Educing Ivan Illich: Reform, Contingency and Disestablishment / Edition 1

by John Baldacchino

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433176425
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	06/17/2020
Series:	Teaching Contemporary Scholars , #12
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.86(h) x 0.00(d)

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).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Books 9

Las Meninas 10

Reading as Stranger 12

A Boat that Sailed? 14

The Tyranny of Empiric 16

Tables of Friendship 17

2 Immanence 23

Conversos 23

Humanistic Peripheries 26

Hiddenness 28

Educing Illich 31

3 Utopia 37

As "It" Perpetuates 37

Freedom and Intelligence 39

Milking the Family Goat 41

Dreamers 43

A Promise 45

Quandaries 48

4 Tradition 53

Epoché 53

After Deschooling … 55

… What? 59

The Laic and the Ecclesial 61

Processed Emancipation(s) 65

Beneath God's Nose 67

"Progressive conservative" 70

Philosophia Perennis 71

The Convivial Challenge 74

5 Learning 81

Equality, Liberty and Meaning 82

Theory, Choice and Common Sense 85

Damned Assumptions 85

Opinionated Evidence 86

The Three-Legged Stool 88

Kant's Futuring 89

Lewis and Marx 92

Within the Spheres 96

6 Reform 103

Idolatrous Hypotheses 104

Colored Circles 106

Returning (to) Form 109

Shadow-Less Affairs 112

Abolished Worlds 115

7 Contingency 121

Golgotha's khôra 121

Kenotic Tools 124

After Contingency's Sunset 128

Metaphor and Agency 132

Watersheds 136

Synchronically Possible 136

Franciscan Hope? 138

8 Disestablishment 143

A Journey's Ends 143

Tools of Possibility 143

A Changed Nemesis 145

Myth and Transparency 147

Constructed Equity 148

Fabled Worlds 150

A Tomorrow without a Future 153

Responsibility 153

Algorithms 155

Neighbors and Foreigners 157

Maritain's Beautiful Face 160

Beyond Sinful Planning 164

Bibliography 169

Index 175

Editorial Reviews

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

“Reading Illich’s work by relating the disestablishment of institutions to re-form and contingency, thereby implying radical freedom, this book situates Illich’s thought in a ‘Golgotha’ that is found outside the polis, the church and the market. It wonderfully shows the relevance of Illich’s topicality of conviviality and the relevance of the attention he pays to the quality of hiddenness and of the way Illich contests widespread concepts like ‘life’ and ‘responsibility’. In this way Educing Ivan Illich offers a really refreshing and fascinating entry into Illich’s thinking.”—Jan Masschelein, Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

“Another outstanding monograph by John Baldacchino. A fresh, thorough and truly comprehensive work on Ivan Illich, an interdisciplinary theorist who is particularly relevant to our age given the massive problems we face with politicians and institutions. Baldacchino insightfully explains and justifies the theological foundation of Illich’s work, a foundation that strongly defines Illich’s crucial understanding of dissent and conviviality.”—John P. Portelli, Professor, OISE, University of Toronto

“In this magnificent book, John Baldacchino has imaginatively returned Ivan Illich to the intellectual ground of his life and ideas. Not only does Baldacchino present a rich philosophical reading of Illich, that goes beyond the decontextualized or anecdotal treatments that plague Illich’s legacy, Baldacchino also manages to theorize a constructive relation to tradition in a sympathetic and radical way.”—Samuel D. Rocha, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia

From the Publisher