Forces of Education

Dennis Johannßen is is Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Languages and Literary Studies at Lafayette College, USA. His work has appeared in MLN, The German Quarterly, Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie, and Anthropology and Materialism. Dominik Zechner is Assistant Professor of German at the Department for German, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Brown University, USA.

• List of AbbreviationsPreface: Pedagogy and Experience in Walter Benjamin, Michael Jennings (Princeton University, USA) Editors' Introduction, Dennis Johannßen (Lafayette College, USA) and Dominik Zechner (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA)Chronicle of Benjamin's School and Student Years, Dennis Johannßen (Lafayette College, USA) and Dominik Zechner (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA)Part I: Genealogies of Learning1. Infans, Clemens-Carl Härle (University of Siena, Italy)2. Learning from Experience: Elements of Self-Criticism in Benjamin's Works, Charles Gelman (New York University, USA)3. Leitmotif Siegfried, Laurence A. Rickels (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Germany)4. The Child in Benjamin: An Enduring Lesson, Henry Sussman (Yale University, USA)Part II: Languages of Youth5. Conversational Pedagogy in Benjamin and Nietzsche, Natasha Hay (University of Toronto, Canada)6. Speaking Silence: Historical Subjectivity in Nietzsche and Benjamin, Ian Fleishman (University of Pennsylvania, USA)7. Silence, Medium, Transmission: Benjamin’s Metaphysics of Language and Youth, Adi Nester (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)8. "In Voice Land": Benjamin on Air, Ilit Ferber (Tel-Aviv University, Israel)Part III: Envisioning Pedagogical Futures9. Unfulfilled Historical Time and the Self-Pedagogy of Critique, Gerhard Richter (Brown University, USA)10. Against the Law: Youth and the Critical Pedagogy of Eternal Rebellion, Michael Powers (Macalester College, USA)11. Improvision, Thomas Schestag (Brown University, USA)12. Walter Benjamin and the Anthropocene, Nitzan Lebovic (Lehigh University, USA)List of ContributorsIndex

Recent scholarship on Benjamin has found new urgency in his writings on childhood, education, and pedagogy. The current collection of essays is a significant contribution to this growing body of literature. Anyone who reads Forces of Education will undoubtably recognize Benjamin himself as an angel of history, gazing upon the ruins of our educational institutions while nevertheless remaining in flight, propelled by the idea of education’s potential redemption.