Résumés
Abstract
Neo-liberalism’s greatest strength as an ideological force has been its ability to traverse boundaries, adapt and adopt customs and cultures, and inflect the central premise of individualism, competition, and capital creation into all manner of non-market spaces. In this article, I argue that Heidegger’s rendering of “idle talk” furnishes a useful prism for understanding the current conditions of neo-liberal influences in education. I offer two analyses of what it means to be in a time and place that is enframed by discourses of neo-liberalism and the material conditions of capitalism. First, I describe how thrown conditions in education reflect a preoccupation with a limited, neo-liberal view of what it means to care or be concerned. Second, I suggest that alternatives to neo-liberalism are less available because of impoverished conceptions of what it means to understand. I conclude with the argument that, despite the dire ontic conditions, there is much opportunity to contemplate what comes next for exploring alternative educational futures.
Keywords:
- neo-liberalism,
- capitalism,
- ontology,
- Heidegger
Résumé
La plus grande force idéologique du néolibéralisme tient à sa capacité à traverser les frontières, à s’adapter aux cultures, à adopter des coutumes, et à infléchir les prémisses centrales de l’individualisme, de la concurrence et de la création de capital dans toutes sortes d’espaces non commerciaux. Dans cet article, j’argumente que l’interprétation rendue par Heidegger des «bavardages » (idle talk) constitue un prisme d’exploration utile pour comprendre les influences néolibérales qui s’exercent actuellement dans le domaine de l’éducation. Je présente deux analyses de ce que cela signifie d’être dans un temps et dans un lieu définis par des discours empreints de néolibéralisme et par des conditions matérielles de capitalisme. Tout d’abord, je décris comment la vision néolibérale restreinte de ce que signifie «se soucier» ou «se sentir concerné» se reflète dans le contexte éducatif. Ensuite, je montre qu’il existe moins d’options au néolibéralisme en raison des conceptions appauvries de ce que signifie «comprendre». En conclusion, je soutiens qu’en dépit de conditions ontiques graves, les occasions sont nombreuses, par l’exploration d’autres possibilités, d’envisager un avenir différent en matière d’éducation.
Mots-clés :
- néolibéralisme,
- capitalisme,
- Heidegger,
- ontologie
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Apple, M. W. (2006a). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality (2nd ed.). Routledge.
- Apple, M. W. (2006b). Understanding and interrupting neoliberalism and neoconservatism in education. Pedagogies, 1(1), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15544818ped0101_4
- Apple, M. W. (2017). What is present and absent in critical analyses of neoliberalism in education. Peabody Journal of Education, 92(1), 148–153. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26158534
- Bhattacharya, A. (2010). Children and adolescents from poverty and reading development: A research review. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 26(2), 115–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573560903547445
- Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
- Biesta, G. (2016). Who’s afraid of teaching? Heidegger and the question of education (‘Bildung’/‘Erziehung’). Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 832–845. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1165017
- Biesta, G. (2019). What kind of society does the school need? Redefining the democratic work of education in impatient times. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(6), 657–668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09675-y
- Biesta, G. (2024). From the point where I stand to the place where I can be found: The critique of perspectival reason as philosophy for education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2024.2435336
- Bracke, S. (2016). Is the subaltern resilient? Notes on agency and neoliberal subjects. Cultural Studies, 30(5), 839–855. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2016.1168115
- Brown, W. (2011). Neoliberalized knowledge. History of the Present, 1(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.1.1.0113
- Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books.
- Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press.
- Buckingham, D. (2020). Epilogue: Rethinking digital literacy: Media education in the age of digital capitalism. Digital Education Review, 37, 230–239. https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2020.37.230-239
- Carnoy, M. (2011). As higher education expands, is it contributing to greater inequality? National Institute Economic Review, 215(1), R34–R47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0027950111401142
- Critchley, S., & Schürmann, R. (2008). On Heidegger’s Being and Time (S. Levine, Ed.). Routledge.
- Curtis, N. (2013). Thought bubble: Neoliberalism and the politics of knowledge. New Formations, 80(80), 73–88. https://doi.org/10.3898/NEWF.80/81.04.2013
- Di Giovanni, A., & Parker, L. (2024). Is it a choice? Examining neoliberal influences in three Ontario education reforms. Critical Education, 15(2), 52–74. https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v15i2.186892
- Di Giovanni, A., & Parker, L. (2025). Three case studies of the language used to justify recent neoliberal and neoconservative curriculum reform. Canadian Journal of Education Administration and Policy, 206, 72–93.
- Ecalle, J., Magnan, A., & Gibert, F. (2006). Class size effects on literacy skills and literacy interest in first grade: A large-scale investigation. Journal of School Psychology, 44(3), 191–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2006.03.002
- Enslin, P., & Hedge, N. (2024). Decolonizing higher education: The university in the new age of Empire. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 58(2-3), 227–241. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhad052
- Farias, V. (1989). Heidegger and Nazism. Temple University Press.
- Gardner, D. (2010). Future babble: Why expert predictions fail and why we believe them anyway. McClelland & Stewart.
- Gerver, R. (2014). Creating tomorrow’s schools today: Education, our children, their futures. Bloomsbury.
- Giroux, H. A. (2007). Beyond neoliberal common sense: Cultural politics and public pedagogy in dark times. JAC: A Journal of Compositional Theory, 27, 11–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20866768
- Giroux, H. A. (2011). The disappearing intellectual in the age of economic Darwinism. Policy Futures in Education, 9(2), 163–171. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2011.9.2.163
- Giroux, H. A. (2016). Public intellectuals against the neoliberal university. In N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry outside the academy (pp. 35–60). Routledge.
- Giroux, H. (2023). The right-wing’s Dirty War against history and education: Beyond the politics of disappearance. Fast Capitalism, 20(1), 72–85. https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/article/view/484
- Goldmann, L. (1977). Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a new philosophy. Routledge.
- Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? Harper & Row.
- Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology (W. Lovitt, Trans.). In The question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 3–35). Garland Publishing.
- Heidegger, M. (2001). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Blackwell. (Original work published in 1927)
- Heidegger, M. (2009). Letter to William J. Richardson. In G. Figal (Ed.), The Heidegger reader (pp. 298–304). Indiana University Press.
- Herskowitz, D. M. (2020). Between exclusion and intersection: Heidegger’s philosophy and Jewish Volkism. The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 65(1), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybz018
- Hill, D. (2013). Marxist essays on neoliberalism, class, ‘race’, capitalism and education. Institute for Education Policy Studies.
- Hill, D., & Kumar, R. (Eds.). (2009). Global neoliberalism and education and its consequences. Routledge.
- Hodge, S. (2015). Martin Heidegger: Challenge to education. Springer.
- Irwin, R. (2015). Environmental education, Heidegger and the significance of poetics. Policy Futures in Education, 13(1), 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210315580221
- Janzen, M., & Heringer, R. (2023). Who is the “student”? A critical analysis of neoliberal education reform legislation. Canadian Journal of Education, 46(3), 545–569. https://doi.org/10.53967/cje-rce.5641
- Joronen, M. (2013). Conceptualising new modes of state governmentality: Power, violence and the ontological mono-politics of neoliberalism. Geopolitics, 18(2), 356–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.723289
- Karademir, A. (2013). Heidegger and Nazism: On the relation between German conservatism, Heidegger, and the National Socialist ideology. The Philosophical Forum, 44(2), 99–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/phil.12005
- Lazonick, W. (2015). Labor in the twenty-first century: The top 0.1% and the disappearing middle-class (Working Paper Series No. 4). Institute for New Economic Thinking. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2586239
- Le Blanc, P. (2008). Lenin: Revolution, democracy, socialism. Pluto.
- Lee, S. (2024). The OECD’s new discourse of curriculum reform: Student agency, competency, colonization, and translation. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 58(2-3), 321–342. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhae030
- Levinas, E. (1989). Is ontology fundamental? Philosophy Today, 33(2), 121–129.
- Lewis, T. E. (2017). Study time: Heidegger and the temporality of education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(1), 230–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12208
- Littler, J. (2013). Meritocracy as plutocracy: The marketising of ‘equality’ under neoliberalism. New Formations, 80(80), 52–72. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/529452
- Lumsden, S. (2014). Self-consciousness and the critique of the subject: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Poststructuralists. Columbia University Press.
- Marcuse, H. (2005). Heideggerian Marxism. University of Nebraska Press.
- Mertel, K. C. (2020). Heidegger, technology and education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(2), 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12419
- Morales-Doyle, D., & Gutstein, E. “R.” (2019). Racial capitalism and STEM education in Chicago public schools. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(4), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592840
- Mortari, L. (2016). For a pedagogy of care. Philosophy Study, 6(8), 455–463.
- Neumann, R. (2012). Socialism in high school social studies textbooks. The Social Studies, 103(1), 31–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.566590
- Noddings, N. (2005). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. Teachers College Press.
- Norris, T. (2006). Hannah Arendt & Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the consumer society. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 25, 457–477. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-006-0014-z
- Nxumalo, F., Nayak, P., & Tuck, E. (2022). Education and ecological precarity: Pedagogical, curricular, and conceptual provocations. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.2052634
- Oberhaus, L. (2015). Body–music–being: Making music as bodily being in the world. In F. Pio & Ø. Varkøy (Eds.), Philosophy of music education challenged: Heideggerian inspirations (pp. 101–112). Springer.
- O’Brien, M. (2010). Re-assessing the ‘affair’: The Heidegger controversy revisited. The Social Science Journal, 47(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2009.08.002
- Olafson, F. A. (2000). Heidegger’s thought and Nazism. Inquiry, 43(3), 271–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/002017400414863
- Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20(3), 313–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930500108718
- Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2022). Right to read: Public inquiry into human rights issues affecting students with reading disabilities. https://www3.ohrc.on.ca/sites/default/files/FINAL%20R2R%20REPORT%20DESIGNED%20April%2012.pdf
- Park, E., Orum Hernández, G., & Lee, S. J. (2022). Asian Americans and the battle against affirmative action: Opposition to race-based admissions as neoliberal racial subjectivity performance. Race Ethnicity and Education, 27(4), 474–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2022.2154331
- Parker, L. (2020). Literacy in the post-truth era: The significance of affect and the ethical encounter. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(6), 613–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1803834
- Parker, L. (2023). Making the most of it: Thinking about educational time with Hägglund and Levinas. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 57(6), 1147–1160. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhad067
- Parker, L. (2025). Arriving thrown: The facticity and challenges of dwelling as migrant child. In W. Kalisha & T. Szkudlarek (Eds.), Educating the next generation: Reflections on crises, migration, and education (pp. 45–58). Springer.
- Peters, M. A. (2000). Heidegger, Derrida, and the new humanities. In G. Biesta & D. Egea Kuehne (Eds.), Derrida and education (pp. 209–230). Routledge.
- Peters, M. A. (Ed.). (2002). Heidegger, education and modernity. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Peters, M. A. (2012). Neoliberalism, education and the crisis of western capitalism. Policy Futures in Education, 10(2), 134–141. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2012.10.2.134
- Peters, M. A. (2021). Neoliberalism as political discourse: The political arithmetic of homo oeconomicus. In M. Sardoč (Ed.), The impacts of neoliberal discourse and language in education (pp. 69–85). Routledge.
- Peters, M., & Irwin, R. (2002). Earthsongs: Ecopoetics, Heidegger and dwelling. The Trumpeter, 18(1), 1–17. https://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/116
- Quay, J. (2013). Education, experience and existence: Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger. Routledge.
- Richardson, J. (2012). Heidegger. Routledge.
- Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge.
- Säfström, C. A., & Månsson, N. (2022). The marketisation of education and the democratic deficit. European Educational Research Journal, 21(1), 124–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041211011293
- Sandel, M. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What’s become of the common good? Penguin.
- Sardoč, M. (2022). The rebranding of neoliberalism. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(11), 1727–1731. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1823212
- Savage, G. (2017). Neoliberalism, education and curriculum. In B. Gobby & R. Walker (Eds.), Powers of curriculum: Sociological perspectives on education (pp. 143–165). Oxford University Press.
- Schumacher, P. J. (1990). Art for existence’s sake: A Heideggerian revision. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 24(2), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332787
- Smith, K., & Parker, L. (2021). Reconfiguring literacies in the age of misinformation and disinformation. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 17(2), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2025.2499222
- Smyth, B., & Westerman, R. (Eds.). (2022). Marxism and phenomenology: The dialectical horizons. Lexington Books.
- Sokol, M. (2021, July 14). Florida education board approves new school standards. Tampa Bay Times. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2021/07/14/florida-education-board-approves-new-school-standards/
- Soler, J. (2016). The politics of the teaching of reading. Prospects, 46, 423–433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-017-9415-8
- Stickney, J. A. (2020). Seeing trees: Investigating poetics of place-based, aesthetic environmental education with Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(5), 1278–1305. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12491
- Stiglitz, J. E. (2025). The origins of inequality, and policies to contain it. Oxford University Press.
- Strubell, E., Ganesh, A., & McCallum, A. (2019). Energy and policy considerations for deep learning in NLP. In Proceedings of the 57th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 3645–3650). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/P19-1355.pdf
- Tašner, V., & Gaber, S. (2022). Is it time for a new meritocracy? Theory and Research in Education, 20(2), 182–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785221113619
- Thomson, I. (2002). Heidegger on ontological education, or how we become what we are. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Heidegger, education, and modernity (pp. 123–150). Rowman & Littlefield.
- Venn, C. (2009). Neoliberal political economy, biopolitics and colonialism: A transcolonial genealogy of inequality. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 206–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409352194
- Weinstein, M., Blades, D., & Gleason, S. C. (2016). Questioning power: Deframing the STEM discourse. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 16(2), 201–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/14926156.2016.1166294
- Wilkins, A. (2012). The spectre of neoliberalism: pedagogy, gender and the construction of learner identities. Critical Studies in Education, 53(2), 197–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2012.672332
- Wolin, R. (Ed.). (1993). The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader. MIT Press.
- Yacek, D. W., & Jonas, M. E. (2019). The problem of student disengagement: Struggle, escapism and Nietzsche’s birth of tragedy. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 26(1), 64–87. https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/1051
- Yoon, E.-S. (2020). School choice research and politics with Pierre Bourdieu: New possibilities. Educational Policy, 34(1), 193–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904819881153
- Yosef-Hassidim, D., & Sharma, M. (2019). Neoliberalism in websites of schools of education and teacher education programs: Comparison between Canadian and American public universities. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 64(4), 411–440. https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v64i4.56594

