Synthetically Growing A Post-Human Curriculum: Noel Gough's Curriculum As A Popular Cultural Text.
Synthetically Growing A Post-Human Curriculum: Noel Gough's Curriculum As A Popular Cultural Text.
Synthetically Growing A Post-Human Curriculum: Noel Gough's Curriculum As A Popular Cultural Text.
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S~ntbetica{[~ Growing
CONTEMPORARY
CURRICULUM
DISCOURSES
TWENTY YEARS
OF
JCT
EDITED
BY
WILLIAM
F
You will, I think agree with my choice of phrases once you've moved
through this remarkable collection .. . let us celebrate what is truly a collective achievement."
VOLUME
PIN A R
PAPERBACK
a Post-Human Curriculum:
John Weaver
University of Akron
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John Weaver
the culture of infonnation technology and the reconstitution of the body or the
writing process, but to date there has been only one attempt, in my (limited) mind,
to theorize the culture of infonnation technology: Noel Gough's. His attempts have
been both a rediscovery and a recharting of the connection between post-structural
and postmodem thought and infonnation technology as it relates to science
education, popular culture, and cUlTicu lum theory. Gough has been ab Ie to shed the
burden ofthe traditional leftist critique wh ich looks upon the influence of in formation
technology on society with a suspicious dismissal and an unhealthy paranoia that
can be found in the work of early critical theorists such as JUrgen Habennas and
Herbert Marcuse and contemporary new and improved-Marxists like MontyNeil or
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. Atthe same time, Gough ' s work is no idle exercise in
the techno-worship of cyberspace. Instead, he (re)makes the future of curriculum
theory and infonnation technology as he critically enters into a dialogue with the
post-human condition and the manifestation of this condition in popular culture
texts. In this dialogue Gough not on ly theorizes the impact ofinfQnnation technology
on our identity, environment, and curriculum but also establishes a post-structural,
postmodern practice in order to understand the impact on students, teachers, and
the world of genetic cloning, cosmetic surgery, prostheses, synthesized drugs,
memory altering devices, bio-hazardous conditions, and post-Fordist economics.
As he peers into the future, Gough does not seek advice from "canonical
treasures" or traditional European intellectuals. Instead, Gough relies upon popular
culture texts such as Science Fiction, films, music, television, and com ics . Gough's
critical but unsuspicious look into the potential of popular culture texts levels
arbitrary hierarchies of knowledge that elevate select forms of knowledge as
universal and transcendent wisdom while labelling other sources as void of meaning.
Gough's vision is an example of what intellectuals can accomplish if we decide to
unpack our own notions of what are wOlthwh ile forms of knowledge and deflate our
own notions of taste.
In this review I will focus onhis seminal work Laboratories in Fiction, but! will
also draw on some of his recent work while drawing from other techno-cultural icons.
1 will also try to flesh out what it means to educate the post-human generations to
come and what thoughts curriculum theorists might want to entertain as the third
Christian millennium rises above the horizon.
In Laboratories in Fiction, Gough presents a curricular vision that is based
partly in realism and partly in SF and other fonns of popular culture. Not surprising
to any readers of JeT, I am sure, Gough reminds us that science curriculums
specifically and school curriculums in general have failed to equip students with any
tools to create and position themselves in the post-structual, postmodern textual
world they confront in every cultural site. Instead of providing students with the
power to create maps to navigate through the postmodern terrain of our postindustrial, post-colonial, post-human, and post-structural worlds, we give them, in
regard to our representation of science in schools, a fiction that fails 10 "resemble the
sites in which most scientists work" in any form . What is constructed in science
curriculums is a characturization of science in which students "follow recipes,
perfonn routine procedures, rehearse technical skills ... [and] demonstrate the reliabilityofselected ('well-accepted') scientific 'laws'" (p. 20). This fiction mirrors more a
traditional Gemsback utopic story found in the 1930s popular monthly SF periodic
Amazing Stories than the "reality" of laboratory life. Science is presented as what
Bruno Latour (1987) calls "Ready Made Science." In this Ready Made (Science)
fiction, the scientist always lives in a world where "data generation systems,
'scientific' knowledge and 'scientific method'" are clearly demarcated and these
dimensions of science are part of a "rational sequence of activities that can be
described in tem1S of the 'scientific method' " (p.16) .
Gough seeks not to displace this fiction with a more "accurate" or "reliable"
picture of what science is and what scientists acutually do in the laboratory. What
he is after is a more realistic fiction. A "Science in the Making" (Latour 1987). It is a
fiction found not in textbooks but in Science Fiction, films, and music . Gough
envisions cUlTiculum theory as a popular culture text where we finally acceptthat "the
science of science fiction is not the same as the fiction that is textbook science but
it may be m ore mean ingfu I, m ore interesting and more cen tra I to th eli ves oflearn'ers"
(p.24). It is a vision even those who have found solace in post-structural, postmodern
thought find problematic and hard to embrace. Gough's vision requires us to draw
distinctions between popular culture and academic culture and recognize the
pedagogical and theoretical value of the former and the fiction ofthe latter.
As you may have gathered, Gough ' s notion offiction is one central tenet of his
thinking about science education and curriculum theory. Through the power and
insights of SF literature and otherfonns of popular culture, we can reclaim the terrain
of fiction as a source of knowledge and collapse the arbitrary, but influential,
boundary that emerged between the (treasured) fact and ( unreliable) fictions during
the Enlightenment. Gough reminds us that both "fact and fiction refer to human
experience, the important difference being that' fiction' is an acti ve fonn ... whereas
'fact' descends from apastparticiple, a part of speech which disquises the generative
act" (p.26) . Science fiction , for Gough, offers an opportunity to expose and critique
the " narrative strategies of scientific writing" and how this writing style creates "an
illusion of neutrality, objectivity and anonymity which constributes to the authority
of the [scientific] text" (p.19).
Atthe same time, Gough asserts, "SF does much more: itgives 'imaginative fonn'
to 'the limits of our own constructed knowledge.' SF also gives imaginative fonn to
what might lie beyond these Iimits, beyond the ' fringes ofouras-yet-unsayable fears
and hopes '" (p.31) . SF with its imaginative force opens vistas to theorize popular
culture, infOlmation technology, and the post-human condition. It presents itself as
a deconstructed and reconstructed terrain upon which postmodem conditions such
as commuications mediated via information technology, cyborg bodies, ecological
crises, multi-national capitalism, and biochem ically enhanced m indsare interpreted
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Young people are seeking answers to issues they will have to deal with in the near
future such as the cloning of humans, synthetically grown skin, genetic coding and
screening, prostheses, organ transplants plus the environmental issues concerning
bio-hazardous materials. In the post-human world everything is contested and
young people often turn to popular culture to make sense out of this reality.
For curriculum theorists to assist young people in theirtrek ofmeaning making,
we have to become less the "defenders ofthe faith" (p . 44) who privilege academic
knowledge and the principles of purity, essentialism, rationality, and reductionism
and more the creator who promotes opportunities for young people to navigate
through the contested terrain of everyday life. To be a creator in a post-human world
is to realize that young people are already cyborg/media creations~half human, half
computer generated image~who use their post-human identity to move about in the
world and to contruct an '''awareness about the world, a complex, hesitating
orientation toward the future'" (p. 44).
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John Weaver
people ... who know the most about how postmodernism feels (as distinct from
how to envision or analyze it) are all under the age of six tee n" ... . Ifwe are to establ ish
mutually rewarding pedagogical relationships with the kinds of young peoplewho,
as many cultural critics assert, "have no sense of history," "live in a world of a
simulacra," and "seethe human form as provisional" ... then weneed to attend closely
to the media through which-and the standpoints from which-we might be able
to achieve shared meanings. (1995, p. 73)
... highlights to sociopolitical dangers inherent in in virlo fertilization, technologically assisted surrogacy, fertility drugs, and "designer children." The collection
raises questions about who really benefits from these technologies: thewomen who
are the SUbjects/objects of the research and technologies or the scientists who
compete within a predominantly Eurocentric, white, male scientific establishment
for international prizes or funding from transnational pharmaceutical corporations
and departments of defense. (p. 52)
Whereas traditional curriculum approaches often revere and deify science and
privilege it not only through the stories told but also in the stories sanctioned as
legitimate, curriculum theorists stand at the edge of time facing an opportunity to
construct a post-human curriculum that permits young people to wrestle their
destinies away from multi-national corporations and to invent their own stories that
will envision a future that is liveable. An opportunity exists to re-invent the stories
ofthe post-human condition so schools may be a place where futures are not sold
and handed-out according to the position one maintains in relation to multi-nationals
and access to information but where futures are constructed and re-constructed;
where information technology dominates but not at the peril of young people; and
where science and academic knowledge is respected but not atthe price of degrading
and humiliating other forms of knowledge including those forms ofknowledge such
as science fiction, films, comics, television, and music that young people cherish and
come to rely upon as sources of understanding and meaning.
In his later works Gough (1995), develops further his vision of a post-human
curriculum. In "Manifesting Cyborgs in Curriculum Inquiry," he connects the
posthuman condition with postmodernity, popu lar culture, the experiences of young
people and the intertextuality between the three.
As adults, our fractured postmodernist identities are not constituted by the same
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Gough asks us to not only join in a pedagogical adventure with our students who
live in a post-human, mu Iti-media(ted) age but also look with in at our perceptions and
how we interpretthe stories young people live by and construct reality. For instance,
how do we respond to the Baudrillardian issue of the Simulacra? Do we judge it as
a form of adolescent pessimism and nihilism or can we see it as a manifestation ofa
different cultural form that young people are interacting with in trying to make sense
out oftheir lives and the world around them? Do we see the simulacra as a cognitive
wasteland where nothing new exists as Federic Jameson pessimistically asserts or
can we see the simulacra as a source of creativity and imagination? Do we see the
dominance ofthe simulacra in young people's lives as a form of moral decline and
the relativization of standards and taste or can we see these interpretations of young
people as our own pessimistic displacements of our (apocalyptic) vision ofthe future
that reveals nothing about young people and everything about our own immortality?
These are some of the issues, T think, Gough's post-human curriculum vision
encourages us to reflect upon. Gough's curricular vision is one of post-modem
textuality and self-reflection where images dominate and interpretations of images
are essential but not essentialistic.
Finally, Gough's post-human curricu lum is also aboutthe stories we tell and the
metaphors that guide our thinking. Through the interplay between science education, information technology, popular culture, and our perceptions of popular
culture, we already have seen how the stories we tell influence our thinking in
Laboratories ofFiction. As Gough mentions, we need to make a shift from the "'the
storybook image of science'" (p.13) where science transcends humanity, saves
humanity through its empirical grace, and improves our lives without creating any
environmental and cultural problems to a story that creates an alternative view of
science where science still is a source of know ledge but is on ly one possible source
of mean ing we construct as a part ofthe narratives we tell each other and take as truth.
In "Manifesting Cyborgs in Curriculum Inquiry," Gough (1995) suggests that we
need to expand our story telling one step further. We need to include the post-human
or cyborg into our narratives about science, information technology, popular culture,
and curriculum theory.
The cyborg, for Gough (1995), is both a literary figure that captures a metaphorical shift in our thinking about epistemological and ontological issues but also a
symbol of real developments in our post-industrial world. Metaphorically posthumans "arc cxrl icitly human inventions" (p.75). In the work of Donna Haraway
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John Weaver
(1991) for instance, the cyborg is a symbol of radical feminism that transcends
traditional boundaries and lim itations in order to enter into a new era of radical pol itics
where traditional barriers and stereotypes no longer hinder the potential of all human
beings, animals, and machines. The cyborg is the embodiment of a new way of
thinking about the relationship between humans, animals, and machines. For
Katherine Hayles (1991) the cyborg is a metaphorical symbol for a cosmic web or
Zeitgeist that is orchestrating the reconnection of science, literature, and other
academic fields after three centuries of arbitrary separation in which science was
deemed the legitimate heir of truth and literature the illegitimate child of all that was
knowable.
The post-human needs to be incorporated into the stories we tell about real life
developments as well. Whether we judge them as freaks of nature, symbols of a
consumer cu Iture, or representatives ofthe newel ite class in the Western world, posthumans are an important part of our society. As Gough points out, one way or another
Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Stephen Hawking are all manifestations of cyborgs in our world today. They transcend nature through the enhancement of mechanical body parts and we worship them as asociety fortheir inteIJigence,
political savy, or appearance. They are truly the blessed of the earth - since they are
the ones with wealth, power, and insurance-and they have inherited (bought) the
earth.
On the importance ofthe stories we construct and the post-humans who inhabit
them, Gough leaves us with this thought and challenge:
Gough, N. (1993). Laboratories in Fiction: Science Education and Popular Media. Geelong,
Australia: Deakin University.
Gough, N. (1995). Manifesting Cyborgs in Curriculum Inquiry . Melbourne Studies in
Education, (36: I), pp.71-83.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women : the Reinvention ofNature. New York:
Routledge.
Hay les, K. (1991). Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Latour, B. (1987). Science inAction: How toFollow Scientists and Engineers through Society.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age ofthe Internet. New York: Touchstone
Books.
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Whether or not cyborgs materialise from our narrative experiments,orremainimmanent in them, the kinds of cyborgs we and our chi Idren are now-and are possibly
becoming-will be shaped by the stories we mutually construct .... Ira curriculum
is to generate hopeful rather than fearful possibilities for the complex hybridisation
of humans with what has previously been regarded as "other," then we need not only
to manifest cyborgs in curriculum inquiry but also proliferate them . (p.80)
Gough's vision challenges us on many fronts. The time is ripe for curricu lum theorists
to take up many ofthe themes he manifests in his writings. Ifwe do, no doubt, we
will move along side the many young people who are trying to make sense of the
present and future. And if we do, no doubt, we will meetup with Noel Gough notthis
time though as an "accidental astronaut" (Gough 1991) but as a popular guide.
References
Barr, M. (1993). Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond. Chapell-lill,
NC: University of North Carolina.
Gough, N. (1991). "An Accidental Astronaut: Learning with Science Fiction. In G. Willis &
W. Schubert, eds. Reflectionsfrom the Heart of Educational Inquiry: Understanding
Curriculum and Teaching through the Arts, pp. 312-320. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.