Tyson E. Lewis

The Surveillance Economy of Post- Columbine Schools

The 1999 Columbine High School tragedy triggered an unprecedented intensification of school militarization and student criminalization. In response to the murder of thirteen individuals by the self-proclaimed “Trench Coat Mafia,” schools across America adopted new and improved “safety” measures. In the name of security, information technologies and psychological profiles were deployed, heightening the abilities of the school to act as a sophisticated tool of surveillance and discipline. The logic that drives the implementation of these safety measures is far from ideologically neutral.

Exopedagogy: On pirates, shorelines, and the educational commonwealth

In this paper, Tyson E. Lewis challenges the dominant theoretical and practical educational responses to globalization. On the level of public policy, Lewis demonstrates the limitations of both neoliberal privatization and liberal calls for rehabilitating public schooling. On the level of pedagogy, Lewis breaks with the dominant liberal democratic tradition which focuses on the cultivation of democratic dispositions for cosmopolitan citizenship. Shifting focus, Lewis posits a new location for education out of bounds of the common sense of public versus private, nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, inclusion versus exclusion, human versus civil rights. This is the space of the commonwealth whose actors cannot be identified as ‘citizens’ but are rather the anonymous multitude. In conclusion, Lewis finds a model for organizing this commonwealth in the work of Ivan Illich, whose learning networks speak to the urgent political and pedagogical need for exodus from the conceptual vocabulary that defines much of the contemporary field of educational theory.

Biopolitical Utopianism in Educational Theory

In this paper I shift the center of utopian debates away from questions of ideology towards the question of power. As a new point of departure, I analyze Foucaults notion of biopower as well as Hardt and Negris theory of biopolitics. Arguing for a new hermeneutic of biopolitics in education, I then apply this lens to evaluate the educational philosophy of John Dewey. In conclusion, the paper suggests that while Hardt and Negri are missing an educational theory, John Dewey is missing a concept of democracy adequate to the biopolitical struggles of the multitude. Thus, I call for a synthesis of Dewey and Hardt and Negri in order to generate a biopedagogical practice beyond both traditional models of education as well as current standardization.

Paulo Freire's Last Laugh: Rethinking critical pedagogy's funny bone through Jacques Rancière

In several enigmatic passages, Paulo Freire describes the pedagogy of the oppressed as a ‘pedagogy of laughter’. The inclusion of laughter alongside problem‐posing dialogue might strike some as ambiguous, considering that the global exploitation of the poor is no laughing matter. And yet, laughter seems to be an important aspect of the pedagogy of the oppressed. In this paper, I examine the role of laughter in Freires critical pedagogy through a series of questions: Are all forms of laughter equally emancipatory? Certainly a revolutionary pedagogue can laugh, but should he or she, and what are the political (if not revolutionary) implications of this laughter? In order to shed new light on Freires fleeting yet provocative comments, I turn to Jacques Rancière for his emphasis on the aesthetics of politics, and Paulo Virno who connects joke telling with critical theory. Overall, I argue that we need to take Freires gesture toward a pedagogy of laughter seriously in order to understand the aesthetics of critical pedagogy and the fundamental need for a redistribution of the sensible that underlies educational relations between masters and pupils.

Critical Surveillance Literacy

In this article, the author provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the complex and contradictory matrix of surveillance technologies being deployed in U.S. schools. Through a review of the extensive literature on surveillance, the author charts the modalities of disciplinary and sovereign power as they relate to the overall social relations of late capitalism. In conclusion, the article offers a tentative reconstructive vision for schools both inside and outside the classroom.

Defining the political ontology of the classroom: toward a multitudinous education

This paper is driven by a simple question: what type of collective space is a classroom and how can it be imagined differently? Drawing on the social topography provided by Hardt and Negri, I suggest that schools have traditionally worked to produce either (a) a people; (b) a crowd; or (c) the masses. The problem with these forms of social collectivity is that they each tend to limit radical movements for democracy. Opposed to a people, a crowd, or the masses, I suggest that classroom collectivity be reconceptualized in terms of the multitude. It is by configuring the dynamic space of the classroom in relation to a theory of the multitude that educational democracy can be achieved.

Utopia and Education in Critical Theory

In this article the author examines the intimate connections between utopia and education in Frankfurt School critical theory. Although substantial links have been made in the critical pedagogy tradition between education, critique, and utopian dreaming, an in-depth analysis of the utopia–education matrix in the works of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson enriches our current understanding of this topic in several key ways. Marcuse enables us to envision play as a possible praxis for revitalizing utopian longings while Adornos focus on anxiety offers a sound corrective to the overemphasis on hope in utopian scholarship. Finally, Jameson mediates many of the differences arising between Marcuse and Adorno to fashion a post-utopian utopianism for late capitalism.

Mapping the Constellation of Educational Marxism(s)

In this paper, the author maps three radically different visions of Marxism in educational philosophy. Each ‘register’ contains insights but also contradictions that cannot easily be resolved through internal modifications of the theory or through theoretical synthesis with other registers. The radical function of Marxist pedagogy is to create a constellation of Marxisms through which the outline of history can emerge. As such, the author ends with a new emphasis in Marxist education on the ‘exacting imagination’ of the teacher which creates a constellational image of concepts and theories all of which hang in a precarious and historically specific configuration.

Community of Infancy: Suspending the Sovereignty of the Teacher's Voice

While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children (P4C) in todays strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agambens work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry (as the dialogic pedagogical model underlying P4C) to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high-stakes testing and the ‘ludic’ postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school.

The Architecture of Potentiality: Weak Utopianism and Educational Space in the Work of Giorgio Agamben

The article first examines the interrelationship between time and space in Giorgio Agambens formulation of messianic utopianism. While time has been given a privileged position in Agambens philosophy of potentiality, I attempt to uncover the equally important spatial logic of potentiality. In particular, I examine four spatial figures that appear throughout his books: the stanza, limbo, the door, and the operational image. The operational image is the most interesting precisely because it illustrates the interrelationships between time and space within his overall theory of the messianic. The notion of weak utopianism that I develop is connected directly with the question of education. For Agamben, the action that, more than any other, represents the messianic moment is the act of studying, or studious play. The temporality of weak utopianism is not simply the messianic time of the now but also the temporality of perpetual study, where the student holds judgment in suspension in order to experience the potentiality of thought itself. Likewise the space of weak utopianism can be thought of as an educational space. In conclusion, I illustrate the educational importance of weak utopianism through an example taken from school architecture exemplifying the inherently educational dimension of Agambens messianic utopianism.