Educational methods and cognitive modes: Focusing on the difference between Bernard Stiegler and N. Katherine Hayles

Abstract

This paper aims to show how to conceive the relationship between educational methods and cognitive modes. Focusing on the difference between Stiegler and Hayles, I will show that it is necessary to invent an educational philosophy for hyper attention. While Stiegler agrees with Hayles’s position regarding attention, he criticizes Hayles for defining attention as duration. According to Stiegler, attention has less to do with duration than with ‘retention’ and ‘protention.’ Based on this phenomenological insight, Stiegler appeals for a need to protect children from this mutation of the cognitive mode. However, Hayles suggests that hyper attention has certain advantages. It is not only a ‘mutation’ of attention but also a new cognitive mode in modern society. Thus, we should invent new educational methods and educational philosophies appropriate to hyper attention in order to bridge the gap between deep attention and hyper attention.     

Mind the gap: infilling Stiegler’s philosophico-educational approach to social innovation

According to Bernard Stiegler, social innovations in the educational field are an antidotical cure for social pathologies wrought by the digitalisation of society. This article explores how Stiegler’s social pharmacology links to the human-technical co-constitution thesis that he first expounded in Technics and Time, 1. Not only do we identify in the Stieglerian corpus a lack of conceptual clarity about social innovation, but also problems in the anthropo-philosophy on which this latter work rests. Tying up the loose threads of Stiegler’s philosophical tapestry is accomplished in three steps. In the first, we retrofit Stiegler with an enactivist view of cognition. The second involves precisely defining social innovation, and then pinpointing open education as a ‘pure’ social innovation situated on the socially curative side of Stiegler’s digital ledger. The third closes the loop by identifying complementarity between enactivism and socio-educational innovation in an age of mass empowerment by means of networked computers.     

Conceptual ecologies for educational research through Deleuze,Guattari and Whitehead

This article will explore the increasing interest in the application of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Alfred North Whitehead to educational research, for example, as a conceptual underpinning for inquiry in the new materialisms, and/or educational posthumanism. The exploration of this paper is complicated by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari changed their philosophical position in their dual publications, with, for example, their last book: What is Philosophy? representing a substantial departure from their rhizomatic work in, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. This article will explain the changes in position with reference to the mapping of conceptual ecologies that Deleuze and Guattari are describing through their philosophy, and not dualism. Concept creation appears in the analysis of Western philosophy in: What is Philosophy? and as the job of philosophy. In contrast, A Thousand Plateaus presents a whole raft of interrelated concepts that help explain the connections between capitalism and schizophrenia, but do not present ‘concept creation’ as a positive task as such, even though one could impute that they are successfully doing it. This article will explain these changes in positioning of Deleuze and Guattari as a mode of sophisticated conceptual ecology, which takes into account the work that they want their concepts to perform. Transcribed to educational research, ‘concept creation’ is an importantly non-methodological task, which is augmented and expanded with reference to the metaphysics of Whitehead’s process philosophy (a non-method), and how it has been taken up, for example, by Isabelle Stengers in terms of research positioning and science.     

The university of the future: Stiegler after Derrida

Abstract

Higher education has not been spared from the effects of the disruptive aspects of technology. MOOCs, teach bots, virtual learning platforms, and Wikipedia are among technics marking a digital transformation of knowledge. The question of the university, the foundation of its authority and purpose is more than timely; it is urgent to any future philosophy of higher education. Will the university survive in the future and if so, for what purpose? We examine two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, who take on this challenge. Derrida, writing at ‘the scene of teaching’, proposes new humanities for a university ‘without condition’, one with increasing autonomy to democratize it further. Stiegler takes issue with him on the conditions of the university of the future. Stiegler offers not an ‘anti-Derridian discourse’ but a ‘deconstruction of a deconstruction’ of Derrida. Stiegler’s critique of Derrida on the role of the professoriate and the university of the future expand the fissure between them. In this article, we argue that Stiegler’s reading of Derrida points to the university not as an anachronistic way of knowing displaced by the digital revolution but as vital to a politics of the spirit in a democratic future.     

Utopianism,transindividuation, and foreign language education in the Japanese university

Abstract

This article examines the current state of foreign language education in Japanese universities as illustrative of the troubling conditions facing the liberal arts (i.e. the transformative arts) in a globalized neoliberal milieu. The utopian ideal in education has always insinuated, at the least, a pedagogy that inspires personal agency, creative investment, challenge to power and social change. This imagining of incalculable futures, however, has been undermined by the seemingly inevitable and confluent forces of a networked world, represented most forcefully by the socioeconomic reductionism of neoliberal globalism. In the context of contemporary Japanese higher education, these forces are joined by Japan’s uniquely ambivalent relationship with the ‘outside’ world, and manifested in the rigid conceptualizations that motivate deeply problematic government and institutional initiatives for the ‘globalization’ of higher education. Within the frame of Bernard Stiegler’s work on transindividuation (psychosocial transformation), this article critiques these influential practices as fundamentally antithetical to the challenge of engaging Japanese learners of foreign languages in sustainable ‘economies of contribution’—economies which foster critical engagement and which open paths to transindividuation. The article concludes by arguing for a radical reimagining of the landscape of foreign language pedagogy in Japan and for a repositioning of learners from ‘short-circuited’ semiotic consumers to ‘long-circuited’ semiosic participants.     

Stiegler Contra Robinson: On the hyper-solicitation of youth

Abstract

This paper examines the affective disorders plaguing many young people and the problem of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in particular. It aims to define the limits of the critique of British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson in terms of his philosophy of ‘creativity’ through a consideration of the ideas of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, especially the notions of ‘industrial temporal objects’ and stupidity (bêtise). It makes the case for adopting elements of each distinct research paradigm as a prolegomena to forging a social critique of capitalist-dominated, market-led educational institutions. The former, it will be seen, identifies some of the problems facing teachers in terms of the use and application of technology, the false divide between arts and the humanities, but falls short of explaining the root of the structural and psychic malaise in neo-liberal regimes regarding classroom breakdown in general. The latter, despite the apocalyptic tone of some his pronouncements provides an update and radicalization of Deleuze’s societies of control thesis in terms of what Stiegler designates ‘uncontrollable societies’. Stiegler, it will be seen, presents a critique of technology that is all the more pressing in an age in which the loss of expectation in the lives of young people can lead to a corresponding fall off or destruction in ‘deep attention’. I want to test the hyperbole of Stiegler’s assertion that young people today suffer from a ‘colossal’ attention deficit disorder of unprecedented scale and magnitude.     

Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential

Abstract

My objective in this paper is to write a pharmacology of the university by thinking about its relationship to systemic stupidity, intelligence, and the possibility of becoming. Starting with an exploration of the contemporary dystopia of drive-based stupidity imagined by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, which I seek to capture through the idea of the humiliation of thought, I look to deepen his response to this situation by suggesting a return to the work of two of his key sources, Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze. My objective here is to use their work in relation to Stiegler’s in order to suggest a utopia of educational becoming. Following my exploration of Stiegler’s dystopia, in the second part of the article I read Heidegger’s philosophy in order to formulate a utopian theory of education becoming, which is sensitive to the possibility of authoritarianism contained in his catastrophic decision to become a member of the Nazi party. Against the dystopic humiliation of thought Heidegger’s turn to Nazism can be seen to represent, I turn to Deleuze in the name of a model of educational becoming that recognises difference in itself, before noting that this philosophical approach has similarly found humiliation in the contemporary neoliberal university dominated by a form of rhizomatic power. Finally, I look to develop a fusion of Heideggerian and Deleuzean approaches to deepen Stiegler’s pharmacological critique of the contemporary dystopia of systemic stupidity and its potential resolution in an educational utopia of invention on the other side of the humiliation of thought.     

Negen-u-topic becoming: On the reinvention of youth

Abstract

At first glance a Russian anarchist’s revolutionary address to the youth of his day made in the late 19th century and the address to youth made by a contemporary French philosopher may appear to have little in common as their context and era are ostensibly very different. How would Petr Kropotkin’s address be understood in our time? Are Kropotkin’s concerns the same as those raised by Bernard Stiegler? Could Kropotkin speak of universal concerns, a sense of elevation and sublimation not governed, undermined or circumvented by digital relations, calculation or algorithmic determination? I find a mutual concern with the coming into maturity of youth, but, I am concerned that as we are passing through an epochal and revolutionary transformation driven by digital and cognitive capitalism and in our toxic and crisis-ridden milieu, Kropotkin’s rhetoric would inevitably fall on deaf ears? Is his rhetoric on revolution anachronistic? How would his rhetoric be crafted for a youth seemingly indifferent to the plight of fellow brethren? Is it conceivable that the humanist-inflected prospects of youth so vaunted by Kropotkin have now been devastated by the inhuman and nihilistic tendencies of the so-called miscreant, ‘blank generation’ as described by Stiegler? True, while it is difficult to calibrate the vision of youth affirmed in Kropotkin with the fear of youth in Stiegler, and, despite differences in episteme, tradition and political orientation, both thinkers I think are concerned with the trials and tribulations of youth and both hold out the prospect of the not-yet of youth, of the coming into being of the maturity of youth, of Aufklärung. It is this shared focus I wish to examine further.     

Writing the Self: Wittgenstein,Confession and Pedagogy

In this paper I investigate ‘the confessional’ as an aspect of Wittgenstein's style both as a mode of philosophising and as a mode of ‘writing the self’, tied explicitly to pedagogical practices. There are strong links between Wittgenstein's confessional mode of philosophising and his life—for him philosophy is a way of life —and interesting theoretical connections between confessional practices and pedagogy, usefully explored in the writings of the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. The Investigations provides a basis and springboard for understanding the notion of ‘writing the self’ as a pedagogical practice which encourages a confessional mode compelling us to tell the truth about ourselves and, thus, creating the conditions for ethico‐poetical self‐constitution.     

Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene

Abstract

My objective in this article is to consider the implications of Bernard Stiegler’s theory of the neganthropocene for the politics of knowledge and education. Stiegler sets out his theory of the neganthropocene in his recent books, Automatic Society and The Neganthropocene, in order to respond to what he writes about in terms of the entropic conditions of the hyper-industrial society of the anthropocene. In this respect Stiegler extends his earlier work on hominisation, technics, technology, and hyper-industrialisation to take in the concept of the anthropocene and related environmental, ecological concerns. In this article I set out Stiegler’s theory of the neganthropocene, before thinking through the politics of knowledge and education that could make this utopian transformation from an ecologically unsustainable to a sustainable society possible. What would the politics of knowledge of the neganthropocene look like and how would they work in the context of the (global) education system?     

Martin Buber,Hasidism, and Jewish spirituality: the implications for education and for pastoral care

Abstract

There is a legal requirement that schools engage with the spiritual aspects of education, which encompasses pastoral care. This reflects the ethical sensibility that is present in individuals and underlies interactions with Others; and which should be part of the ethos of all educational institutions and especially schools. This is because spirituality is important to leading a moral life and to understanding the Other. The article considers specifically the potential of Jewish spirituality, and uses Martin Buber’s thought, to gain a better understanding of its contribution to education and to pastoral care. In the first part, we comment on the ‘basic words’, I-Thou and I-It, which are connected with Hasidism, the Jewish spiritual movement which had a great influence on Martin Buber. Hasidism understands that it is our duty to find and connect with the ‘divine sparks’, as genuine relations merge with the Divine, and when humans relate genuinely to one another, they relate to God. This is crucial for understanding the superiority of I-Thou relations over I-It relations. In the second and third parts of the article, we consider the implications of this understanding of Jewish spirituality for education and for pastoral care. This is done through highlighting the importance of I-Thou relations if the spiritual aspects of education and of pastoral care are to be encouraged and fulfilled.     

Smart screens and transformative ways of looking: Towards a therapeutics of desire

In this article, I set up a Heideggerian framework of research in order to investigate the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, focusing especially on the desire to look, which I see as intricately connected with the desire to know and the desire to be. With a clear phenomenological disposition, supplemented by a deconstructive look via Giorgio Agamben and Bernard Stiegler, I turn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and especially to his myth of Narcissus, and to Lacan’s theory of the formation of the I, concluding that desire necessitates the split of the self, the self’s misrecognition in an image or in a medium or in a screen, and the subsequent reorganisation of the body, which ultimately allows for the self’s metamorphosis. After this, I discuss specifically the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, emphasising that in an age that the presence of screens and of technologically produced images increases exponentially, we cannot ignore this phenomenon’s implications for educational theories and practices. Rather, we need to orient our investigations towards the interconnectedness of looking, knowing, and desiring, underlining therefore the need for an educational focus on the ways we learn to see and on the ways we learn to desire.     

Heidegger and Stiegler on failure and technology

Abstract

Heidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault ‘shows up’ in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger's thesis. Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. The fall, or failure, is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and is at the root of all cultures. Since the onset of Information Technology, the acceleration of life is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. Education is vital for generating the imaginary, along with the ability to think critically, and ensures the authenticity of political processes, but as importantly, it helps us to imagine the future beyond the Armaggedon scenarios of climate change, and ecological devastation. The Arts and Humanities are at the core of generating a new future.     

Flourishing as the aim of education: towards an extended, ‘enchanted’ Aristotelian account

Flourishing, understood along Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian lines as objective eudaimonic well-being, is re-emerging as a paradigm for the ideal aim of education in the 21st century. This paper aims to venture beyond the current accounts and Aristotle’s own, by arguing that both suffer from a kind of ‘flatness’ or ‘disenchantedness’ in failing to pay heed to the satisfaction of certain impulses that have been proven to give fullness to our lives: impulses having to do with awe-inspiring emotional attachments to transpersonal ideals. I thus argue that while Aristotelian flourishing is a necessary place to begin, it is not a sufficient one to conclude, a study of human flourishing, either generally or in classroom contexts; it needs to be extended and ‘enchanted’ in order to do so. That venture does not necessitate an embrace of supernaturalism, however.     

What can we learn from Plato about intellectual character education?

Abstract

In the Republic, Plato developed an educational program through which he trained young Athenians in desiring truth, without offering them any knowledge-education. This is not because he refused to pass on knowledge but because he considered knowledge of the Good as an ongoing research program. I show this by tracing the steps of the education of the Philosopher-Kings in Plato’s ideal state, to establish that the decades-long educational regime aims at training them in three types of virtue: (i) Moral Virtue; (ii) the Cognitive Virtue of Abstraction; (iii) the Cognitive Virtue of Debate.

Plato’s theory of education has much to teach us about intellectual character education today. The Platonic educational program does not advocate the direct transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner but rather focuses on building the learners’ epistemic dispositions. Building upon the Socratic Method, Plato’s educational program does not ‘spoon-feed’ knowledge to the learners but rather fosters the growth of intellectual virtues through problem-solving.

I explain ways in which fostering intellectual virtues through problem-solving could be applied in classrooms today. I conclude that Plato’s rigorous educational program is of definite merit for contemporary virtue education, especially since Aristotle offers us surprisingly little on how to educate for intellectual virtues.     

Education and ultimate meaning

Richard Peters and John White have both argued that education should contribute to the meaning people are able to find in or give to life. Both dismiss the idea of ultimate or profound meaning (‘the meaning of life’) in favour of ordinary meaning, or ‘meaning in life’. Thus they exemplify the trend visible also in the general philosophical literature on life’s meaning. I argue that in their rejection of ultimate meaning and retreat to ordinary meaning they concede too much. There is room for plausible notions of ultimate meaning between the extreme they reject and the alternative they embrace. I propose two such notions, one meta-ethical, one metaphysical (specifically, Whiteheadian). If there are indeed plausible notions of ultimate meaning, and if ultimate or profound meaning is therefore a possibility we cannot dissmiss offhand, then it would be wrong to reject the possibility of ultimate meaning in education. Instead, education should both help people come to terms with doubt in this area of life, and foster their capacity to enjoy experiences of ultimate meaning.     

On the organology of utopia: Stiegler's contribution to the philosophy of education

Abstract

We are living in and beyond two massive changes in the world, both of which must be addressed by education, the caretaker of memory. First is the geological era of the Anthropocene—a crisis of nature and mankind, a fundamental geo-trauma. While climate change is a reality which we are belatedly just beginning to understand as we increasingly experience its changing weather patterns, the Anthropocene remains unknown or invisible for many. As a concrete case in point, the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the Tōhoku region of Japan remains an ongoing but largely invisible crisis. Indeed, there is a sense of collective disavowal regarding what we must do in its wake, for it is a crisis which effects not only the contemporary but future generations. The second is equally momentous. The advent of mass access to the Internet in the 1990s and its effects on learning, knowledge, societal relations and psychical life are also just beginning to be understood. For Bernard Stiegler the ecological crisis and the technological question go hand in hand. To explain this position we are naming Stiegler not only a utopian thinker in the classical sense but also a utopian thinker who offers practical ‘negentropic’ weapons to contest entropic becoming in the digital world. We are arguing Stiegler’s oeuvre and pharmacological method has much to give to the philosophy of education as it seeks to account for the crisis in education.     

Generativity and flourishing

The psychological construct of ‘generativity’ was introduced by Erik Erikson in Childhood and Society in 1950. This rich and complex notion encompasses the constellation of desires, concerns and commitments that motivate individuals and societies to pass on legacies to future generations. ‘Flourishing,’ which means, very roughly, living life well, is another rich and complex notion, interpretations of which are found in ancient philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. In this article I relate interpretations of these two concepts by arguing that certain forms of generativity can be considered an Aristotelian-type virtue, and that the virtue of generativity is necessary, but not sufficient, for flourishing in the Aristotelian sense. In other words, one can be generative without flourishing. The reverse, however, does not seem true: it is hard to see how one can fully flourish without being generative.