Explorers of the World: Colonial Residues in the Making of Curious Learners

• In Event: Making the neo-colonizer: strategies and tactics of subjectification for development

Proposal

This paper examines the configurations of ‘curiosity,’ a notion that is currently being mobilized in a wide range of cultural-educational endeavors. For example, curiosity is now perceived as an attitude that indicates an individual’s global-mindedness or competence (Asia Society/OECD, 2018; Béneker, Tani, Uphues, & van der Vaart, 2013). It is also evoked as a key to enhancing scientific thinking not only among children who are to ask and explore questions within the classroom (Jirout & Klahr, 2012) but also among citizens who are to solve problems and produce innovations within the nation (New Zealand Government, 2014). In such mobilizations, the notion of curiosity is assumed an innate and inherent quality of individuals, who are “born curious” (Engel, 2011, p. 628).

Drawing from an ‘archive of curiosity’ (see Ahmed, 2010) – consisting of materials such as academic publications, websites, and handbooks – the purpose of the paper is to inquire into how ‘curiosity’ plays out as it inscribes modern notions of humanity, progress, and development. Of particular interest are the affective, emotional and aesthetic investments in the notion of curiosity through which the learner is fabricated as an explorer. The present configurations of curiosity are considered through three overlapping points of analysis that, together, suggest the colonial residues of ‘curiosity:’ 1) the production of memories and historical narratives, 2) the embeddedness of certainty and mastery, and 3) the pursuit of authenticity and self-discovery.

1) In these configurations, historical narratives associated with Euro-Western cultures of (geographical) exploration and (scientific) discovery are produced through “memory work” (Driver, 2001, p. 217) in which “the past [is made meaningful] for the people in the present” (ibid.). Historical figures are mobilized as examples of curious-minded individuals through which feelings of courage and a sense of anticipated adventure are mediated. Through ‘histories of association’ (Ahmed, 2004), what ‘sticks’ to current fabrications of curiosity are the particular feelings of excitement, achievement and pleasure.

2) At the same time, curiosity produces imag(inari)es of the world with its subject positioned above it. The ‘commanding view’ (Spurr, 1993) is for the learner-explorer, suggesting a gaze of certainty and the mastery of the unknown through which the affective and emotional orientations towards the new/different/Other are normalized.

3) Current discourses of curiosity prescribe ways of knowing and relationality that inscribe the pursuit of authenticity; of authentic learning in authentic environments. ‘Curiosity’ is mobilized as an experiential mode of learning that is to feel like learning, thus coupling curiosity with notions of wonder, inspiration, and joy. To be curious is to explore the world and arrive at the discovery of the authentic self; it inscribes a teleology that aligns the cosmopolitan individual’s self-cultivation with historical processes of civilization.

This inquiry destabilizes the common assumption about curiosity as a boundless and harmless orientation of interest and wonder towards the unknown. While curiosity is assumed as vital for human development and social progress, the diverse ways in which it is currently circulates points to its dividing practices that formulate what/whom curiosity is for and what/whom count as its subjects and objects.

Author

• Johanna Sitomaniemi-San, University of Oulu