Connecting With Difference Through Aesthetic Memory-Work: A Dialogic Poetic Inquiry

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Arts-Based Research and Social Justice

Abstract

We focus on dialogic learning that began when we heard Elliot Eisner explain the value of arts-based educational research as follows: “The opposite of aesthetic is anaesthetic!” We demonstrate how we have come to know each other and our selves as South African university educators in new ways because of an evolving process of aesthetic memory-work. We describe how we recalled early experiences that influenced our enduring interest in the aesthetic. Next, we show how we extended this aesthetic memory-work process through a workshop that we facilitated with 13 other university educators. We offer a poetic re-presentation of participants’ memory stories and then turn back to our selves to contemplate our emerging learning about connecting with difference through aesthetic memory-work.

Authors

• Guruvsagie (Daisy) Pillay, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, University of KwaZulu-Natal