Alexander J Means
Biographic Data
| ID | 3693054 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander J Means |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander J |
| FAMILY NAME | Means |
| SIGNATURE | MEANS A J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2452-7870 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 55 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Contesting the new right’s global war on education: Toward an antifascist metapolitics
Teaching beyond dread
Beyond epistemic exodus in educational studies: A response to Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball
This article is a response to recent work by Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball who have argued that modern schools are intolerable and irredeemable and therefore must be abandoned. Basing their project in Foucault, they have advocated for an alternative project of commoning a new episteme in education based in self-formation. I argue that this represents a more general problem in educational studies, particularly in new materialism and post t…
Beyond a world of dread: A conversation with David Theo Goldberg
Defending a future university to come
The Postdigital-Biodigital Revolution
Cultural studies, education, and the apocalyptic threat of war (Vol. 44, No. 2)
Radical studying for another world: A conversation with Eli Meyerhoff
The following is a conversation between Eli Meyerhoff, Amy Sojot, and Alexander Means. The three discuss ideas from Meyerhoff’s Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) a groundbreaking work of political theory that challenges received liberal, progressive, and radical approaches to the university and to pedagogy. The conversation touches on a number themes such as study and world making, universi…
After Brexit and Aukus’: Twitter-inspired collective writing on geopolitics of an emerging multipolar world
Collective Disorientation and Catastrophic Precarity in the Hypermodern Era
Who can imagine a future today? Any sense of progress, or belief in the future, appears as merely another exclusive privilege of the ultrarich. Time seems to be accelerating faster than catastrophic trajectories can be metabolized. Meanwhile, hypermodern capitalism is eroding its own conditions of possibility, intensifying historical injuries and societal fractures, and destabilizing modern assumptions regarding space, time, and security. The sup…
Collective disorientation in the pandemic conjuncture
In its far-reaching impacts on global life, encroaching upon seemingly every aspect of social totality, the COVID-19 pandemic is an urgent topic for cultural studies. This article situates the pandemic within a historical conjuncture in which various post-neoliberal formations are being struggled over. These emergent formations will in turn be indelibly impacted by the pandemic’s social, cultural, and political economic dimensions. Key to this un…
World, planet, territory: Toward a geo-logic in the critical sociology of education
Despite proliferating attention within the social sciences toward the sources and consequences of climate change and environmental crises, educational sociologists have been slow to confront ecological questions. This omission may seem surprising given the prominence of global perspectives within the field. However, we argue, such a focus is emblematic of the discipline’s sociocentrism and anthropocentrism. Against such a reified sense of the fie…
Foucault, biopolitics, and the critique of state reason
The concept of biopolitics was first outlined by Michel Foucault (2003, 2007, 2009) in his lectures at the College de France in the late 1970s in order to name and analyze emergent logics of power
Public intellectuals in the age of viral modernity: An Epat collective writing project
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and Theory on 07/12/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2010543 \nThe accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version
The China-threat discourse, trade, and the future of Asia. A Symposium
Michael A. PetersOnce commentators and policy-makers divest themselves of deep cultural Western assumptions that only democracies can prosper economically, or that capitalism and liberal democracy
Empire and education
Hardt and Negri’s Empire series (2000, 2004, 2009, 2016) has inspired twenty years of debate and experimentation across the social sciences and humanities in fields as divergent as international re
Education after empire: A biopolitical analytics of capital, nation, and identity
As it emerged in the late twentieth century, Empire promised a new era of global cooperation and stability through a seamless integration of late capitalism and neoliberal technocracy. Premised as an end to history itself, all that was left to accomplish was to tinker at the margins, stimulate corporate enterprise, embrace financialization and technological innovation, and encourage liberal rights and inclusion. As we enter the third decade of th…
A dialogue with Michael Hardt on revolution, joy, and learning to let go
In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—c…
Education and Technological Unemployment
Hypermodernity, automated uncertainty, and education policy trajectories
This paper examines how elite transnational policy and research organizations are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on research reports by the Organizatio…
The dark mirror of capital: On Post-Neoliberal Formations and the Future of Education
This paper examines how transformations in political economy and digital technology point toward potential post-neoliberal futures. Outlining the contours of a crisis of neoliberal hegemony, the authors explore how technological developments have contributed to political economic dynamics of market failure and oligarchic capture, resulting in new forms of digital precarity. As evidence, the paper examines a specific post-neoliberal discourse call…
Generational Precarity, Education, and the Crisis of Capitalism: Conventional, Neo-Keynesian, and Marxian Perspectives
In the wake of the global financial crisis, societies across the world are attempting to manage potentially destabilizing levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. New terms have entered the popular lexicon such as ‘generation jobless’, ‘the new underclass’, and ‘the precariat’ in order to describe a generation of young people struggling to acquire secure livelihoods in the most dismal labor market since the Great Depression. This article…
Netflixing human capital development: Personalized learning technology and the corporatization of K-12 education
Advanced by powerful venture philanthropies, educational technology companies, and the US Department of Education, a growing movement to apply ‘big data’ through ‘learning analytics’ to create ‘personalized learning’ is currently underway in K-12 education in the United States. While scholars have offered various critiques of the corporate school reform agenda, the role of personalized learning technology in the corporatization of public educatio…
Educational commons and the new radical democratic imaginary
This article reflects on emergent (radical-progressive) languages of democracy to consider what common educational institutions might mean today. It explores distinct philosophical and political tensions that cut across these languages in relation to educational organization and pedagogy including – antagonism versus exodus, transcendence versus immanence, pluralism versus multiplicity, democracy versus communism. In contrast to other theorists i…
Beyond the poverty of national security: Toward a critical human security perspective in educational policy
This article examines the intersecting logics of human capital and national security underpinning the corporate school reform movement in the United States. Taking a 2012 policy report by the Council on Foreign Relations as an entry point, it suggests that these logics are incoherent not only on their own narrow instrumental terms, but also more importantly in terms of progressive ideals of human and educational flourishing. The article proceeds …
Netflixing human capital development: Personalized learning technology and the corporatization of K-12 education
Advanced by powerful venture philanthropies, educational technology companies, and the US Department of Education, a growing movement to apply ‘big data’ through ‘learning analytics’ to create ‘personalized learning’ is currently underway in K-12 education in the United States. While scholars have offered various critiques of the corporate school reform agenda, the role of personalized learning technology in the corporatization of public educatio…
Generational Precarity, Education, and the Crisis of Capitalism: Conventional, Neo-Keynesian, and Marxian Perspectives
In the wake of the global financial crisis, societies across the world are attempting to manage potentially destabilizing levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. New terms have entered the popular lexicon such as ‘generation jobless’, ‘the new underclass’, and ‘the precariat’ in order to describe a generation of young people struggling to acquire secure livelihoods in the most dismal labor market since the Great Depression. This article…
The dark mirror of capital: On Post-Neoliberal Formations and the Future of Education
This paper examines how transformations in political economy and digital technology point toward potential post-neoliberal futures. Outlining the contours of a crisis of neoliberal hegemony, the authors explore how technological developments have contributed to political economic dynamics of market failure and oligarchic capture, resulting in new forms of digital precarity. As evidence, the paper examines a specific post-neoliberal discourse call…
Beyond epistemic exodus in educational studies: A response to Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball
This article is a response to recent work by Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball who have argued that modern schools are intolerable and irredeemable and therefore must be abandoned. Basing their project in Foucault, they have advocated for an alternative project of commoning a new episteme in education based in self-formation. I argue that this represents a more general problem in educational studies, particularly in new materialism and post t…
The China-threat discourse, trade, and the future of Asia. A Symposium
Michael A. PetersOnce commentators and policy-makers divest themselves of deep cultural Western assumptions that only democracies can prosper economically, or that capitalism and liberal democracy
Collective Disorientation and Catastrophic Precarity in the Hypermodern Era
Who can imagine a future today? Any sense of progress, or belief in the future, appears as merely another exclusive privilege of the ultrarich. Time seems to be accelerating faster than catastrophic trajectories can be metabolized. Meanwhile, hypermodern capitalism is eroding its own conditions of possibility, intensifying historical injuries and societal fractures, and destabilizing modern assumptions regarding space, time, and security. The sup…
Public intellectuals in the age of viral modernity: An Epat collective writing project
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and Theory on 07/12/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2010543 \nThe accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version
Educational commons and the new radical democratic imaginary
This article reflects on emergent (radical-progressive) languages of democracy to consider what common educational institutions might mean today. It explores distinct philosophical and political tensions that cut across these languages in relation to educational organization and pedagogy including – antagonism versus exodus, transcendence versus immanence, pluralism versus multiplicity, democracy versus communism. In contrast to other theorists i…
Beyond the poverty of national security: Toward a critical human security perspective in educational policy
This article examines the intersecting logics of human capital and national security underpinning the corporate school reform movement in the United States. Taking a 2012 policy report by the Council on Foreign Relations as an entry point, it suggests that these logics are incoherent not only on their own narrow instrumental terms, but also more importantly in terms of progressive ideals of human and educational flourishing. The article proceeds …
A dialogue with Michael Hardt on revolution, joy, and learning to let go
In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—c…
Hypermodernity, automated uncertainty, and education policy trajectories
This paper examines how elite transnational policy and research organizations are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on research reports by the Organizatio…
Defending a future university to come
Foucault, biopolitics, and the critique of state reason
The concept of biopolitics was first outlined by Michel Foucault (2003, 2007, 2009) in his lectures at the College de France in the late 1970s in order to name and analyze emergent logics of power
Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the Struggle for Democratic Life
Through a case study in a Chicago public school, Means demonstrates that, despite the fragmentation of human security in low-income and racially segregated public schools, there exist positive social
Educational commons and the new radical democratic imaginary
This article reflects on emergent (radical-progressive) languages of democracy to consider what common educational institutions might mean today. It explores distinct philosophical and political tensions that cut across these languages in relation to educational organization and pedagogy including – antagonism versus exodus, transcendence versus immanence, pluralism versus multiplicity, democracy versus communism. In contrast to other theorists i…
Beyond the poverty of national security: Toward a critical human security perspective in educational policy
This article examines the intersecting logics of human capital and national security underpinning the corporate school reform movement in the United States. Taking a 2012 policy report by the Council on Foreign Relations as an entry point, it suggests that these logics are incoherent not only on their own narrow instrumental terms, but also more importantly in terms of progressive ideals of human and educational flourishing. The article proceeds …
Netflixing human capital development: Personalized learning technology and the corporatization of K-12 education
Advanced by powerful venture philanthropies, educational technology companies, and the US Department of Education, a growing movement to apply ‘big data’ through ‘learning analytics’ to create ‘personalized learning’ is currently underway in K-12 education in the United States. While scholars have offered various critiques of the corporate school reform agenda, the role of personalized learning technology in the corporatization of public educatio…
Generational Precarity, Education, and the Crisis of Capitalism: Conventional, Neo-Keynesian, and Marxian Perspectives
In the wake of the global financial crisis, societies across the world are attempting to manage potentially destabilizing levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. New terms have entered the popular lexicon such as ‘generation jobless’, ‘the new underclass’, and ‘the precariat’ in order to describe a generation of young people struggling to acquire secure livelihoods in the most dismal labor market since the Great Depression. This article…
Education and Technological Unemployment
Hypermodernity, automated uncertainty, and education policy trajectories
This paper examines how elite transnational policy and research organizations are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on research reports by the Organizatio…
The dark mirror of capital: On Post-Neoliberal Formations and the Future of Education
This paper examines how transformations in political economy and digital technology point toward potential post-neoliberal futures. Outlining the contours of a crisis of neoliberal hegemony, the authors explore how technological developments have contributed to political economic dynamics of market failure and oligarchic capture, resulting in new forms of digital precarity. As evidence, the paper examines a specific post-neoliberal discourse call…
Empire and education
Hardt and Negri’s Empire series (2000, 2004, 2009, 2016) has inspired twenty years of debate and experimentation across the social sciences and humanities in fields as divergent as international re
Education after empire: A biopolitical analytics of capital, nation, and identity
As it emerged in the late twentieth century, Empire promised a new era of global cooperation and stability through a seamless integration of late capitalism and neoliberal technocracy. Premised as an end to history itself, all that was left to accomplish was to tinker at the margins, stimulate corporate enterprise, embrace financialization and technological innovation, and encourage liberal rights and inclusion. As we enter the third decade of th…
A dialogue with Michael Hardt on revolution, joy, and learning to let go
In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—c…
Collective disorientation in the pandemic conjuncture
In its far-reaching impacts on global life, encroaching upon seemingly every aspect of social totality, the COVID-19 pandemic is an urgent topic for cultural studies. This article situates the pandemic within a historical conjuncture in which various post-neoliberal formations are being struggled over. These emergent formations will in turn be indelibly impacted by the pandemic’s social, cultural, and political economic dimensions. Key to this un…
World, planet, territory: Toward a geo-logic in the critical sociology of education
Despite proliferating attention within the social sciences toward the sources and consequences of climate change and environmental crises, educational sociologists have been slow to confront ecological questions. This omission may seem surprising given the prominence of global perspectives within the field. However, we argue, such a focus is emblematic of the discipline’s sociocentrism and anthropocentrism. Against such a reified sense of the fie…
Foucault, biopolitics, and the critique of state reason
The concept of biopolitics was first outlined by Michel Foucault (2003, 2007, 2009) in his lectures at the College de France in the late 1970s in order to name and analyze emergent logics of power
Public intellectuals in the age of viral modernity: An Epat collective writing project
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and Theory on 07/12/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2010543 \nThe accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version
The China-threat discourse, trade, and the future of Asia. A Symposium
Michael A. PetersOnce commentators and policy-makers divest themselves of deep cultural Western assumptions that only democracies can prosper economically, or that capitalism and liberal democracy
The Postdigital-Biodigital Revolution
Cultural studies, education, and the apocalyptic threat of war (Vol. 44, No. 2)
Radical studying for another world: A conversation with Eli Meyerhoff
The following is a conversation between Eli Meyerhoff, Amy Sojot, and Alexander Means. The three discuss ideas from Meyerhoff’s Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) a groundbreaking work of political theory that challenges received liberal, progressive, and radical approaches to the university and to pedagogy. The conversation touches on a number themes such as study and world making, universi…
After Brexit and Aukus’: Twitter-inspired collective writing on geopolitics of an emerging multipolar world
Collective Disorientation and Catastrophic Precarity in the Hypermodern Era
Who can imagine a future today? Any sense of progress, or belief in the future, appears as merely another exclusive privilege of the ultrarich. Time seems to be accelerating faster than catastrophic trajectories can be metabolized. Meanwhile, hypermodern capitalism is eroding its own conditions of possibility, intensifying historical injuries and societal fractures, and destabilizing modern assumptions regarding space, time, and security. The sup…
Beyond a world of dread: A conversation with David Theo Goldberg
Defending a future university to come
Teaching beyond dread
Beyond epistemic exodus in educational studies: A response to Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball
This article is a response to recent work by Jordi Collet-Sabé and Stephen J. Ball who have argued that modern schools are intolerable and irredeemable and therefore must be abandoned. Basing their project in Foucault, they have advocated for an alternative project of commoning a new episteme in education based in self-formation. I argue that this represents a more general problem in educational studies, particularly in new materialism and post t…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political economy (7 works)