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Bill Brydon

Immaterial Child Labor: Media Advocacy, Autoethnography, and the Case of Born into Brot... - 0 views

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    This article investigates the contemporary phenomenon of "child media advocacy," or the practice of "empowering" child subjects by providing them with media technologies as a means of self-representation. Tracing the genealogy of this practice to an older ethnographic tradition of "handing over the camera" to the native, or autoethnography, this article argues that the liberatory impulse of child media advocacy needs to be interrogated as a part of the legacy of harnessing media for turning deviant or dangerous types into productive social subjects. The centerpiece of the article is a reading of Born into Brothels, an award-winning film documenting the codirector and photojournalist Zana Briski's humanitarian project to emancipate the children of prostitutes in India by training them in photography and creating avenues for them to sell their own photographs of brothel life. A close reading of two autoethnographic photographs follows, which suggests that the visual rhetoric of immediacy that permeates and surrounds the film conceals a more complex set of transactions that draw on the enduring ethnographic mythology of the mimetic child to authenticate the project of the film. The article concludes by arguing that Born into Brothels puts to work the immaterial or affective labor of children in the production of cultural commodities as a humane and "empowering" alternative to coerced sex work. This move to mobilize the child as a new figure of economic promise indicates the vexed bonds that contemporary humanitarian discourses of media advocacy are forging with the affirmative economic imperatives of neoliberalism.
Bill Brydon

Narrative - Emergent Narrative in Interactive Media - 0 views

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    The connections between the concepts of emergence and narrative are manifold, complex and significantly non-obvious, but in one context at least they come together explicitly: the term "emergent narrative" has an established currency in computer game studies as a potential (and desirable) effect of interactive media. Indeed for many it is the holy grail of contemporary computer game design, offering as it does the prospect of reconciliation between the conflicting values of narrative satisfaction and player autonomy. In the academic context of digital media studies, this same promise of synthesis has put emergent narrative in the front line of a long-running debate between ludologists and narratologists about the relative importance of game and narrative paradigms. My argument here suggests that emergent narrative is not the unifying concept it appears to be for computer game studies, though it does have interesting possibilities in that field; more fundamentally, though, I want to argue that this seemingly very specific concept helps to clarify the incommensurability of emergence and narrative and has implications for our larger understanding of the process of narrative sense making. The discussion begins with an introduction to emergence and some indication of its problematic relation to narrative. I then turn to emergent narrative itself, outlining the history of the concept and some difficulties of definition. I argue that these difficulties arise from confusions about the nature of simulation, and I make a case for understanding narrative and simulation as distinct and, in certain respects, antithetical modes of representation.
Bill Brydon

Partitions, identities and intercultural education: an exploration of some key issues -... - 0 views

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    "This article attempts an initial exploration of the ramifications of geopolitical partition for identity in the context of children and their education. While not an exhaustive definition, partitions may be observed to follow armed conflict between human collectivities (nation-states, putative nations, ethnic groups, etc.) and are the outcome of treaties, armistices and unilateral action. Furthermore, a comparative and historical overview suggests that such macro-political action has clear micro-sociological impact, not least upon children and their families. While there may be some overlap with the creation of refugees this is by no means an automatic outcome of partition. On the other hand, an 'imagined community' with refugee status may be a consequence of conflict, the drafting of new geopolitical boundaries together with voluntary or forced migration. Here, in the context of children's education, questions are posed regarding the disintegration of collective identity, the construction of otherness and the formation of new identities as manifested, inter alia, in the dynamics of nationality, language and religion. Inevitably, while the consequences of partitions set challenges for the possibility for intercultural dialogue they may also establish the possibility of new opportunities for the development of more inclusive identities."
Bill Brydon

AGILE ETHICS FOR MASSIFIED RESEARCH AND VISUALIZATION - Information, Communication & So... - 0 views

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    "In this paper, the authors examine some of the implications of born-digital research environments by discussing the emergence of data mining and the analysis of social media platforms. With the rise of individual online activity in chat rooms, social networking sites and micro-blogging services, new repositories for social science research have become available in large quantities. Given the changes of scale that accompany such research, both in terms of data mining and the communication of results, the authors term this type of research 'massified research'. This article argues that while the private and commercial processing of these new massive data sets is far from unproblematic, the use by academic practitioners poses particular challenges with respect to established ethical protocols. These involve reconfigurations of the external relations between researchers and participants, as well as the internal relations that compose the identities of the participant, the researcher and that of the data. Consequently, massified research and its outputs operate in a grey area of undefined conduct with respect to these concerns. The authors work through the specific case study of using Twitter's public Application Programming Interface for research and visualization. To conclude, this article proposes some potential best practices to extend current procedures and guidelines for such massified research. Most importantly, the authors develop these under the banner of 'agile ethics'. The authors conclude by making the counterintuitive suggestion that researchers make themselves as vulnerable to potential data mining as the subjects who comprise their data sets: a parity of practice."
Bill Brydon

Independent learning crossing cultures: learning cultures and shifting meanings - Compa... - 0 views

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    "This paper contrasts the notion of 'independent learning' as perceived by two informant groups at a UK institution of higher education: (1) teachers, educators and providers of education and (2) their students or 'consumers' of education. Both informant groups are staff and students studying in a culture different to that of their first education. They are identified in their receiving institution as 'international', or have identified themselves as such. The experience of transition into a UK University was explored with both informant groups, through interviews and focus groups, over a cycle of two years. 'Independent learning' as rhetoric and practice emerged for both groups as an issue in their transition from familiar to unfamiliar learning culture. Three key insights emerged. Firstly, a mismatch is identified between teacher perceptions and student interpretation of 'independent learning' expectations and practice. Secondly, it emerges that student experience of the learning culture is in a state of continuous flux, evolving between first arrival and end of programme through cycles of bafflement and empowerment. Finally, both students and teachers identify a number of strategies for dealing with this experience of 'transitional' independence. The paper concludes by recommending a notion of 'phased scaffolding' that might inform educational practice and by reflecting on the implications for the educator in revisiting received educational discourse from the perspective of participants negotiating a second learning culture."
Bill Brydon

More than you know: critically reflecting on learning experiences by attuning to the 'c... - 0 views

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    This reflection, using auto-ethnography as method, explores the value of attunement to feedback in the teaching of a professional postgraduate course for allied mental health professionals. This is, therefore, a story of two halves: a narrative of my learning based on my reflections of my own teaching, and a story of how I have integrated feedback from students and their clinical supervisors to refine my teaching and course development in the programme. The resulting model of teaching and learning I have developed involves a process of 'creative attunement'. 'Attunement' is a psychodynamic concept involving 'contact' or a quality of relationship based on availability, presence, empathy, respect and selective disclosure. The learning activities of the programme aim to develop an awareness of the students' own 'craft knowledge' as graduate social workers and occupational therapists during their intern year in the health services. Through a process of growing the students' awareness of self in the clinician's role by attuning to students' feedback, learning from undergraduate education becomes more available to be applied in a new field of practice. Designing learning activities that incorporate stories of practice and align with clinical supervisors and service user narratives provides access to a variety of learning experiences. I explore the implications for developing critical-reflective practice within a 'community of learners' model.
Bill Brydon

Science as 'Horrible': Irreverent Deference in Science Communication - Science as Cultu... - 0 views

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    "Horrible Science is a popular UK-based brand of books, toys and magazines aimed at 7-11 year olds. At first sight, the term 'horrible' might be taken as embodying a critique of science and technology. However, a closer look reveals Horrible Science quite playfully twisting between positive and negative uses of the word, often transforming the latter into the former in the process. The horrible of Horrible Science is clearly signalled as fun. It is domesticated to undermine any sense of fear associated with its imagery. Moreover, the horrible of Horrible Science becomes related to an imagery of truth which is deferential to the work and social standing of the scientific community; it draws analogies between the horrible and science in terms of granting hardness, exclusivity, and even an intuitive closeness to nature. Horrible Science's cultural critique of science and technology, as much as they exist, are accommodated within a traditional discourse of celebrating scientific achievements and deferring to its expertise. By sampling more irreverent discourses, Horrible Science offers a way to excuse a type of earnest reverence, delight and excitement for science that had become unfashionable by the end of the twentieth century. It packages science for sale to a 'public' who want to enjoy science and be seen doing so, but who are also aware of the advantages of their outsider identity. In Horrible Science, an irreverent deference is a form of quite 'late modern' science communication, one that feels the need to show awareness of critique and counter-arguments if it to be trusted by its critically aware audiences."
Bill Brydon

Journal of Narrative Theory - Teaching Culture - 0 views

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    "Throughout the history of film, plots have required that a character be rendered unconscious for a finite period with no explanation of the process and with no other consequence, to which end, the medium invented the "magic-single-punch." All one character has to do is say: "I hate to do this but . . ." then throw a swift punch to jaw, and the recipient agrees to pass out for however long the plot requires. More significant than this compliant character is the equally compliant viewer, who accepts this miracle of anesthesia, that works to perfect effect even on a character who, in other scenes, might have a chair broken over his head or receive several karate chops to the trachea with barely a blink or stagger. Although I believe that car chases were the reason God invented "fast-forward," even more bewildering than the apparent popularity of this screen event is the fact that audiences have failed, over the last two decades, to wonder why not one of the cars involved has a working airbag. Such thoughts, of course, disrupt the pleasure that has been paid for with money, time, and attention, in the same way, for example, that disputing the comparably absurd tenets of Reaganomics disrupts the myth of satisfaction purchased with (low) taxes, lip-service patriotism, and self-serving citizenship.1 In 1984-in the middle of Reagan's reign over morning in America-federal law required that all cars have passive restraints by 1989. Since Reagan's second term, in other words, in defiance of legality and common sense, the premises of Reaganomics and of movie car chases have remained unchallenged. Fueled on the one hand by pleasure industries, and on the other, by think tanks and talk radio, the speeding of the economy and of the movie-chase car, along parallel courses toward disastrous crashes could be glossed by saying that, as usual, American mass media had disabled the wrong airbags. Although we do not n
Bill Brydon

Neoliberalism, cities and education in the Global South/North - Discourse: Studies in t... - 0 views

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    In this special issue we are also particularly concerned with the take up of neoliberal forms of globalization in schooling and higher education in cities, in both the Global North and South. There is a troubling inadequacy inherent in denoting the Global South and Global North, related most clearly to the invocation of a uni-directional, mostly paternal and exploitative set of relationships; whether these be of capital, of resources, of people, and so forth. Alternatively, following critical development studies, we might see the North and South in both politico-economic terms, pertaining to development, and in geographical terms (Riggs, 2007). As such an important conceptual framework for dealing with ideas of the North and South is the mutually constitutive nature of notions such as the global and local (Massey, 2005; M.P. Smith, 2001), especially the relationship to neoliberalism and space (Peck & Tickell, 2002). Understanding contemporary challenges to education in a globalized world requires attendance to space and place, and to scale; the global, national, regional, local (Robertson, 2000; Thiem, 2009), and to concepts and phenomena such as transnationalism that complicate understandings of and relations between space and place, global and local (Jackson, Crang, & Dwyer, 2004). The papers in this special issue, while not explicitly taking up spatial theorizing, nonetheless speak to a complicating of the global as producing the local, and correspondingly of the local (usually conflated with place) as always the 'victim' of the global (Massey, 2005). The papers in this special issue provide empirical and conceptual interventions that speak more to complex, relational understandings of neoliberal globalization. A relational understanding posits that: local places are not simply always the victims of the global; nor are they always politically defensible redoubts against the global. Understanding space as the constant open production of the topologies of pow
Bill Brydon

Making art invisible: visual education and the cultural stagnation of neo-liberal ratio... - 0 views

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    The popularity of visual literacy may have resulted, in part, from some school authorities rushing the process of determining school curriculum. This article argues that the haste is reflective of pressure placed on educational discourse to conform to neo-liberal reforms of the sector, and is not the result of a careful and complex debate within the education community. In Australia, such reform has contributed to the erosion of visual art as a discrete subject in the general curriculum. The article accounts for the fact that the lack of careful debate may be due to art educators rehearsing tired arguments for retaining the place occupied by visual art, which smack of sentimentality. The author examines the conceptualisation of visual art at a cultural and theoretical level, and argues that by considering the function art has traditionally played in relation to conceptions of human subjectivity, we may disclose the marginalisation of visual art as a signal of much larger threats to political and economic structures in democratic society. The article considers whether the absorption of 'art' within a broader preference for visual communication, graphic design, or design and technology, is symptomatic of a long-term cultural stagnation.
Bill Brydon

Scaffolding critical thinking in the zone of proximal development - HERDSA - 0 views

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    This paper explores student experiences of learning to think critically. Twenty-six zoology undergraduates took part in the study for three years of their degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Vygotsky's developmental model of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provided a framework as we examined how critical thinking was developed. There was very little evidence of critical thinking at first year as students experienced a high-level of material scaffold in the form of course documents, textbooks, problem solving-exercises and discussions that were primarily aimed at the acquisition of factual knowledge. In large classes students were anonymous to lecturers and they relied on each other for support. In years 2 and 3, learning to do research became the main scaffold for critical thinking and students gradually changed their views about the nature of knowledge. Verbal scaffolding and conversation with lecturers and peers allowed students to extend their ZPD for critical thinking. They began to accept responsibility for their own and their peers' learning as they practiced being a zoology researcher. These findings are discussed in relation to two approaches to scaffolding in the ZPD and it is suggested that research should be an integral part of the first year if critical thinking remains a key aim for higher education.
Bill Brydon

Eco/feminism and rewriting the ending of feminism: From the Chipko movement to Clayoquo... - 0 views

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    This article draws on research at an eco/feminist peace camp set up to facilitate blockades against clear-cut logging in coastal temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada in the early 1990s. The camp was said to be based on feminist principles and sometimes these were even articulated as eco/feminist principles. The slippage between these terms provides a focus for my discussion. Specifically the article explores the apparent paradox of the sheer vitality of this eco/feminist activism, and in particular its insistence on international connections, in contrast to the widely circulating accounts of the end of feminism, and especially the end of global sisterhood, which emerged in the early 1990s. Thus this article is also necessarily about how recent histories of eco/feminism, including tensions between theory and activism, are narrated. I take as a departure point references to the work of Vandana Shiva and the Chipko movement which circulated in accounts of the camp, and explore ways in which eco/feminists might read such utterances as more than evidence of a naive and problematic universalism. I situate eco/feminism's internationalism genealogically in feminism and eco/feminism and read this as a counter-narrative to the ending of global sisterhood. Through paying attention to various movements, back and forth, between Clayoquot and Chipko, Canada and India, and drawing on Anna Tsing's notion of 'friction', I offer an account of what has been at stake in disavowals of the possibility of reading Chipko as eco/feminist, and suggest the importance of a more generous reading of eco/feminists' attention to the Chipko movement.
Bill Brydon

Racial Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Critical Interracial Dialogue for Teachers of Color -... - 0 views

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    "Brazilian education activist Paulo Freire ( 1970 12. Freire , P. 1970 . Pedagogy of the oppressed , New York , NY : Continuum . View all references ) argues that to create social change, oppressed people must have critical consciousness about their conditions, and that this consciousness is developed through dialogue. He theorizes that dialogue allows for reflection and unity building, tools needed to transform society. When considering racial oppression in K-12 schools, racial minority teachers have an often-untapped insight and power to transform classrooms and schools (Kohli, 2009 21. Kohli , R. 2009 . Critical race reflections: Valuing the experiences of teachers of color in teacher education . Race, Ethnicity and Education , 12 ( 2 ) : 235 - 251 . [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Web of Science ®] View all references ). Connected through a commonality of racial oppression, it is important for teachers of color to engage in cross-racial dialogues about manifestations of racial injustice in K-12 schools and to develop strategies for change. Utilizing Freire's conceptual lens and a critical race theory (CRT) framework, this article highlights critical race dialogue about the educational experiences and observations of 12 black, Latina, and Asian American women enrolled in a teacher education program. Through cross-racial discussions, the women were able to broaden their multicultural understanding of racial oppression as well as strategize solidarity building among diverse students in urban classrooms. This study demonstrates knowledge and insights of teachers of color and highlights the importance of interracial dialogue in school contexts."
Bill Brydon

Contours of Learning: On Spivak - Parallax - Volume 17, Issue 3 - 0 views

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    "Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's long career as teacher, theorist and activist has been characterised by a sustained commitment to pedagogy, and in particular by an awareness of how the dilemmas and problems that teaching throws up - whether in the classrooms of subaltern communities in West Bengal or in the seminar rooms of Columbia University - can offer a beginning for theoretical reflection. Such problems, which often serve as anecdotal starting points in her essays as Spivak describes moments of problematic encounter with resistance, confusion, privilege and silence, often work to trip up, in enabling ways, the kinds of paradigms that theory might otherwise want to impose, whether onto notions of cultural, social or gender difference, or onto ideas of development and globality. They are occasions for Spivak to draw attention to the ideological conditions in which differing forms of education (elementary and tertiary, Southern and Northern, public and private) operate, sutured as they are in their different ways to the nation-state. Yet an equally longstanding insistence of Spivak's work, from earlier essays such as her review of Derrida's Limited Inc, 'Revolutions that as Yet Have No Model' (1980) through to later works such as Other Asias (2008) has been that the classroom, whether located in rural West Bengal or in New York, offers a crucial site for the training of the imagination into the possibility of a different, collective political life of the future."
Bill Brydon

English as an international language of scientific publication: a study of attitudes - ... - 0 views

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    This paper focuses on an issue attracting increasing attention: the possible disadvantage inflicted on non-Anglophone academics by the dominance of English in scientific publication and academic exchange. We critically review the evidence for linguistic disadvantage, noting some of its limitations, and critique the native/non-native distinction as a coarse and somewhat unsatisfactory criterion for distinguishing between the advantaged and disadvantaged. In the second part of the paper we report on an empirical survey of the attitudes of Spanish academics at the University of Zaragoza to the possible disadvantage they may experience in publishing in English, and we investigate determinants of these attitudes. Though the survey shows, as expected, that a majority do feel disadvantaged in academic publication relative to Anglophone scholars, it also indicates, we argue, that attitudes are more complex and multidimensional than the literature sometimes suggests. Self-reported language proficiency emerges as a significant determinant of attitudes. The final part of the paper discusses a number of proposed language planning interventions designed to redress linguistic disadvantage. We argue that some of the more radical of these are flawed or unfeasible and suggest that more modest measures have a greater likelihood of ameliorating the situation.
Bill Brydon

Login and logout: practices of resistance and presence in virtual environments as a kin... - 0 views

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    "Learning processes are closely connected to the contexts in which professional and day-to-day practices are conducted, and to the characteristics of those contexts. These processes develop through and between different systems of activities, established by actors operating on the basis of explicit and implicit rules in order to achieve certain goals. They do so through the use of artefacts and knowledge, within a system of labour sharing, role definition and specific power mechanisms. What happens when the rules of these systems, or the roles, artefacts or knowledge, change? What happens to learning processes if the contexts in which the practices are implemented happen to be online, for example in a blog or a virtual community of practice (VCoP) or on social networking platforms? When we speak of learning in Web 2.0 environments created ex novo within a project, we are speaking of a type of participation and precise presence that does not manifest itself through a nomadic, solitary journey around the web. It is, rather, considered as one of the ways of being, learning and working together within a given project. This is, therefore, a very powerful option: learning together online through the use of ICT and in a given space of time."
Bill Brydon

Global Subjects or Objects of Globalisation? The promotion of global citizenship in org... - 0 views

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    Sport for Development and Peace (sdp) has been adopted as a 'development tool' by Western development practitioners and a growing number of development organisations. Sport is frequently referred to as a 'global language' and used to promote international awareness and cross-cultural understanding-two key themes in global citizenship literature. In this paper I examine the language adopted by organisations promoting sdp-specifically, what sdp organisations say they do as well as the nature and implications of their discourses. Drawing on a large and growing body of literature on global citizenship and post-structuralism, and on post-colonial critiques, I argue that sdp narratives have the potential to reinforce the 'Othering' of community members in developing countries and may contribute to paternalistic conceptions of development assistance. In so doing, they weaken the potential for more inclusive and egalitarian forms of global citizenship. The article examines the discourse of sdp organisational material found online and analyses it in the context of broader sport and colonialism literature. The work of SDP organisations is further examined in relation to global citizenship discourse with a focus on the production- and projection-of global subjects, or objects of globalisation, and what this means for development 'beneficiaries'
Bill Brydon

Social Justice and Varieties of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique - New Political Economy - - 0 views

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    "In assessing the various forms of welfare capitalism, normative political philosophy typically draws on two major philosophical traditions - republicanism and liberalism, invoking either equality and the public good or, alternatively, individual autonomy as normative criteria for evaluation. Drawing, instead, on Critical Theory as a tradition of social philosophy, I advance a proposal for assessment of the types of welfare capitalism conducted as 'immanent critique' of the key structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Normative criteria thus emerge within a diachronic dimension of social transformation, which in turn grounds the comparison among synchronic types of capitalism. This ultimately enables a research agenda for the operationalisation of a normative analysis of capitalism within which social justice is gauged by the degree of voluntary employment flexibility - a key factor in the distribution of life-chances in the early twenty-first century."
Bill Brydon

Return: The Photographic Archive and Technologies of Indigenous Memory - 1 views

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    "This paper considers the intersection of Aboriginal traditions surrounding photography and the use of new technologies as both a research tool and a community resource. Over recent decades Australian cultural institutions have radically altered their management of photographic archives in response to changing political and intellectual circumstances - especially Indigenous advocacy. A sense of moral obligation has become the arbiter of new cultural protocols that have moved far beyond legal provisions for protecting intellectual property. Experiments with new digital tools attempt to understand and balance the role of photographs of Aboriginal people within Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. However, cultural protocols rely significantly upon representations of "remote" Aboriginal communities in northern Australia that emphasize difference and reify practices that may in fact be fluid, and overlap with Western values. In the aftermath of colonialism, photographs are important to Aboriginal communities, especially in southern Australia, not merely as an extension of tradition, but also in the context of colonial dispossession and loss. As a form of Indigenous memory the photographic archive may address the exclusions and dislocations of the recent past, recovering missing relatives and stories, and revealing a history of photographic engagement between colonial photographers and Indigenous subjects."
Bill Brydon

Teaching Global and Social Justice as Transgressive Spaces of Possibility - Motta - 201... - 0 views

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    "In this article I reflect on introducing critical pedagogy into social justice teaching in an elite UK university as part of the Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Project. I de-essentialise Freire's conceptualisation of the human subject and her desire for transcendence with the introduction of Deleuze and Guattari's politics of desire. This enables an adaption of critical pedagogy from its original context of popular politics to the individualised elite setting of our project. Our pedagogical objectives become the opening of spaces of possibility which decentre the dominant regime of truth of the neoliberal university and enable imagining and becoming "other". This involves disrupting normal patterns of classroom performativity in terms of student as consumer and lecturer as producer of commodities, transgressing dualisms between mind/body, intellectual/emotional and teacher/student. Our pedagogical praxis is therefore inherently political as by radically disturbing commodified subjectivities we foster processes that lead to unanticipated, maybe even unspeakable, transgressions."
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