Material specters: International conflicts, disaster management, and educational projects

Abstract

In this essay, Marianna Papastephanou discusses three books-Michalinos Zembylas's The Politics of Trauma in Education; Sigal Ben-Porath's Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict; and Kenneth Saltman's Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools-from the perspective of the material causality of conflict and of the significance this might have for conflict resolution and the role that education may play in it. Setting out from the Derridean standpoint of spectrality, Papastephanou explores divergences and convergences of Zembylas's critical emotional praxis, Ben-Porath's counterposition of belligerent and expansive citizenship education, and Saltman's critique of educational programs that capitalize on natural disasters and wars. Papastephanou examines various operations of ontology in an interplay with hauntology (to use Jacques Derrida's terminology) and thus puts forward a critical approach to the contribution of each perspective. © 2011 Board of Trustees | University of Illinois.