Displacements of Forgetting and Curriculum Theory: Autobiographical Experience, Educational Collage, and Lynda Barry's Demons

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-17 - Words, Images, and Historical Spaces

Abstract

This paper argues that, while autobiographical memory remains an important structure through which we erect our teaching selves, educational research into this area needs to also recognize the various displacements and mnemically significant transfigurations implied in our shared facility for forgetting. While it may be accurate to say that memory’s capacity to access our past experience is always far from sufficient, this simple acknowledgement misses the point; forgetting produces and displaces, as much as it seemingly erases. This paper therefore accentuates the productive nature of forgetting, while also considering—with reference to psychoanalytic theory—the implications of this knowledge for autobiographical pursuits and pedagogies in curriculum theory.

Author

• David Lewkowich, York University