Art’s False “Ease”: Form, Meaning and a Problematic Pedagogy

Baldacchino, John

doi:10.1007/s11217-013-9396-x

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…418-425). What Baldacchino (2013b) does not do-which I find curious-is bring English into the purview of the arts once he has exposed the problems with enablist thinking. This is an issue, firstly, because so much of what Baldacchino has to say about the arts, but with visual art as his paradigm, holds true for the practice of English studies and what in my view is most vital in and to them; and, secondly, because despite his powerful critique, Baldacchino (2013b) doesn't quite dismantle enablist logic.…”

Section: Knowledge and Knowing; Learning And Unlearningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Perfectionist Call of Intelligibility: Secondary English, Creative Writing, and Moral Education

Belas¹

2020

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This article puts forward moral-philosophical arguments for re-building and re-thinking secondary-level (high-school equivalent) English studies around creative writing practices. I take it that when educators and policy makers talk about such entities as the "well-rounded learner," what we have, or should have, in mind is moral agents whose capacities for moral dialogue, judgement, and discourse are increased as a result of their formal educational experiences. In its current form, secondary English is built mainly, though not exclusively, around reading assessment; around, that is, demonstration of students' "comprehension" of texts. There is little or no sense that the tradition and practice of literary criticism upon which this type of assessment is based is a writerly tradition. By making writing practices central to what it is to do English in the secondary classroom, I argue that we stand a better chance at helping students develop their capacities for self-expression, for articulating their developing webs of belief and for scrutinizing those webs of belief. I thus wish to think about English and Creative Writing Studies in light of Cavell’s moral perfectionism, and to conceive of it as an arts-practical subject and a mode by which one might, in Baldacchino’s sense, undergo a process of "unlearning." My arguments are tailored to the English educational context.

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Section: Knowledge and Knowing; Learning And Unlearningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One is reminded ofLewin's comment that "[t]here is nothing so practical as a good theory"(1951, p. 169). 2 This is not the same thing as "accessibility" (seeBaldacchino, 2013b).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Perfectionist Call of Intelligibility: Secondary English, Creative Writing, and Moral Education

Belas¹

2020

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“…It may well be that this is not what Garoian wants or intends, and I am sure he would probably object to my insistence that there is no solace to be found in learning per se (See Baldacchino, 2013a and2014). Yet far from being dystopian, I…”

Section: Impassementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In avoiding the limits of a spatial dialectic (Negri, 1991;Baldacchino, 2014), we must substitute the spatial with the paradoxical, the relativist with the relational, the factual with the fabular, form with the body … etc. At a further, subjective and indeed personal, level … I want to juxtapose the narrative of Garoian the artist and performer with those of his history.…”

Section: Finding Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In its method of epoché, art must seek those paradoxical moments, or events, by which it could assert itself as nonart (Baldacchino, 2012). In avoiding the limits of a spatial dialectic (Baldacchino, 2014;Negri, 1991), we must substitute the spatial with the paradoxical, the relativist with the relational, the factual with the fabular, form with the body . .…”

Section: Finding Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Métier of Living

Baldacchino

2015

Qualitative Inquiry

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In art, what appears to be a condition for change is almost always strategically expedient. This is especially the case when one positions art and change within a prosthetic space. Charles Garoian lays claim to this strategy by posing prosthesis as the fourth dimension that follows a third synthetic stage that dialectically binds a thesis to its antithesis. Re-reading Garoian’s claims against the Soviet and Neo-Liberal renditions of Hegel’s theory of the dialectic, this article argues that such claims could reduce art’s space to a prosthetic synthesis that risks pedagogical and aesthetic ossification. Given the performative élan by which Garoian invests education, this appears paradoxical, especially in terms of the personal dimension by which he invests his art as a métier of living and surviving a history that is firmly marked by the devastation of genocide. Strangely, this paradox is what gives us the ability and power by which we could seek a counter- Bildung. As this article’s author puts it, in art, such a counter- Bildung takes the form of unlearning by which one would exit the predicament of instrumental reason. For unlearning to become possible, prosthetic syntheses must be reversed by making of arts education a case for synthetic prostheses. Only then could Garoian’s performative method begin to assert an inverse positioning that would effectively counter the instrumentalization of the dialectic, and with it, that of history and art.

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Response to Walter Gershon’s Review of Art’s Way Out

Baldacchino

2014

Stud Philos Educ

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Art’s False “Ease”: Form, Meaning and a Problematic Pedagogy

Cited by 3 publications

References 3 publications

The Perfectionist Call of Intelligibility: Secondary English, Creative Writing, and Moral Education

The Perfectionist Call of Intelligibility: Secondary English, Creative Writing, and Moral Education

The Métier of Living

Response to Walter Gershon’s Review of Art’s Way Out

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