Punctum and the Illusory in Arts-Based Educational Research

• In Event: Constructing Educational Possibilities: Teaching Difference Through Repetition

Abstract

On March 29, 2023, I and 4 colleagues met to design a creative, collaborative, pedagogical event where, at a later date, we would meet to teach each other something in a workshop format. We selected the concept of repetition (Deleuze, 1994) for each to interpret in the design of our individuated workshops, exploring the generative nature of the tension between repetition as sameness and repetition as difference. The learning would come from our experimentation with the concept through a creative practice, while taking up the nuanced interpretation of repetition within the individual workshops as well as the event itself. My paper today takes up the pedagogical event I designed and from this I will explore the vitalism of the illusory and punctum (Barthes, 1980) in arts based educational research that attends to social, political, and ethical commitments.
In this conference call, we, as educational researchers, were requested, to “ask our community to dream and imagine, not in an illusory manner that is uncritical, ahistorical, and atheoretical, but in a manner that is rooted in justice seeking, that is evidence based, as we seek a different education reality” (Howard et al, 2023, p. 1). Part of the significance of arts based educational research (ABER), though, is the centrality of the illusory-the unreal-for its potential in the creation of something new. Rather than seeking a particular form of “reality”, I argue for the imaginative in its potential in not finding, but rather creating a different reality. Drawing on this understanding, I designed three specific prompts, which involved the selection of an object with personal meaning, photographing the object in place, and then responding in narrative form to this experience. Following this, they were asked to return to the narrative, and to attend to what stood out for them. This practice was repeated several times. We met 5 weeks later to discuss their work.
To explore the outcomes, I look to Barthes’ (1980) discussion of the encounter with photography through two concepts: studium-as “a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity” (p. 26) and punctum as that “which will disturb the studium” (p. 27). I draw on punctum to explore my colleagues’ attention to the cuts, stings, and jolts they attended to in the elicitation of involuntary memories provoked through their engagement with the prompts and through the repetition of photographing, narrating, and responding. This attentiveness to their individuated responses is more than simple relativism. Punctum points to an engagement with the creation and encountering of the image that challenges the benign and passive studium to what Bennett (2010) describes as impersonal affects as ethical sensibilities and social relations as a field of micropolitics promoting a drive towards action. The field of ethical justice begins with the all too human-the punctum-without which, the commitment to justice exists only as studium- as policies and practices without special acuity, remaining as idle gestures. In this historical moment, the affective drive towards ethical action is essential for change in educational realities.

Author

• Adrienne Boulton, Kwantlen Polytechnic University