Demokratia
The Machinations of Government or the Wheels of Justice?As was noted in We, The People and Demos [Ethnos], Jacques Ranciere (2011) engages with ‘the ancients’ in his discussion of ‘democracy’. Let us...
View ArticleDissensus or Dissociation?
Gerald Graff suggests that Bill Readings’ vision of a University of Dissensus has already been realised in the existing pluralistic university in which academics tend to their own, separate gardens,...
View ArticleScottish Universities
This film from 1948 tells the story of the foundation and growth of the four 'ancient' Scottish universities: St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.To watch film, click on image or click:...
View ArticleTomorrow Never Comes; Nor Knows
Cumbernauld, Town for TomorrowClick on title or still to watch this 1970 film from the Scottish Screen ArchiveIt is (not) knowing.
View ArticleBlogging on blogging
Karen Fricker argues that, at present (the 2010s), blogs occupy a liminal space. They are at once personal and public; they potentially participate in dominant discourses; yet they are potentially...
View ArticleCuration and Discipline Formation
W. B. Worthen suggests that, when it comes to use of the term 'curation', it is difficult to separate critical fashion from discipline formation.The term 'curation' has been extended to cover an...
View ArticleBlogging and the Academy
Blogging holds an unstable place in academia.Timothy Stephen and Teresa M. Harrison (1994: 768-69), writing about mailing lists in 1994, the early days of the internet, suggest that the academy is a...
View ArticleTo learn and to teach
GenerosityIn a short text on Christian Metz’s Essais sur la signification au cinema, Volume 2, Roland Barthes discusses the question of how Metz brings a supplement to his writings both through and in...
View ArticlePedagogics, Didactics and The Instructional Turn: The Thinning of Western...
The flyped classroom in the flyped university of dissensus"I have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one cannot understand the history of education in the United States during...
View ArticleThe problematic of 'the book’. Aspects of the scene of teaching.
Preface: Non-magisterial and non-soteriological pedagogiesIn seeking to develop non-magisterial (non-self-present) and non-soteriological (non-salvational) pedagogies from within the context of the...
View ArticleNon-magisterial, non-charismatic, non-soteriological, non-dogmatic...
In trying to understand the complicated status of ‘the book’, and associated pedagogies and reading practices in early 21st century higher education, it may be necessary to engage for a moment with the...
View ArticleFrom magisterium to professoriat: the thinning of Western epistemology?
Harold Perkin (2006: 159) begins his chapter on the history of universities with the observation that while all advanced civilisations have needed higher education to train their ruling, priestly,...
View ArticleKant and the thinning of Western epistemology?
As part of his outline of the praxis tradition in Western thought from Aristotle to 20th-century philosophical hermeneutics, Pilario (2005: 34) argues that the problematic faced by Immanuel Kant,...
View ArticleCritique, criticality and the right to be critical
Doris Salcedo, Untitled, 1989The ability to thinking critically is often cited as one of the main outcomes of higher education [1] and critical thinking is frequently mentioned as a component of...
View ArticleSpivak’s lessons: refractions of the scene of teaching
John Latham, Film Star, 1960"In Marx's text philosophy must thus displace itself into the everyday struggle. In my argument, literature, insofar as it is in the service of the emergence of the...
View ArticleRestoring the ‘thickness’ of Western ways of knowing
Anselm Kiefer The Women of the Revolution, MASS MocaI am indebted to Steven Cranfield for his comment on "Spivak's Lessons: Refractions of the Scene of Teaching", to which the following text is a...
View ArticleCritical thinking, creative thinking and the right to dissent
1. Critical thinking and creative thinkingAs was noted at the end of the blog post, "Critique, criticality and the right to be critical", the relationship between critical and creative thinking remains...
View ArticleLearning as promise (prospective); learning as awareness...
“So you see: this question brings us back to where we were: nowhere, or, if you like, where we are.” (John Cage, "Lecture on Nothing")Narrative environments, considered from the point of view of being...
View ArticleSloterdijk and narrative environments
1. EnvelopesBruno Latour points out that when it is said that ‘Dasein is thrown into the world’ [1], as does Heidegger, the significance of the preposition ‘into’ is often overlooked. Peter Sloterdijk,...
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