Straightening Devices

We use Sara Ahmed's concept of straightening devices. She talks about the will as a technique, "a way of holding a subject to account". The concept is interesting to think about how children's imagination was kept within certain borders. The children chewing the borders of a 'right' way of imagining were those willful subjects that child art as a straightening device, or the multiple ways through which imagination was configured within the educational discourse, tried to hold to account. We can read those willful subjects as queer subjects. As studied by Eve Sedgwick, the word queer derives from the Indo-European word 'twerkw', meaning to turn or to twist, thus, a deviation from the straight orientation. The concept is particularly useful for our line 'the hopes and fears of creativity in education'. The new modern notion of history as past, present, and future and the recapitulation theory gave rise to the notion of child development. This way of producing knowledge about the child was essential to the government of children. The separation of the child from the adult and the invention of steps through which the child's growth should pass created a set of expectations that defined what a normal child was and should be and, simultaneously, what the abnormal child was. We refer to the stages of development as straightening devices, using Sara Ahmed's concept.

2022 - The 'eventualization' of the creative child in arts education, or, unpacking the layers of hegemony and coloniality (Cat Martins)

Submitted by csmartins on Fri, 05/26/2023 - 19:33

The texts focuses on the colonialities of arts education practices such as developmentalist rationality, the historical equivalence of the child with the so-called 'primitive', the gardening practices and the straightening devices of education. It starts by analyzing the cover of the 1951 Unesco Courier and asks how this image seems so familiar to us?

The text is in Portuguese and can be downloaded here

2022 - The colonialities of arts education: seeds, plants and the gardening practices of education in the making of the nature of the child (Cat Martins)

Submitted by csmartins on Fri, 05/26/2023 - 18:16

The text looks at some metaphors used in arts education discourses, namely the metaphor of the child as a seed and as a plant, and of the educator as a gardener, whose function would be to conduct, without disturbing, the child's growth. These practices are contradictory and carry various types of violence, whether in the ways of imagining a universal child (having the subject European, adult, male, 'white', non-disabled, as a becoming) from developmentalist perspectives, or in the hope of their future.

1897-1938 - Juvenile Art Class (Franz Cizek)

Submitted by csmartins on Thu, 11/14/2019 - 11:51

The Juvenile Art Classes opened in 1897 in Austria and lasted until the 1930s. The program of the classes was: "Let the children grow, develop and mature". Through William Viola's books on Cizek's methods, we learn about his practices and praise of what he considered the natural creative child. Just for the 'slogan' of the classes, we can see how the gardening practices of education informed his thought. Cizek was a traveling author through the works of art educators like Marion Richardson, R. R. Tomlinson, and Herbert Read.

1942 - Child Art (Wilhelm Viola)

Submitted by csmartins on Sun, 11/10/2019 - 21:17

The book from Wilhelm Viola is about the art education methods of the Austrian Franz Cizek. It starts with the history of ‘child art’ as being the history of the discovery of the child “as a human being with his own personality and his own particular laws”, and the importance of Cizek in perceiving the child’s nature.

Subscribe to Straightening Devices