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=What is this?=

Strictly speaking, this site is not a //wiki// in that it is not the result, either formally or functionally, of a collaborative process, and it is not open to revision by visitors. It is rather a non-linear hypertext essay, created by a single author.

Abstract Suggested Reading Order Notes ||
 * ==Contents== ||
 * Getting Started

Getting Started

 * This site is part of a Master's thesis project on anarchism and the philosophy of education.
 * It was created as a wikispace to take advantage of the internal (and, to a lesser degree, external) hyperlink functions, for the purpose of facilitating a relatively efficient introduction to the relevant concepts and arguments with which the larger project is concerned.
 * The decision to write this defense of anarchist(ic) ideas in a non-linear medium is a conscious effort to practically demonstrate them: to have both the content //and the form// of the writing reflect the values and virtues of anarchism.

= Abstract: =

Anarchism, an intensely contentious cluster of ideas and related social movements, has much to offer philosophers (and practitioners) of education, despite the difficulties that inevitably arise in any engagement with it. I will critique certain prevalent tendencies in anarchism while attempting to retrieve, clarify, expand, develop, and defend others. Specifically, i will be questioning "utopian," "counter-cultural," and "identitarian" tendencies which seem to dominate many contemporary discussions of anarchism, and i will articulate an anarchistic orientation that avoids the problems and limitations of those approaches. I will argue for a more complex, pluralistic engagement with the "paradoxical" polarities from which anarchism derives much of its dynamic potential (i will focus especially on the polarities of individuality and sociality). I will outline a spiralling conceptualization of time to illustrate the intersubjective transformation that lies at the heart of an anarchist approach to "education" as a //process//. That is, i will argue for an understanding of anarchism as both pragmatic and anagogic.

Suggested Reading Order:
I encourage readers to let themselves explore the text in whatever manner pleases them or feels intuitively right; however, certain pages do inevitably rely on others and therefore it might serve readers best to proceed in an order appropriate to the development of those particular ideas.

Specifically, the pages on complexity, time, spiral and education might be read in that order, since //a complex notion of time represented by a spiral (or helix)// is assumed in my comments about Jerome Bruner's "spiral curriculum," for example. It should go without saying that a reader may find it preferable to proceed in exactly the reverse order (or any other) depending on innumerable factors. I have striven to provide hyperlinks at every opportunity precisely to facilitate the reader's ability to engage selectively and strategically with the content (though i've also made choices of where //not// to place links, in order to invite sustained attention at certain points).

Questions?
 * Feel free to contact me if you have feedback.

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