October 12th, 2013 / 9:37 pm
 Snippets
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“If glamour is involved, it’s not in the erotic sense of the word, but in its original sense: professional learning used and fashioned like occult power.”

7 Comments

  1. October 12th, 2013 / 9:50 pm Brooks Sterritt—

      “Horkheimer is silent. Barthes and Brecht, the same. Adorno has one essay and one lecture. Marcuse delivered a few perfunctory lectures on the role of university students in politics—but he makes it clear that you can’t build on them (university politics as well as the lectures, sadly). Derrida has some tantalizing pronouncements, particularly in Glas (“What is education? The death of the parents…”), but they are scattered and more relevant to the family setting than the school. Something similar, unfortunately, could be said of Bachelard—why was he not nostalgic about his education? Baudrillard, Lefebvre, and Foucault all seem interested in the question, if we judge by their interviews and lectures—and wouldn’t it be lovely to hear from them—but they never go into any depth. Even Althusser’s essay, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, which contains the above quote, quickly shies away from the topic: instead, he concentrates on the Church. In short, professional critical philosophy might have produced a more interesting study of Kung Fu Panda (see Žižek, who is also silent) than of the whole business of education. The one exception would be Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which I will discuss.”

  2. October 12th, 2013 / 10:56 pm elias tezapsidis—

      interesting. tho i d say, and i mean this, that harry potter s success came from sirius black.

  3. October 12th, 2013 / 10:59 pm Brooks Sterritt—

      but he wasn’t around from the beginning, was he? (i forget/didn’t read very far)

  4. October 12th, 2013 / 11:07 pm elias tezapsidis—

      yeah ur right.

      also, congrats on not reading very far!

      i read up to #5. always finding myself pulling all-nighters to finish #4 & #5 in “one sitting” the days they were released.

      but #3 was my favorite, by far.

      i wonder what i d think if i looked at them today. but i m not certain i want to know?

  5. October 13th, 2013 / 1:21 pm deadgod—

      Harouni’s conclusion: theory about education is done by theorists who are themselves educators, therefore (?), that theorizing is circularly self-reinforcing discourse motivated by an interest in enchanting–fooling–, and that acts to enchant–fool–, profession-defined non-professionals.

      Is Harouni actually critiquing this “glamour”?

      Or is he providing a one-sided, authoritarian, unsound debunking of “one-sided, authoritarian, unsound” self-aggrandizement.

      Hypocrite lecteur!–mon semblable,–mon frère!

  6. October 13th, 2013 / 1:37 pm deadgod—

      Helpfully to his thesis, Harouni doesn’t mention Gadamer (On Education, Poetry, and History), Habermas, Honneth, Apel. He mentions Dewey, but not, say, Peirce. Thought about ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ by Nietzsche or Freud?

      Feminist and anti- and post(?)-colonial discussion about ‘education’ that predates Freire?

      –or 2000+ years of comment on the theme (and thematizing) of ‘education’ by Plato’s Socrates and by Aristotle?

      I think Harouni’s stamping his foot: ‘Nobody’s talking about education because nobody’s really talking about education!’

      Fun to object to. His (anarchistic) point?

  7. October 13th, 2013 / 7:11 pm Brooks Sterritt—

      Great points. I also found myself objecting to the “philosophers do it better than mere practitioners” argument (cf. Cage, Sontag, Motherwell, Robbe-Grillet, et al).