Living in the Age of Imposed Amnesia: The Eclipse of Democratic Formative Culture
The importance of formative culture as a mode of civic education in the shaping of democratic values and critical agents can be found in the work of many theorists extending from Mills and Raymond Williams to Castoriadis and Wolin. What all of these theorists share is the recognition that pedagogy is central to any viable notion of politics and that various cultural and media sites help produce new subjects, who are summoned to inhabit the values, dreams and social relations of an already established social order. All of these theorists understand that the educational force of the wider culture and the sites in which it is produced and distributed demand a radical rethinking of politics itself. They all argue that education in the broadest sense – especially in light of the cultural centrality of the new media and the Internet in particular – must be viewed as essential to making connections between learning and social change and to comprehending fully the politics of the present historical conjuncture and the need to assert the claims of justice and democracy.
Learning Community 