Session Information
29 SES 09, Parallel Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
From the Aristotelian concept of potentiality developed by Giorgio Agamben (2007), we develop an analysis of the Curricular Program of Drawing, in Secondary School Education, in Portugal. While a theoretical representation of a kind of potentiality can be genealogically identifiable on the production of this discursive field - structuring an ideal image for the visual arts' student – we get necessarily confronted with a discourse on Drawing, largely inherited from social, cultural, and artistic traditions, that can no longer refuse to be questioned in such a contemporary context where other emergencies may take place.
If the student's educational path follows a process of acquisition of specific skills in order to achieve the defined potentialities in the Program, it is primarily the effectiveness of the drawings being produced - drawings from observation of reality - that places students before that potentiality. What is being argued here is that this long and alleged school of 'truth' produces effects on the ways in which the pupils see their work, themselves, and Drawing. We see, within the classroom, how pupils are transformed in order to adapt to what they consider as the ideal product of their work. The results are standardized responses. In this sense, drawings, made in class, are not considered by us as harmless exercices of learning, but rather, territories of agitation, doubt and deep, if not irreversible transformations. Practical elements, concrete and observable, are testimonies to the process of subjectifiying potentiality as the never achieved state.
Other dimensions apart from these tend to disappear from drawing classes. If, according to Agamben, potentiality contains within itself, its own power of resistance, another place is to be found for potentiality. Opening the space where the potentiality in the curriculum is demonstrated as a possibility to do, to be and to respond in a certain way, the impotentiality will necessarily represent a reaction which, although it is contrary to it, does not denies it. Impotentiality opens itself as a place of possibility. In this way, impotentiality is the act of suspending the potenciality guaranteed by the curriculum, in its own space of becoming, circumscribing its precise territory, in order to disassemble its own sense of power: its power of subjection. As such, we call impotentiality to a space in which the teaching practice and student learning can be developed from a growing deconstruction of school evidences of 'truth', and their imposed discourse on what and how drawing pupils are supposed to be, act and behave. It's an impotentiality questioning the place of practices, in which normalizing standards are fixed. We thus confront the Drawing concept introduced in the curriculum with the reality of contemporary drawing practices, and its possibilities as thinking-in-act. We propose the possibility of thinking about the impotentiality as a means of positioning before what we recognize as incompatibilities between the discourse of teaching visual arts and the potential of a real contemporary thought, which should, in school, find its place to be.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Agamben, G. (2007). Bartleby Escrita da Potência. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim. Agamben, G. (2009). O que é o contemporâneo? e outros ensaios. Chapecó: Argos. Aristóteles. (2010). Sobre a Alma. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. Atkinson, D. (2001). Teachers, Students and Drawings: Extending discouses of visuality. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 22:1, 67-79. Atkinson, D. (2006). School Art Education: mourning the past and opening a future. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 25:1, 16-27. Atkinson, D. (2008). Pedagogy Against the State. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 27:3, 226-240. Foucault, Michel (1988). Technologies of the Self, in Technologies of the Self, A Seminar With Michel Foucault, edited by Luther H. Martin; Huck Gutman & Patrick H. Hutton, 16-49. Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (2008). A Arqueologia do Saber. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária. Popkewitz, T. S. (2001). Lutando em Defesa da Alma. Porto Alegre: Artmed Editora. Penim, Lígia. (2003). Da Disciplina do Traço à Irreverência do Borrão. Lisboa: Livros Horizonte. Ramos, A. (Coord.). Programa de Desenho A, 10º, 11º e 12º Anos Curso Científico-Humanístico de Artes Visuais. (Homologado em 25/03/2002). Ministério da Educação, Departamento do Ensino Secundário
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