Education and Democracy at The End

In this book, Di Paolantonio grapples with what it means when education and democracy are at an end: when these two foundational aspects of our society seem to have reached a culminating point, no longer appearing to produce and make sense amid the crises of our time. Engaging topical political events and mobilizing a variety of cultural resources, Di Paolantonio shows that today the possibility of the future and the significance of an expansive transgenerational sensibility are radically in question as trends toward destruction, cruelty, and banality are steering world defying calamities, and sparking "chronopathologies" of doom and despair among the planet's occupants. However, Di Paolantonio mines the forlorn conceptual archive of education and embedded sensibilities within certain aesthetic works to help us register and reignite the transgenerational sensibility. Unfolding his argument through a series of accessible chapters that draw on contemporary philosophy, educational thinking, and cultural-artistic works, Di Paolantonio’s broad repertoire allows us to explore how the transgenerational sensibility, though presently foreclosed, still retains a possibility we might tap for overcoming the impasses of our time.

Mario Di Paolantonio is Associate Professor at York University, Canada. His work draws on ethical philosophy, cultural memory, and democratic theory to study memorial, aesthetic, and political “forums” attempting to pedagogically reckon with historical-political wrongs in transitional democracies. He has taught and lectured internationally and has received numerous funded awards for his research along with being twice the recipient of the York University Research Leader Award. His extensive publications span across the fields of philosophy of education, social and political thought, cultural memory and the arts.