Educing Ivan Illich - Reform, Contingency and Disestablishment

More than a book about Illich, this is a conversation with Illich's work as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, just under twenty years after his passing, and almost fifty years since his Deschooling Society was first published. As Illich is beatified and demonised in equal measure, Educing Ivan Illich chooses to focus on the relationship between reform, contingency and disestablishment. As reform stands for a plurality of reiterations that seek effective forms of accordance, in our recognition of contingency we freely claim that even as we might recognize the presence of universality in how everything appears on a shared horizon, we are not denied the existence and dynamic reality of plural possibilities in their inherent contradictions. In this bargain of synchronicity, we find that disestablishing the reified universe by which we have, for so long, traded, staked and even lost our freedom and intelligence, is not just a desire but it becomes a must. Unlike other commentators of Illich's work, Baldacchino argues that what is radical about Illich is not a freestanding concept of deschooling but in how, in disestablishing social life, he exits the walls of the polis by upholding tradition as a disruptive force. In such light Illich's work is read in what remains overdue. Odd though it may sound, this is an urgent need for anyone interested in Illich's unique and irreplaceable contribution. To that end, Educing Ivan Illich has far more to offer than is usually expected from a commentary on someone else's work.

List of contents

Introduction - Books - Las Meninas - Reading as Stranger - A Boat that Sailed? - The Tyranny of Empirie - Tables of Friendship - Immanence - Conversos - Humanistic Peripheries - Hiddenness - Educing Illich - Utopia - As "It" Perpetuates - Freedom and Intelligence - Milking the Family Goat - Dreamers - A Promise - Quandaries - Tradition - Epoche - After Deschooling ... - ... What? - The Laic and the Ecclesial - Processed Emancipation(s) - Beneath God's Nose - "Progressive conservative" - Philosophia Perennis - The Convivial Challenge - Learning - Equality, Liberty and Meaning - Theory, Choice and Common Sense - Damned Assumptions - Opinionated Evidence - The Three-Legged Stool - Kant's Futuring - Lewis and Marx - Within the Spheres - Reform - Idolatrous Hypotheses - Colored Circles - Returning (to) Form - Shadow-Less Affairs - Abolished Worlds - Contingency - Golgotha's khora - Kenotic Tools - After Contingency's Sunset - Metaphor and Agency - Watersheds - Synchronically Possible - Franciscan Hope? - Disestablishment - A Journey's Ends - Tools of Possibility - A Changed Nemesis - Myth and Transparency - Constructed Equity - Fabled Worlds - A Tomorrow without a Future - Responsibility - Algorithms - Neighbors and Foreigners - Maritain's Beautiful Face - Beyond Sinful Planning - Bibliography - Index.

About the author

John Baldacchino is Professor of Art & Education in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A graduate of the University of Malta (B.Ed.) and Warwick (MA & PhD) he was faculty at Columbia University in New York, and the universities of Dundee, Falmouth, Robert Gordon and Warwick in Britain. He authored thirteen books, including Education Beyond Education (2009), Makings of the Sea (2010), Art¿s Way Out (2012), John Dewey (2014) and Art as Unlearning (2019). He is the editor of Histories and Philosophies. The International Encyclopaedia of Art and Design Education (2019).

Summary

More than a book about Illich, this is a conversation with Illich's work as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, just under twenty years after his passing, and almost fifty years since his Deschooling Society was first published.

Report

"In this scholarly reading of Ivan Illich, John Baldacchino conducts an astonishing feat; namely, to find ignored and minimized connections in Illich's contribution to education. Educing Ivan Illich creates a new educational 'language,' with original viewpoints and perspectives, which expands our repertoire of thinking and our competence of acting-that we so desperately need when faced with educational situations. This volume should be read by anyone who has an interest not only in education but also in that which is good for humanity."-Herner Saeverot, Professor of Education, Western Norway University

Product details

• Authors: John Baldacchino
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2020
• EAN: 9781433176432
• ISBN: 978-1-4331-7643-2
• No. of pages: 186
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 15 mm x 225 mm
• Weight: 382 g
• Series: Teaching Contemporary Scholars
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Education > General, dictionaries