Conference Papers and Materials

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Teaching a very Marcusean Piketty
(2015) Engel, Sascha
This paper proposes a pedagogy using Thomas Piketty's data on economic inequality as a starting point towards a Marcusean project. The centerpiece of this pedagogy is the transfer of Piketty's credibility in presenting 'hard' facts to a social and political project of refusal. To this end, I propose a four-step approach. First, I propose a discussion of Piketty's data within one-dimensional scientistic language. Secondly, I suggest a transfer of credibility from the numbers on inequality to the discussion of Piketty's notion of meritocratic extremism. Thirdly, this discussion takes Piketty's one-dimensional language to a point where it becomes insufficient to express the extent of the ramifications of economic inequality. Here, I introduce Marxian economics as an alternative language, showing that its hypotheses are corroborated at least in part by Piketty's data. Finally, transferring the findings of Piketty to a language outside of one-dimensional econocratic thought also introduces a new political horizon.
Marcuse and education today
(2015) Norwood, Karina R.
Unlike other significant contributors to political theory, such as Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills, and W.E.B. Du Bois, the critiques of Herbert Marcuse remain trapped in the 1960s era of radicalism with his work referenced by few today. Although scholarship evaluating post-industrial societies largely neglects Marcuse’s claims, many of his notions appear more relevant than ever. Particularly, Marcuse’s concerns involving the one-dimensionality of education, which neglects critical thinking, increases scholastic standardization, and condemns individuality, encompass the reality of American education today. Granted that Marcuse, a professor himself, participated in various demonstrations with student movements throughout the sixties, modern critiques of education require his expertise in the field. Additionally, given that the student movement slowly disintegrated throughout the seventies and eighties with a majority of the students’ demands unaddressed, Marcuse’s apprehensions never lost their credibility over the years. Therefore, an evaluation of the current educational system in America through the lens of Marcuse proves crucial.
Images from a historical interstice – Herbert Marcuse and the cyborg`s new sensibility
(2015) Pisani, Marilia
In this paper I will develop some implications about the concept of obscenity from Marcuse, to thinking over some political paradoxes that permeate our contemporary lives. To this, I assume a question: what has been considered obscene in these, the first two decades of the twenty-first century?
Schedule of the Sixth Biennial Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Conference Society
(2015)
Full schedule of the Sixth Biennial Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Conference Society which took place November 12-15, 2015 at Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD.
Contributions to a critical pedagogy in Latin America since the footsteps of Simon Rodriguez
Ortiz, Mariana
Mariana Ortiz is from Mendoza, Argentina. The city where she lives is a thousand kilometers from Buenos Aires. In Mendoza she works as a teacher at all levels (high school, college and university). In Latin America teaching is a precarious job and teachers have to work at several institutions to make a living. Especially if you also do research. Her first approach to the work of Herbert Marcuse was in the 90s, as a student activist. At that time, the student movement in her country saw a boom of participation and revolt against neoliberalism. The takeover of colleges and universities was unprecedented during the period between 1995 and 2001. In this context, they appropriated the political experience of the May 1968 events in France, texts by Sartre, Angela Davis and writings of Marcuse. The 90s were experienced by them with intensity; for many of us they determined our whole way of life: some of they decided to teach in rural areas, others traveled to work to other Latin American universities, others were devoted to political participation in social environmental organizations and others continued to participate in the human rights movement. For Mariana Ortiz, the Latin American intellectuals made great contributions to the construction of a critical pedagogy that largely revolves around the need to create an opposite to the dominant language in order to build emancipatory political processes in general and pedagogical processes in particular. To understand this, the starting point is the work of the educator Simon Rodriguez in the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1960s, as all the people know, the imprint of the Brazilian Paulo Freire was key. In order to think these Brazilian experiences as part of a continental process I brought to share with you some notes written by an Argentine professor named Daniel Prieto. His unique way of revisiting Simón Rodríguez's pedagogical proposal was brutally interrupted in the 70s by the last military dictatorship in Argentina. The update made by Professor Prieto gave new meaning to the dominant forms of communication found in the process of teaching and learning following in the footsteps of Rodriguez. The work is synthesized with a five-minutes video made for this meeting. It was created collectively between Mariana Ortiz and others activists who are filmmakers and students who have participated in educational projects in recent years. Perhaps the history of struggles in Latin America shows that the starting point for building a critical pedagogy is to return to the subject, which is also a fundamental principle we learned from Marx.
An aesthetic challenge to education: Against a damaged subjectivity
(2015) Antunes, Deborah Christina
This paper aims to reflect on the potential identified by Theodor W. Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory with respect to the subjectification process towards human emancipation. We begin from the complaint art/commodity within the Culture Industry starting with Adorno’s discussions on music on radio – Current of Music – and its relation to half-education processes – Theory of half education - and regression of hearing - On the fetish-character of music and the regression of listening – in Late Capitalism – Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? –. Then, we enter the Aesthetic Theory, Adorno latest book, in order to seek to understand how a truly aesthetic theory proposed by the author, in seeking to unite Eros and Logos, can take place as a force in the fight for an emancipated society and point to possibilities for an educational social process that goes beyond the schematism already settled in subjectivities propitiated by current social life. At the end, we present an experimental interdisciplinary evaluation process – uniting human science methodology, Brazilian literature (through the romance O Alienista, by Machado de Assis) and social critique - proposed during the 2013 Seminars of “Social Psychology” at Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil. We also present some of the results of such an experimental evaluation process materialized in aesthetic creations realized by undergraduate students, such as a chapbook and an artistic installation inside the University. University is a place where experimentation, imagination and critique cannot be dissociated from educational process; otherwise, knowledge will only perpetuate its authoritarian potential, against its emancipatory potential.

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