An a/r/tographic métissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice
So for our first lesson we all had some reading homework. I was asked to read and make notes on: “An a/r/tographic métissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice”. Initially I must confess I was somewhat put off by my need to google half of the words in the title. I was also quite intrigued…like reading a press release that is so far up it’s own bottom that you can’t stop reading it and then find it appears to bear no relationship to the work you are looking at 🙂
In the opening paragraph, the text proposes:
“how the introspective and extrospective interact with the visual or performative as a vehicle for revealing the self, this article posits that the self-in-relation to theory and practice becomes a way of knowing that broadens educational discourse among artists/researchers/teachers.”
Upon reading this, my initial “teaching hat” thought was, that as a native English speaker, I was struggling with the language being used and felt that it would be prohibitive for a large number of people… for my own brain, I felt like the terminology/language being used was getting in the way of what was being said. This made me think about how it can often be tricky preparing slideshows for Short Courses, not knowing the level of student I am going to be working with and how important accessible language is in communicating with your reader/student. And teaching on Foundation, with many students coming to London for the first time, learning English, how incredibly challenging that must be.
The text offers up the stories of four a/r/tographers and proposes that a fifth narrative emerges. As someone who is interested in ideas around the non-self and the possibilities/ownerships of “narratives”, this interested me:
“stories are understood as fragmented, in perpetual states of becoming, representative of many and sometimes conflicting voices, and complex in their multiple layers and connections”
This quote rings true for me and opens up ideas around experience being conditional, temporary and open to change. It makes me think of metamodernism and Dylan’s “don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin”. It also makes me think of experience as being communal rather than individual and how as teacher, I would hope to create the conditions for my students to be working as individuals as part of a community, crossing ideas with one another. To discover ideas about one’s work and one’s sense of self in a way that is connected to those around us and that this sense of self is not static but is constantly regenerating and transformative to how we experience the world.
References
Trish Osler, Isabelle Guillard. Arianna Garcia-Fialdini, Sandrine Cote, An a/r/tographic métissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice, Journal of Writing in Cretive Practice, 2019