Beyond the Modern-Postmodern Struggle in Education (Toward Counter-Education and Enduring Improvisation)

"This book is an attempt to historically and conceptually address the present human condition and the current specific role of education as a distinctively creative symbolic violence. In doing so, the book reevaluates the various manifestations and conflicting alternatives to normalizing education. The author suggests a unique, Diasporic, counter-education that transcends modern politics, postmodern philosophical assumptions and spiritual telos towards an impetus for the re-birth of what the author refers to as the "enduring improviser". It is a first step towards a new critical language that addresses the challenges of globalizing capitalism, of the cyberspace, of racism and of the new antisemitism that springs from postcolonialism. The book calls for a creative rearticulation of the relations between the aesthetic, the ethical, the intellectual and the bodily dimensions of the cosmos and human life. It is an invitation for a new Diasporic religiosity, one which turns courageously towards the exile of the gods. It addresses the ever-strengthening-and-tempting-sophistication of the anti-humanistic dimensions of "our" postmodern pleasure machine, of pre-modern "redemption" projects and of modern deceiving offers for "emancipation". The book is of special relevance for students of critical sociology, critical philosophy, Jewish philosophy, cultural studies, feminist studies, education—and for all friends of the free spirit.