In an educational landscape dominated by discourses and practices of learning, standardized testing, and the pressure to succeed, what space and time remain for studying?
In this book, Tyson E. Lewis argues that studying is a distinctive educational experience with its own temporal, spatial, methodological, aesthetic, and phenomenological dimensions. Unlike learning, which presents the actualization of a student’s "potential" in recognizable and measurable forms, study emphasizes the experience of potentiality, freed from predetermined outcomes. Studying suspends and interrupts the conventional logic of learning, opening up a new space and time for educational freedom to emerge.
Drawing upon the work of Italian philosopher and critical theorist Giorgio Agamben, Lewis provides a conceptually and poetically rich account of the interconnections between potentiality, freedom, and study. Through a mixture of educational critique, phenomenological description, and ontological analysis, Lewis redeems study as an invaluable and urgent educational experience that provides alternatives to the economization of education and the cooptation of potentiality in the name of efficiency. The resulting discussion uncovers multiple forms of study in a variety of unexpected places: from the political poetry of Adrienne Rich, to tinkering classrooms, to abandoned manifestos, and, finally, to Occupy Wall Street.
By reconnecting education with potentiality this book provides an educational philosophy that undermines the logic of learning and assessment, and turns our attention to the interminable paradoxes of studying. The book will be key reading for scholars in the fields of educational philosophy, critical pedagogy, foundations of education, composition and rhetoric, and critical thinking and literacy studies.
1: From Being Willful to More Willing: The Agency of the Studier 2: Im-Potentiality: The Ontology of Study 3: The Aesthetics of Study: Poetic Rhythm, Mood, and the Melancholic Angel 4: The Method of Study or, Collecting Signatures 5: The Space and Time of Study: Weak Utopianism and Education 6: The Work of Studious Play: Overcoming the Problem of Transmission 7: Studying with Friends 8: Public, Collective Studying as an Im-Potential Political Gesture
Biography
Tyson E. Lewis is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University, USA, where he directs the graduate program in pedagogy and philosophy.
‘Surely, one of the greatest merits of Lewis’ book is to relate Agamben’s thought to established philosophers of education, among others Illich, McLaren, Freire and Rancière…Lewis also offers highly nuanced analyses and, although I may have suggested otherwise by emphasizing the negativity that characterizes study (not-knowing, a-poria, im-possibilities, etc.), the argument in this book isn’t a mere repudiation of the things we usually hold to be true.’- Joris Vlieghe, Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
‘This is a highly inspiring and compelling book. It offers a remarkable and original reading of some of Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts, developing them into a profound philosophy of study that challenges the language of learning that has colonized educational thought in the last decades. In a really surprising and provoking way Lewis opens up a route for a (un)timely educational philosophy and theory.’ Jan Masschelein, Professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven
