“Body recognizing mind”? Negotiating knowledge through performance

Abstract

One of the aims here is to consider how knowledge can be negotiated through
engagement with performance-related projects. To do this, I will offer a teaching
perspective on how exposure to cultural events as part of group activity can provide
strategic interventions which enable a type of border-crossing between social and
academic contexts. In turn, this holds implications for attempting to develop what
has been termed curriculum responsiveness. The concept of \'border crossing\' pedagogy
has been explored at length by education theorists like Henry Giroux, and there is
considerable overlap between discussions on the need for a critical pedagogy and
recent local debates on what has been broadly termed \'responsive pedagogy\'. In
contextualising this discussion, I look at notions of performance as outcome, and
performativity as process, in relation to debates in tertiary education. I also consider
how knowledge is re-contextualised through the intervention of performance-related
projects, as well as the role of affective investment and pleasure in meaning making.
I argue that border crossing interventions such as performance-related projects could
contribute to a greater self-reflexivity concerning the forms of knowledge students
have to engage with, and ideally also their own \'situatedness\' in relation to this.

Journal for Language Teaching vol Vol. 41 (2) 2007: pp. 34-46