Archival Research – 55 Educational Journals

Since at least the 1960s, an intense debate has centered on questioning the artistic field, including what is known as institutional criticism. According to Andrea Fraser, a key figure in contemporary art focused on institutional reflection, institutional criticism is inherently ambiguous. She argues that “[...] it is never ‘out there,’ in sites and situations, let alone in ‘institutions’ that are distinct and separable from ourselves. We are the institution of art: the object of our criticism, of our attacks, is always also within us” (^{Fraser, 2014}, p. 3).

This does not seem to be the case regarding research on the presence of art in the educational field. One example is the controversial debate on art in education among contemporary scholars of the subject, initially proposed by the Costa Rican thinker Gaztambide-Fernandez, which prompted responses from other researchers, eventually leading to a rejoinder. This discussion, published in the Harvard Educational Review, revolves around Gaztambide-Fernandez’s contentious claim about the ineffectiveness of art in the educational field.

For Gaztambide-Fernandez, there are two types of arguments that persistently aim to legitimize the importance of art in the educational field. The first is essentialist, asserting that art justifies itself, with the value of the experience being paramount. The second is an instrumental approach, in which art serves another purpose, based on the assumption of its potential effects on, for example, social transformation, academic performance and so forth.

In either case, what is being debated is the capacity of art to positively influence educational outcomes, whether through individual transformation via aesthetic experience or by shaping the consciousness of individuals: “[...] instrumentalist approaches claim that the infusion of the arts can improve academic performance; intrinsic arguments assert that the presence of the arts enhances individual experiences and perceptions of the world” (^{Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013}, p. 212, based on the author’s translation).

One way or another, such discourses operate within a rhetoric of effects, suggesting that the arts “[...] refine, cultivate, transform, enhance, impact or even teach [...]” (^{Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013}, p. 213). Regardless of the means or type of effect, both perspectives assume that the arts inevitably produce certain outcomes. The essentialist view develops the idea of art as something in itself, operating like an elixir applied to education. The instrumental (and more causal) approach aims to scientifically measure the effects of the interaction with the arts, preventing a deeper questioning of the very conceptions of art on which it is grounded (^{Honorato, 2018}).

Ultimately, the author does not intend to argue against the presence of the arts in education, as some of his colleagues seemed to have assumed, but rather to critically examine this relationship.

The critical questioning proposed in this article, similar to that suggested by Gaztambide-Fernandez, is based on suspending essentialisms and naturalized assumptions, thus challenging a priori notions. Questioning education, according to ^{Alfredo Veiga-Neto (2004, p. 65)}, means understanding that the “[...] body of knowledge gathered under the name of education is not something natural, something that exists in the world and was discovered by human reason.”

This also seems to be the approach of Fraser and other artists who reflect on the art institution as a site of power struggles. Drawing on Foucauldian thought and, in particular, archival research, this article aims to bring to the field of art in education a perspective that suspends a priori discourses about their interrelation, using archival research to scrutinize proselytizing discourses that assume from the outset that art is inherently beneficial within the educational field.

Archive as Research Methodology

Working with the notion of archive as proposed in Foucault’s work allows us to recompose the past and, through its lens, invent the present itself. Though this may seem contradictory, it diverges from the archival science perspective, which aims to historiographically reconstruct the past. Rather than determining how things are, it is about “[...] seeing what kinds of evidence, familiarities and acquired, unconsidered modes of thought underlie the practices we accept” (^{Foucault, 2016}, p. 356). In other words, archive here is understood as part of a historical forge, made up of “[...] the set of effectively spoken discourses [...] that continue to function and transform throughout history, enabling the emergence of other discourses” (^{Foucault, 1987}, p. 145).

For Foucault, therefore, working with archives was not about commenting on a subject but treating it as a monument to itself—a verbal mass produced by human beings, “[...] the mass of things said in a culture, preserved, valued, reused, repeated and transformed. In short, this entire verbal mass that has been created by humans” (^{Foucault, 2014}, p. 52).

By adopting an archive-based perspective, the aim is to examine the thematic dispersion surrounding creativity in art education and create a map that reveals the discourses, their rarefactions, sequences and disappearances. This investigation can be found in its entirety in the doctoral dissertation from which this paper is derived.

The first step of the archival study resulted in 1,446 selected articles published in A1, A2 and B1 journals from 1996 to 2019, namely: Acta Scientiarum; Atos de Pesquisa em Educação; Cadernos CEDES; Cadernos de Educação; Cadernos de Pesquisa; Cadernos de Pesquisa: pensamento educacional; Cadernos de Pesquisa (UFMA); Comunicações; Currículo sem Fronteiras; Eccos Revista Científica; E-curriculum; Educação (PUCRS); Educação (UFSM); Educação & Realidade; Educação & Sociedade; Educação e Cultura Contemporânea; Educação e Pesquisa; Educação em Foco (UEMG); Educação em Foco (UFJF); Educação em Perspectiva; Educação em Revista; Educação Temática Digital; Educação: teoria e prática; Educação (Unisinos); Educar em Revista; Educativa; Em Aberto; Espaço Pedagógico; Horizontes; Imagens da Educação; Inter-Ação; Linguagens, Educação e Sociedade; Linhas Críticas; Perspectiva; Práxis Educacional; Práxis Educativa; Pro-Posições; Quaestio; Reflexão e Ação; Retratos da Escola; Revista Brasileira de Educação; Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos; Revista Cocar; Revista da Faced (Atual Revista Entreideias: educação, cultura e sociedade); Revista da FAEEBA; Revista de Educação Pública; Revista de Educação PUC-Campinas; Revista Educação em Questão; Revista Diálogo Educacional; Revista Eletrônica de Educação; Revista Ibero-Americana de Estudos em Educação; Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação; Roteiro; Série-Estudos; Teias.

The selection of these journals (rather than others) was not strictly based on the parameters that establish evaluative filters regulating the circulation of ideas derived from field research, theses, dissertations, etc. Instead, the aim was simply to gather a significant body of academic works that would ensure a consistent range of discourses circulating these ideas and debates across various institutions and contexts in Brazil.

Through a search using descriptors such as visual arts, artist and artistic, a total of 498 articles were identified and analyzed. This substantial body of discourse could have been addressed from numerous approaches. From a quantitative perspective, one could examine the uneven distribution of articles across Brazilian journals and regions, the prevalence of certain themes over others, the absence of art-related topics in some journals, the recurrence of debates in others, the authorship of articles, among other possible categories. Such data could provide an illustrative overview of the circulation of ideas about art in the educational field. In this paper, however, the focus is on examining the circulation of one major theme that was repeatedly emphasized over the 25-year period covered in the selected journals: creativity as the cornerstone of art education.

Circulation about Art in the Educational Field

The year was 1996. In December, the new National Education Guidelines Law (Law 9394/1996 - LDB) was enacted, with the mission of updating its first version from 1971. This law regulated the expansion of educational rights and the autonomy of public education networks, schools and teachers, defining the responsibilities of teaching. In the case of art education, it marked the official inclusion of art as a mandatory subject rather than merely a school activity.¹

That same year, five authors wrote about art and education in academic journals within the educational field, highlighting the limited presence of this discussion in that forum.

Aniceh Farah ^{Neves (1996)} believed that artistic practice in the classroom remained aligned with the context of Law 5692/71—that is, still largely fragmented into productions for commemorative dates, techniques and topics. In her view, this resulted from art teachers’ lack of understanding of the true significance of art in schools. According to Neves, this misunderstanding stemmed from a fundamental lack of identity, going back to a history of art education shaped by Jesuit instruction and the manual labor of enslaved people, followed by the French Mission and its elitism, and, later, the inclusion of art in the Basic Education (Elementary and Secondary) curriculum without the existence of degree programs to train teachers. This linear progression, as presented by ^{Neves (1996)}, is repeated in various articles within the archive, constituting what could be considered an official historiography of art education. In Neves’s view, this historiography appears to bear the weight of a supposed lack of definition in the field of art education in Brazil.

Besides the lack of a desired unity, there were evident differences regarding what role art should play in education. For ^{Maria de Lourdes Ornellas (1996, p. 170)}, the key question was whether “[…] there might not be a way for art to contribute more effectively to the teaching-learning process.” What was at stake was education as a goal to be achieved through art. Thus, the main goal of education was to “[…] create men capable of doing new things, not simply repeating, but men who can be creative, inventive and discoverers” (^{Ornellas, 1996}, p. 173).

In turn, for the researcher Rose Meri ^{Trojan (1996)}, contrary to the assumption that the field lacked an identity, the core discussion revolved around the importance of the subject in schools, a decades-long debate among researchers in the field. According to her assessment, its objective was to “[…] justify the importance of this subject [art education] in basic education” (^{Trojan, 1996}, p. 87). However, she seemed to take a pessimistic view, stating that such efforts had failed to convince either teachers or students, precisely because of the type of teaching practice being implemented: “[…] what is the point of spending time drawing, making Mother’s Day cards or decorations for Saint John’s Day?” (^{Trojan, 1996}, p. 87). She was unequivocal in her diagnosis: the lack of substantive content in the subject reinforced the perception of artistic education (as it was termed in 1996) as trivial. For Trojan, this stemmed from the fact that, so far, the question What is art for? had not been satisfactorily answered.

The question seemed to persist that year: “After all, what is art for?” (^{Othon, 1996}, p. 13). According to Sônia Othon, the answer was standardized: art was associated with enjoyment or pleasure, which, in her view, worked against its consolidation in education, as it was linked to something superfluous. Othon argued that the importance of art lay precisely in the context of contemporary times—a postmodern era whose fluidity and heterogeneity had created greater space for artistic expression and, consequently, an unprecedented proliferation of images. According to Othon, the need for art education was linked to this postmodern complexity, as teaching students to decode the world’s images was essential for preventing manipulation. Thus, the guiding principle should be: “[…] sharp, wide-open eyes, attentive to an analytical and critical view of all things, from every perspective” (^{Othon, 1996}, p. 22).

The critical and emancipatory character that art education claimed for itself was a central concern in the argument for its importance, as proposed by ^{Ornellas (1996)}, for whom the core of art education was the development of a conscious, creative, free, critical and emancipated individual. In the same line, Ricardo ^{Japiassu (1996)} asserted that denying children access to art education—or aesthetic literacy, as he preferred to call it—contributed to an exclusionary pedagogy, since art was not only a tool for social transformation but, above all, a means of humanizing the school environment.

In this same context, and still regarding the post-LDB seminal discussions on art education, the topic of teacher training came noticeably to the fore between 1996 and 2000. The concept of a reflective teacher (^{Veríssimo, 1999}), who integrated art into his/her teaching practice, stood in opposition to a technicist teacher. In this sense, art education was seen as offering potential benefits to teachers.

During those first five years, a key observation emerged—one that would resurface throughout the following decades—indicating that the issue was not, and still does not seem to be, fully resolved among researchers in the field. This is evident in the statement made nearly two decades later by the researchers ^{Gislene Germann and Antonio Pereira (2013, p. 433)}: “[...] art education in Brazil has assumed, within the history of school education, different conceptions regarding its goals, content, approach and methodologies.” ^{Maria Subtil, Egon Sebben and Ademir Rosso (2012, p. 351)} observed that “[...] a reductionist view prevails in schools, in which art serves more as a strategy for other subjects and school activities, or for disciplinary purposes, than as a field of knowledge in its own right.” In turn, the American researcher Elliot Eisner offered a more optimistic perspective on the relationship between art and education, viewing the former as a means of renewing the latter. In his article “What Can Education Learn from the Arts About the Practice of Education?”, ^{Eisner (2008)} concludes that despite the many uncertainties surrounding the field, it was possible to affirm that “[...] a conception of practice rooted in the arts can contribute to the improvement of both the means and the ends of education” (^{Eisner, 2008}, p. 6).

In his view, art contributes several ways of thinking to education. One concerns the absence of rigid rules, which encourages “[...] students and teachers to be flexibly purposeful” (^{Eisner, 2008}, p. 16). Another relates to the inherent flexibility of artistic practice. Lastly, he highlights the recognition of the unity between form and content, which requires “[...] thinking within the constraints and possibilities of the chosen medium, emphasizing the importance of aesthetic satisfaction as a motivation for work” (^{Eisner, 2008}, p. 16).

Nevertheless, the intersection of art and education was marked by tensions and contradictions, probably because “[...] art becomes naturalized and metabolized within the complex web of experiences, including those of the school environment” (^{Subtil, Sebben & Rosso, 2012}, p. 351). Along similar lines, ^{Barbosa (2009, p. 7)} claimed that “[...] arts education is an epistemology of art and, therefore, an inquiry into the ways in which art is learned in schools.”

To better understand how art was assimilated within education, ^{Subtil, Sebben and Rosso (2012)} interviewed elementary school teachers and art education undergraduates regarding their social representations of art. Their findings provided insight into how these professionals perceived the role of art in education:

1) Art as the enjoyment of beauty through sensory perception and the exercise of sensitivity.

2) Art as a pretext, a means for development, socialization and children’s learning—ideas primarily conveyed by teachers.

3) Art as artistic knowledge, related to society and experienced in daily life, with the potential to criticize society as a whole

(^{Subtil; Sebben; Rosso, 2012}, p. 357).

The researcher ^{Maura Penna (1999, p. 57)} had already identified, 13 years earlier, the main approaches to art education at the turn of the century. Although they do not directly address the functions of art as presented by Subtil, Sebben and Rosso (2012), they can serve to support them: “(1) a technical-professional focus; (2) art in schools as a means of fostering the comprehensive development of individuals; (3) revival of artistic language content.”

In one way or another, the categories proposed by the aforementioned authors seem to intertwine, suggesting the potential for further investigation into these relationships.

One of the most widespread social representations of art, according to the study mentioned above, is its association with beauty and the comprehensive development of the individual. “Would it be [...] admissible to educate without considering the aesthetic dimension? What is the contribution of aesthetic education to the field of education?” (^{Ormezzano, 2007}, p. 7). For ^{Graciela Ormezzano (2007, p. 16)}, aesthetic education is “[...] a process in which each individual feels, experiences and resonates emotionally, allowing their human potential to be expressed both in the recognition of their unrepeatable singularity and in the deep perception of a dynamic union with others.” Along the same lines, Verussi Amorim and Maria Eugênia Castanho view aesthetic education as ethical: “Concerned with the individual’s expansion beyond himself toward others, whether individually or collectively, it is profoundly affected in a social environment that suppresses compassion” (^{Amorim; Castanho, 2007}, n.p.).

Over these 24 years of discursive fragmentation in the educational field—whether in the early years of the analyzed publications or more recently—a recurring theme stands out: the need to define and refine the discourse on the importance of art in education.

Discourses on the Legitimation of Art in Education

From the perspective of the historiography of art education in Brazil, Ana Mae ^{Barbosa (2009)} proposes a paradigmatic shift that would supposedly move beyond the modernist model of teaching based on free expression—with creativity as its main pillar—toward what is called postmodernist art education. This approach stems from a conception of art as knowledge, supported by content and expertise, theoretically distancing itself from notions such as expression and creativity.

Postmodernist education (^{Iavelberg, 2015}) would be linked to a certain standardization of knowledge within the field of Art in Education, offering a means of overcoming or refining previous approaches.² However, despite being conceived in a linear and developmental manner—where postmodern art education would represent an evolution or improvement over earlier models—it appears to retain creativity as one of its fundamental pillars.

Although the archive investigated in this study shows that research on creativity in visual arts education was particularly frequent between 1996 and the early 2000s, especially studies based on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, the idea that creativity is an essential aptitude in education appears in different ways across many narratives. Rather than signaling a suppression of creativity (traditionally associated with modern art education) in favor of the knowledge and content emphasized by postmodernist education, they suggest a reformulation of its role.

Based on interviews conducted in 1983 with over 2,500 teachers, ^{Ana Mae Barbosa (2009, p. 10-11)} reported that “[...] all of them mentioned the development of creativity as the primary goal of their teaching. For those who emphasized the visual arts, the concept of creativity was spontaneity, self-liberation and originality.” Three and a half decades later, in 2018, a study with second-grade elementary school children included in the analyzed archive, linking literature and visual arts, revealed the following findings: “[...] that a school project integrating children’s literature and artistic expression fosters children’s enjoyment and appreciation of reading, stimulates imagination and creativity [...]” (^{Franco; Balça, 2018}, p. 77). Also in early childhood education, creativity emerges as a direct outcome of artistic education.

Although several studies highlight the distinction between art and creativity, suggesting that creativity exists independently of art, this does not seem to be the case in discussions that link the two concepts. Given that “[...] it is not just any aesthetics or creativity, but an aesthetics that moves toward beauty” (^{Ariosi, 2014}, p. 138), the idea of creativity becomes intrinsically tied to a particular notion of art. Numerous articles address creativity, even if only tangentially or as an implicit assumption. The term appears in 219 articles, more than half of those available online. This points to an uncritical belief in the value of creativity in art education, despite an education conceived as knowledge.

Such recurrence, however, is not incidental. Creativity is the defining principle of art education. While in the well-known modernist laissez-faire approach, which dominated art education in Brazil for decades, creativity was associated with a lack of intervention and the triumph of spontaneous childhood expression, in today’s world creativity is guided and shaped by an educational agenda aligned with the concept of the creative economy. This is evident in UNESCO’s Roadmap for Arts Education: Developing Creative Capacities for the 21st Century (2006, p. 1):

Humans all have creative potential. The arts provide an environment and practice where the learner is actively engaged in creative experiences, processes and development. Research indicates that introducing learners to artistic processes, while incorporating elements of their own culture into education, cultivates in each individual a sense of creativity and initiative, a fertile imagination, emotional intelligence and a moral ‘compass’, a capacity for critical reflection, a sense of autonomy and freedom of thought and action. Education in and through the arts also stimulates cognitive development and can make how and what learners learn more relevant to the needs of the modern societies in which they live.

However, as observed, the concept of creativity in the discourses takes on different shades. In her article, Teresa ^{Eça (2010)} seeks to define the specific idea of creativity she employs, unlike most of the analyzed articles. According to Eça, creativity is a common human ability to invent new things. However, it is not valued in schools, possibly because, as she argues, it involves a certain degree of uncertainty, an attribute that is diametrically opposed to school curriculum frameworks.

Yet, while creativity was once resisted in favor of an art education rooted in knowledge (solidified through content), in the 21st century, it is celebrated and seems to gain prominence within the discourse of art in education. Its importance is no longer confined to the subjective expression of childhood authenticity but now resides in “[...] building a sustainable future because it fosters creativity, innovation and critical thinking, essential skills for an emancipatory culture of equality and social responsibility” (^{Eça, 2010}, p. 13).

One notes here a discursive shift that apparently aims to undermine the idea of creativity as an innate faculty to be developed in children for the sake of their genuine self-expression. However, it reflects a reconfiguration of the notion itself, now detached from the idea of genius, which, paradoxically, seems to be rejected in contemporary discourse, as it represents a singular form of existence not accessible to everyone.

Creativity and Genius Underlying Art Education

The idea of genius is strategic for understanding how certain key terms—in this case, related to the concept of creativity—align with discourses in the educational field, particularly in art education.

According to ^{Catarina Martins (2011)}, the connection between genius and creativity emerged in the 18th century, linking artistic creation to the Romantic myth of the misunderstood artist as a genius. She claims that one of the first texts on genius, titled Of Genius by an unknown author, emerged in 1720, focusing on the differentiation between ordinary people and those endowed with genius.

Nowadays, the concept of genius no longer holds relevance, as it would suggest an innate condition exclusive to a few, while creativity is seen as a universal capacity, no longer tied to artistic virtuosity, but related to leading life in personal and authorial manner. In this sense, the concept of genius becomes standardized, residing in each person’s actions toward themselves. To explore how the concept of creativity is present in current discourses, we selected articles from the period between 2015 and 2019 that address this notion.

^{Pillotto and Voigt (2016)}, in a study on assessment in the arts based on the National Overall Curriculum Standards for Basic Education (^{Brazil, 2013}), found that creativity figured among the criteria used by art teachers to assess their students’ work. However, creativity does not seem to be a criterion employed solely in basic education. A 2017 study on undergraduate visual arts programs in Santa Catarina revealed that university professors in various subject areas, such as photography art, and technology, used creativity as an assessment measure (^{Batistti et al., 2017}). The same was found by ^{Maria Flávia Silveira Barbosa (2017)} in a survey with undergraduate students, where creativity was identified as one of the main functions of art in people’s lives

Expanding the scope of this belief even further, it could be argued that it is not only incorporated in discourses linked to artistic practices in the educational field but also extends to other areas of knowledge, as highlighted in a study on the concept of art conducted by Brazão and Mendonça in 2019 with graduate students in physical education from two vocational courses in Portugal. The study stated that creativity was intrinsically connected to these students’ artistic representations and viewed as a capacity that, when coupled with innovation, was responsible for the comprehensive education of individuals. Although this study was conducted in a different country and context, it is worth stressing that, on the one hand, while creativity was central to art education until the 1990s, despite seeming to be excluded from discourses after that decade, the archive reveals the opposite: the idea of creativity continues to be in vogue, albeit shaped by neoliberal principles in the educational field.

It is not uncommon, in other cases, for creativity to take on the guise of a supposed human potential capable of “[...] promoting the development of sensitive, creative individuals who are well-prepared to experience humanizing aesthetic experiences” (^{Lima, 2017}, p. 55), something presented as an essence of art education “[...] in basic education, [...] the greater meaning of artistic education and education itself” (^{Lima, 2017}, p. 40).

Whether through the idea of unleashing human potential or the concept of creativity itself, the analyzed articles seem to share the belief that “[...] creative activity is ‘inherent’ to being for presenting multiple combinations of various areas of knowledge, as well as emotions and ideas of each individual” (^{Lampert, 2016}, p. 93).

Thus, the creative potential of art operates a kind of transformation on ourselves, through which “[...] we reinvent ourselves every day, revisiting the different places we inhabit” (^{Victorio Filho et al., 2019}, p. 11). In this sense, one of the functions of art education nowadays seems to be the development of this potential, whose goal, according to ^{Cardoso Júnior and Candau (2018)}, is to blur the boundaries between art and life.

Among the supposed obstacles to creativity pointed out in the examined texts is the fact that the National Common Curricular Standards—which, according to the Ministry of Education, aims not only to guide the Brazilian basic education systems but also to establish knowledge, competencies and skills for all students in Brazil—does not offer clear guidance for art teachers. According to ^{Iavelberg (2015)}, this could reinforce the reproduction of historical paradigms in art education such as free expression and traditional education.

In this regard, teacher training becomes a key aspect and frequently appears linked to the need for creativity, because...

[...] Creating original and updated proposals in the classroom or selecting a textbook depends on a well-integrated theoretical and practical background, with mastery of the subject being taught and appropriate teaching methods

(^{Iavelberg, 2015}, p. 81).

According to ^{Rodrigues (2017, p. 670)}, “[...] in order to teach art one needs to ‘think on one’s feet’ and know how to use creativity, as the latter requires a fertile imagination.” Apparently, what is commonly said about creativity, still in line with Rodrigues, is something like the “[...] ability to create, to invent something new with what one has, to have original ideas, in short, to ‘think outside the box,’ to break free from the confinement and isolation of bureaucratic knowledge” (^{Rodrigues, 2017}, p. 630). As argued by Maria Flávia ^{Barbosa (2016)}, creativity is viewed as a competence, to use a trendy term, and its absence, may be considered a problem, a shortfall in teacher training in the field of art.

One of the analyzed articles that most frequently mention the word creativity actually focuses on technological processes, art and the education of young adults, which clearly shows the broad scope of the term. On the one hand, it holds the teacher responsible for developing both a critical and creative consciousness in their students, in the form of an “[...] emerging paradigm” of “[...] how individuals institute, constitute, produce and create” (^{Nascimento, 2017}, p. 110); on the other hand, it urges individuals to continuously create and re-create themselves through a desire to learn. Thus, creativity is the “[...] essence of research and learning” (^{Nascimento, 2017}, p. 111), in a continuous process of knowledge construction, and the creative potential (an analogous term to creativity) is not only vital but also an attribute that makes life more intense.

In many discourses, both creativity and creative potential are presented as positive qualities attributed to a type of experience that is associated with an essentialist notion of art, which supposedly brings benefits to individuals during their development process. However, above all, as seen in the statements above, creativity transcends the educational field and pedagogical discourses, extending into everyday life as a kind of ability that is constantly required. Thus, creativity, as a rallying cry of the present, seen not as “[...] a magical process but as a subjective process of changes, development and organization of the inner life” (^{Cupertino; Gianetti, 2005}, p. 78), detaches itself from art practices per se and takes on a different role, beyond a supposed aesthetic or technical education in the arts. It becomes an imperative for navigating the path to success in one’s life, where “[...] creativity emerges as a means of removing obstacles, offering the possibility of reconstructing identity” (^{Cupertino; Gianetti, 2005}, p. 78).

Among the selected articles, one highlights what the author calls the psychopedagogization of art (^{Zanetti, 2017}). In his view, the presence of art in the educational field is surrounded by a range of discourses from the field of psychology and can be divided into three distinct movements: psych discourses for the improvement of art teaching; a supposed essence of art for improving psych practices; and, lastly, psych discourses applied to the artistic field. ^{Zanetti (2018)} claims that the link between the discourses of psychology and the process of pedagogization lies in a kind of liberation that creativity could provide.

This kind of interpretation aligns with what the sources have presented up to this point, namely: that underlying the terms creativity, creative potential and creation are assumptions that are tied to the traits instilled in a certain notion of artistic practice—one still linked to genius, as previously mentioned—and also contribute to the consolidation of a certain type of individual. Thus, artistic practice functions simultaneously as a means of self-improvement and as a psychological unveiling of the self.

Narratives of Artistic-Pedagogical Proselytism

The technologies of subjectivity, or techniques of the self, are nothing more than the ways in which we are urged to act upon our bodies, souls and behaviors in order to achieve happiness, fulfillment, empowerment and so on. According to ^{Nikolas Rose (1998, p. 44)}, “[...] through self-inspection, self-problematization, self-monitoring and confession, we evaluate ourselves against criteria provided by others.” This is how knowledge attributed to art in the educational field operates, configuring itself as a technology of the self. It becomes clear that through both the highlighted pathways of education of taste and a sensitive education of the eye, the techniques of governing the soul are set in motion, especially when they promise the opposite of governance: liberation, expression, and, with that, a certain idea of free will. In a 2019 article on self-regulated learning using artistic drawing with undergraduate students, this mechanism is evident. For the authors, the integrative artistic activity helps students tackle, question, evaluate and modify the ways they approach their tasks (^{Freire; Duarte, 2019}).

Whatever the psych source in the contemporary educational debate, it involves, as far as could be verified, operating a certain set of...

[...] distinctive characteristics of modern knowledge and expertise of the psyche [which] relate to its role in stimulating subjectivity, providing self-examination and self-awareness, shaping desires and seeking to maximize intellectual capacities. They are key to the production of individuals who are ‘free to choose,’ whose lives become valid insofar as they are imbued with subjective feelings of meaningful pleasure

(^{Rose, 1998}, p. 35).

It is clear that the narratives of artistic-pedagogical proselytism listed here are part of the discourses that legitimize the importance of art in education, as these discourses are supported by them. Thus, an attempt was made to trace some of the threads of these narratives in order to reveal, in a genealogical sense, that what is currently considered natural is the result of discursive constructions made over time.

We thus see a set of discourses that gained strength in statements that clustered around the self-sufficiency of art in the educational field. In this way, myths seemed to emerge around art as an expression of creativity, liberation and universality. Truth-assertion regimes specific to the present were observed in motion, operating, as demonstrated, as a kind of litany that aims to legitimize the importance of art education on a daily basis, ultimately constituting what we call “[...] artistic-pedagogical proselytizing narratives”: a specific type of government by art, which, as a rule, attributes to it a disruptive power per se.

The choice to label this type of discourse as a narrative is simple and clear: it is one of the objects of scrutiny outlined by Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. Along with languages, mythologies, poems and dreams, narratives are discourses that make it possible to define recurring elements, rules of transformation and forms of opposition. It was in this sense—of observing a type of discursive construction that narrates itself and is present in a significant number of articles, as we have observed—that we chose to refer to this set of statements as artistic-pedagogical proselytizing narratives. By considering them forms of governance, also in a Foucauldian perspective, we shed light on an aspect that is almost always overlooked in discourses that stress the emancipatory nature of art, while what we have seen is that they constitute a set of normative discourses, a complex regime of action operating around the construction and shaping of subjectivity based on the encounter of art and education in the form of a human technology. In other words, it is part of a “[...] sets of forces, mechanisms and relationships that enable action from a center of decision—a government department, a managerial office, a military operations center—over the subjective lives of men, women, and children” (^{Rose, 1998}, p. 40). In our case, the aim was to observe how such a technology operated governance by art and, specifically, through the notion of creativity. Evidently, from a Foucauldian perspective, understanding the truth effects that combine art and the educational field serves as a starting point to reveal some of the ways in which the governance of the soul has been exercised through creativity.

The fact is that, in line with Gaztambide-Fernandez, there seems to be, in the analyzed articles, a widespread and constant attempt to legitimize and justify the importance of art in education, with the articles generally addressing this theme. Such narratives do not seem to critically examine the power relations existing between these bodies of knowledge; on the contrary, they essentialize and overestimate art. Obviously, given the nature of this paper, it will not be possible to demonstrate the operation of these discourses as effected in the doctoral thesis on which it is based. There, it was about observing in motion the truth-assertion regimes specific to the present that operate, as shown, as a kind of discursive reiteration that aims to daily legitimize the importance of art education, ultimately constituting artistic-pedagogical proselytizing narratives: a specific type of governance by art, which usually attributes to it a disruptive power per se. We have seen that these self-legitimizing discourses of art in education are self-referential, endogenous and rely on “[...] claims of universality of this concept [that] are always ahistorical, as they ignore the very specific (and rather short) history of Eurocentric conceptions of what is considered artistic” (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013, p. 224). Even though we are witnessing a supposed epistemological shift pointing to counter-narratives and dissenting histories, it is worth recalling that in the field of art (and its relation to education), historical narratives are based on their connection with Eurocentric traditions and canons, and even if other histories are written, many of the beliefs embedded in discourses about art in the educational field are components of artistic-pedagogical proselytizing narratives, hence the importance of revisiting them.

To conclude, by drawing on the archive as a research procedure, we are ultimately interested in critically analyzing the discourses that treat the relationships between art and education as universal, beneficial and essential. As we can see, these discourses operate forms of governance (proselytizing narratives) that reiterate ways of life in which creativity is supposedly a form of liberation and constitution of freer, more expressive and emancipated individuals. In this sense, rejecting the uncritical adherence to discourses that proliferate the importance of art and creativity in education becomes, perhaps, a possibility to view art not merely as a qualifier of education or experience but as an operation of thought (^{Deleuze; Guattari, 2007}), to think and invent other worlds, in other ways.