Staging the Crisis: Teaching, Capital, and the Politics of the Subject

Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Volume 40, Issue 3, pages 418–435, (June, 2010).

This article proposes a philosophical reconstruction of the subject of the educator as the agent of curriculum.

Based on the recent work in critical theory and philosophy, the article describes the process of the existential crisis of the educator as the first step toward a truly critical education. The article argues that philosophy of curriculum must be concerned not just with forms of thought but also with forms of being—with the very ground of the subject and its real.

This political ontology of the subject suggests a process of reconstruction consisting of several stages:
the disclosure of ideology and complicity,
the investigation of the process of interpellation, and
the creation of a fundamentally collective educational practice.

It is only on the basis of the effective staging of this crisis at the heart of the teaching subject that a meaningful critical pedagogy and curriculum can be articulated.

The article concludes with a description of the outlines of such a critical education, as they emerge through the process of reconstruction described above.