Petra Mikulan – författare

This volume argues that refusal is a viable political ethics in education. It is an ethics that allows space for new possibilities to emerge, with the potential to enrich higher education study and pedagogies in the future. Chapters examine the ethical, epistemological, political and affective premises of refusing the colonial university, and reflect upon what refusal means for higher education decolonization across international settings. Refusal marks a political ethos and praxis that denies, resists, reframes and redirects colonial and neoliberal logics, while asserting diverse sovereignties and lifeworlds. Whereas resistance may reinscribe the weakness of the colonized in the power relations with the colonizer, refusal interrupts the smooth operation of power relations, denying the authority of the settler state and remaking the rules of engagement. It is a political stance and action that denies the very legitimacy of power over the subjugated. This collection views refusal not as an end in itself, nor as a mode of critique, but as a necessary first step for educators and students in higher education to invest in the idea of radically different modes of futurity. It explores how educators and students in higher education can invent pedagogies of refusal that function ethically, affectively and politically, and asks: What do pedagogies of refusal look like? How might western universities sustain and support refusal, rather than discipline it? What assumptions are sustained by ruling out certain educational futures as out of bounds, or impossible? This book will be important reading for researchers, scholars and educators in Decolonizing Education, Higher Education Transformation, and Philosophy of Education. It will also be valuable to policymakers and activists who are considering how refusal might be carried out within and outside institutions.

This volume argues that refusal is a viable political ethics in education. It is an ethics that allows space for new possibilities to emerge, with the potential to enrich higher education study and pedagogies in the future. Chapters examine the ethical, epistemological, political and affective premises of refusing the colonial university, and reflect upon what refusal means for higher education decolonization across international settings. Refusal marks a political ethos and praxis that denies, resists, reframes and redirects colonial and neoliberal logics, while asserting diverse sovereignties and lifeworlds. Whereas resistance may reinscribe the weakness of the colonized in the power relations with the colonizer, refusal interrupts the smooth operation of power relations, denying the authority of the settler state and remaking the rules of engagement. It is a political stance and action that denies the very legitimacy of power over the subjugated. This collection views refusal not as an end in itself, nor as a mode of critique, but as a necessary first step for educators and students in higher education to invest in the idea of radically different modes of futurity. It explores how educators and students in higher education can invent pedagogies of refusal that function ethically, affectively and politically, and asks: What do pedagogies of refusal look like? How might western universities sustain and support refusal, rather than discipline it? What assumptions are sustained by ruling out certain educational futures as out of bounds, or impossible? This book will be important reading for researchers, scholars and educators in Decolonizing Education, Higher Education Transformation, and Philosophy of Education. It will also be valuable to policymakers and activists who are considering how refusal might be carried out within and outside institutions.

Despite pervading all aspects of educational practice and theory, little scholarship focuses on time in education. This book addresses that lacuna questioning our assumptions about time and their ramifications on theories of learning, issues of equity and diversity, and on the purposes of education itself. The authors examine ideas about time in a wide variety of contexts, from ancient Greek fiction to 19th century theories of evolution and from 20th century indigenous stories to 20th century afro-futurist fiction. They show how pervasive the image of ‘time as an arrow’ has become, an image of time that is one-way, singular and teleological. Through exploring other theories of time, the authors propose alternatives for time in education. They argue that time is one of the key biopolitical tools we think and operate with, but rarely address as a historical, cultural and pedagogical category with which schools reproduce oppressive structures around race, class, and gender in society. The book draws on ideas from the arts and the sciences to illustrate and trouble assumptions of time drawing on artistic and theoretic work from Édouard Glissant, Henri Lefebvre, Giordano Nanni, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Bonnie Honig and others.

Despite pervading all aspects of educational practice and theory, little scholarship focuses on time in education. This book addresses that lacuna questioning our assumptions about time and their ramifications on theories of learning, issues of equity and diversity, and on the purposes of education itself. The authors examine ideas about time in a wide variety of contexts, from ancient Greek fiction to 19th century theories of evolution and from 20th century indigenous stories to 20th century afro-futurist fiction. They show how pervasive the image of ‘time as an arrow’ has become, an image of time that is one-way, singular and teleological. Through exploring other theories of time, the authors propose alternatives for time in education. They argue that time is one of the key biopolitical tools we think and operate with, but rarely address as a historical, cultural and pedagogical category with which schools reproduce oppressive structures around race, class, and gender in society. The book draws on ideas from the arts and the sciences to illustrate and trouble assumptions of time drawing on artistic and theoretic work from Édouard Glissant, Henri Lefebvre, Giordano Nanni, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Bonnie Honig and others.