Building Other Worlds in Education Through the Radical Potency of Despair

Abstract

Over the past few decades an overwhelming sense of despair has infiltrated education. This despair, manufactured by education’s thoughtless submission to neoliberal logic exacerbates the already compromised conditions in education. Drawing on parts of my dissertation, “Cruel Optimism,” Burnt-out-souls, and the Ruptured Fantasy of Education (2021), my keynote address responds to the conference provocations, which ask us to think about ethical possibilities in education, and educators’ desires to build other worlds amidst the present conditions of education in the ruins. Inspired by F. Tony Carusi’s (2017) suggestion that despair in education might “be a condition in which ethical teaching finds new movement,” I register the radical potency of despair as a force which works to reckon with the “cruel optimism” of education (p. 642). Consequently, my talk does not join the discourse of hope in education, rather, I suggest that it is not hope that ignites educators who keep fighting the ruins of education but rather our despair. Our despair moves us. Our despair motors us onward, despite our burnt-out-souls, as we continue to stand up for the potential in education.