Those Who Want to Play: Pursuing Animal Politics in Upbringing and Education

Marija Bulatović

doi:10.25038/am.v0i24.418

Authors

Marija Bulatović

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i24.418

Keywords:

animal play, ludic expressionesqueness, education, play within formal education, speculative pragmatism

Abstract

Education is based on intergenerational divisions into the separate worlds of childhood, adulthood, and seniority which educational scientists further divide into even smaller stages. In this paper, in order to problematize the defined modalities of the existence of a child, an adult, and an elderly individual, I will prompt the rooted opinion that play is characteristic of childhood, while the game is typical of later stages. I intend to find in the human lifespan the moments when, after childhood, an adult abandons to play, and to propose the manners of overcoming the intergenerational differences in formal education as a field for surpassing the given in the entanglement of education and life. To surpass the given is extremely important at a time when education is instrumentalized. One of the ways the human can surpass the given is if they extract from play the principle which Massumi calls ludic expressionesqueness that is not immediately noticeable and that has the potential to reinvigorate both educational practices and life itself. Finally, I will examine theories of education and educational practices to see if they have strengths they can rely on in inspiring ethico-aesthetic practices of becoming with the world.

Article received: April 20, 2020; Article accepted: July 1, 2020; Published online: April 15, 2021; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Marija Bulatović

Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade
Serbia

Marija Bulatović, (b.1970) is an architectural engineer. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, the University of Belgrade in 2007 and finished her masters course at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade in 2016 with her thesis “Development and Observation of an Educational Programme Based on Co-Regulated Learning Approach.” Currently, she is a PhD student both at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University, Belgrade in the Department of Humanities and Art and Media Theory, where she is also a teaching assistant, and Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade in the Department of Pedagogy and Andragogy. Her fields of interest include comparative media studies, digital artivism, participative research, practice as research, public pedagogy, and art-based learning. She has written on co-regulated learning and micropolitical changes in the classroom (Education Today) and contemporary learning strategies (Journal of the Institute for Educational Research). She is co-founder of the Center for Spatial and Art Education OMG AR

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i24.418 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i24.418