Description
Book SynopsisBringing Walter Benjamin into dialogue with the urgent issues facing educational institutions today, this is the first comprehensive exploration of his philosophy of education and pedagogy. In recent years, problems concerning the practice of education have become central to the critical discourse in the humanities: from debates regarding deplatforming and the redefinition of free speech on campus to the digitization of learning and the ethics of mentorship. But where do we go from here? This volume argues that Walter Benjamin's writing offers critical tools to rethink the
purposes of education and the
institutional forms it should assume. Reaching from his earliest writings during his involvement with the antebellum German Youth Movement to his late essays on history, theatre, and new media, the authors here explore how Benjamin argued against education as an institutional task subject to a scientific discipline. T
Trade ReviewRecent scholarship on Benjamin has found new urgency in his writings on childhood, education, and pedagogy. The current collection of essays is a significant contribution to this growing body of literature. Anyone who reads Forces of Education will undoubtably recognize Benjamin himself as an angel of history, gazing upon the ruins of our educational institutions while nevertheless remaining in flight, propelled by the idea of education’s potential redemption. * Tyson E. Lewis, Professor of Art Education, University of North Texas, USA *
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Preface: Pedagogy and Experience in Walter Benjamin,
Michael Jennings (Princeton University, USA) Editors' Introduction,
Dennis Johannßen (Lafayette College, USA) and Dominik Zechner (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA) Chronicle of Benjamin's School and Student Years,
Dennis Johannßen (Lafayette College, USA) and Dominik Zechner (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA) Part I: Genealogies of Learning 1. Infans,
Clemens-Carl Härle (University of Siena, Italy) 2. Learning from Experience: Elements of Self-Criticism in Benjamin's Works,
Charles Gelman (New York University, USA) 3. Leitmotif Siegfried,
Laurence A. Rickels (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Germany) 4. The Child in Benjamin: An Enduring Lesson,
Henry Sussman (Yale University, USA) Part II: Languages of Youth 5. Conversational Pedagogy in Benjamin and Nietzsche,
Natasha Hay (University of Toronto, Canada) 6. Speaking Silence: Historical Subjectivity in Nietzsche and Benjamin,
Ian Fleishman (University of Pennsylvania, USA) 7. Silence, Medium, Transmission: Benjamin’s Metaphysics of Language and Youth,
Adi Nester (University of Colorado Boulder, USA) 8. "In Voice Land": Benjamin on Air,
Ilit Ferber (Tel-Aviv University, Israel) Part III: Envisioning Pedagogical Futures 9. Unfulfilled Historical Time and the Self-Pedagogy of Critique,
Gerhard Richter (Brown University, USA) 10. Against the Law: Youth and the Critical Pedagogy of Eternal Rebellion, Michael Powers
(Macalester College, USA) 11. Improvision,
Thomas Schestag (Brown University, USA) 12. Walter Benjamin and the Anthropocene,
Nitzan Lebovic (Lehigh University, USA) List of Contributors Index
