Curriculum Theory as In(ter)vention: Irigaray and the Gesture.

This paper explores Luce Irigaray's analysis of gesture in the "praticable" and considers resonances and dissonances between the analytical/conference scene and the pedagogical exchange. Irigaray is a French language philosopher, linguist, and psychoanalyst who uses the French term "praticable" of psychoanalytic practice to mean the conventions and gestures which mark the psychoanalytic setting. The paper attempts to encourage questioning the relation between psychoanalysis and pedagogy, and suggests specific connections that might refocus what is done in writing curriculum theory. Ultimately, the paper argues, curriculum theorizing can be rendered as an in(ter)vention. That is, as it intervenes strategically to transform the pedagogical scene it simultaneously invents new modes of social relations, discourse, and thought. The argument is constructed to suggest that intervention is imbricated with birth, with passageways, and with invention and the importance of curriculum theory's relation to the gesture in pedagogy. The first section of the paper deals with Irigaray's analysis of the practicable and the gesture and identifies three aspects of the gesture: the geography of the pedagogical encounter, the transference, and the theory practice relationship. The second section connects these aspects to pedagogy and curriculum theorizing. (Contains 27 reference notes.) (JB)