Ranceriean Pedagogy/introduction

From Studyplace

This ^[1] film clip is from Buñuel and Dali's 1929 surrealist film, Un Chien Andou.

This clip introduce several of the elements that run through Rancierè's work. First, the creators tried to make the film without any "idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind"; the clip cutting they eye open is unexpected, disturbing; and, as we read it, this disturbance forces us to open our eyes or look with new eyes.

To find common ground amongst the 5 members of this project team, we've chosen an open, but unifying theme to discuss: Rancierè's implications for us, as educators.

In this brief presentation we hope to outline some of the theoretical implications of Rancierè's work for the practice of educators and to illicit your cooperation in a few brief experiments with some techniques derived from his writing.

As others in our seminar have noted, discovering what to take away, a prescription, from Rancierè can be a difficult task — or as my colleague Scott might say, it is "slippery as bananas".

Probably like many of you, I was, and am, drawn to education because I want to make a difference. I want my work to be meaningful — to reach beyond myself, to contribute to the greater good. While I didn't come to the task with a naiveté, after years of studying, the futility of using education seems inescapable.

Dewey, who has taken his deserved knocks over the last several sessions, already alerts us to the difficulty of this task.

Of "Aims in Education" he says:

— John Dewey. Democracy and Education, 1916.

For Dewey, aims were dangerous, unpredictable and counter-productive to the only true task of education, education for its own sake. For Rancierè they are even worse. They stultify. Their very existence precludes emancipation.

Now stripped of our agenda, our campaign, the case does not improve. Instead of content to teach, he gives us a technique, a process. Instead of grand narrative, an achievable end, we have "emancipation". Unfortunately, we cannot physically achieve emancipation. It is not a matter of overthrowing the aristocracy or slaying our captors.

Our seminar has addressed Rancierè's conception of the political and the aesthetic. They require a disruption, a suspension of the normal workings. They bring something previously un-knowable, un-sensible, into light. We have discussed this at length, in part, because Rancierè offers us only small hints of how to achieve the political, or of what our role can be.

Our first, and probably best clue is the example of Rancierè himself. Despite the great length that he takes to empower words, the new master must first lead by actions. The unique style of The Ignorant Schoolmaster is noted in the translator's introduction to my copy, pointing to Rancierè's blending of Jacotot's writing with his own, slipping between the past and the present. On first reading I thought of this as a writing technique, an attempt to add fluidity and narrative structure to the text. On further consideration, though, it's also Rancierè's refusal to explicate. He does not tell us what to think of Jacotot, but allows Jacotot's words to stand on their own.

In his writing, we can collect bits of how an adherent of universal teaching and a believer in the equality of intelligence may proceed. Chance and improvisation become important.

In The Politics of Aesthetics he talks about "the region of free play":

Beyond the missive against explication, The Ignorant Schoolmaster contains other recurring themes that we can use to inform our practice. Specifically, attention, improvisation, and verification.

   The impossibility of our saying the truth, even when we feel it, makes us speak as poets, makes us tell the story of our mind's adventures and verify that they are understood by other adventurers... (p 64)