. He's all
beetle root and bone, horned with
the forest beard, a spiral of moth bristle,
victim of the crimson hog typhoid.
When he sleeps, tonight, in his bed
or sty, listen for the human moan
of dream, a purred sorrow, wet air
loosed from fang lock.
--Anne Keefe
From the Back Cover
"By engaging an encyclopedic range of figures from the philosophical tradition and popular culture, Lewis and Kahn lead us on a fascinating journey to discover the monsters that populate our posthuman world. We are confronted by horrible and fearsome beasts of violence, exploitation, and destruction, but we also recognize ourselves in creative monsters that blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman life. Most impressively, Lewis and Kahn propose paths to train the monsters of our world, a monstrous education, a pedagogy for the beautiful monsters we can become."
--Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth
"Our cultural fascinations with the monstrous and its omnipresence in our contemporary Western imaginings play center-stage in this provocative exploration of a zoöphilic exopedagogy. From the feral, to the alien, to the faery, Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn put pressure on our affective comfort zones by asking us what it means to love the monstrous amidst and within us. The answer comes through their theoretically vast and conceptually rich exploration of a radical democratic pedagogy of the unrepresentable."
--Davide Panagia, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University, Co-Editor of Theory and Event, and author of The Political Life of Sensation
About the Authors
Tyson E. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Educational Philosophy at Montclair State University. He is the co-editor of Marcuse's Challenge to Education (2008), and his articles have appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Culture, Theory, & Critique and Educational Theory. He is also author of a forthcoming book on aesthetics and education.
Richard Kahn is the author of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010), as well as of the forthcoming, Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011); and he is the Founding Editor of Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. His work has been collected in a wide variety of books and journals, including The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd edition); The Blackwell Companion to Globalization; and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. He is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles. For more information about him and an archive of many of his writings, visit: richardkahn.org."