Bernard Stiegler as philosopher of education
Editors: Joff P.N. Bradley & David Kennedy
This is a call for papers for the special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, to be edited by Joff P.N. Bradley, Teikyo University, and David Kennedy of Nihon University, both situated in Tokyo, Japan. The editors are of the view that we are in the midst of a techno-cultural revolution, historic in proportion, which is radically transforming the nature of intelligence and memory. It thus behooves the philosophy of education to understand this fundamentally, at base, and to undertake a “destruction” of its meaning.
This call for papers tackles this issue through a focus on the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. We want to put Stiegler to work not only to inform the Deleuzian turn in the philosophy of education but to see how his philosophy might be construed as an update, extension, and critique of Felix Guattari’s and Gilles Deleuze’s individual and collaborative endeavours and indeed of John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy. This task ahead is to show the enduring critical and heuristic import in explaining the current crises afflicting the media-saturated youth of today. Concepts and philosophical tools to be explicated upon include:
“cognitive and affective proletarianization” as a destruction of knowledge in higher education institutions;
the question of frustration, disruption and shock within our current hyper-industrial milieu; and
the proliferation of short-term, drive-based addictions.
This issue seeks to explore the meaning of the struggle against proletarianization and the risks involved in the exteriorization of knowledge in modern technologies, the growth of alienation, endemic unhappiness and loneliness and what all of this means for the protentional possibilities through higher education. To this end, we shall extend Stiegler’s criticism of the general proletarianization of both workers and consumers to that of students in higher education institutions. This perspective shall also be evaluated in terms of ongoing debates about the anthropocene and the psychical effects on youth.
Finally, this issue shall consider Stiegler’s demand for the revision of “the axioms of what knowledge itself is”, the call for an “economy of contribution”, and the cultivation of noesis (understanding or reason) to contest the destruction of the subject or what he designates as the nihilistic process of disindividuation. This issue shall investigate this return to the “base of knowledge” in terms of Stiegler’s invocation to:
construct restorative transindividuating circuits between the generations (between teacher and student);
build a therapeutic economy of knowledge and contribution;
affirm the construction of a materialistic “ecology of the spirit”.
Ready to submit?
Final papers for peer review should be no more than 6,000 words in length, including references. Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. A guide for authors, sample issues, and other relevant information is available on the EPAT website.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Joff P.N. Bradley or David Kennedy.
Please send an abstract for your paper by July 31st, 2018 to Joff P.N. Bradley and David Kennedy.
Full papers will need to be submitted by November 21st, 2018 to the online EPAT platform.
