Thinking With Surveillance, Thinking With Desire: Diffracting the Use(lessness) of Theory in Education

• In Event: Pushing the Curriculum Boundaries in Authoritarian Educational Times

Abstract

In this proposal and as part of a larger project, we explore theory’s various potentials: for instance, to work as an apparatus of prescriptive surveillance, or to work as a line of flight toward new/renewed realities of justice. Through a critical posthumanist process of ‘diffracting’ theory with our previous work with K-12 teachers, we consider 1) what theoretical concepts might activate when they encounter this past fieldwork, and 2) how teachers are always already theorizing. We share an abridged version of one of the ‘renderings’ generated through this inquiry, which touches on themes related to curricular accountability, surveillance, and ‘desire’ as a way to view teacher experiences as superpositional (not oppositional) and always entangled with other agencies.

Authors

• Emma Minke McMain, University of Arkansas

• Allyson V. Compton, Iona University