Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy

Published: 01/11/2018

The belief in the transformative potential of education has long underpinned critical educational theory. But its concerns have also been largely political and economic, using education as the means to achieve a better – or ideal – future state: of equality and social justice. Our concern is not whether such a state can be realized.[…]

3,200 Persons + $10 Per Month = Sustainability / How You Can Help

by Eileen Joy In the spirit of Open Access also (ideally) meaning transparency of the data of open-access publishing, here are some figures from punctum books, followed by a plea. Ever since launching our Graduated Open Access platform at the beginning of this year (whereby PDFs of each of our titles are available for $5.00[…]

The Pedagogics of Unlearning

Published: 05/23/2016

What does it mean to unlearn? Once we have learned something, is it ever possible to unlearn that something? If something is said to have been unlearned, does that mean that it is simply forgotten or does some residual force of learning, some perverse force, also resonate in ways that might help us to rethink[…]

Nothing Has Yet Been Said: On the Non-Existence of Academic Freedom and the Necessity of Inoperative Community

by Eileen A. Joy *talk given at Harvard University for the Medieval Studies Workshop, 27 April 2015 Nothing Has Yet Been Said: On the Non-Existence of Academic Freedom and the  Necessity of Inoperative Community But if this world, even though it has changed … , proposes no new figure of community, perhaps this in itself[…]

Let Us Now Stand Up for Bastards

Figure 1. Adad Hannah, The Raft of the Medusa (100 Mile House) 2 (2009) by Eileen A. Joy [cross-posted to In The Middle] I recently had the great pleasure and honor of participating in the symposium, “Disrupting DH,” convened on January 30, 2015 under the auspices of GWU’s Digital Humanities Institute, co-managed by Jonathan Hsy,[…]

A Time for Radical Hope

by EILEEN JOY I was very lucky to be invited recently by George Washington University — more specifically, GW’s new Digital Humanities Institute [Alex Huang], GW’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute [Jeffrey Cohen], and the Gelman Library [Geneva Henry and Karim Boughida] — to give a talk on the state(s) and future(s) of open-access[…]

Staying Alive

Published: 10/21/2013

Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts fiercely defends the liberal arts in and from an age of neoliberal capital and techno-corporatization run amok, arguing that the public university’s purpose is not vocational training, but rather the cultivation of what Fradenburg calls “artfulness,” including the art of making knowledge. In addition to sustained[…]