Forces of Education: Walter Benjamin and the Politics of Pedagogy

Bringing
Walter Benjamin into dialogue with the urgent issues facing educational
institutions today, this is the first comprehensive exploration of his philosophy
of education and pedagogy.

In
recent years, problems concerning the practice of education have become
central to the critical discourse in the humanities: from debates regarding

deplatforming and the redefinition of free speech on campus to the
digitization of learning and the ethics of mentorship. But where do
we go from here? This volume argues that Walter Benjamin’s writing offers
critical tools to rethink the purposes of
education and the institutional forms it
should assume.

Reaching
from his earliest writings during his involvement with the antebellum German
Youth Movement to his late essays on history, theatre, and new media, the
authors here explore how Benjamin argued against education as an
institutional task subject to a
scientific discipline. They show instead how he took his cue from language as a medium of subtle
understanding to critically analyze the forms of violence inherent in the concept and history of education. For Benjamin, education was the lever to political
reform. For him, the experience of youth should always be at the centre of considerations.

Written
by leading international scholars, Walter
Benjamin and Education both contextualizes Benjamin’s pedagogy in the trajectory
of his own thought and also offers an astute analysis of the value and relevance
of his student-focused ideas to the institutional and political challenges of
today.