ivan illich died dec 2002 - observer obituary:

Ivan Illich, who has died of cancer aged 76, was one of the world's great thinkers, a polymath whose output covered vast terrains. He worked in 10 languages; he was a jet-age ascetic with few possessions; he explored Asia and South America on foot; and his obligations to his many collaborators led to a constant criss-crossing of the globe in the last two decades.

Best known for his polemical writings against western institutions from the 1970s, which were easily caricatured by the right and were, equally, disdained by the left for their attacks on the welfare state, in the last 20 years of his life he became an officially forgotten, troublesome figure (like Noam Chomsky today in mainstream America).

[...]

He was far more significant as an archaeologist of ideas, someone who helped us to see the present in a truer and richer perspective, than as an ideologue.

[...]

Illich retained a lifelong base in Cuernavaca, but travelled constantly from this point on. His intellectual activity in the 1970s and 1980s focused on major institutions of the industrialised world. In seven concise, non-academic books he addressed education (Deschooling Society, 1971), technological development (Tools For Conviviality, 1973), energy, transport and economic development (Energy And Equity, 1974), medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1976) and work (The Right To Useful Unemployment And Its Professional Enemies, 1978, and Shadow Work, 1981). He analysed the corruption of institutions which, he said, ended up by performing the opposite of their original purpose.




biography and stance

recent essays and "last words"

e-texts

so ausdrücklich wie noch nie wollte er dort seine überlegungen zum kirchlichen ursprung einzigartig westlicher selbstverständlichkeiten mit seinen schülern und freunden besprechen. wie ein roter faden ziehen sich diese historischen untersuchungen zur perversion der frohen botschaft durch das letzte jahrzehnt seiner lehre in bremen.

history of ideas now contains two works by sexy ivan illich- deschooling society and tools for conviviality.. enjoy..