The Curriculum of Loss: Making Sense of Death Through Storytelling With Theory

• In Event: Tales and Texts: Approaches to Qualitative Work

Abstract

This paper explores a posthuman understanding of death in a curriculum of loss, but it also is a way to articulate grief by moving on and expanding the connection. This inquiry leads into the death of a young student and the grieving process of the school community, where understanding death becomes part of accepting our educational responsibilities as an ethical engagement. The inquiry is carried out through ‘storytelling with theory’. This is a post-qualitative mode of inquiry where the story entangles with the theory. In writing to make sense of the death of this cherished student in a small community high in the Andes, amid the grief and the possibilities, the posthuman tradition of thought proves being productive and soothing.

Author

• Jacqueline Barreiro, Simon Fraser University