Performativity, Politics and Education: From Policy to Philosophy provides a critique of educational policies and practices underpinned by the logic of performativity and offers an alternative approach grounded in a philosophy of hope, a valuing of collegiality over competition, and an ongoing commitment to intellectual dialogue.

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week Judith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailing economic and political conditions, analyzing what they signify and how. Understanding assemblies as plural forms of performative action, Butler extends her theory of performativity to argue that precarity—the destruction of the conditions of livability—has been a galvanizing force and theme in today’s highly visible protests. “Butler’s book is everything that a book about our planet in the 21st century should be. It does not turn its back on the circumstances of the material world or give any succour to those who wish to view the present (and the future) through the lens of fantasies about the transformative possibilities offered by conventional politics Butler demonstrates a clear engagement with an aspect of the world that is becoming in many political contexts almost illicit to discuss: the idea that capitalism, certainly in its neoliberal form, is failing to provide a liveable life for the majority of human beings.” —Mary Evans, Times Higher Education “A heady immersion into the thought of one of today’s most profound philosophers of action...This is a call for a truly transformative politics, and its relevance to the fraught struggles taking place in today’s streets and public spaces around the world cannot be denied.” —Hans Rollman, PopMatters

Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity breaks new ground by presenting a range of approaches to understanding the role, function, impact, and presence of performance in education. It is a definitive contribution to a beginning dialogue on how performance, as a theoretical and pragmatic lens, can be used to view the processes, procedures, and politics of education. The conceptual framework of the volume is the editors' argument that performance and performativity help to locate and describe repetitive actions plotted within grids of power relationships and social norms that comprise the context of education and schooling. The book brings together performance studies and education researchers, teachers, and scholars to investigate such topics as: *the relationship between performance and performativity in pedagogical practice; *the nature and impact of performing identities in varying contexts; *cultural and community configurations that fall under the umbrella of teaching, education, and schooling; and *the hot button issues of educational policies and reform as performances. With the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the effect, affect, and role of performance in education, the volume provides a crucial starting point for discourse among theorists and teacher practitioners who are interested in understanding and acknowledging the politics of performance and the practices of performative social identities that always and already intervene in the educational endeavor.

The economy is commonly described either as the apolitical realm of calculation or as the fully political one of domination. This book scrutinizes the ways in which the economy is performed, in order to situate where precisely politics is located with regard to economic matters. Politics, the book demonstrates, thus appears at the turning point, in the place where the efficiency of economics is negotiated and where the need to forward it, reshape it, and complement it emerges. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy.

This book discusses affective practices in performance through the study of four contemporary performers – Keith Hennessy, Ilya Noé, Caro Novella, and duskin drum – to suggest a tentative rhetoric of performativity generating political affect and permeating attempts at social justice that are often alterior to discourse. The first part of the book makes a case for the political work done alongside discourse by performers practising with materials that are not-known, in ways that are directly relevant to people carrying out their daily lives. In the second part of the book, four case study chapters circle around figures of irresolvable paradox – hendiadys, enthymeme, anecdote, allegory – that gesture to what is not-known, to study strategies for processes of becoming, knowing and valuing. These figures also shape some elements of these performances that make up a suggested rhetorical stance for performativity.

This book focuses on key contemporary discourses related to sexualities and schooling. Such discourses include: educational strategies used to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students; considerations of how educators might influence students' sexual identity; narratives of risk and violence often asociated with LGBT youth; stories of salvation and protection; as well as debates relating to the 'closet' and calls to 'come out' in the classroom. People often are left out of discussions of sexualities and schooling are also incorporated in this text.

In academia, the effects of the "cultural turn" have been felt deeply. In everyday life, tenets from cultural politics have influenced how people behave or regard their options for action, such as the reconfiguration of social movements, protests, and praxis in general. Many authors writing in this field are known for their scholarship and social activism, both of which are arguably guided by principles of cultural politics about the nature of representation and the deployment of power in political discourses. The Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education is less an attempt to standardize contemporary educational scholarship and more a collection that engages the problems and promises of recent themes in social and cultural thought, which require our attention and demand a response. In other words, it opens doors to questions rather than convenient answers to difficult educational dilemmas. The Handbook is part of the appraisal of an opening created by interdisciplinary writings on such themes as representation, civil society, cultural struggle, subjectivity, and media within the context of education. Indeed cultural politics troubles traditional frameworks in search of critical explanations concerning education's place within society. The contributions in the collection support this endeavor. "In these difficult times, critical pedagogy needs all the theoretical inspiration it can muster. This formidable collection of provocative texts, skillfully edited by Zeus Leonardo, draws on a wide range of ideas from leading contemporary theorists and imaginatively applies their lessons to the thorny problems of the real world." - Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. "This volume is a cutting-edge contribution to the study of cultural politics in education. Chapter authors affirm the critical role of culture as a set of material practices; they excavate and develop foundational thinking on ideology, discourse, race, and the array of post-studies in social theory. The book is at once an accessible introduction to, and a brilliant advancement of, the field of cultural analysis." - Jean Anyon, Professor of Urban Education at City University of New York, Graduate Center and author of Ghetto Schooling.