Unlearning: Education, Literature, Event

Abstract

This thesis is an extended investigation into the concept of unlearning and how it can be used to further critical thinking in the philosophy of education and literary studies. The thesis argues, in the context of the global corporatization of education practices in schools and universities -specifically in second level literature classes and university literature seminars- that a reconceptualization of the possibilities of literature to re-empower and re-inform must be taken seriously (Apple 2001; Cottom 2013; Giroux 2014; Hussey and Smith 2008; Lynch 2006). It argues that a new language of resistance can be envisaged in a language of unlearning, where event, ignorance, and risk take center stage and replace the language of marketization, competition, and consumerism (Biesta 2005; 2006; 2010; 2013). It does this by echoing ideas already abounding in the work of contemporary philosophers, such as Gert Biesta, Jacques Rancière, Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo and others, whose analyses of learning vocabularies point to a flaw in our capacity to resist controlling forces that manipulate the democratic promise of education today. It also recalls Bill Readings' argument which criticises the institutions' new accounting system (standardisation) without a concomitant accountability (a value system). This thesis takes seriously the idea that the languages we choose to speak about education have a direct relation to how we conceive of it and its possibilities.