Re: development: loss, destruction, transformation

From: Mary Bryson (mary.bryson@ubc.ca)
Date: Tue Mar 29 2005 - 09:39:44 PST


On 3/28/05 3:30 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> but if your kid did not learn to add or read, you might get unhappy. :-)

OK, time for me to chime in here... I was a participant in a day-long
participatory conference <Beyond Postmodernism> some time ago <it was
actually a Postmodernism Bashing carnival> and the whole group was
discussing the enormous significance of a scientific model for "learning to
read" <back to, postmodernism bashing> and so I instigated a "break away"
discursive intervention --
I suggested that the discussion on "learning" might more fruitfully <ha ha>
intersect with some of the problematics of postmodernisms if instead of
"learning to read" we were to discuss "learning to be queer" and how that
might be facilitated and nurtured in educational contexts.

Oops

Oh dear

Talk about the abject -- yes, well --- someone tried being nice and said
something like, "Don't you think it is partly genetic?" and then they all
went back to talking about "learning to read".

Taking a genealogical approach to tracing the historical production of
"learning" there is so much that is pre-figured if the object of analysis is
the repetition of an act where we assume consensus --- "learning to read"
--- an activity that, in school, surely, is one of the means for the
production of a subjugated and disciplined body --- a tame ventriloquist. I
would argue that if the "break away" is what we want to understand then it
would be very useful to study the "ones that got away" -- the contexts and
practices that produce diss-identification with culture's normative
trajectory.

Nice to be back,

Mary



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