Kirsten Locke

Performativity, Performance and Education

Abstract This article explores Lyotard’s notion of performativity through an engagement with McKenzie’s analysis of performance as a ‘formation of knowledge and power’ that has displaced the notion of discipline as the tool for social evaluation. Through conditions of ‘performance’ capitalism, education is to conform to a logic of performativity that ensures not only the efficient operation of the state in the world market, but also the continuation of a global culture of performance. I further trace Lyotard’s postmodern aesthetic of experimentation through performance as an ‘event’ in an analogous attempt to track the process of cultural production in terms that acknowledge the temporality of the event so as not to reduce the artwork to a commodity, knowledge to information, and ‘performance’ to be managed. Where this has critical traction is in education, a site that deals with the intersection of politics, art, theory, philosophy and history—in short, a site where all aspects of ‘performance’ are fully realized. This article engages with the key ideas of these thinkers’ approaches to notions of performance, and assesses their relevance for an understanding of the ambiguities of ‘performance’ in contemporary education institutions.

Collective writing: An inquiry into praxis

This is the second text in the series collectively written by members of the Editors’ Collective, which comprises a series of individual and collaborative reflections upon the experience of contributing to the previous and first text written by the Editors’ Collective: ‘Towards a Philosophy of Academic Publishing.’ In the article, contributors reflect upon their experience of collective writing and summarize the main themes and challenges. They show that the act of collective writing disturbs the existing systems of academic knowledge creation, and link these disturbances to the age of the digital reason. They conclude that the collaborative and collective action is a thing of learning-by- doing, and that collective writing seems to offer a possible way forward from the co-opting of academic activities by economics. Through detaching knowledge creation from economy, collaborative and collective writing address the problem of forming new collective intelligences.

Ten theses on the the shift from (static) text to (moving) image

To cite this article: Michael A. Peters, E. Jayne White, Elizabeth Grierson, Georgina Stewart, Georgina Stewart, Nesta Devine, Janita Craw, Andrew Gibbons, Petar Jandrić, Michael A. Peters, Rene Novak, E. Jayne White, Richard Heraud & K. Locke (2018) Ten theses on the the shift from (static) text to (moving) image, Open Review of Educational Research, 5:1, 56-94, DOI: 10.1080/23265507.2018.1470768 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2018.1470768

Is peer review in academic publishing still working

ABSTRACT Peer review is central to academic publishing. Yet for many it is a mysterious and contentious practice, which can cause distress for both reviewers, and those whose work is reviewed. This paper, produced by the Editors’ Collective, examines the past and future of peer review in academic publishing. The first sections consider how peer review has been defined and practised in changing academic contexts, and its educational significance in the development of scholarship. The paper then explores major historical and contemporary issues around identity, diversity, anonymity, and the review process, and the related power of editors versus reviewers in academic publishing. Finally, the paper discusses the case of new scholars as reviewers engaging in neoliberal labour, before concluding with some brief recommendations based on our analysis.

Antipodean Theory for Educational Research.

ABSTRACT This article results from a collaborative investigation into Antipodean theory in education by members of the Editors’ Collective (www.editorscollective.org.nz). The Prologue contains a brief personal account of the South Project (www.southernperspectives.net), as an example of the contemporary projects and activities falling under the banner of ‘Antipodean’ ways of working and thinking. The Introduction briefly reviews the history of (mainly Western) ideas about the Antipodes, from classical Greek philosophy through to the contemporary globalised era. This is followed by a synopsis of the motivations, purposes and benefits of Antipodean theory, with more detailed examinations of equality, indigeneity, replication and creation as some of its central elements. We consider the role of Antipodean thinking as a located critical theory for education, and a way to defend our aspirations for equality and social justice against the incursions of neoliberalism, today and in the future.

Writing in the Margins: An Interview with Bob Davis.

Bob Davis is Editor of the Journal of Philosophy of Education and is Head of School and Professor of Religious and Cultural Education in the School of Education Administration at the University of Glasgow. As far as intellectual conversations and engagements go, this interview was nothing short of delightful. Bob, as he insisted I call him, spoke with such eloquence, humour, and generosity that in the interests of space and to fully appreciate the impact of his insights—in areas such as the role of learned societies in philosophy of education, engagements with new publishing formats in a digital age, and the future relevance of philosophy of education broadly—I have foregone the need for extended explanatory detail outside the perimeters of the interview. There is much I want to pursue further: the way the act of reading has historically interacted with the technologies through which it is mediated and its implications for new forms of publishing, the radical lineage of the salon to learned societies, and the revolution of the publishing world and its effects on academia. In the meantime, however, I will pass it over to Bob and let the conversation speak for itself. Enjoy.

Lyotard's Pedagogies of Affect in "Les Immatériaux".

Abstract This paper explores the continuing relevance to education of ideas about art and resistance that Jean-François Lyotard signalled in his curated exhibition in 1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris entitled Les Immatériaux. The exhibition was for Lyotard the ‘staging’ of a resistance at the dawning of an information age that challenged the prioritisation of computerised ‘data’ through the very deconstruction of data as presented in artistic form. While the implications of this event for art exhibitions are still being theorised and debated, it is the insight Les Immatériaux provides as pedagogical encounter that is the focus of this article. The paper explores the exhibition in the context of the immateriality of art and develops this argument towards a notion of artistic testimony that then culminates in an analysis for the pedagogical significance of the exhibition in the information drenched, highly networked context of contemporary education.

Intersectionality and Reflexivity in Gender Research: Disruptions, Tracing Lines and Shooting Arrows.

This paper utilises the conceptual lens of intersectionality to explore gendered academic career trajectory in the context of one participant’s challenge to a normative reading of the link between her private life and its relation to a ‘successful’ academic career. The paper then charts the recalibrations that needed to take place to ensure certain sociocultural categories and intersections were not privileged over others. Finally, the paper then utilises the concept of intersectionality as a metaphor with which to view the intersecting and reflexive relationship between the interviewer, the interviewee and the performative event of the interview process.

Activating Built Pedagogy: A Genealogical Exploration of Educational Space at the University of Auckland Epsom Campus and Business School.

Abstract Inspired by a new teaching initiative that involved a redesign of conventional classroom spaces at the University of Auckland’s Epsom Campus, this article considers the relationship between architecture, the built environment and education. It characterises the teaching space of the Epsom Campus as the embodiment of educational policy following its inception in the early 1970s. Heralded as a modernist work of architecture juxtaposing material and textural combinations, the Epsom Campus emerged as a metaphorical vanguard of teaching pedagogy that stood as a symbol of a more progressive and culturally inclusive style of education. With consideration for a different kind of architectural space and pedagogy at the city-based business school, the article extends an understanding of spatiality and learning, and argues the structural architectonics of the teaching space and the built environment confer their own pedagogical value. By drawing on the critical stance of Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology for reading history, strands of historical discourse and ‘vibrant materialities’ are considered so that the ‘built pedagogy’ of both contexts can be activated and explored.