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Seeing through a glass, darkly? Towards an educational iconomy of the digital screen
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Abstract
This paper attempts to reassess the educational affordances of digital screens, at a time when their educational impact has become incontournable, but is also increasingly growing suspicion. To bypass the redundancies of overly critical theoretical approaches, the paper foregrounds the subjectifying potentialities of the screen’s elusive technological ‘plasticity’. After the introduction, in which some pedagogical misgivings about the digital screen are addressed, we turn to Marie-José Mondzain’s historico-philosophical genealogy of iconoclasm. Trying to make sense of the aesthetic-political ambivalence that shrouded the icon’s screenic agency within a Christian ‘economy of salvation’, and which climaxed in a politics of strictly economic equivalency, we concur with Peter Szendy that this ambivalence still haunts the icon’s contemporary heirs. By pedagogically re-reading Szendy’s alternative account of ‘iconomy’ we are subsequently led to make a case for exceeding neoliberal screening politics through an affirmation of the digital screen’s radical plasticity. Along with Yves Citton, we suggest, in our conclusion, that this post-critical affirmation calls for an ‘iconomical’ practice of care-ful experiments with the screen’s dynamic technologies. Instead of combating or adapting to its aesthetically dazzling algorithms, educational practices are required that allow these algorithmic quantities to qualitatively differentiate the uses that educands make of them.
... It can be plausibly argued that we should not cede to "apocalyptic" (Eco 1964) attitudes towards these phenomena and, instead of indulging in forms of iconoclasm against the new digital-iconic regime, as educators we should rather "cal[l] for an 'iconomical' practice of care-ful experiments with the screen's plastic technologies" (Koopal and Vlieghe 2022). 13 In the following, however, I will take another path and suggest some practices which can come to terms with the tautological form of vision reigning nowadays. ...
This paper engages with Italo Calvino’s lecture on Visibility, included in his last—and testamentary—volume Six Memos, by understanding it in an educational and pedagogical key. While the question of pedagogy is expressly addressed by Calvino himself in his lecture, the interpretation here provided is not merely an application of his tenets but an elaboration on and an autonomous development of them. In particular, in the spotlight there is the intimate bond image-cum-writing which seems to preside over Calvino’s insights and is here suggested as key to tackling the challenges of the contemporary mediascape and the “tautological vision” dominating therein. While a part of the educational discourse invokes “homeostatic” pedagogical solutions, namely the (ultimately confrontational) deployment of writing to compensate for the iconic ruling regime, this paper explores the possibility of a specific kind of visual education (instantiated by comics and Otto Neurath’s Isotype), which combines the role of the image with some features traditionally attributed to the pedagogy of writing (e.g. the cultivation of abilities of abstraction, of reflection etc.). A pedagogy of figuration is, accordingly, proposed as an interruption of the tautological vision of the new media and as conducive to educating readers of the unwritten world and of the world of digital images, Mr. Palomar—the hero of Calvino’s last novel—possibly being the archetype of this kind of (new?) readership. By referring to two influential notions in the contemporary debate in educational philosophy and theory, this pedagogy is finally interpreted in term of (visual) thing-centredness rather than (visual) subjectification.
... An Aristotelian-Heideggerian analysis also complements and corrects existing critiques of both educational simulations and of the rhetoric of "high-leverage behaviors" which TLE employs. Existing research critiques educational simulations and online learning on the basis of spatial, embodied learning (Dall'Alba and Barnacle 2005; Willat and Flores 2022;Ucok-Sayrak and Brazelton 2022;Ward 2018) concerns over democracy (Zembylas and Vrasidas 2005;Curinga 2016;Lindberg 2020;Smeyers and Burbules 2006;Knox 2016), and the ways in which technology changes humanity's relationship with information and the environment (Koopal and Vlieghe 2022;Hassan 2021;Thorat 2022;Vlieghe 2016;Thoutenhoofd 2018;Waks 2001;Lewis and Alirezabeigi 2018). Similarly, critiques of "high-leverage behaviors" and "best practices" are premised either on concerns over preserving teacher autonomy (Fitz and Nikolaidis 2020;Hardy 2018;Biesta 2007;Hordem 2021;Gottlieb 2019), or on concerns about the impossibility of distilling teaching down into discrete behaviors due to the ineradicable complexity of the teaching and learning environment (Schneider and Gottlieb 2021;Biesta 2010;Smith 2008;Stolz 2018;2012;Wrigley 2018). ...
While virtual simulations are a familiar professional training tool, they have only recently been implemented in teacher education programs. These simulations are used to complement traditional student teacher placement. In this paper, the author critically examines one teacher training simulation, TeachLivE, specifically in terms of its implicit conceptions of what it means to teach and to learn. The analysis utilizes Aristotle’s explanation of the Greek concepts energeia and dunamis, as well as Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The author argues that TeachLivE’s structure implies an ontology of teaching and learning that precludes the cultivation of a teacherly disposition, and that, were this ontology to be corrected, teacher training simulations would be rendered superfluous.
... No se trata de olvidarnos de que la educación tiene unos principios que la definen o de olvidarnos de dispositivos como la escuela, que emergieron mucho antes que nuestra realidad onlife, sino de (re)definirlos y aplicarlos desde parámetros actuales. Es tarea de los educadores hacer esto (García del Dujo, et al., 2021) y ya contamos con ejemplos concretos, como el de una profesora que consigue transformar un Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) de espacio de aprendizaje individual a lugar de estudio colectivo (Vansieleghem, 2019), o el de un profesor de poesía que, construyendo un poema a través de smileys, logra que sus estudiantes consigan experimentar la potencia ontológica que encierra un poema (Koopal & Vlieghe, 2022). ...
Desde que a partir del último tercio del siglo XX las tecnologías de la información y la
comunicación (TIC) comenzaron a evolucionar de manera exponencial, no han dejado de aparecer análisis sociales señalando la inevitable pérdida de lo material que implica el mundo digital. No obstante, frente a este planteamiento, existe otro, que va ganando cada vez más fuerza, y que insiste en que lo digital no viene definido por la inmaterialidad, sino que ha dado lugar a un nuevo tipo de materialidad cuyas potencialidades merece la pena estudiar. Dentro del campo de la investigación educativa y, en especial, de la Teoría de la Educación, el primero de los discursos ha sido y continúa siendo el dominante. Esto ha conducido a un acercamiento pedagógico al mundo digital como mero medio que, por inmaterial, se puede moldear y adaptar a cualquier uso, debiendo la educación, por tanto, intervenir exclusivamente en el usuario y, a través de él, introducir cierta normatividad en este espacio. Esta ponencia pretende explorar el segundo discurso, partiendo de la base de que lo digital es de algún modo material y que, de esta manera, encierra unas dinámicas internas propias, que no se pueden obviar y cuyas implicaciones educativas y pedagógicas es necesario considerar.
... To conclude, the argument developed in this last section does not come with a principled objection against using and relying on the latest digital technologies. It is precisely an invitation to look for ways to relate anew, in educationally worthwhile ways, to this new condition (Koopal & Vlieghe, 2021). This is also to point to the fact that the digitization of education that we have so easily embraced as a result of the pandemic is a pedagogical issue of the highest relevance. ...
This contribution deals with the impact of digitisation on what it means to educate and to be educated, especially in the wake of the massive switch to on-screen learning during the COVID-19 crisis. It is argued that we can only adequately relate to this phenomenon if it is based on a strong pedagogical and technocentric account of (school) education. Drawing from authors such as Arendt, Lahire, Stiegler and Serres, the argument is made that four basic pedagogical operations (sharing love for the world, showing newcomers that there is a common world, drawing attention to things that matter, creating the student experience and sense of belonging within a new generation) is under considerable threat. At least, this is the case if we don’t try to conceive of new digital technologies in a pedagogically meaningful manner, instead of unreflectively relying on existing conferencing technologies.
... It is not a question of forgetting that education has certain principles that define it, or of forgetting devices such as schools that emerged long before our onlife reality, but of defining and applying them based on current parameters. It is the task of educators to do this, and we already have specific examples, such as that of a teacher who managed to transform a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from space for individual learning to a space for collective study (Vansieleghem, 2019), or a poetry teacher who, by composing a poem through smileys, managed to get his students to experience the ontological power of a poem (Koopal & Vlieghe, 2021). ...
Identity has been widely understood in Western societies as a specular construction that operates simultaneously both from within and from outside oneself. However, this process is fiercely changing in a world in which almost every human action is mediated by information and communication technologies. This paper, from a theoretical perspective, aims to discover the main educational implications of this change. For that purpose, we first consider the traditional meaning and process of forming the self in Western culture. Afterwards, we identify and describe the mechanisms for the construction of the self in our current context, highlighting the fact that technologies, in themselves and regardless of the use we make of them, hide implications. Taking this into account, we show to what extent the current development of the self presents shades, conflicts and tangible risks from an educational perspective. We finally conclude that it is essential to promote an education on technology that goes beyond the use regulation in which, up to now, it has been solely focused on.
The whole book is available at: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-a-post-critical-pedagogy/
The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers.
We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
This paper provides an analysis of the educational use of the Internet and of digital technologies that is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, that is neither critical nor post-critical. Turning to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s comments on studying and its relationship to the technology of the blank writing tablet, the authors argue that digital devises are a radical transformation in our relationship to the technologies of reading and writing. Traditionally, the scholar was able to experience his or her potentiality to communicate through writing via the blankness of the writing tablet. Yet, according to Agamben, such blankness has become inaccessible in the digital age, where the screen is always full of content. Here the authors argue that Agamben is correct in his diagnosis, yet his own theory of communicability (as the experience of our ability to and not to communicate this or that specific message) offers up a way to redeem the educational use of digital devices. It is precisely the overflowing saturation of communications on the Internet which produces a new kind of blankness. It is this blankness which should thus become the focus of a studious form of media literacy—one that is not critical or post-critical so much as pre-critical (in that it contemplates the very potentiality for communication as such).
This article discusses, from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, the meaning and the importance of basic literacy training for education in an age in which digital technologies have become ubiquitous. I discuss some arguments, which I draw from the so-called literacy hypothesis approach (McLuhan, Goody, Havelock, Ong), in order to understand the significance of a ‘traditional’ initiation into literacy. I then use the work of Bernard Stiegler on bodily gestures and routines, related to different (traditional and digital) technologies, in order to elaborate and criticize the claims the literacy hypothesis makes. Bringing together insights from both the literacy hypothesis approach and Stiegler's work, I defend the view that there exists an essential difference between traditional and digital literacy, and I try to argue for the introduction of a spelling and grammar of the digital in the educational curriculum.
IF... THEN provides an account of power and politics in the algorithmic media landscape that pays attention to the multiple realities of algorithms, and how these relate and coexist. The argument is made that algorithms do not merely have power and politics; they help to produce certain forms of acting and knowing in the world. In processing, classifying, sorting, and ranking data, algorithms are political in that they help to make the world appear in certain ways rather than others. Analyzing Facebook's news feed, social media user's everyday encounters with algorithmic systems, and the discourses and work practices of news professionals, the book makes a case for going beyond the narrow, technical definition of algorithms as step-by-step procedures for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. Drawing on a process-relational theoretical framework and empirical data from field observations and fifty-five interviews, the author demonstrates how algorithms exist in multiple ways beyond code. The analysis is concerned with the world-making capacities of algorithms, questioning how algorithmic systems shape encounters and orientations of different kinds, and how these systems are endowed with diffused personhood and relational agency. IF ... THEN argues that algorithmic power and politics is neither about algorithms determining how the social world is fabricated nor about what algorithms do per se. Rather it is about how and when different aspects of algorithms and the algorithmic become available to specific actors, under what circumstance, and who or what gets to be part of how algorithms are defined.
In this article, I set up a Heideggerian framework of research in order to investigate the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, focusing especially on the desire to look, which I see as intricately connected with the desire to know and the desire to be. With a clear phenomenological disposition, supplemented by a deconstructive look via Giorgio Agamben and Bernard Stiegler, I turn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and especially to his myth of Narcissus, and to Lacan’s theory of the formation of the I, concluding that desire necessitates the split of the self, the self’s misrecognition in an image or in a medium or in a screen, and the subsequent reorganisation of the body, which ultimately allows for the self’s metamorphosis. After this, I discuss specifically the phenomenon of looking at the smartphone screen, emphasising that in an age that the presence of screens and of technologically produced images increases exponentially, we cannot ignore this phenomenon’s implications for educational theories and practices. Rather, we need to orient our investigations towards the interconnectedness of looking, knowing, and desiring, underlining therefore the need for an educational focus on the ways we learn to see and on the ways we learn to desire.
Screens have been with us since the eighteenth century, though we became accustomed to staring at them only after the appearance of film and television in the twentieth century. But there was nothing in film or TV that prepared us for the revolution wrought by the combination of screens and the internet. Society has been transformed and this book asks how and with what consequences?
Screen Society’s conclusions are based on an original research project conducted by scholars in the UK and Australia. The researchers designed their own research platform and elicited the thoughts and opinions of nearly 2000 participants, to draw together insights of today’s society as seen by users of smartphones, tablets and computers – what the authors call Screenagers. The book issues challenges to accepted wisdom on many of the so-called problems associated with our persistent use of screen devices, including screen addiction, trolling, gaming and gambling.
From the ampersat and amerpsand, via smileys and runes to the ubiquitous presence of mathematical and other symbols in sciences and technology: both old and modern documents abound with many familiar as well as lesser known characters, symbols and other glyphs.
Yet, who would be readily able to answer any question like: ‘who chose π to represent the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference?’ or ‘what’s the reasoning behind having a ⌘ key on my computer keyboard?’ This book is precisely for those who have always asked themselves this sort of questions.
So, here are the stories behind one hundred glyphs, the book being evenly divided into five parts, with each featuring 20 symbols. Part 1, called Character sketches, looks at some of the glyphs we use in writing. Part 2, called Signs of the times, discusses some glyphs used in politics, religion, and other areas of everyday life. Some of these symbols are common; others are used only rarely. Some are modern inventions; others, which seem contemporary, can be traced back many hundreds of years. Part 3, called Signs and wonders, explores some of the symbols people have developed for use in describing the heavens. These are some of the most visually striking glyphs in the book, and many of them date back to ancient times. Nevertheless their use — at least in professional arenas — is diminishing. Part 4, called It’s Greek to me, examines some symbols used in various branches of science. A number of these symbols are employed routinely by professional scientists and are also familiar to the general public; others are no longer applied in a serious fashion by anyone — but the reader might still meet them, from time to time, in older works. The final part of the book, Meaningless marks on paper, looks at some of the characters used in mathematics, the history of which one can easily appreciate with only a basic knowledge of mathematics.
There are obviously countless others symbols. In recent years the computing industry has developed Unicode and it currently contains more than 135 000 entries. This book would like to encourage the curious reader to take a stroll through Unicode, to meet many characters that will delight the eye and, researching their history, to gain some fascinating insights.
In this article, we read together the work of two philosophers, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as profound educational thinkers. This means that their philosophical approaches help us to articulate what is at stake in education today. As a starting point for this discussion we take their work on Saint Paul. This is because, throughout his Letters, Paul has found the appropriate words to think and speak about the fate of our world and about new ways of beginning with this world. Therefore, with their reading of Paul, Badiou and Agamben can be said to develop fresh ideas about the contemporary challenges of education. We argue that this joint educational reading of their work, opens a post-critical view on education. This is to say, the alternative we suggest is not just a criticism of the existing system, but an entirely affirmative one. It is about fidelity to an event which has the force to install a particular attitude towards life and which installs a messianic interruption of time. With Badiou and Agamben it can be shown that education is about the possibilities we have at our disposal to begin anew with our world – which turns education into an important political issue too. Following that thread, we give an ontological account of teaching, which defines the teacher not in terms of pedagogical expertise, but in terms of passion for a subject matter.
On the basis of a close reading of three authors (Flusser, Stiegler, and Agamben), I try to elucidate what the growing presence of digital technologies in our lives implies for the sphere of schooling and education. Developing a technocentric perspective, I discuss whether what is happening today concerns just the newest form of humankind's fundamental dependency on a technological milieu or that it concerns a fundamental shift. From Flusser, I take the idea that the practice of writing shapes human subjectivity, as well as our very sense of history and progress, and that with the advent of digital technologies the possibility of a posthistorical era is granted. I confront this idea with Stiegler's analysis of technological tools and practices as strongly materialized memories, which amounts to a plea for securing the link with the particular history behind the technologies we use. Here, education should play a conservative role and take responsibility for using technologies in a correct way. I argue that Stiegler is not wholly consistent on this point and, moreover, that his view precludes the possibility to rethink the very meaning of education under present (digital) conditions. This possibility is opened if we turn to a philosopher which is ruthlessly criticized by Stiegler for being a technophobe: Agamben. I argue, however, that a more detailed reading of Agamben—n combination with Flusser—might show a completely different and far more positive appreciation for digital technology and that this view offers an opening for rethinking what education is all about.
Why does a cell phone have a screen? From televisions and cell phones to refrigerators, many contemporary technologies come with a screen. The article aims at answering this question by employing Emmanuel Levinas’ notions of the Other and the face. This article also engages with Don Ihde’s conceptualization of alterity relations, in which the technological acts as quasi-other with which we maintain relations. If technology is a quasi-other, then, I claim, the screen is the quasi-face. By exploring Levinas’ ontology, specifically what can be identified as his tool analysis, as well as his notion of the face, a new understanding of contemporary technologies can be extracted. Some of these technologies hardly fit into the Heideggerian notion of the hand as the main interface to artifacts. Instead they require the face. Levinas’ notion of the face is analyzed from an ontological perspective and developed in conjunction with the screen. As the screen serves as a quasi-face, it enables the construction of quasi-other technological artifacts.
See - http://rdcu.be/mE1M
A depiction of the ancient Hebrew understanding of the human being must take into account the fact that the Bible does not contain a systematic anthropology, but unfolds the multiplicity of human existence inductively, aspectively, and in narrative fashion. In comparison to Greek body/soul dualism, but also in the context of body-(de-)construction and gender debates, this circumstance makes it a treasure trove of interesting, often contrasting recollections and insights with liberating potential. This assertion will be illustrated concretely in terms of the nexus points of the human body (throat, heart, and womb), the relationship of humans to animals and angels, and the questions of the power and value of a human being.
Inspired by Hannah Arendt, this contribution offers an exercise of thought as an attempt to distil anew the original spirit of what education means. It tries to articulate the event or happening that the word names, the experiences in which this happening manifests itself and the (material) forms that constitute it or make it find/take (its) place. Starting from the meaning of scholè as ‘free time’ or ‘undestined and unfinished time’ it further explores scholè as the time of attention which is the time of the regard for the world, of being present to it (or being in its presence), attending it, a time of delivery to the experience of the world, of exposure and effacing social subjectivities and orientations, a time filled with encounters. Education, then, relates to forms of profanation, suspension and attention and can be articulated as the art (the doing) and technology that makes scholè happen.
In his praise of the attitude of loving one another in 1 Cor. 13 Paul argues that ‘now we see in a mirror and in a riddle’ but at the eschaton we will see ‘face to face’ (v. 12). The implied object of ‘seeing’ is God. By introducing the image of a mirror Paul uses a well-known Hellenistic metaphor to describe the indirect, partial and incomplete nature of man’s knowledge of God. The expressions ‘in a riddle’ and ‘face to face’ are taken from Old Testament descriptions of Moses’ unique communication with God found in Num. 12.8 and Deut. 34.10.
This article takes notice of the particular relationship, or fit, between the hand and the mobile screenic device (MSD). Starting with biomechanics and industrial design, it describes the active and responsive quality of this relationship, which enables a manner of seeing that is material and dynamic - tactile. Informed by Benjamin’s notion of the tactile, it explains tactile vision as sensual and diffuse and potentially charged with the immediacy and contingency of the everyday. Ultimately, this article asserts that tactile vision, emerging out of fit, provides for a more visceral mode of experiencing the world.
Abstract In this essay Christiane Thompson discusses the systematic outcomes of Theodor Adorno's philosophical work for a reworked theory of Bildung (an important term in the German tradition of philosophy and history of education). In his essay “Theory of Halbbildung,” Adorno revealed the inevitable failure of Bildung, on the one hand, and the necessity of Bildung (in view of a critique of society), on the other. After having exposed this contradiction, Thompson seeks to analyze Bildung's systematic role by turning to Adorno's reflections on art and metaphysics. Adorno's concept of aesthetic experience hints at the possibility of a more genuine approach to Bildung and culture, one that makes the borders of our experience visible and, as a result, suggests a different relation to ourselves and to the world. She concludes by examining the critical dimensions of this different Bildung as well as its pedagogical relevance.
The barest awareness of the ubiquity and influence of the media today provides proof enough that our fate is in the hands of the image. But when and how was this fate sealed? Image, Icon, Economy considers this question and recounts an essential thread in the conceptualization of visual images within the Western tradition. This book argues that the extraordinary force of the image in contemporary lifeâthe contemporary imaginaryâcan be traced back to the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries. It was during this period that the church was compelled to produce an account of the theological status of the religious image that would nevertheless not be open to even the slightest suspicion of idolatry. The solution arrived at was the dual doctrine of the image, invisible (and thus beyond the charge of idolatry) and the icon, visible, and thus perfectly fitted to be placed at the center of a pedagogical and political strategy serving the temporal power of the church. The foundations of this immense philosophical enterprise were laid in no less than the multifarious, interwoven strands of the divine economy, God's overall plan for the salvation of humanity.
Le supermarché du visible. Essay d’iconomie. Minuit
- P Szendy
Iconen en beeldverering: Godsdienst als symbolische praktijk
- P Moyaert
Mondzain-Rancière: Pourquoi éduquer à l’image
- E Burdeau
The ecology of attention
- Y Citton