boundary 2 42:1 (2015) DOI 10.1215/01903659-2828230 © 2015 by Duke University Press In the Neighborhood of Zero: Ontology and Pedagogy Jeanette McVicker Analogous to the traditional interpretation of a text, entering the pedagogical circle with the end ( telos) already inscribed generates a derivative, calculating, and erosive thinking, a thinking of colonized and docile bodies in the service of the dominant sociopolitical order whether conceived as disciplinary society or imperial state. —William V. Spanos, The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism What I had caught a glimpse of in the corner of my eye in Brux—that the borders that had broken down were already being rebuilt, that another war was in the making—had returned to disturb my renewed joy for life. And then, irrepressibly insistent, there was the tremen- dous destruction of Dresden and its incinerated civilian population, who in that world below all causes—that zero zone—had become a place of neighbors. —William V. Spanos, In the Neighborhood of Zero Neighbor : Old English nēahgebūr , from nēah “nigh, near” + gebūr “inhabitant, peasant, farmer” — Oxford English Dictionary boundary 2 Published by Duke University Press