Cura’s Gift: Curriculum Praxis for the Untimely

• In Event: Creative Philosophical Responses to the Challenges of Education

Abstract

In the proposed paper, we describe curriculum praxis for what Grosz (2004) names “The Untimely”—moments of unsettling disruption that remind us of the ongoing precarity of being present in the midst of the remembered past and the imagined future. We argue against the ways in which commensurability and security have been seen as admirable outcomes of curriculum and schooling, arguing instead for curriculum praxis emerging from incoherencies, incommensurabilities, and insecurities. Investigating such fissures within the context of schooling, we consider what might count as a praxis for the untimely. Informed by the writings of Maxine Greene (1988), Judith Butler (2004), and Anna Tsing (2021), we interpret two situational narratives to argue that the life of curriculum is always situated in insecurity and incommensurability. Rather than trying to see these as problems to be ignored, overcome, or solved, we embrace these as always present (and necessary) embodied and situated experiences.

Authors

• Morgan Schaufele, University of Calgary

• Dennis Sumara, University of Calgary