Conference Agenda

Alienation can be seen as a foundational aspect of the most wicked global problems today: growing social inequality, political extremism, and rampant ecological crises etc. This is discernible in media coverage identifying youth as ‘alienated’ from politics (Wittenberg, 2013) or unemployment leading to ‘alienation’ from society, which is visible in rising crime and mortality rates (Lammy, 2021). One central concern in these critiques is the pervasive influence of digital media, which is seen as contributing to a profound sense of disconnection – numbing, isolation, and a loss of future visions. Together, these dynamics contribute to a fragmentation of selfhood and a weakening of one’s sense of groundedness in the world: of belonging, of being part of a tradition, and of having a future.

Alienation does not only feature on the media landscape. Since the turn of the millennium, alienation has slowly but surely resurfaced in critical social sciences after several decades of dormancy (Tekin, 2023). Having formerly been dismissed as harbouring essentialism, it is again a part of critical social theories that seek to point towards theoretically founded responses to current societal ills (Honneth, 2014; Jaeggi, 2014; Rosa, 2010, 2016; Sørensen, 2015).

It is therefore no surprise to see alienation present also in expressing educational concerns and addressing them. If young people are alienated from society, the school can, by introducing an accepting and caring environment that resonates with their lifeworlds, contribute to healing such wounds. And if children in urban environments are isolated from nature, schools can introduce them to the great outdoors and begin to suture the gaping estrangement from living non-human environments.

This symposium seeks to engage with the problem of alienation in education from a perspective that digresses from such mainstream problematisations. We wholeheartedly agree that there are indeed negative forms of alienation – powerlessness, loss of freedom, mental health issues – which are very real and very much imbued with the challenges posed to education, many of which education can and should address.

Nevertheless, our aim in this symposium is to open up a space of reflection for positive alienation, that is, alienation as something to be nurtured and explored, a condition that is not only inhibitive, but also productive and deeply ingrained in human existence (see also Clarke, 2025; Kenklies, 2022). This level of alienation presents us with an existential ‘crack’ that cannot be undone by any educational means. We explore positive alienation as a condition that is always with us and that we must learn to live with even, and especially, in a world of ongoing ecological and social crises (McGowan, 2024). It aids in identifying what is irredeemably unknown, withdrawn, and uncontrollable about our own existence – the unwieldy, irrational forces of human unconsciousness that cannot be made harmonious, as well as the withdrawn materiality and scales of the non-human world that are somehow both within and without us.

Through the symposium papers we approach the more culturally and politically contingent issues approached in terms of negative alienation in education from a different angle. Our approach to alienation balances with a darker tone (Lysgaard, et. al 2019) what we see as the solutionist, progressive ‘can do’ aspect of much educational research and policy agendas. Such darkness does not amount to pessimism and dystopian views of the future, but a more sober and ‘weird’ understanding of the insisting ‘always already’ of alienation. It is sober in the sense of not being lured by fantasies of quick and easy fixes, and weird in the sense of being attuned to unsettling and paradoxical forms that our coming to understand alienation takes.

This paper investigates alienation as a narrative structure that shapes contemporary critical education discourses. While alienation has been a central point of departure for a range of European social and political theories, educational research seldom pauses to define it explicitly (Kenklies, 2022; Papastephanou, 2001). Instead, alienation is often invoked implicitly as a diagnosis of present social or personal malaise, with its inverse of meaning, resonance, or harmony framed as a desirable educational aim. To situate this discursive tendency, the paper begins with a schematic overview of major European alienation traditions. This overview is structured analytically along two axes: negative versus positive, and contingent versus foundational conceptions. Negative accounts portray alienation as suffering, powerlessness, or loss of meaning that should be corrected, while positive accounts regard estrangement as a generative condition for autonomy or critical distance. Contingent theories attribute alienation to historically and culturally produced structures that can, in principle, be transformed; foundational theories treat alienation as intrinsic to human existence, language, or development. Although these axes frequently correlate (negative accounts often implying contingency) their conceptual separation clarifies the diversity of resources available to educational critique. The paper examines how especially negative-contingent understanding of alienation in critical education discourses operates a narrative form that organizes how educational problems are rendered intelligible. Drawing on Prince’s (1982; 2004) account of minimal narrative, alienation discourses typically unfold in a three‑part structure. First, an initial state of social, political, or ecological disorder is described. Second, action is introduced in the form of compensatory or reformist measures intended to remedy this condition. Third, a projected future of restored fullness, resonance, or non‑alienation is imagined (cf. Papastephanou, 2001). This arc is frequently underwritten by a historical subplot that interprets present‑day alienation as the outcome of earlier societal disruptions in which human beings lost a more authentic or harmonious relation to the world. By analyzing negative-contintent alienation as a powerful academic narrative form ( Bencivenga, 2021) rather than a fixed concept, the paper highlights how such narratives generate affective and temporal orientations that shape educational critique. Finally, the paper considers the potential of positive-foundational accounts of alienation for re‑narrating educational problem spaces. Rather than seeking redemption from alienation, these perspectives allow one to explore how estrangement, dissonance, or unsettlement might serve as productive resources for educational theorizing and practice.

Bencivenga, E. (2021). The narrative element of philosophy. Human Affairs 31(4), 380-385. Kenklies, K. (2022). Alienation: The foundation of transformative education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 56(4), 577-592. Papastephanou, M. (2001). Estranged but not alienated: A precondition of critical educational theory. Journal of philosophy of education, 35(1), 71-84. Prince, G. (1982). Narrative analysis and narratology. New Literary History, 13(2), 179-188. Prince, G. (2004). Revisiting narrativity. Narrative theory: Critical concepts in literary and cultural studies, 11-19.

This paper introduces the framework of object-oriented didactics to rethink the "object of education" beyond the traditional idealist legacy (Bengtsson et. al 2019). While conventional didactics, particularly the Enlightenment-driven continental tradition of Bildung (Klafki 1959), emphasizes "shedding light" onto the world to make it visually accessible to the human mind, this paper argues for an aesthetic intervention: painting the content of education black (Lysgaard et. al. 2019). This approach aims to sensitize learners to a form of negativity—the inherent evasion of the object of education as it remains distinct from merely educational "content" for the human subject. To facilitate this, the paper utilizes Vantablack—a substance composed of vertically aligned nanotube arrays that absorbs 99.965% of visible light—as a theoretical prosthesis (Michael 2018). Vantablack creates a unique cognitive dissonance; by stripping three-dimensional objects of their perceived volume, it renders them as flat, two-dimensional voids or silhouettes. This effect creates a visceral, uncanny response in the observer, who feels a strong impulse to "fall into" or touch the object to resolve the absence of reflected light. In an educational context, Vantablack serves as a "protention-inhibitor," suspending the learner’s ability to project meaning and feel "at home" in a familiar world. The paper critiques the subject-oriented didactics of Wolfgang Klafki, which reduces content to a "reductive appearance" based on generalizable, historical pasts (Klafki, 1956). Drawing on the "no-hair theorem" from physics (Tang & Xu, 2022), the author argues that objects of education are not reducible to stable categories but are continuously individuating through emergent individual qualities. True Bildung is thus reframed as a process of alienation, where the learner engages with an inaccessible, four-dimensional object that remains "dark" and out of reach (Bengtsson & Lysgaard 2023). Ultimately, the paper concludes that education involves "falling downwards" into the specificity and "thisness" of the object (Bengtsson et. al. 2023). This encounter leads to an "experience of oblivion" and the ruination of the prior self, as the learner’s world fades away in favor of a transformative, externalized relation to the undisclosed Doppelgänger of the object of education.

Bengtsson, S. L., Lysgaard Andreasen, J., & Jørgensen, N. J. (2019). Object-oriented didactics. European Conference of Education Research. Bengtsson, S. L., & Lysgaard Andreasen, J. (2023). Fiction Science: Educational Substance as a Technology of the Anthropocene. In Flashpoint Epistemology Volume 1 (pp. 168–189). Routledge. Bengtsson, S., Andreasen Lysgaard, J., Kardyb, D., Varpanen, J., Saari, A., Hofverberg, H., & Harman, G. (2024). Report on the symposium “speculative realism in environmental education and the philosophy of education.” Environmental Education Research, 30(7), 1177–1187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2024.2348701 Klafki, W. (1959). Das Pädagogische Problem des Elementaren und die Theorie der kategorialen Bildung. Beltz Verlag. Lysgaard Andreasen, J., Bengtsson, S. L., & Laugesen, M. (2019). Dark Pedagogy. Palgrave Macmillan. Michael, M. (2018). On “Aesthetic Publics”: The Case of VANTAblack®: The Case of VANTAblack®. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 43(6), 1098-1121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243918775217 Tang, M., & Xu, Z. (2022). The no-hair theorem and black hole shadows. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022(12), 1-26.

A spiraling pattern can be identified when looking at post WW2 and especially recent western educational research and policy (Biesta, 2014; Hattie & Larsen, 2020). Problems of unfulfillment and arguably alienation emerges, that being lack of democratic participation, educational ambition or the lack of the specific competences needed to fuel the labor market (OECD, 2019; UNESCO, 2021). Understanding and overcoming this lack is done through approaches that offer new takes on the competence spectrum. From neo-liberal framings of visible learning, over more muddled notions of OESCD/UNESCO concepts linking competences and sustainable development to left or right wing emphasis on values, identity and belonging, it seems that a more clear cut understanding of the lack and solutions to fill it always lines up and offers the prospect of educational order where chaos reigns (Griffiths, 2021; Kopnina, 2020). Largescale efforts to implement these perspectives invariably fail as new problems of fulfillment pops up or the existing ones continues to dominate (Bengtsson, Lysgaard & McGarry 2025). This paper argues that the drive to offer solutions to the ills of the world, with education as the vehicle that never truly delivers, seems to be a spiral that a large array of research and policy are caught in. The paper offers a critique of the ongoing emphasis on solutions, both as an identity marker for late stage modernism and as an educational trait that only seems to gain strength. In the face of the anthropocene challenges and entailing hyper objects of destruction and unrelenting wicked problems (Lysgaard & Bengtsson, 2020; Saari & Mullen, 2020), the concept of developing modernistic solutions to large and small challenges, and especially within education is at best a waste of time and at worst an obsession that keeps us from breaking with the patterns of misuse that have bought current ails on the human and more than human worlds. Drawing on OOO and lacanian psychoanalysis the paper argues for the ontological value of breaking with large scale over investment in solutionism, generally and especially in the educational sphere (Harman, 2011; Lysgaard, 2018). As educators and practitioners we are not only set up to fail, working with simplistic conceptualizations of solutions, but this doubling down on a stale concept also removes the endless educational venues of navigating the endless and inspiring failures of educational thought and practice.

Biesta, G. (2014). Beautiful Risk of Education: Paradigm Publishers. Griffiths, T. G. (2021). Education to transform the world: limits and possibilities in and against the SDGs and ESD. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 30(1-2), 73-92. doi:10.1080/09620214.2020.1854829 Harman, G. (2011). On the undermining of Objects: Grant, Bruno, and Radical Philosophy. In The Speculative turn. Hattie, J., & Larsen, S. N. (2020). The Purposes of Education: Routledge. Kopnina, H. (2020). Education for the future? Critical evaluation of education for sustainable development goals. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(4), 280-291. doi:10.1080/00958964.2019.1710444 Lysgaard, J. A. (2018). Learning from Bad Practice in Environmental and Sustainability Education: Peter Lang. Lysgaard, J. A., & Bengtsson, S. (2020). Dark pedagogy – speculative realism and environmental and sustainability education. Environmental Education Research, 26(9-10), 1453-1465. doi:10.1080/13504622.2020.1739230 OECD. (2019). OECD FUTURE OF EDUCATION AND SKILLS 2030: OECD LEARNING COMPASS. Retrieved from Saari, A., & Mullen, J. (2020). Dark places: environmental education research in a world of hyperobjects. Environmental Education Research, 26(9-10), 1466-1478. doi:10.1080/13504622.2018.1522618 UNESCO. (2021). Education for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development