Currere and Praxis

Living our subjective presence: An interview with William F. Pinar

2025-01-03T19:29:23+03:00

This paper is a narrative account of the conversation that took place at Pinar’s house, on April 4, 2023, focusing on a few themes that emerge from his 2023 book A Praxis of Presence in Curriculum Theory: Advancing Currere Against Cultural Crises in Education as well as the dialogue between us, including “subjective presence,” “study,” and “knowledge of most worth”. This paper hopes to experience Pinar’s calling not only in reverberating textual conversations but also in the author’s embodied lived experiences in the interview. This paper invokes several lived moments the author shared with Pinar and gives a glimpse of the person behind his text, in other words, to humanize the text. This would echo the humanist emphasis embedded in the reconceptualization of curriculum studies. This interwoven feeling, reading, thinking, and writing, I believe, are in itself a very pedagogical attempt to “concretize” the abstract and go beyond and behind the text. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of embracing the subjective presence for teachers’ pedagogical praxis.

Re-listening to Alexisonfire: Duo-currere, adolescence, and the forms of study therewithin

2025-01-03T19:15:50+03:00

This article shares insights emergent from our practices of listening and re-listening to music that deeply affected us during adolescence. Drawing methodologically on duo-currere, we focus our reflections on our mutual love for, and respective experiences with, the Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire. We evoke the concept of study toward an articulation of the value of such listening both in adolescence and today. More specifically, the following insights emerge from our reflexive practice: 1) our adolescent listening shaped our affective landscapes, forming the contours of our relational and social lives; 2) our adolescent listenings were our first forms of study, and we find similarity in the ways we operate as scholars of curriculum today; and 3) re-visiting those listenings with active attention constitutes a valued form of study, albeit perhaps one that does not fit within the constraining value logics of neoliberal capitalist society. We conclude the article by gesturing toward the affective potency of music heard in our adolescence and its relevance in currere.

The heart of the matter: Jean-Luc Nancy

2025-01-03T22:01:51+03:00

Curriculum theorists write about things that no one wants to talk about. Currere is not just about lived experience, but it is also about death. And it is this that no one wants to talk about. This is what Heidegger called Being-Toward-Death. I write about a professor who died several days before his seminar began. That professor was Jean-Luc Nancy who was Jacques Derrida’s student. Derrida is a familiar name to curriculum theorists, but Jean Luc-Nancy might not be. Christopher Fynsk—a well-known philosopher and friend of Nancy’s—had the courage to teach Nancy’s seminar only a few days after Nancy died. I took that seminar. The year was 2021. The seminar was held at the European Graduate School. In that seminar I began studying Nancy’s work. This paper is an introduction to Nancy’s work.

Pedagogy, demagogy, and subjectness: Encounter and responsibility

2025-01-05T14:11:21+03:00

The article delves into the nuanced relationship between pedagogy and demagogy, analyzing how they shape the educational experience. It highlights that when pedagogy loses its existential focus, it risks turning into demagogy, prioritizing control over education's transformative potential. The author argues for a pedagogy that values subjectivity, intuition, and the inherent uncertainty of educational encounters. Using poetic language, the author portrays teachers as oscillating between the roles of artists and entertainers, when addressing the responsibility consequent of the subjective encounter. The piece suggests that educational encounters should be approached with the same wonder as one feels when encountering the sea and other elemental beings, recognizing the interplay between the vastness of existence and human life's limitations. The astonishment consequent of these encounters engages both students and teachers in a shared journey of self-discovery, uncovering new facets of their identities through their interactions. Through autobiographical narrative and philosophical discourse, the work emphasizes the need for educators to engage deeply with the subjective dimensions of teaching, fostering spaces where both teachers and students can explore their identities and responsibilities in relation to each other and the world.