What's Left of the World: Education, Identity and the Post-Work Political Imagination - Softcover

Blacker, David J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1789040108 ISBN 13: 9781789040104

Publisher: Zer0 Books, 2019

Synopsis

In 1960, Paul Goodman argued that the Fordist system that treated people as mere cogs in a machine had created a profound unhappiness in young people and in American society as a whole. More than half a century later, professor David Blacker recognizes that decades of neoliberalism have pushed young people beyond unhappiness and into a collective identity crisis. Overall, Americans no longer feel needed to do jobs that had previously anchored them in society and are becoming disconnected and purposeless. The proliferation of new identities is symptomatic of neoliberalism and its hyper-commodification and deregulation of everyday life. But it's not all doom and gloom:  the de-anchoring process opens a new "world" of possibilities that Blacker details in the book's later chapters.

About this title

About the Author

David Blacker is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware. He has written five books, including The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, nearly 50 articles for academic journals and has given invited presentations at academic institutions and other venues worldwide, including Cambridge University, University of London, University of East London, McGill University University of Wales, University of Edinburgh and Columbia University. He was selected by the University of Illinois's Center for Advanced Study for its prestigious campus-wide MillerComm Lecture Series. Blacker's work has been widely reviewed in both academic and popular publications and he appears regularly on podcasts such as The Majority Report FM, for which he was selected by listeners as a "Best Interview of the Year." He lives in Philadelphia.

From the Back Cover

We are approaching peak critique of neoliberalism. The shortcomings of that market monomania are well-chronicled: inequality, precarity, instability, loneliness, cruelty, environmental devastation, resource depletion and above all its shallowness and nihilism. But how might we see beyond it? Jeremiads of heightened fervency? Economic theories of greater intricacy? Decrials of still further outrages? Better data? Shrewder policy proposals? More energetic activism? While none of these things can hurt, maybe what's needed most is deceptively simple: a direction rooted in a holistic worldview that can generate more than mere complaint.

As old assumptions about identities and institutions dissolve, the urgency grows to discover what those in opposition are positively for. Yet how can such collective discoveries be made, when the remaining arenas for public action--education, work, and politics--are deflated by cynicism and unable to inspire? Though bitter at first, a dose of philosophy may be a last resort. Deeper insight into ourselves and our motivations can excite the imagination toward unanticipated possibilities, generating a desperately needed ideological adventurousness. Toward that end, this book scans current meaning horizons for a more livable and inviting alternative world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zer0 Books
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1789040108
• ISBN 13: 9781789040104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256