Pedagogy, Naked and Belated: Disappointment as Curriculum Inquiry

Abstract

This writing is performed with and about disappointment in moments of failed research and teaching. The bulk of this chapter was written some years ago and describes, reflects on, and analyzes a self-study inquiry about the phenomenon of pedagogical reading. Having returned to and studied this earlier work, I offer a posthuman postscript that rereads the initial inquiry primarily through the work of Deleuze. Rereading intimate scholarship through a post-human lens decenters the self as knower, writer, and teacher, making possible otherwise ways of imagining reading, writing, and studying together. In my case, posthumanism provides tools for rereading two concepts offered for understanding teaching literature, naked and belated pedagogy. While these concepts were somewhat productive in helping me understand what I was experiencing as a researcher and writer, they reproduce and justify traditional, text-centered teacher identities and practices. They are a product of and themselves reproduce what Deleuze and Guattari (2003) called “arborescent” thinking. Ultimately, naked and belated pedagogies reinforce traditional curriculum practices, sidestep students’ lives, and position the teacher as final authority in matters of curriculum control and interpretation. Disappointment includes those affections and emotions that arise through a posthuman rereading of the research scene – including what I, the researcher and teacher, failed to do, say, think, and teach.

Citation

Sams, B.L. (2018), "Pedagogy, Naked and Belated: Disappointment as Curriculum Inquiry", Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-152. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720180000031011