Althusser and Education
Dr David Backer
15:00-17:00
Please email Dr Samuel Mercer at mercers@hope.ac.uk for the event zoom link. Full information available here.
In this online symposium, Dr David Backer (West Chester University) discusses his book Althusser and Education (Bloomsbury 2022) with Emile Bojesen (University of Winchester), Samuel Mercer (Liverpool Hope) and Olga Ververi (Liverpool Hope). In Althusser and Education, Dr Backer re-visits Louis Althusser’s theory of education to develop a critical reading of contemporary discourses within education studies, and gestures towards the production of an Althusserian pedagogy. This new pedagogic approach is one that privileges the school as both an educational and ideological apparatus within a particular social and material context: a context which structures the very pedagogic practices and strategies available within that institution. His book has been described as “the most comprehensive and nuanced reading of Althusser’s thinking about education available in the English language.” Isaac Gottesman (Connecticut College).
David I. Backer is an Associate Professor of Education Policy at West Chester University. Most recently his research and organizing apply a Marxist lens to the problem of school finance in a time of climate change. He writes a weekly newsletter called Schooling in Socialist America on this topic.
Discussants
Emile Bojesen is Professor of Philosophy & Education and Director of Research & Innovation at the University of Winchester. With Dr Ansgar Allen, he is the editor of the Risking Education imprint of Punctum Books. His research tends to focuses on depths and complexities of educational experience and, alongside many journal articles, book chapters, edited journals and books, he is the author of Forms of Education: Rethinking Educational Experience Against and Outside the Humanist Legacy (Routledge 2020. Over the last few years, he has published articles and released music/sound which explore education through practice-based research.
Olga Ververi is Lecturer in Education Studies at Liverpool Hope University. She teaches Sociology of Education and her research interests are the concept of critical thinking, citizenship education, critical social theory and critical discourse analysis.
Dr Ververi was born in Greece, completed her undergraduate degree in the University of Patras and she did her postgraduate studies in Manchester (MA in Education/MMU) and in Bristol (PhD/University of Bristol).
Samuel Mercer is Lecturer in Social Policy at Liverpool Hope University. His research focuses on the use of Louis Althusser’s concept of theoretical anti-humanism within sociological discourse. Dr Mercer has published articles on this topic in journals including Economy and Society and Dėcalages. He is on the editorial board of the journal Rethinking Marxism, and his book The Ideology of Work: Theoretical Humanism, Work and Labour is forthcoming as part of the Historical Materialism book series.