ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and explains the idea of ontopolitics. The question of the identity of education in our time is raised, in terms of its fundamental being. Arguing that the question concerning what education is rarely gets asked, the chapter proposes that our thinking in relation to the history and identity of education in modernity is locked into an unchallenged stereotype. The separation of ‘real’ education (as an unquestionable virtue) and institutional education as a fallen version of education’s true and proper self, enables the central discourse of salvation to continue. The failure to think or rethink what education is means that its political effects are disguised or regarded as subject to redemption. A complete rethink is suggested as possible and necessary for an understanding of the politics of education.
