Learning context underlying feeling and performing in contemporary capitalism. A pedagogical point of view Una lettura pedagogica

Abstract

The article will tackle the relationship between pedagogy and economy through two main focuses. The first one is represented by rational behaviour conceived as a calculus based on competition (as in Game Theory) outlining a certain profile of homo oeconomicus. The second one problematizes and partly contradicts the first one, posing in the foreground the dimension of “feeling” conceived as a machine – in the deleuzian sense – producing and re-producing attitudes and habitus in order to intercept and shape the imaginary. In the first case an economic scenario based on a strictly rational and antagonist perspective is settled, in the second one different forces are displaced and gathered in what Lyotard termed “libidinal economy”. The pedagogical point of view has the possibility to highlight the learning contexts proposed, encouraged and validated by these basic assumptions, facing their diffusion, subtle and unexpected, in the educational sphere.