Conference Agenda

In recent years we live under “social and historical conditions of permanent crisis” (Hage 2009), so much so that Walter Benjamin’s famous claim that the “emergency” which we face has become the rule rather than the exception, seems truer than ever (Benjamin 2003). From wars to pandemics to recurring financial crises to rise in authoritarian regimes to the seemingly unstoppable climate change – any sense of the stability in the present and trust in the promise of the future seem to decline or even vanish altogether. The future is viewed as a series of crises and calamities bound to happen, each more dangerous than its predecessor.

From an analytical perspective, the concept of crisis is also challenging as it introduces many ambiguities and unclarities. It is often perceived as extreme hardship yet it is seen as an opportunity for change or growth; it is considered both as a distinct event and but also as part of historical continuity; it brings up fears of catastrophe, often identified as such, but it also inspires revolutionary hopes. To add to the concept’s lack of clarity, ‘crisis’ is used both literally and metaphorically, with no clear distinction between them. Originated as a medical term which delineates a dangerous imbalance that calls for a life-or-death decision, the use of crisis has now spread to many other fields – psychology, economics, politics and more (Koselleck 2006).

How should educators and educational policymakers think of crisis and act in such times of turbulence? As an activity often perceived as incremental and steadily progressive, education in times of crisis is challenged when faced with ruptures, breaks, and radical changes. Moreover, education’s strong connection to the concept of development – individual and social alike – puts it at odds with a reality shaped by sudden and non-linear changes. When teachers face crisis, the common educational impetus is to treat it as a problem in need of a solution; as hardship that must be endured and overcome. Thus, the teacher is expected to cultivate their students’ resilience. A somewhat similar approach sees crisis as a necessary and valuable part of life and emphasizes its role in development (eg. teenage crisis). In this case, the crisis’ resolution is connected to successful maturing and growth.

In the proposed panel, we examine various alternative ways to educationally confront crisis. Among the questions the presenters will ask are:

• What exactly is a crisis and what is its relationship to social change?
• Should education be directed to prevention of crises? And if a crisis did erupt, should education be concerned in overcoming it, paving the way back to normality? Alternatively, should education unlock the revolutionary potential of crisis?
• How do educational systems deal with external and internal crises? What are the relations between the two?
• How is education affected by the contemporary state of constant crisis?
• What is the relationship between crisis and catastrophe? And how are they expressed in teaching itself?

This presentation will examine educational crises and the response to them through the lens of complexity theory. Initially developed in the natural sciences to address phenomena beyond the scope of traditional scientific approaches, complexity theory offers a unique perspective on crises. Central to our discussion is the work of French philosopher Edgar Morin (1976) and his "Crisiologie" concept, which provides a foundational framework for understanding crisis within complex systems. Building on complexity theory, crisis is defined here as having three distinct conditions: Firstly, it involves the disruption of systems, hindering them from achieving their objectives. In complexity terms, crises often lead systems to abandon their usual 'attractors' (Gilstrap 2005) Secondly, these disruptions are beyond the control of existing principles or methods (Nsonsissa 2011). Thirdly, they bear significant consequences, impacting the system at a fundamental level (Novalia & Malekpour 2020). Additionally, the presentation differentiate between crises stemming from external elements versus those arising internally, emphasizing the role of antagonistic elements in line with Morin's theories (Morin 1976). Focusing on the education, it is argued that crises in it are predominantly externally induced, stemming from political, economic, or other exterior influences. These crises typically prompt responses aimed at minimizing deviations through negative feedback, viewing the crisis as a threat to be neutralized (Folke 2006). This defensive posture, while aimed at preserving the system, ironically diminishes its capacity to handle future crises and adapt to change. It curtails the productive potential of the system, which is essential for fostering positive changes and necessary transformations (Novalia & Malekpour 2020). To counteract this trend, a divergent approach is advanced. It is maintained that by diversifying and strengthening the active powers within educational systems, we can enhance their resilience and adaptability in the face of crises. To substantiate this argument, the historical responses of educational systems to economic crises will be examined, highlighting the detrimental effects of conventional approaches and underscoring the need for a paradigm shift inspired by complexity theory. This presentation aims to start and dissect the nature of educational crises and chart a forward-thinking path for educational systems to thrive amidst continual change and challenges.

Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global environmental change, 16(3), 253-267. Gilstrap, D. L. 2005. Strange attractors and human interaction: Leading complex organizations through the use of metaphors. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 2(1), 55-69. Morin, E. 1976. Pour une crisologie. Communications, 25(1), 149-163. Novalia, W., & Malekpour, S. 2020. Theorising the role of crisis for transformative adaptation. Environmental science & policy, 112, 361-370. Nsonsissa, A. 2011. Pour une «crisologie» 1. Hermès(2), 139-144.

Evaluation comments for last semester’s Theory of Education class were not disheartening. They were disavowing (me). My past--my teaching and the philosophical tradition that nurtured it, cycles of endeavors to reenchant student engagement with theory and its history--was aborting me. Palinodes of neoliberalism’s takeover of the university could help understand what was happening. Lyotard could explain how my teaching’s language games failed performativity; Schulman could explain the gentrification of the mind; Brown could explain what else has been happening beyond and besides the regimes of metrics and competences: the economization of political affect was expanding to the psychic life of learning. Yet this was not just discomfort with aporia; this was the undoing of temporalization. Students opted for self-presencing of meaning, without oblique [dis]orientation, without past, without me. “The art of losing’s not too hard to master”, writes Bishop, “though it may look like (Write it!) disaster”. Exergue to Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure, Bishop’s verse both anticipates and defies success’s alignment with heteronormative performativity. This paper does not argue for navigating between ‘cynical resignation’ and ‘naive optimism’. Bishop’s ‘Write it!’ does not induce hope; it animates Benjamin’s Angelus Novus. The storm irresistibly propels me into the future to which my back is turned because I refuse to subscribe to a hope that growth will eventually come from the future (Benjamin recited). While cast into dismay by the storm ‘we call progress’, I choose to hold into the pile of debris before me, without hope. This reading of Benjamin’s Angelus Novus attempts to theorize the state of being alienated from one’s intellectual genealogy and relegated, without redemption but also without remorse, to an unmarked grave of a-sociality and a-temporality. This reading holds onto the pause before catastrophe without holding onto leftist melancholia against ‘quietism’. Blown by the storm of progress is theorized as a queer temporality of backwardness (Love 2009) whereas the ruins, i.e., uncongested, aborted, trivialized and overpassed ‘pieces’ of teaching are picked up: “unclear examples”, confusing bind[ing]s of concepts, images and excerpts from texts deemed inappropriate or superfluous, anything that defied and defiled possession. The debris is collected and rearticulated as fragments of mythology (Benjamin). In parallel, the collected are recollected towards queer disidentification and sociality with texts and authors we love (but failed to teach efficiently) through what Elizabeth Freeman calls “temporal drag”.

Ahmed, S. 2006. Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press. Benjamin, W. 2010. Theses on the Philosophy of History. In Critical Theory and Society, ed. S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner, Routledge. Brown, W. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberlism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books. Brown, W. 2003. Resisting Left Melancholy, in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian. University of California Press. Freccero, C. 2006. Queer/Early/Modern. Duke University Press. Freeman, E. 2010. Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories. Duke University Press. Giroux, H. 2011. Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. Social Identities 17.4: 587-601. Halberstam, J. 2020. The queer art of failure. Duke University Press. Love, H. 2009. Feeling backward: Loss and the politics of queer history. Harvard University Press. Lyotard, J. F. 1994. The postmodern condition. Cambridge University Press.

This presentation is concerned with teaching students in times of external crisis and with the corresponding internal crisis in the practice of teaching itself under such conditions. The first question is how educational goals change, or should change, when external reality moves from a state of normalcy to a state of crisis, and the second question is how an incremental and largely progressive endeavor such as education can be reframed to suit crisis’ notable characteristics of nonlinearity and rupture. Critiquing the depoliticization of crisis, and education’s common compliance with it, I argue that crisis should be recognized educationally as such, instead of ignored, “solved” or normalized, and that when recognized, it allows for new emancipatory possibilities. The definition of crisis is notoriously ambiguous as the concept experienced several significant changes in the last 200 years, and is often imprecisely overused. Therefore, I first briefly present the historical development of the concept while focusing on its temporal and political implications (Freeden 2017; Holton 1987; Koselleck 2006). I then discuss crisis as a phenomenon that lacks the capacity to be “confirmed by unambiguous observational evidence” (Lukton 1974), especially when it is no longer a rare exception but an almost regularly recurring event. I also critique the problem-solving approach – educational and otherwise, in which crisis is viewed negatively as merely an obstacle to endure or overcome. Reading in Walter Benjamin’s early work on both crisis and on education, I show that such a view misses the uniqueness of crisis and the learning opportunity it presents by being an occurrence that, by its very essence, “tears away facades and obliterates prejudices” (Arendt 2006). Finally, I argue that in order to teach students to recognize crisis and understand it as an open-ended (possibly emancipatory) phenomenon, teaching itself should change and embrace unexpectedness and nonlinearity.

Arendt, H. 2006. ‘The Crisis in Education’, in Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Benjamin, W. 2003. ‘On the Concept of History.’ In Selected Writings IV: 1938-1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. 2004. Selected Writings I: 1913-1926. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Freeden, M. 2017. Crisis? How Is That a Crisis?! Contributions to the History of Concepts 12, 12-28 Koselleck, R. 2006. Crisis. Journal of the history of ideas, 67:2. 357-400 Lukton, R. 1974. Crisis Theory: Review and Critique, Social Service Review 48:3, 384-402