Slimer, Slime, and the Thingness of Pedagogy1
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8 Educational Perspectives Volume 51 Number 1 Slimer, Slime, and the Thingness of Pedagogy1 Amy N. Sojot Outside a hotel room, someone spots a slimy, neon Slime’s impermanent shape oozes when transferred from green ghost frantically stuffing discarded food from a an encounter with Slimer or removed from a container. room service cart into its mouth. The person remarks Somatically engaging with the unbounded thing-power to himself, “Disgusting blob.” This blob rapidly flees of slime, Slimer presents an affirmative pedagogy of through a wall into a different hallway. It leaves a sticky thingness: a pedagogy that dismisses shallow limits residue. The ghost spots a different person and pur- defining appropriate production of knowledge and posefully accelerates in his direction, knocking him over, expectations of how to relate to objects, things, and, as covering him with slime, and then disappearing. in the case with Slimer, ghosts. This is the first encounter the Ghostbusters The paper is organized around five sections. The have with Slimer, a ghostlike apparition from the film first section provides a brief background on postfounda- Ghostbusters (1984). The sensation of this slime-filled tional inquiry and new materialism, two approaches that encounter presents an opportunity to interrogate frame the conversation regarding sensation, thingness, assumptions made about things, subjectivity, pedagogy, and pedagogy. Following this introduction, further sec- and sensation in educational studies. For example, tion titles incorporate dialogue from the Slimer scene. how does pedagogy feel? Using Slimer as a metaphor, The next two sections address pedagogy and sensation. this paper considers the sensation and tangibility of The following two sections use Slimer to explore the pedagogy. The intent is to explore the thingness of thingness of pedagogy and implications for the role pedagogy through Slimer and what this thingness holds of embodiment in education. This order accomplishes for thinking experimentally about pedagogy (Ellsworth two things: one, it establishes the specific approach to 2005). Engaging in this type of conceptual exploration pedagogy and sensation used here and two, it provides suggests that attention to pedagogical sensations can a foundation for understanding how a new materialist disrupt commonplace perceptions of the cognitive/ approach can inform educational possibilities. somatic dichotomy thus complicating what constitutes appropriate knowledge and learning selves. Reticulating Frameworks Ghostbusters is an early 1980s comedy-fantasy film Postfoundational inquiry is helpful for sifting through that follows four main characters—Peter Venkman, Ray dominant educational assumptions and identifying at- Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddermore—as titudes that should be analyzed, critiqued, and discarded they face the uncanny in New York City, from demonic or reworked (Tavares 2016), thereby loosening narrow possession to poltergeists. The film opens at the New definitions of appropriate research. Here, the process of York Public Library. A librarian replacing items among developing a question has as much weight as asking the claustrophobic bookshelves runs away in terror after a question itself through self-awareness of the contingent poltergeist causes an explosion of catalog cards around nature of exploration. This pushes preconceived borders her. The main plot follows the Ghostbusters as they of inquiry, which parallels new materialism’s boundary confront increasing paranormal activity, culminating in pushing of subject-object relationality. their victory against an ancient demonic god who ac- New materialism, the theoretical framework used in cessed the city through a supernatural portal. However, this paper, renews focus on the affective power of things this paper will focus on the specific scene that depicts (Bennett 2010). New materialism critiques the carefully the moment when Peter (referred to as Venkman), Ray, constructed assumption of what determines proper and Egon encounter and capture their first ghost, Slimer. relationality in that non-human entities are not inert Using Slimer as a conceptual tool is purposeful. and passive. In fact, they have the capacity to affect us. Slimer is a ghost or, technically, a Class 5 Full Roaming Additionally, because they have that capacity, they are Vapor. Slimer is a helpful way to illustrate sensation, not just objects to be poked, prodded, and measured. pedagogy, and thingness. Slimer is pure slime, pure Secondly, it disrupts assumptions of self and subject that ectoplasm. Slimer illustrates a particular thingness in permeate through educational assumptions, in particular educational assumptions including “thing-power” to the Cartesian subject and the wholly rational human be- the affective sensations provoked with Slimer’s slime. ing. Through these approaches, this paper considers the Emerging Educational Scholars 9 meaning inter/intra-object relationality (Bennett 2010) recognition of interpretation. Ellsworth (2011) observes, holds for challenging education’s cognitive-somatic “Pedagogy does not follow rules, nor does it rule—but it distinction, which views the mind as the subject of is also NOT antagonistic or chaotic. Pedagogy is a living knowledge and the body as an obstacle (Baker 2015). form. Pedagogical designs need to be worked out again A new materialist approach to inter/intra-object and again” (305). This non-teleological perspective of relationality reworks the relationships both between and pedagogy (Ellsworth 2011) is what makes it “a wicked within human and nonhuman entities. Political theorist problem—not a strategy” (306). Similarly, Slimer is also Jane Bennett (2010) describes this relationality within a “wicked problem” because it has no preconceived and and between diverse nonhuman entities from electrical distinct endpoint. Instead there is a more than in Slimer, grids to worms. Educational scholars have used new as there is in pedagogy, that resembles the striving of materialism to interrogate the relationship between data Spinoza’s conatus: searching rather than solving. and researcher (MacLure 2013) as well as the relational By approaching pedagogy as an open process and embodied encounters between the various equip- (Lusted 1986), it helps to instead ask what it does and ment at playground sites and children (Knight 2016). the interactions of its web of relations (or its various Additionally, in contrast to other object-oriented ontolo- assemblages). Pedagogy is contingent and, again gies like speculative realism, new materialism draws quoting Lusted (1986), “tied to a historical moment attention to the ethical and political considerations defined within the then current state of knowledge” (10). of engaging with entities through sensations, without This description puts forth multiple pedagogies rather privileging what Nathan Snaza et al. (2016) describe as a than one absolute pedagogy. Since pedagogy is con- “flat ontology that makes no distinctions” (xxix). textual, there can be a range of pedagogies operating concurrently, from productive to limiting pedagogies. Calling attention to the assumpti≠≠ons that animate Pedagogy: “Don’t Move! It Won’t Hurt You!” these pedagogies enables a constant reworking of Pedagogy is a clumsy word. Pedagogy doesn’t glide relationships and the inequality of power in knowledge- gracefully off one’s tongue; instead it tumbles awkwardly production that is intimately connected to pedagogy, out, a belly flop of a word. David Lusted (1986) writes, not just between the human subjects of teacher/learner “it’s an ugly word in print and on the tongue” (3). The (Ellsworth 1997; Lusted 1986) but also between things. sensation of saying “pedagogy” is not smooth like The productivity of pedagogy lies in its irresolution. “graceful” nor does it connote substantiality through its rhythm like “curriculum.” The word gurgles out. Sometimes students themselves draw attention to the Sensation: “He Slimed Me!” word: “Oh, it’s that weird word again! What is it? How do Sense in education is the coarse paper and ink flowing you say it?” The word itself is inspected, paced around, across the page while writing, fidgeting in uncom- forgotten, and then provoked back into our awareness. fortable seats, and running on the field, sweat and It feels material, a type of thingness surrounding each exhilaration. What does Venkman sense when Slimer utterance and an affective quality interacting with each flies through him? Disgust is an emotion. What comes of them in their own way. before is the sensation. When pedagogy goes through A simple definition of pedagogy is that it is the Venkman, what is the emotion, but more to the point: art and dynamic process of teaching and learning. what is the sensation that provokes it? Ellsworth (1997) describes teaching as an impossible The feeling body has precedence in educational task because it is not guaranteed that a person/learn- discourse. John Dewey (1938), for instance, posited ing/thing/student will learn exactly what one teaches, the necessity of intention to encourage an educational which parallels Freire’s (1970/1993) parallel critique of experience. Similarly, Paulina Rautio (2009) draws our the banking model of education. The explanation can attention to the connection between pedagogy and provoke but not directly communicate. Learning must aesthetic everyday experience. Philosophy and politi- take into account that person’s experiences, pathways cal theory connect sensation