Educational Ills and the (Im)possibility of Utopia

As a bold provocation to reimagine what the philosophy of education might mean in the 21st century, this book responds to the exhaustion of present theoretical models and indeed the degradation of fabulative thought in its current prospectus. The contributors, from Asia, the Americas, and Europe, proffer a frank response to the everyday reality of the classroom where teachers compete with electronic devices for the attention of students whose minds are literally elsewhere, cocooned in the noospheric ether. Outside of lecture halls the world is suffering the rise of fascism, panic, and anger driven by precarious employment, and a looming fatalism and resignation in the face of ecological calamity. These developments have led to an avalanche of psychical woes afflicting young people ranging from trauma, the loss of hope and, in extremis, violence and suicide. The concerned and committed writers of this volume therefore raise the timely question of the return of utopia as a fitting, desperate, and indeed necessary response to the ecological, existential, and pedagogical crises spreading across the planet. At this most crucial juncture in human history, the excellent contributions to this book offer singularly unique perspectives regarding the possibility/impossibility of utopia. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Joff P. N. Bradley teaches at Teikyo University, Tokyo, and is Visiting Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Kyung Hee University, Seoul. Gerald Argenton, Associate Professor at Tamagawa University, Tokyo, is a philosopher of education studying the formative dimensions of the unknown.

Introduction: Educational ills and the (im)possibility of utopia 1. Exhausted philosophy and islands-to-come 2. Utopian spaces and the promise of education: a conceptual analysis 3. Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential 4. Utopia and pessimism: 'You should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds' 5. School in the (im)possibility of future: Utopia and its territorialities 6. Minimal utopianism in the classroom 7. The curious promise of educationalising technological unemployment: What can places of learning really do about the future of work? 8. Nowhere II Erewhon 9. The power of social dreaming: Reappraising the lesson of East European dissidents 10. Utopianism, transindividuation, and foreign language education in the Japanese university