Wednesday 24 February 2016

Posthumanism & MOOC a book by Jeremy Knox #MOOC #criticalresearch

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of receiving a manuscript for review. Although the review was limited to the first chapters, I got all excited by what Jeremy Knox had written. The book looks at MOOC and puts the within a posthumanist framework to analyse its meaning and impact. Jeremy refers to different MOOC along the way, proving his main philosophical ideas. 

The full title of the book is Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course: contaminating the subject of global education, and is written by Jeremy Knox. You can have a look at the introduction, as well as the chapters here. The book is about 220 pages and provides stimulating reading for anyone passionate about education and philosophy. The paperback costs about 32 GBP. 

From the intro: "This book is about the rise to prominence of the MOOC: its high-profile marketing and emerging approaches to research; its spatial ordering of university provision and online education; and the unprecedented number and spread of its students.
However, this book is also about the human condition: a human condition that is profoundly and intimately entwined with the ideas and practices of education, of which the MOOC is merely one.
This book draws on a well-established critique of humanism from philosophy and critical theory: critical posthumanism. It is this theoretical sensitivity that will allow the ensuing analysis to look beyond the limitations of the humanist subject in the discourses and material practices of the MOOC, and work towards new understandings of this far-reaching and technology-infused form of education.

This book uses critical posthumanism as an umbrella term for a number of specific theoretical areas, each of which will inform particular aspects of analysis in the succeeding chapters: new materialism; postcolonial intersections with posthumanism; spatial and mobilities theory; sociomaterial theory; and the idea of the ‘monstrous’ as a critical examination of the humanist ideal".