Henri Lefebvre (1901-91), philosopher and sociologist, is, together with Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, one of the most relevant representatives of the first generation in Western Marxism. His engagement with Marxism led him to analyse everyday life in post-war France in order to decipher the possibilities of,…

This article explores the different approaches taken to the concepts of work or labour by Marx and Foucault, examining in particular the question of subjectivity in relation to youth unemployment and the current crisis of youth unemployment as part of the aftermath of the global recession of 2008.

What is the role of the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) today? This is not a new question. In 1903, William James questioned the value of the degree as an indicator of teaching ability. Unfortunately, the issue James raised has never been resolved. Move forward in time to 1990. Theodore Ziolkowski essentially agreed with James, but raised additional…

This essay examines the legacy of the late President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias. Shortly after the death of President Chavez, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the 266th and current pope of the Catholic Church and took the name, Francis. The essay contrasts the demonization of Hugo Chavez by the Western corporate media with the adulation of…

Frantz Fanon, a pioneer of post-colonial theory, attempted to seek some unbeknown possibilities through a Sartrean existentialism thought toward ethnic liberation and the fighting against imperialism. This article tries to enter Fanon's short life that was full of humanism and existentialist thought and to explore the hidden theoretical context…

This reproduces, for fun, a conversation between three professors at the University of Illinois, that originated at a dinner party over a couple of bottles of good red wine.

Throughout medieval thought, a major issue raised was that of the relationship between religion and philosophy. Alternative frameworks see the problem as a conflict between faith and reason, tradition and speculation, mysticism and rationalism. The medieval Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, (1126-98), who lived in medieval Spain, attempts…

Using the term "recuperation" from their experiences working alongside activists in the "occupied factories" of Argentina, the authors illustrate how "occupied spaces" were transformed into "recuperated" sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production. Focusing on the IMPA factory (Industrias Metalurgicas y Plasticas Argentina) located in…

If one looks at the German educational debate on media, one can find a broad interest in film and its implicit formative ("bildenden") effects on its spectator. But despite this increased awareness of the importance of audiovisual media arrangements for individual formation ("Bildung"), almost all of the theoretical perspectives on this phenomenon…

The article examines the Australian national program of values education via the lens of Deleuze's philosophy. It argues that it is teachers with a genuine level of self-knowledge who can create the conditions conducive to best practice in schools. Both theoretically and empirically, quality teaching has demonstrated the power of the affective…

This article focuses on the contributions of philosophy, art and science to education through the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological usefulness of a Deleuze-Guattarian conceptual framework that informs multiple literacies theory (MLT). Education lends itself to Deleuze's notion of connecting and creating through philosophy, art and…

This article charts the crisis of the modern university using Bill Readings' (1996) "The University in Ruins". Readings distinguishes three principal ideas underpinning the concept of the modern university: the Kantian idea of reason, the Humboldtian idea of culture, and the technological idea of excellence. The article reviews these three…

The modern university developed as an institution legitimated by external referents, including national culture and its emancipatory potential. Today's university, however, has been largely destabilized as these referents have become, at the very least, significantly less compelling relative to larger concerns about economic competitiveness and,…

The history of transcendence and nomadism in face of the call for "home-returning" is marked figuratively by four milestones: (1) the "era" of immanence and dwelling in total harmony as a manifestation of self-sustained holiness; (2) the "era" of relating to holiness by mediation of God, especially in the monotheistic religions; (3) the "era" of…

Under current historical conditions, as Israelis, Jews are structurally almost prevented from facing the possibility of living in light of the Messianic impetus, as the world's universal moral, intellectual, and creative vanguard. This special Jewish mission was made possible by the Jews' unique homelessness--a Diasporic existence as a realized…