Other Education - The Journal of Educational Alternatives ISSN 2049-2162 Volume 3 (2014), Issue 2 · pp. 102-107 Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti The University of British Columbia vanessa.andreotti@ubc.ca 102 BOOK REVIEWS An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Gayatri C. Spivak February 2012 Hardback $35.00 • £25.95 • €31.50 ISBN 9780674051836 Harvard University Press Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, The University of British Columbia, Canada An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (AEEG) has 25 essays spanning a period of 23 years and represents Spivak's cumulative retrospection on the meaning, difficulties, joys and paradoxes of teaching in the humanities focusing on the conflictual intersections of ethics, aesthetics and politics. The book has been described as an enthusiastic reminder of “pedagogy’s power to reach beyond the logic of capital” (Bari, 2012, p.1). The book offers a patterned mosaic of her pedagogical propositions, something that can be extremely useful for thinking education “otherwise.” However, in order to give justice to Spivak’s propositions it is necessary to trace them back to the context of critique within which they emerged. Therefore, what I decided to do in this review article is to offer a very brief synthesis of Spivak’s critiques and propositions that I think are of most value to an “Other” education and, in order to do this, I will focus on her work as whole; not only her latest book. But before I go any further, I should qualify my own reading of Spivak. Although I do have a first degree in English and literary studies, I was only introduced to Spivak’s scholarship while carrying out research on the World Social Forum at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, which is hosted by the Department of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham, in England. Since then, my reading of Spivak has focused on political and existential (rather than literary) aspects of her work and has been deeply influenced by discussions with colleagues in political theory and cultural and development studies. Since I was introduced to Spivak’s work, her insights have not only given me the language to articulate sticky educational, political and existential concerns, but have also pushed me to expand my imagination and educational practice in profound ways. On the other hand, I must say that her style of writing made me want to give her up at least a thousand times. An example of her difficult and dense prose can be found right in the introduction of AEEG. Here we go: