Within Michel Foucault’s own conceptualization of governmentality, there is little room for something like ‘ungovernable life’. The latter seems to hint at a form of social conduct beyond ...power-relations, which would offend Foucault’s basic philosophical postulates. I argue that this identification between governmentality and power as such demonstrates a one-sided focus on the history of Western power-relations. By opposing Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality to Ivan Illich’s critical history of government, I delineate indigenous struggles against governmentalization as a form of ungovernable counter-conduct. Throughout his books from the 1970s to 1990s, Illich wrote a critical history of government surprisingly similar to Foucault’s, from the pastorate to modern political economy. However, rather than merely describing this history, Illich argued governmentalization alienated human beings from their autonomy. As a former missionary priest, he criticized the Church’s and modern governments’ attempts to subsume populations under a conduct of conducts. He advocated anticolonial resistance to subsumption under Western governmental regimes. In Illich’s appreciation of decolonized life, an ungovernable form of life can be discovered, which I defend with the example of Zapatismo and indigenous self-government through mandar obedeciendo.
A Covid-19 alterou o funcionamento dos sistemas nacionais de educação. Evidenciou-se a dependência social para com as instituições escolares: impossibilitados de frequentá-las, os educandos ficaram ...longos períodos sem escolarização. Despreparadas para educarem seus membros, as famílias e outras instituições não supriram adequadamente suas demandas educacionais. Tal cenário suscita a reflexão sobre alternativas educacionais viáveis de serem implementadas em momentos de crise e em condições “normais”. São oportunas as reflexões de Ivan Illich, na obra Sociedade sem escolas, sobre a desescolarização. Nossos objetivos aqui são: compartilhar considerações sobre a desescolarização; e considerar possibilidades de desescolarização da educação nacional.
L'articolo cerca di restituire il senso della prospettiva ecologica di Ivan Illich, pensatore e critico radicale della modernità, che egli cosidera l'esito del pervertimento del messaggio evangelico, ...operato dalla Chiesa romana. L'industrializzazione, conepita come effetto ultimo di quel tradimento, condanna l'essere umano a una condizione di dipendenza e subalternità rispetto alle merci prodotte sul mercato e ai servizi offerti dalle categorie di esperti competenti. In questo modo egli compromette, secondo Illich, il proprio rapporto con gli altri e con la Terra come sua dimora, rinchiudendosi nel guscio della propria individualità, prigioniero dei bisogni creati dal mercato. Ristabilire l'equilibrio ecologico per Illich è possibile solo attraverso un cambiamento sostanziale dei ritmi produttivi, per restituire all'uomo la padronanza degli strumenti e con essa la propria autonomia.
This article introduces the notion of convivial technology as a conceptual framework for technologies suitable for degrowth societies. This paper is inspired by Ivan Illich's notion of convivial ...tools but reconsiders it in the light of current practices and discussions. Looking for a definition of convivial technologies it uses qualitative empirical research conducted with degrowth-oriented groups developing or adapting grassroots technologies like Open Source cargo bikes or composting toilets in Germany. The basic ethical values and design criteria that guide these different groups in relation to technology are summed up into five dimensions: relatedness, adaptability, accessibility, bio-interaction and appropriateness. These dimensions can be correlated with the four life-cycle levels material, production, use and infrastructure to form the Matrix for Convivial Technology (MCT). The MCT is a 20-field schema that can be filled in. Experiences with the tool in different fields are presented. The MCT is itself a convivial tool as it allows for degrowth-oriented groups to self-assess their work and products in a qualitative, context-sensitive and independent way. It is a normative schema that fosters discussion concerning degrowth technologies in contexts of political education. And it is a research method as it helps collecting data about underlying ethical assumptions and aspirations of individuals and groups engaged in developing technology.
•Convivial technology describes desirable technologies in a degrowth context.•Convivial Technology is defined by five dimensions.•The Matrix of Convivial Technology (MCT) is introduced.•The MCT is a tool for self-assessment, qualitative research and political education.
Glavni poudarki Pedagogike zatiranih Paula Freireja vključujejo samouresničenje kot smoter človekovega življenja, opredelitev zatiralskih elit, ki to milijonom zatiranih preprečujejo, ter idejo, da ...je modus operandi moderne šole prav utrjevanje zatiranja s tem, ko učence pasivizira. Podobno kot Ivan Illich je bil tudi Freire prepričan, da bo urok dominacije odpravljen, če se bodo ljudje aktivno samouresničevali, a nove oblike tržne ekonomije to predpostavko na žalost postavljajo pod vprašaj, saj novi načini kapitalistične produkcije presežne vrednosti temeljijo natanko na samouresničevanju posameznikov. Zdi se tudi, da v razvitih družbah ne potrebujemo toliko pedagogike zatiranih kot prej pedagogiko zatiralcev. Toda rešitve teh problemov gre iskati znotraj Freirejevega okvira in ne mimo njega.
This paper aims to studying in historical perspective the beginning of the social movement of homeschooling in Spain. It begins by analyzing the way in which the ideas of authors such as Ivan Illich ...arrived in the 1970s. Later, attention is paid to three bulletins, Aprender sin Escuela (1989-1993), Buzón (1993-1997) and Crecer sin Escuela (1997-2005), which served as a reference to organize a movement that rejected schooling. The paper focuses in the intellectual figures who developed a central rol in the initial deployment of the movement. The detailed study of these publications highlights the objectives that the homeschooling/unschooling promoted since its beginning in Spain: to share experiences, to promote networking, to spread education at home and to internationalize this pedagogical alternative.
El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar en perspectiva histórica el comienzo del movimiento social de la educación en casa en España. Se inicia analizando el modo en que llegaron las ideas de autores como Ivan Illich en los años setenta. Posteriormente se pone atención en tres boletines, Aprender sin Escuela (1989-1993), Buzón (1993-1997) y Crecer sin escuela (1997-2005), que sirvieron de referencia para sus inicios a nivel organizativo. Asimismo, la atención se centra en las figuras intelectuales que fueron protagonistas en el despliegue inicial del movimiento. El estudio de estas publicaciones pone de manifiesto los objetivos del homeschooling/unschooling en su inicio en España: compartir experiencias, fomentar el trabajo en red, divulgar la educación en casa e internacionalizar esta alternativa pedagógica.
This article addresses the need to find alternative ways to envision, develop and govern public service media’s (PSM) online services and data-driven systems. By critically discussing both ...opportunities and shortcomings of how European PSM organisations developed their online services and personalisation systems, we argue that in their own platformisation processes, PSM have partially lost their distinctiveness and have not been able to provide viable alternatives to the dominant audiovisual media platforms. Thus, building on Mouffe’s agonistic theory and Illich’s conviviality theory, this article proposes a theoretical framework to radically rethink the guiding principles and rationales driving public service platforms, in order to develop viable alternatives to the currently dominant models. By doing so, we envision the development of such services as convivial tools that are based on three principles, namely, symmetry of power (intended as hackability, openness and algorithmic conviviality), independence and environmental sustainability.
This article revisits Ivan Illich's call for limiting the use of tools and elaborates its implications for degrowth. Illich analyzed growth not as an economic ideology, but - more radically - as the ...result of a historically unique mindset that turns tools from means into ends. Unlike many advocates of degrowth, he did not propose alternative modes of resource consumption and distribution, but instead tried to defend vernacular subsistence and conviviality against the industrialized satisfaction of needs. Any meaningful limit to growth, Illich insisted, has to be rooted in the defense of a sphere beyond production and consumption. Yet, as he himself realized, in an advanced technological society this distinction between autonomous action and heteronomous need satisfaction is blurred. Modern tools – and especially the computer - not only paralyze innate capabilities, but shape self-perception and subjectivities so as to increase dependencies on technological systems. On the basis of Illich's works, this article will argue first that degrowth requires limits to material as well as immaterial technologies, including political management and professional services; second that these limits have to be based on the appropriate balance between vernacular subsistence and engineered instrumentalities: and, third, that political decisions demand the cultivation of a critical awareness of the symbolic power of modern technologies.
•Illich analyzes growth as the result of the inversion of tools from means into ends.•Degrowth requires limits to material and immaterial technologies as well as to political management.•Limits have to be based on the balance between subsistence and engineered instrumentalities.•In a technological society, political decisions demand the cultivation of technical ascesis.
In his book
(1975), Ivan Illich calls for human self-limitation in technology development. His aim is neither environmental protection nor the prevention of unforeseen side-effects of technology ...development, but the comprehensibility of technologies’ operating principles for the user. For if the construction or repairing of tools requires expert knowledge inaccessible to the public, this necessarily entails social imbalances in power. In a similar manner, Bernard Stiegler conceives the delegation of know-how to technological systems as a kind of proletarianization that ultimately may result in a loss of savoir-vivre. Without sweepingly rejecting the division of labour, automation or specialized knowledge, practices of commoning respond to such diagnoses: free software like GNU/Linux or open hardware largely succeed in unlinking the expert knowledge that advanced computing doubtlessly requires from problematic power effects. From this perspective, proprietary algorithms are problematic, as their lack of transparency prevents conviviality. This also holds for the practices of data aggregation and extraction which steadily increase the information gap between platform providers and users. An even more fundamental problem is posed by so-called “self-learning”, i.e., recursively adapting, algorithms: it is not clear how and to what extent the knowledge and instructions generated by “artificial intelligence” can be traced and reconstructed by human insight. Thus, we are confronted with a situation of potentially non-recoverable proletarianization and non-conviviality that exposes a renewed urgency of Illich’s considerations concerning technological self-limitation.
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