This book asks what it means to live in a higher educational world continuously tempered by catastrophe. Many of the resources for response and resistance to catastrophe have long been identified by thinkers ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James to H. G. Wells and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. Di Leo posits that hope and resistance are possible if we are willing to resist a form of pessimism that already appears to be drawing us into its arms. Catastrophe and Higher Education argues that the future of the humanities is tied to the fate of theory as a form of resistance to neoliberalism in higher education. It also offers that the fate of the academy may very well be in the hands of humanities scholars who are tasked with either rejecting theory and philosophy in times of catastrophe―or embracing it.
Author(s): Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Series: Palgrave Studies on Global Policy and Critical Futures in Education
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: Cham
Notes
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
1 Introduction
Classroom Catastrophes
Catastrophic Trades
Of Shame and Sycophants
Catastrophic Resistance
Conclusion
2 Education and Catastrophe
World Teacher
World Political Animals
Education and World Peace
Conclusion
3 Little Blue Books
Books for Everyone
Little Blue Philosophy
The Problem of Humanized Knowledge
Conclusion
4 All Publishers Are Equal
The Underworld of Publishing
A Growing Giant
The Publishing Machine
The Future of the Past
Conclusion
5 Academic Privilege
Rank, Prestige, and Privilege
Conclusion
6 The End of Morality
The Debt Catastrophe
Forget Morality
Neoliberal Man
Conclusion
7 Post-literature America
The Birth and Death of American Literature
Made in America
Conclusion
8 A Century of Antitheory
The Products of Theory
The Ends of Antitheory
Conclusion
9 Catastrophic Theory
The Aesthetic View
Stale Objects
Actors and Texts
Conclusion
10 Pessimistic Education
Pessimism and the Dignity of Critique
Educational Pessimism
Resistance and Hope
Pessimism into Theory
Conclusion
11 Coda
Bibliography
Index
