This provocation explores absurdity in art as a possible if unlikely approach to education. What might anthropology as education learn from forms of creativity that consciously construct the non sensical? What 'sense' might anthropology make of the function of nonsense in art, culture and society?
Paper long abstract:
Education is challenged to tread a delicate path between the reliable transmission of information, training in skill, and respect for the autonomy of the learner. What matters is how these elements are mobilised in ways that allow participants (educator and learner) to think, to be clear and interested, to trust in creativity while also investing in good habits that do not become a form of servitude (Stengers 2011, Arendt 1961/2006). Effective education pivots on good communication if it is to renew a life in common (Dewey 1916/2011). It is important to set the student's mind in motion through ways of educating that are vivid rather than enforcing dead forms of indoctrination and passivity. Such mobility draws on imagination and experience and it is perhaps in the arts that one might seek examples for how to mobilise both in ways that are vivid, effective and affective.
Education of this kind is closely aligned with democracy and freedom and focuses on making sense of the world. What happens if it can no longer be safely assumed that the values of freedom of thought and shared responsibility underpin education, or have become eroded to the point of being unrecognisable, nonsensical?
What has art to say with nonsense?
Andre Breton, writer, poet and founder of surrealism, suggested that Dada was' the marvellous faculty', of drawing together two widely separate realities found in experience and creating a spark from their contact that was intentionally dis-orientating. He goes on to say "Can such a gift not make the man whom it fills something better than the poet?" (Ades 1976, p 30). Dada generated nonsense to reflect the nonsensical that was ongoing in life in response to the brutality of WW1. It is one of many examples of the way in which art has responded to breakdown in meaning and values in culture and society in the 20th and 21st centuries
This provocation explores absurdity in art as a possible if unlikely approach to education in the present. What might anthropology as education learn from cultural forms of creativity that consciously construct the non sensical? What 'sense' might anthropology make of the function of nonsense in art, culture and society?
This provocation will involve a Dadaist activity as an experience of the issues followed by a brief provocation (outlined above) and hopefully a rich discussion.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
Education is challenged to tread a delicate path between the reliable transmission of information, training in skill, and respect for the autonomy of the learner. What matters is how these elements are mobilised in ways that allow participants (educator and learner) to think, to be clear and interested, to trust in creativity while also investing in good habits that do not become a form of servitude (Stengers 2011, Arendt 1961/2006). Effective education pivots on good communication if it is to renew a life in common (Dewey 1916/2011). It is important to set the student's mind in motion through ways of educating that are vivid rather than enforcing dead forms of indoctrination and passivity. Such mobility draws on imagination and experience and it is perhaps in the arts that one might seek examples for how to mobilise both in ways that are vivid, effective and affective.
Education of this kind is closely aligned with democracy and freedom and focuses on making sense of the world. What happens if it can no longer be safely assumed that the values of freedom of thought and shared responsibility underpin education, or have become eroded to the point of being unrecognisable, nonsensical?
What has art to say with nonsense?
Andre Breton, writer, poet and founder of surrealism, suggested that Dada was' the marvellous faculty', of drawing together two widely separate realities found in experience and creating a spark from their contact that was intentionally dis-orientating. He goes on to say "Can such a gift not make the man whom it fills something better than the poet?" (Ades 1976, p 30). Dada generated nonsense to reflect the nonsensical that was ongoing in life in response to the brutality of WW1. It is one of many examples of the way in which art has responded to breakdown in meaning and values in culture and society in the 20th and 21st centuries
This provocation explores absurdity in art as a possible if unlikely approach to education in the present. What might anthropology as education learn from cultural forms of creativity that consciously construct the non sensical? What 'sense' might anthropology make of the function of nonsense in art, culture and society?
This provocation will involve a Dadaist activity as an experience of the issues followed by a brief provocation (outlined above) and hopefully a rich discussion.
Anthropology as education
Session 1