Aesthetics of Education by Lewis Tyson E.;

Author:Lewis, Tyson E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Aesthetics of Curiosity

In his most recent work, Rancière offers a radically different understanding of curiosity than found in Freire’s model. For Rancière, curiosity does not concern the critique of appearance but rather the redistribution of appearance under the sign of equality. In other words, curiosity does not unveil a deeper, hidden meaning to the order of things but rather interrupts the distribution of things themselves. Second, whereas Freire posits science and narrative as necessary yet separate dimensions, Rancière problematizes any a priori division between science and narrative. And, third, overcoming this division reorients education from a utopian horizon to the active aesthetic performance of the theatrical will in the here and now. Yet, what is most peculiar in Rancière’s work is that curiosity remains a strictly aesthetic sensitivity or affliction and thus lacks a connection to his educational theory. The repercussions of this conceptual gap in Rancière’s educational reflections are felt in the margins. For instance, Rancière writes, “Jacotot’s ‘ignorant schoolmaster’ sets in motion a scholar’s logic, one that pursues the world of knowledge on the basis of a small number of fundamental data, those of a human mind that is identical in each speaking subject” (2011d, 42). Although Rancière’s writings on education detail the function of the will in enabling one to pursue the world of knowledge through attentiveness, he has little to say concerning the more fundamental moment of setting in motion the scholar’s logic. My central claim is that curiosity is the enlivening of attention while the will sustains this attention through the difficulties of the pursuit. Although curiosity only appears in Rancière’s writings on aesthetics and the emancipated spectator, and will only appear in his writings on the emancipated student, it is my contention that Rancière’s fundamental thesis of the ignorant schoolmaster as a kind of artist opens up the possibility for articulating the two. When the teacher places the book in front of the student to translate, this gesture is more than a simple command to be obeyed and the book is more than simply a pedagogical device. The scene that is enacted is an artistic staging of a scene of emancipation. As such, the book becomes an art object, eliciting the curiosity of the student who is both actor and learner. When viewed from this perspective, the work of the will (the effort needed to attend to one’s studies) is dependent upon yet distinct from the work of curiosity (as an aesthetic opening to new perceptions). It is the complexity of this relation between capacities that I wish to tease out in the rest of this chapter, and in the process demonstrate how curiosity is a concern and a problem for the ignorant schoolmaster. Thus Freire’s insight into the educational centrality of curiosity is critical for rethinking Rancière’s project and vice versa.

For Rancière, curiosity is first and foremost aesthetic, “blur[ring] the false obviousness of strategic schemata” (2009c, 104). In other words, curiosity is a peculiar capacity that indicates a faltering in our understanding,

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