Pedagogies of Future Nostalgia: A Posthuman Intimate Scholarship Study of Desire, Discomfort, and Memory

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 1:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Temporalities, Difference, and Educational Futures

Abstract

This paper is a postqualitative, intimate scholarship exploration of leaks, knowledge, and becoming in the elite high school I attended as a student. Thinking with affect and posthumanism, I highlight interactions among three shimmers - desire, discomfort, and memory - which I argue animate pedagogical relations. Data engagement explores my attachments to the site alongside schoolwide transformation through observation, informal interviews, and document analysis. Analysis revealed the school’s distinct positioning offers great capacity to point flows in desired directions: toward a neoliberal revitalization of the humanistic, romantic project of educational nostalgia. To combat the pull of the past, I suggest a pedagogical theory which puts the three intensities to work in a composite assemblage, which I am calling pedagogies of future nostalgia.

Author

• Isabella Devin Bartels, Teachers College, Columbia University