Abstract

This paper engages Bernard Stiegler’s concept of symbolic misery to interrogate the transformations of education in the digital age. Stiegler’s account of the pharmakon—technology as both remedy and poison—provides a philosophical lens for understanding how educational technologies simultaneously democratise access to knowledge and erode the symbolic and relational fabric of pedagogy. The argument develops in three movements. First, it situates symbolic misery within the broader philosophical dialogue on technology, drawing connections to Derrida’s reading of Plato’s Pharmacy, Simondon’s notion of individuation, and Guattari’s reflections on machinic subjectivity. Second, it examines how digital infrastructures risk disindividuation, reducing education to standardised processes of information delivery while undermining desire, meaning, and dialogic engagement. Third, it considers the possibility of renewal through what Stiegler calls negentropic practices of care—educational forms that resist machinic repetition and foster individuation, creativity, and collective sense-making. While examples from contemporary higher education illustrate these dynamics, the paper’s primary aim is to contribute to ongoing debates in educational philosophy by rethinking pedagogy under conditions of symbolic misery. It argues that the future of education depends not on rejecting technology, but on inhabiting its ambivalence—transforming its toxic potential into a resource for symbolic vitality.