In this article, the author draws specifically on the work of Walter Benjamin and engages with the world of video games by focusing on the constitution of labor as it unfolds in modding practices, as well as approaching the very act of seeing labor in a highly visual culture where value is extracted not just through the labor process but also…

This article explores the attraction of Canadian elementary teachers to children's stories that narrate trauma, particularly the trauma associated with First Nations peoples' experiences in Canadian residential schools as told by Indigenous authors. The teachers' responses to these texts are conceived of as occurring within a "contact…

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a subcategory of Art proper, it is worth reconsidering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as…

The film "La teta asustada" (Claudia Llosa, 2009) was inspired by the text titled "Entre prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú" by the medical anthropologist Kimberly Theidon. In this study, Theidon compiles the testimonies of a group of indigenous women who were sexually assaulted…

If story is central to human meaning why, in the research world, is there not more storytelling? Walter Benjamin (1973) noted that, "a story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time" (p. 90). How might research not expend itself, but preserve and…

Today, the use of photographs in publications and exhibitions is commonplace, but this was not always so. This article shows how photographs of certain schools that have had lasting impact on design stand in ambiguous relationships to the buildings themselves. Photographs function as part of the design process; they record details of construction…

In the context of educational practice and research, the individual is often understood in terms of autonomy. From this point of view, we will see our experience as cumulative, as inside of us, and as strengthening us against others. It means that the conception of experience tends to be understood primarily in relation to usefulness. In search of…

This essay reappropriates the segmentary form of the three works of Agustin Fernandez Mallo's "Nocilla" project ("Nocilla Dream" [2006]; "Nocilla Experience" [2008]; "Nocilla Lab" [2009]) en route to an urban reading of its fragmentary structure. The project's interdisciplinary push, overwhelming incorporation of both scientific and…

In this article we explore the educational potential of cinema. To do this we first analyse how the American critical thinker Henry Giroux tries to give body to an educational theory in relation to cinema. His "film pedagogy" is described as developing a critical response of the learner in relation to the public sphere of film.…

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 essay raises questions about how language educators might construct and further develop their epistemology of practice in and through the situations in which they work from day to day. The occasion for this paper is our work as guest editors of a special issue of "L-1: Educational Studies in Language and Literature," when we invited…

The allegory of the cave illustrates one of the central problems in philosophy: the gap between reality as it appears to be and the reality in itself. The allegory of prisoners in the cave, as opposed to being free out of the cave, symbolizes the gap between illusion and truth--between the thing and the thing in itself. The moment of getting out…

This study began with a fascination for the enigma of American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). I began to collect his words. I had been intrigued by German philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin's (1892-1940) philosophical snapshots and with the notion of an aura that could be pealed from objects by photography. And I was taken…

"What is Literature? A Critical Anthology" explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. 'What is literature?' is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a…

Translation theory has faced criticism from professional translators for adopting an ivory tower stance to the "real world" challenges of translation. This article argues that a case can be made for considering the challenges of translation as it takes place in the school classroom. In support of such an argument the pedagogue as translator is…