After many years of dominant anti-utopianism, there has been a resurgent and fruitful interest in utopian thought across disciplines. In our uncertain times, many theorists call for a rethinking of what counts as a desirable future. We respond to this call from an interdisciplinary perspective on the interconnectedness, and potential common cause,…

This essay examines Jean Améry's account of resentment as protest against oblivion and indifference and explores its implications in invoking a political pedagogy that attempts to find moral and political virtue in resentment. Exploring the pedagogical implications of resentment through the lens of Améry's account reveals something important about…

Slogans in education are designed to promote educational goals. One of the finest remarkable examples in Slovenian history demonstrates that political slogans can sometimes cover a whole range of social areas and operate as a central ideologeme, through which a very specific political and educational ambition was promoted in an otherwise…

This paper explores the notion of truth in relation to literature. It opens with a critical exposition of some dominant tendencies in contemporary aesthetics, in which narrow views of truth and reference guide the aesthetic investigations in harmful ways. One of the problems with such as view is not merely that it becomes difficult to talk about…

This article is a conceptual co-exploration of the relationship between philosophy and childism. It draws upon a colloquium in December 2021 at the Childism Institute at Rutgers University. Nine co-authors lay out and interweave scholarly imaginations to collectively explore the concept of childism in critical philosophical depth. Through diverse…

This article seeks to provide a new paradigm for questioning how quality and excellence in teaching practices are understood and evaluated. By combining ideas from complexity theory and Michel Foucault's conception of polymorphous correlations, I argue that a shift away from the forms of thought that engender reductionist evaluations can become a…

Thinking and writing draw on those who have gone before, in a more than abstract way. In this article, I answer the call of one philosopher--Novalis, the early German Romantic--in the form of a séance, which is really a dialogue with the dead. I speak to him, as a Maori writer, about the abstract philosophical issues that Maori encounter and…

Cosmopolitanism and nationalism are often presented in binary terms, as standing in opposition to each other, especially with regards to education. In this paper, we establish a framework for studying education policy today through the lens of a concept we have developed: 'cosmopolitan nationalism'. Many education systems around the world are…

The question I address in this paper is to what extent the prevailing description of educational reality that can be found in contemporary research, policy and practice can be considered complete. The motivation for asking this question stems from an educational paradox to which I refer as the Parks-Eichmann paradox. This paradox has to do with…

In this article, I suggest Maggie Nelson's "The Argonauts" challenges "epistemic habits" in contemporary critical thought on gender, politics, sexuality, intimacy, identity, and love. In particular, I focus on how Nelson through descriptions of queer life, love, and kinship articulates moral-existential and queer-philosophical…

Gareth B. Matthews (1929-2011) inaugurated the study of philosophy in children's literature by simultaneously arguing (1) that philosophy is essentially an encounter with certain kinds of perplexities, (2) that genuine philosophical perplexities are readily found in many children's stories, and (3) that many children are capable of appreciating…

This is an article review of Peter McLaren's "Pedagogy of Insurrection" (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). While it seeks to position McLaren's work within the context of critical pedagogy, this paper also assesses McLaren from the wider discussion of Marxist--Hegelian discourse as it evolved within the Left. Engaging with McLaren critically,…

Botswana's education system, like many other African systems, is greatly influenced by western educational ideas and models. This article reviews Botswana's education system by examining the policies, models and ideas that have influenced its development. Specifically, the review involves tracing the development of the education system of Botswana…

The working thesis of my latest research is that cinema can offer a viewer something of a 're-education in education'. In the case of policymakers and researchers in the field of education, this means looking again at the reality of the conceptual phenomena with which we occupy ourselves in writing to see whether the two groups are aligned. This…

The paper extends the critique in earlier research of human rights as exclusive of otherness and difference by introducing the work of Adriana Cavarero (2000) on a "narratable self." Hence, the formation of human rights is thus about the relations between different narratable selves, not just Western ones. A narrative learning, drawing…