Educing Ivan Illich

John Baldacchino is Professor of Art & Education in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A graduate of the University of Malta (B.Ed.) and Warwick (MA & PhD) he was faculty at Columbia University in New York, and the universities of Dundee, Falmouth, Robert Gordon and Warwick in Britain. He authored thirteen books, including Education Beyond Education (2009), Makings of the Sea (2010), Art’s Way Out (2012), John Dewey (2014) and Art as Unlearning (2019). He is the editor of Histories and Philosophies. The International Encyclopaedia of Art and Design Education (2019).

• Introduction – Books – Las Meninas – Reading as Stranger – A Boat that Sailed? – The Tyranny of Empirie – Tables of Friendship – Immanence – Conversos – Humanistic Peripheries – Hiddenness – Educing Illich – Utopia – As “It” Perpetuates – Freedom and Intelligence – Milking the Family Goat – Dreamers – A Promise – Quandaries – Tradition – Epoche – After Deschooling … – … What? – The Laic and the Ecclesial – Processed Emancipation(s) – Beneath God’s Nose – “Progressive conservative” – Philosophia Perennis – The Convivial Challenge – Learning – Equality, Liberty and Meaning – Theory, Choice and Common Sense – Damned Assumptions – Opinionated Evidence – The Three-Legged Stool – Kant’s Futuring – Lewis and Marx – Within the Spheres – Reform – Idolatrous Hypotheses – Colored Circles – Returning (to) Form – Shadow-Less Affairs – Abolished Worlds – Contingency – Golgotha’s khora – Kenotic Tools – After Contingency’s Sunset – Metaphor and Agency – Watersheds – Synchronically Possible – Franciscan Hope? – Disestablishment – A Journey’s Ends – Tools of Possibility – A Changed Nemesis – Myth and Transparency – Constructed Equity – Fabled Worlds – A Tomorrow without a Future – Responsibility – Algorithms – Neighbors and Foreigners – Maritain’s Beautiful Face – Beyond Sinful Planning – Bibliography – Index.

“Another outstanding monograph by John Baldacchino. A fresh, thorough and truly comprehensive work on Ivan Illich, an interdisciplinary theorist who is particularly relevant to our age given the massive problems we face with politicians and institutions. Baldacchino insightfully explains and justifies the theological foundation of Illich’s work, a foundation that strongly defines Illich’s crucial understanding of dissent and conviviality.”—John P. Portelli, Professor, OISE, University of Toronto