Difference between revisions of "Ivan Illich"
From Convivial Tools Database
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Ivan Illich coined the term "Convivial Tools" in his book [[Tools for Conviviality]] (1973). | Ivan Illich coined the term "Convivial Tools" in his book [[Tools for Conviviality]] (1973). | ||
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| + | ==Early life== | ||
| + | Ivan Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. His father was a Croatian civil engineer, while his mother was from a Sephardic Jewish family, which led to Illich's being expelled from the Piaristengymnasium in Vienna by the occupying Nazis in 1941. He completed his pre-university studies in Florence, and during the war studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican, in order to enter the priesthood. He completed his PhD in 1951 at the University of Salzburg, with a dissertation on the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the nature of historical knowledge. | ||
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| + | On completing his PhD, Ivan Illich asked to be assigned as an assistant parish priest in New York City, where his part of his congregation was Puerto Rican. Illich became fluent in Spanish and spoke out for Puerto Rican culture, and against "cultural ignorance" on the part of the dominant culture. In 1956 Illich was appointed vice-rector of the Catholic University of Ponce in Puerto Rico, but was forced out of the university in 1960 when he opposed the Bishop of Ponce, who forbade Catholics to vote for Governor Luis Munoz Marin because the latter advocated state-sponsored birth control. | ||
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| + | ==CIDOC Period== | ||
| + | Illich was also opposed to Pope John XXIII’s call in 1960 for North American missionaries to "modernize" the Latin American Church. Illich saw a danger in the spread of industrial culture, believing that the popular cultures of the Third World had much too offer. Illich wanted missionaries to learn Spanish, recognize the limitations of their own cultural experiences, and learn from the host country as humble guests rather than triumphant saviors. | ||
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| + | To promote this approach, Illich sought to create a centre to train American missionaries for work in Latin America. He initially founded the Centre for Intercultural Formation at Fordham University, but he wanted the institution to be based in Latin America. After a period of traveling he decided on Cuernavaca in Mexico, where he founded the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) in 1961, with the help of Feodora Stancioff and Brother Gerry Morris. | ||
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| + | The ostensible purpose of CIDOC was to offer language courses and training to missionaries coming from North America, but its second purpose was to dissuade mission-sponsoring agencies from implementing Pope John XXIII’s plan to "modernise" the Church in Latin America. The CIDOC greeted several hundred missionaries each year, providing them a freewheeling environment in which to "redefine their questions rather than completing the answers they have gotten." At the same time, however, Illich ruled over CIDOC with a stern hand, reportedly sending half of the students back home as unfit for missionary work. | ||
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| + | After several years of operation, CIDOC’s critical analysis of the actions of the institutional Church brought it into conflict with the Vatican, and Illich was called to Rome for questioning and ordered to leave CIDOC. He held out by resigning all offices and church salaries, and even leaving the priesthood in 1969. | ||
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| + | In the early nineteen-seventies CIDOC became widely known for explorations of the themes that have become identified with Illich. In 1971 CIDOC colleague Everett Reimer published "School is Dead," which remains a reference for the Homeschooling movement. During the next few years Illich published his best-known and most influential works, including: | ||
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| + | *Celebration of Awareness (1971) | ||
| + | *Deschooling Society (1971) | ||
| + | *Tools for Conviviality (1973) | ||
| + | *Energy and Equity (1974) | ||
| + | *Medical Nemesis (1976) | ||
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| + | Illich’s concerns about the negative impact of the dominant systems of education hit a responsive chord in the libertarian atmosphere of the 1970s, and the book "Deschooling Society" became an international best-seller. | ||
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| + | Towards the end of this period the numbers of missionaries heading for Latin America declined, and the general climate became more rightwing. Illich was also concerned by the influx of formal academics and the growing "institutionalization" of the CIDOC. In 1976, with consent from CIDOC director Valentina Borremans and the members, he shut the center down. Several members subsequently continued language schools in Cuernavaca, some of which still exist. | ||
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| + | ==After CIDOC== | ||
| + | After shutting down CIDOC, Illich retained a lifelong base in Cuernavaca, but travelled constantly. In the late seventies interest in his ideas began to wane within the international educational community, but Illich continued to develop the central themes of his earlier work. He wrote a series of books addressing economic questions: | ||
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| + | *The Right To Useful Unemployment And Its Professional Enemies (1978) | ||
| + | *Toward a History of Needs (1978) | ||
| + | *Shadow Work (1981) | ||
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| + | The last two of these books look at the economics of scarcity. Illich contrasts the socially destructive desire to profit, through the provision of goods in sectors where there is "scarcity," with the socially constructive desire to share "subsistence." | ||
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| + | In the book "Gender" (1982) Illich argued that industrial capitalism creates and depends on a simplistic coupling of male as wage labourer and female as producer of new workers, thereby sacrificing both the feminine and masculine domains. Illich also wrote a book on the historicity of materials: "H2O And The Waters of Forgetfulness" (1985). | ||
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| + | Illich then turned to an exploration of literacy practices, in the books: | ||
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| + | *ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (1988, co-written with Barry Sanders) | ||
| + | *In the Vineyard of the Text (1993) | ||
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| + | The latter volume concerns the origins of book-learning. Illich described it as an attempt to understand the transition from the book to the computer screen, through the prism of the changes in 13th-century reading practice. | ||
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| + | In the 1990s Ivan Illich divided his time between Mexico, the United States, and Germany. He was a Visiting Professor of Philosophy and of Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State in Pennsylvania, and also taught at the University of Bremen. | ||
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| + | ==Last Years== | ||
| + | In the early 1990s Illich suffered from a growth on his face that was diagnosed as cancerous. He consulted a doctor about having the tumor removed, but was told there was a chance of losing his ability to speak, so he let the tumor grow and disfigure his face. | ||
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| + | True to his critique of "professionalized" medicine, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to treat the cancer with traditional methods, administering his own medication. This was against the advice of his doctors, who proposed a largely sedative treatment which would have rendered his work impossible. He regularly smoked opium to deal with the terrible pain caused by the tumor. During this period he wrote a history of pain, which was published in France after his death. | ||
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| + | His last wish was to die surrounded by close collaborators amid the beginnings of a new learning centre he had planned in Bologna. However, he died before this wish could be realized, on December 2, 2002. | ||
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| + | The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley was published with the title "The Rivers North of the Future" (2005). | ||
==Links== | ==Links== | ||
