Resisting "Pure" Reflection Through Slowness: Making Space for Attentive-Diffractive Pedagogies

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Slow Curricula for Transformative Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper argues that curriculum and pedagogy studies practitioners can actively resist the unfolding of the neoliberal commodification crisis in higher education by rethinking the praxis of reflection. Inspired by the critique of ‘pure’ reflection, started by feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway (1988) and continued by philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers (2018), and by critical and new materialist takes on Slow science and scholarship, higher education curriculum development, and pedagogical strategies, this paper reconceptualizes critical ‘messy’ thought as a potential praxis of cultivating affirmation, Slowness (or, differently put, time-halting attentiveness), and grounded hope. Various classroom-applicable Slow pedagogies rooted in the Harawayan-Baradian idea of diffraction (Haraway 1997, Barad 2007) that move away from ‘pure’ reflection’s need for detachment and speed are furthermore developed.

Theoretical Framework:
These are continuously accelerating times of global crises – brought on by a toxic fusion of extraction-based capitalism, commodifying technological advancements, and a self-disciplining neoliberal ideology that has overtaken almost every single domain of our existence (Brown 2015), including that of higher education (Giroux 2014). Stengers (2018: 121) argues that the “fast, dis-embedded science” favored in these productiveness-focused times has not only removed us from “the messy complications of this world” but also “messed up our world” by disregarding the entangled interconnectedness of today’s crises. Curriculum-makers and pedagogues alike are thereby called upon to reflect on the implications of this ‘dis-embeddedness,’ which has stimulated various philosophical and pedagogical counter approaches/critiques. Critical theoretical approaches such as those of Adorno and Horkheimer (1997), Freire (2006) as well as diverse feminist new materialist philosophies (Barad 2007, Braidotti 2013, Haraway 2016, Stengers 2018) will be combined in this paper to create a Slow intervention within the fields of curriculum and pedagogy studies, philosophy, and critical theory.

Modes of Inquiry:
Employing new materialist approaches that align the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political (thereby accepting the complexity of today’s world, while not getting lost in apocalyptic nihilism), this paper elaborates on the relevance of Slow science (Stengers 2018), Slow scholarship (Bozalek 2017), and Slow pedagogy (Taylor & Ivinson 2013, Payne & Wattchow 2009) to curriculum studies.

Data sources, evidence, objects or materials:
Aside from providing combining and elucidating several critical theoretical approaches relevant to Slow scholarship, this paper also presents several attentive-diffractive pedagogical strategies that are relevant to Slow scholarship and curriculum-making, such as that of a collaborative, open-ended syllabus.


Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments

The neoliberalization of higher education can be countered by making space to rethink reflection and thought itself. I argue for the cultivation of attentive-diffractive Slow pedagogies that are rooted in a feminist new materialist framework; a context that forefronts relationality, creativity, and response-ability.

Conclusions and Scholarly Significance:
New materialist perspectives on philosophizing, teaching and curriculum design reinvigorates how we theorize the world (that is, as embodied knowers that are constructed of the same ‘messy’ matter as the world) as well as how we put this theorising into practice. It also hopes to inject a critical neoliberalism-resisting impulse into curriculum and pedagogy studies.

Author

• Evelien Maria Leopold Geerts, University of Birmingham