Utopia and Education in Critical Theory

In this article the author examines the intimate connections between utopia and education in Frankfurt School critical theory. Although substantial links have been made in the critical pedagogy tradition between education, critique, and utopian dreaming, an in- depth analysis of the utopia-education matrix in the works of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson enriches our current understanding of this topic in several key ways. Marcuse enables us to envision play as a possible praxis for revitalizing utopian longings while Adorno's focus on anxiety offers a sound corrective to the overemphasis on hope in utopian scholarship. Finally, Jameson mediates many of the differences arising between Marcuse and Adorno to fashion a post-utopian utopianism for late capitalism. David Halpin has recently argued (2003) that educational reform is inherently linked with utopianism through the faculty of 'ultimate hope.' Ultimate or aimed hope generates innovation in teaching and orients students towards personal improvement and the 'Good' of society. Here, utopia comes to be a powerful language of ultimate hope, providing an alternative vision to prevalent narratives of educational decline. Without this connection between teaching and utopia, education empties itself of its principal driving force, leaving teachers in a state of professional melancholia and professional distress. Likewise, Ivana Milojevic argues that the utopian spirit manifests itself in multiple (even anti-utopian) forms of educational practice (2003). Although recent history might suggest that this utopian kernel has disappeared from educational discourse, utopianism for Milojevic has simply become covert, secretly animating school reform on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Key here is that utopia must be taken into account in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic visions of educational renewal, and thus utopia should become a central concern in educational debates. While Haplin and Milojevic both state that educational practices must include a moment of ultimate hope (and thus a gesture towards a utopian horizon), I would argue that the reverse also holds true: utopianism is inherently interconnected with the question of education. This statement is more than a simple reversal. My equation points out that while all educational practices have a utopian kernel animating them (this kernel ranges from leftist calls for revolutionary critical pedagogies of radical hope to conservative system building fueled by policy proclamations such as No Child Left Behind), so too all attempts to theorize or represent utopia are located in an inherently educational problematic of 're-education' (whether this be bodily senses, social knowledge, or collective interactions). Certainly, Halpin and Milojevic are correct in chastising current educational philosophy for underestimating this connection, and likewise a similar charge can be leveled against utopian scholars past and present for marginalizing education as a mere question of content rather than an inherent feature of the utopian form itself (Ozmon (1969) is a possible exception here). Education and utopia necessarily imply one another (hence the relation between educational philosophy and Plato's Republic or the structurating function of the guide/educator in the work of classical utopian writers from Thomas More to William Morris); the question revolves around establishing exactly what this connection is and how it articulates itself given the historical limitations (and possibilities) of particular situations.