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Dangerous Memories (dangerous + memory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Education100%

Selected Abstracts

Education and the Dangerous Memories of Historical Trauma: Narratives of Pain, Narratives of Hope

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2008
MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore the meanings and implications of dangerous memories in two different sites of past traumatic memories: one in Israel and the other in Cyprus. Dangerous memories are defined as those memories that are disruptive to the status quo, that is, the hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing group-based identities. Our effort is to outline some insights from this endeavor,insights that may help educators recognize the potential of dangerous memories to ease pain and offer hope. First, a discussion on memory, history and identity sets the ground for discussing the meaning and significance of dangerous memories in the history curriculum. Next, we narrate two stories from our longitudinal ethnographic studies on trauma and memory in Israel and Cyprus; these stories are interpreted through the lens of dangerous memories and their workings in relation to the hegemonic powers that aim to sustain collective memories. The two different stories suggest that collective memories of historical trauma are not simply "transmitted" in any simple way down the generations,although there are powerful workings that support this transmission. Rather, there seems to be much ambivalence in the workings of memories that under some circumstances may create openings for new identities. The final section discusses the possibilities of developing a pedagogy of dangerous memories by highlighting educational implications that focus on the notion of creating new solidarities without forgetting past traumas. This last section employs dangerous memories as a critical category for pedagogy in the context of our general concern about the implications of memory, history and identity in educational contexts. [source]

The Hope of a Critical Ethics: Teachers and Learners

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2004
Donald Blumenfeld-Jones
The basic question of this essay is what motivates a person to act on behalf of the "ethical good"? Critical theorists (such as Max Horkheimer, Paulo Freire, and Sharon Welch) have proposed the educational development of critical rationality as the answer to this question, with Freire adding the notion of love and Welch adding the notion of "dangerous memory." These positions are both critiqued and used as a starting place for proposing a critical ethics with three bases: (1) Emmanuel Levinas's notion of ethical infinity (that is, a person is more than any category can reveal and categories entrap and harm the person), (2) the notion of creating a community based on "relational authority," and (3) the development of moral imagination. Descriptions of specific classroom situations ground the discussion in education. [source]