A tendency of previous studies of lifelong learning to focus on learning and learning subjectivities may have led to an underestimation of potential effects in terms of a system of knowledge constitutive processes that operates powerfully to shape our societies. In this paper we explore lifelong learning and practices in the construction of knowledge at the point where a new relationship is being attempted between university courses and workplaces through programmes for learning. Drawing from Foucault and others we argue a (...) strategic relation between discourses of lifelong learning and knowledge practices in such locations. Discourses of lifelong learning appear to support the reaching out of disciplinary practices into the workplace where theoretical knowledge is combined with knowledge derived from work experience, as a new form of knowledge that has use value. Discipline as a modality of power appears reconfigured and multiplied in new power-knowledge constellations which aim to subdue the desire and power of know how. Rather than lifelong learning as learning apparatus and strategy in the promotion of a will to learn as has been suggested elsewhere, we offer an alternative account. Here the promotion of a will to learn articulates with the will to knowledge in part through discourses of lifelong learning. Practices of knowledge constitution support the pacification of know how through its reconfiguration as knowledge that can be codified and mobilized for economic innovation. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger was convinced that we can learn something about the way we inhabit the world by turning attention to our fundamental moods. It was one important theme of his fundamental ontology in the 1920s. There is, according to Heidegger, an intricate connection between awakening our moods and developing a reflexive stance. He provides us with a rich phenomenological description of different forms of boredom. In this article I approach Heidegger’s conception of boredom from an educational point of view. I (...) am suggesting a reading where the experience of boredom has transformative potentialities that also can illuminate our cultural situation as a whole. By turning away from boredom there is always a possibility of turning away from ourselves. (shrink)

This chapter explores the personal and professional obstacles faced by Humanities and Social Science scholars contemplating pre-publication of their scholarly work in an on-line network. Borrowing a theoretical framework from the radical educational theorist Ivan Illich, it also develops the idea that pre-publication networks offer higher education a bottom-up, decentralized alternative to business-modeled e-learning. If learners would only embrace this more anarchical medium, appreciating writing for pre-publication as a process of open-ended discovery rather than product delivery, then the prospect of (...) deinstitutionalizing e-learning could become an exciting new reality. The chapter’s methodology is a combination of normative-theoretical analysis and small sample (n=2) case study based on the author’s personal and professional experiences. While the generalizability (or external validity) of the conclusions is limited, the author hopes to motivate further inquiry into the connection between on-line pre-publication and e-learning. (shrink)