'Teaching knowledge': political-epistemological bets in the curricular debate

In view of the privileged focus, we chose to explore the articulation between subject-knowledge in the curriculum production process from the category 'teaching knowledge'. Resignified in the post-foundational agenda (^{GABRIEL, 2018}). We understand that this category synthesizes the processes of subjectivation and objectification mobilized in formative contexts, particularly in the school context, in the place of teaching, offering clues to explore this place as potentially a space for the production of rebel political subjectivities. This understanding of teaching, operates with the idea of a teaching subject perceived as simultaneously the subject of knowledge, desire and demands articulated narratively from the idea of 'biographical subject'. The challenge is precisely, as Hernández (2014) wonders, to work with investigative lines that

(...) make it possible to move from systems of thoughts based on transcendental and metaphysical foundations that explain the origin of man, science or knowledge to other forms of intelligibility that support the absence of ultimate foundations. (^{HERNANDEZ, 2014}, p.1198).

We have been betting on the 'biographical subject' notion as a possible and powerful strategy to carry out this movement of displacement of intelligibility forms. Operating with this subject understanding opens the way for the destabilization of meanings - historically hegemonized in the educational field - of 'rational autonomous subject' forged in modernity. In effect, this notion allows to invest in subjectification processes that incorporate the criticism to the understanding of a “man-subject since always there” (^{VEIGA-NETO, 2004}, p.133), that is, to the belief in the idea of subject as a being endowed with an autonomy based on reason, conceived as a metaphysical and absolute foundation, as a part therefore, inherent to a pseudo 'human nature'. These interpretations of 'subject' and 'humanity' are at the basis of humanism that has been going through the processes of knowledge production in the area of human and social sciences, in particular, in the field of education.

The expression 'death of the Subject' emerges precisely within this criticism, responsible according to authors like Laclau (1996) for destabilizing the norm of hegemonized and universalized humanity by humanism as mentioned above and bringing to the center of epistemological debates the question of the multiplicity of processes of subjectivation. Along the same line of argument, ^{Biesta, (2013}) states that the subject "seems to have moved from the center of the universe to the center of contemporary discussions and of practical and political interest" (^{BIESTA, 2013}, p.55). If the displacement of this norm opens powerful theoretical paths to combat the exclusion, from the chain of equivalences that define humanity, of those who, according to Honig (1993), "do not live or are unable to live according to this norm" (apud BIESTA, 2013, p.22), on the other hand, it poses a political-theoretical problem for the educational field whose confrontation has been the subject of intense internal debates. How to think the subject of knowledge, the subject of Education after these criticisms of the metaphysical foundation that supports the idea of rational autonomy? How to think about education when its main function of contributing to the development of "this rational potential is problematized so that [people] can become autonomous, individualistic and self-directed?" (BIESTA 2013, p, 19)

In dialogue with Foucault, ^{Biesta (2013}) has focused on these questions and proposed a formulation that seems heuristically powerful to continue thinking about the subject of knowledge without re-updating the belief in the autonomous rational subject, nor to give up the possibility of thinking about the place and the importance of the rational dimension in educational practice. After all, as Biesta (2013) reminds us, for Foucault "the end of man [or the death of the subject] is not the final disappearance of man 'as such', but only the end of a certain modern articulation of human subjectivity" (^{BIESTA, 2013}, p.62). This articulation leaves no room for thinking about the singularity and uniqueness of individuals in the media where their focus is placed on the definition of human nature, as we have seen, based on an essentialist perspective.

The problematization of this modern articulation of subjectivity in the post-foundational agenda opens the way, not only to displace a particular sense of subject / subjectivity, but the very pertinence of the question that underlies this understanding. Instead of asking what the human subject is, it is now a matter of questioning how the subject, perceived as a singular and historical being, "becomes presence" (^{BIESTA 2013}) in certain processes of subjectification?

It is, therefore, in this same theoretical movement that the bet on the 'biographical subject' can be seen as a strategy that has allowed to invest in the understanding of the signifier 'subject' after criticisms of transcendental humanism in the context of the post-foundational perspective. This articulation proposal implies unburdening crystallized meanings of 'subject of knowledge,' political subject and / or social character and seeking other theoretical solutions, in the field of curriculum, to explore - through the methodological contributions of (self) biographical studies - the possibilities of articulation between "formulating demands" and "becoming a presence" in training contexts.

Regarding disciplined knowledge, we have explored the different dimensions of its production and socialization process, considered as processes of objectifying that knowledge. How to think about these operations after the radicalization of the criticism of essentialist objectivisms? How to affirm the possibility of operating in our analyzes with the idea of 'objective' or 'objectified' knowledge without this necessarily corresponding to the reaffirmation of a particular sense of knowledge that considers it as something external to the subject that produces, teaches or learns it, in other words, as something objectified, that can be quantified, accumulated and measured?

We understand that although under erasure (^{HALL, 2000}) the significant knowledge continues to occupy an unavoidable place in the contemporary educational political agenda. In a similar way, we have bet on another production of meaning for the term objectivity than that invested by the enlightenment modernity and marked by metaphysical conceptions of 'neutrality' and 'truth'. We operate in this way, with the understanding of these objectification processes as an intellectual operation that is inscribed in the logic of the political, moving two categories of analysis - hegemony and antagonism - essential in the struggles for meaning. (^{GABRIEL, 2018}). The process of hegemonization characterizes the process of contingent closure of signification processes, which is also marked by the eruption of antagonism, the raison d'être of which is to reaffirm the impossibility of any definitive closure. After all, "inclusion and exclusion - perceived as permanent and temporary movements - are the foundation of any objectivity." (GABRIEL, 2018, p.10). In other words, "hegemonic articulatory practices define their identity as opposed to antagonistic articulatory practices. Antagonism discovers the limits of all objectivity, as it is never fully constituted." (^{GIACAGLIA, 2006}, p.107). In this perspective, 'contingency', 'provisionality' and 'articulation' in the midst of the political game of inclusion and exclusion, would be indelible marks of a 'pattern' of post-foundational objectivity, thus radically removing this possibility of defining any argument based on in the consolidation of a cleavage between objectivity of knowledge and political-ideological dynamics.

The understanding of the processes of subjectivity of teaching and of objectification of knowledge, as defended here, is in line with the idea of a curriculum based on the intersection of two flows of meanings: that of difference and that of biography.

The first curriculum-difference articulation brings us to the perception of the issue of multiplicity as the institute of the curriculum inhabited by this subject-teacher. The difference here is substantive. Instead of adjectivizing knowledge and subjects, it is perceived as a producer. A curriculum of difference is a curriculum open to the multiple possibilities of meaning. The closings produced therein are always contingent and provisional. The subjects that inhabit it are unfinished subjects. There are no teachers previously identified, as such, before the educational act, nor do they have a fixed, plastered professional identity. In this perspective, we become teachers in the relationship we establish daily with knowledge, with others, with the world. The difference curriculum is inscribed between the political and the politics, between insurgencies and stabilizations.

As a biographical space (^{GABRIEL, 2016}), in turn, the curriculum also allows exploring this ambivalent condition of the contemporary subject, destabilizing some plastered binarisms - public / private; collective / individual; individual / society; agent / structure - and open the way to bring the individual who “walks in the landscape” to the attention of curricular studies, to paraphrase Delory-Momberger (2012). It is also important to underline that the understanding of the contemporary subject in all its complexity presupposes placing it in the "airs of our time". Our "biographical condition", as stated by Delory-Momberger (2012), is not only a possibility for the singular subject to "become a presence", but also a condition for the subject to become subject to the new forms of social regulation in our contemporaneity. It is from the recognition of this condition that we can think of the narratives of the self and the we as subversion and / or control of a hegemonic cultural logic.

This type of reflection is crucial in order not to lose sight of the political injunctions of our present and simultaneously not to confuse the return of the "individual", understood as a unique and singular subject by the way he responds to the other, a subject of demands, with the return of the normative individualism or a celebration of identity particularisms. After all, like the subject, its biography is also political, that is:

...) it is understandable not because of conscious rationality or reflective practice, but because of the articulation between experiences, meanings, spaces and incommensurable times that give meaning by establishing chains of meaning in which different elements are included and others excluded for contingent reasons. (^{HERNANDEZ, 2014}, p.1206)

In this same theoretical movement, ^{Miller (2014}), when discussing the role of curriculum theorization as an essential element of the educational debate in the United States and worldwide, suggests forms of autobiographical investigation as a way of paying attention to the self-reflective and temporal aspects of the subjects' interpretation of their educational experiences. For this author, curriculum is seen as “process, an action, an involvement with and in the world” (^{MILLER, 2014}, p. 2047) that according to William Pinar (2004,2011)“invites teachers and students to have “complicated conversations” ( Apud MILLER, 2014, p. 2048) experienced in a multifaceted and multi-perspective way. In a dialogue with Pinar, this author states that the method of currere proposed by him:

(....) it is simultaneously positioned as autobiographical, political, historical and intellectual, and not only involves norms, textbooks and objectives of school districts, but invites teachers and students to have “complicated conversations” (PINAR, 2004, 2011) , lived as and through the multifaceted and multi-perspective understanding project (^{MILLER, 2014}, p. 2047).

As action, process and involvement in the world, the curriculum was constituted “as everything that inhabits, permeates and occurs both inside and outside the classroom” (^{MILLER, 2014}, p. 2051). The author names “communities without consensus” the spaces, processes and relations that are always changing, contingent that constitute the curricula. This conception removes any possibility of forecasting the effects and affects of educational processes.

Perceived as a space for the intersection of places, times and collective and individual experiences, this curriculum - between the subjectivation / teaching professionalization place authorizes us to look at the subject - teacher - despite the moment of its professional life trajectory- as a 'subject in project', unfinished and open to multiple contingent closings that identify it to a specific profession whose meaning is also the result of hegemonic operations amid the struggles for its definition. In this perspective, it is less interesting to understand what it means to 'be a teacher' than the mechanisms or language games through which 'we are constantly becoming a teacher' in discursive contexts that are instituted as fields for structuring teaching.

Our purpose here is more focused in operationalizing the category 'teaching knowledge' as a key to read in the framework of post-foundational intelligibility for the intended analysis than in deepening into the trajectory of its construction or its uses in the educational field. Its plural and heterogeneous nature seems to be potent in helping us to understand the connections of the processes of objectification and subjectification. Defining 'teaching knowledge' implies inscribing it in an equivalent chain of meanings in which terms such as: science, theory, practice, experience, values, skills, disciplinary content, pedagogical content, culture participate. Among these signifiers, we chose to focus on the 'knowledge of experience' to understand the strategies mobilized in the narrative produced by the interviewed teacher.

This option is justified. The expression knowledge of experience has played an important role in recent decades, in research in the educational field, as a productive way to introduce issues related to processes of subjectification into the debate. Experience, understood, not as the knowledge gained through everyday pedagogical practices, but as knowledge that is acquired in the way teachers respond to what happens to them during their professional trajectory. This allows investing in the understanding of knowledge of the experience, as being "formed from all the others, but retranslated,"polished" and submitted to the certainties built in practice and in the lived (^{NUNES, 2001}, p. 34).

It is important to underline the articulating role exercised by the significant experience in the processes of objectification and subjectification of teaching knowledge. It functions as a nodal point capable of simultaneously articulating different knowledges and producing an antagonism that is built around another defining chain of what would be "non-knowledge teaching". It is therefore a matter of investing in some configurations of this game of exclusion and inclusion to the detriment of others. As explained in another opportunity (^{GABRIEL, 2018}), it is interesting to think about the term “experience” less as a locus for the production of teachers' knowledge than as a strategic discursive function that destabilizes the hegemonic boundaries that define it, placing other possible definitions of rationality and subjectivity in the game...

Agreeing that "what counts as experience is neither self-evident nor defined, it is always contestable, therefore always political" (^{SCOTT, 1999}, p.20), we now proceed to present, through the analysis of discursive fragments, a possibility of a political reading of insurgent curriculum production from this category.

Becoming presence: insurgent curriculum recompositions

The challenge of the methodological use of biographical approaches, as understood in the post-foundational discursive approach, consists in "granting the main role to the subject who narrates, trusting in his ability to construct events" (^{HERNANDEZ, 2014}, p. 1205) and, simultaneously, to recognize that the social does not end in this self-referentiality. Facing this challenge resulted in the analysis that follows. We chose to let the intertextuality woven between our interpretations and the different marks of the subjectivation processes that Professor Antônio mobilizes as a biographical subject appear in our writing. Subject of knowledge when his identity as a professor of sociology weighs more heavily, subject of desire, when sexuality markers come into action to account for the curriculum lived in his professional routine. Subject to demand when he understands the political dimension of his teaching practice for the production of rebel subjectivities destabilizing hegemonic normativity

From Antônio's narrative, it is evident that the difference is not an object of the previously established and planned teaching-learning process of the discipline of sociology. The difference is what allows this process to happen. It is interpellative, it crosses the bodies of the subjects - teachers and students - who inhabit that curriculum. The imponderables who question the curricula produce new conformations in their plans, new alliances with the subjects of the curricular space and confront Antônio with his own gender condition and his sexuality, making them essential elements of the “complicated conversation” that constitutes the curricula.

In this movement, paying attention to the masculinity-building processes assumes a central place in the reflection he develops on curricular dynamics. Antônio says:

One thing that marked me at a school where I taught was the place that some boys occupied and the relationship they established with some girls in order to get them to do their tasks. They were boys who had profiles of small alpha males in the school space. Not only leadership for other boys, but who also managed to convince the girls... and there it involved a whole adolescent game, some seduction, some emotional and sexual expectations that they did not have back. But it produced a certain relationship of dependence that was expressed in the fact that the tasks delivered were never in their handwriting. So, from this completely banal episode of a dynamic in the classroom, I started to notice how some things reproduce, like these gender relations and how this construction of masculinity appears very early in school dynamics and has a kind of invisible characteristic. So... certainly, it was not just for me that that boy did not actually do the tasks.

Antônio interprets this episode as an indicative of the construction of particular masculinities from that school experience that he believes were reinforced by practices of the institution that, although progressive, contributed to the naturalization of certain gender positions. In this process, he will reflect on the class markers that shape the profile of the students of this institution and that he understands as limiting access to certain debates in the discourse fields of feminisms.

Certain debates are very concentrated in the middle class. The feminism debate for example or other debates, a hard core in the middle class and poles in the popular classes. So this debate was not placed for these girls on autonomy and, in the context of a school that had a series of practices that reproduced a certain place for girls, without this being necessarily explicit in the official discourse. Officially it was a very egalitarian school, very progressive. But there were a number of practices that naturalized these gender relations in the classroom. Class representation, was basically done by boys. They didn't necessarily have more qualified boys for this process. But in the internal dynamics of the elections, they were basically boys who went to representations.

From these perceptions, Antônio seeks strategies to talk to the girls about the episode with the evaluations. However, when making this movement he comes up against the limitations of his own gender positioning: “what place do I have to talk to girls about autonomy?” He then seeks to join forces with the Physics teacher, who is also sensitive to those issues. “This teacher herself is already unique, because she is a physics teacher. Very marked by the experiences of being a woman in an area such as Physics that is very masculine” and develops a work with her trying to problematize these issues with the girls.

These curricular experiences point to the limits and openings of the teacher's relationship with students, positioning and conditioning the curricular approaches that he will produce from then on. For Antônio, his belonging to the “universe of a male identity” gives him an opening to talk about certain subjects with the boys who are forbidden to female teachers.

At some point I started to realize that I had greater access to boys to talk about certain things (...) there is a universe of a male identity that allowed me to move around, talk about certain things with boys and access certain things with them that perhaps they were not accessible to female teachers or, finally, other subjects. So from that perception, I think that my relationship with feminism served as an inspiration to help me think about the relationship with boys.

During a “complicated conversation” during a class, Antônio is asked by a student who asks him about his sexual orientation.

At some point they always ask something about my private life. So I never had any difficulty saying: "my boyfriend and etc"... I never said, “Hi!I'm gay". But if someone asks, “What did you do over the weekend? I answer: I hung out with my boyfriend. And then, in doing so, I was curious in that first school, in a ninth grade class... there was a group of students who sat in the back and they were clearly testing my virility. I knew that if I didn't cut them, they would make my life hell. Because students also bully their teachers. Especially with certain guidelines. Sexuality is one of them. What they wanted to know was that. When I told them in public, they lost the tool they had to try to create an embarrassment. From that process, many boys came to talk to me.

Talking openly about his sexuality paved the way for the most diverse arrangements. Among them, Antônio identifies the establishment of a bridge between him and the “gay boys,” from that episode on. “I think I can get a closer bridge with the boys. And especially, in that discussion, with gay boys.”

Antônio reflects on the insertion process in the school where he currently teaches - whose profile is mainly composed of white middle class students - and the issues that emerge in this new context. When comparing the previous curricular experiences with the experiences in the new school, Antônio identifies a greater domain of some debates in the discursive field of feminisms by the students of the new institution. Addressing some themes in this new space does not generate the same passionate reactions that he identified in the old schools, as was the case of the student who, feeling his faith affronted by the teacher's approaches in the classroom, asks to be released from attending Sociology classes.

One day a student asked to talk to me, to say that my classes were against his faith. He said he would be present at the exams, but he didn't want to attend my classes anymore. I got pissed about that, but I accepted. I found it very worthy that he had the autonomy to come to me and say that. And he didn't attend my classes from then on. He only showed up for the exams. Delivered the tasks. His exams were great. The tasks were great. But he didn't go to classes any longer. And I found this boy again years later. About three years later at Cantareira in Niterói. I left work after a teachers' meeting (...) when a young man stops me to talk. Only I didn't recognize who it was right away. He said, "don't you remember me?" “No. Sorry." (laughs) But when he spoke about the story, about his class, then I said... I looked at him and thought: “This boy is changed”. I found out that he was taking an anthropology degree and today he was a gay boy and had left the church. I ended up finding it funny because maybe that's why he felt bothered by classes.

This episode with the student leads him to question the place of affection in the curricula, when certain approaches in the classroom, produce displacements in the subjects who touch “wounds that we also cannot manage in the classroom. This is something that some classroom returns make me think about”. Antônio cites the example of the theme of gender violence that is part of his curriculum repertoire. Upon realizing that domestic violence is a reality in the lives of many of his students, he reformulates his planning in order to introduce this theme from another perspective.

He also draws attention to the difference in the historical context that marks the moment of insertion in the new school, which brings in a very latent way the marks of the process of political polarization noticeable in Brazilian society in recent years and which he identifies in some dynamics with his students in the classroom.

The recomposition of plans based on other dialogues with the discursive field of feminisms in the new institution will be motivated, therefore, by perceptions about the students' previous cultural capital, by the fact of teaching in classes of the third year of high school in which gender and racism issues are not part of the program; but also and mainly, due to the curricular questions that emerge in the school routine and provoke Antônio to rethink his approaches.

In this process, the intersectional perspective is assumed as a political strategy to continue operating with markers of the difference that he considers structuring, making them cross all the topics covered in the classroom:

These categories ended up forming my perception of the world anyway, I try to introduce them in different themes...So, for example, we discussed Globalization this semester. And then to think about Globalization, we ended up coming to the topic of migration. And on the migration issue, we went to discuss trafficking in women. What made possible in a topic that at first is not exactly a topic that will discuss gender inequality, but as these markers are structuring, put this debate on trafficking in women. What are these trafficked women; what is the effective profile of these women most prone to trafficking, in a debate on Globalization and migration. ..And then it has been interesting because as for this student profile that I have been working with, presenting gender is not new, making intersectional cuts is.

An unexpected conversation with the boys in the classroom about the universe of the porn industry, about the construction of expectations regarding male sexual performances and female bodies, produces effects and rearrangements in the teacher's curriculum elaborations, bringing back the subject of masculinities to the complicated conversation curricula as a way of inviting boys to become involved in classroom debates.

From the introduction of debates on the construction of masculinities, the teacher seeks to involve boys in social, political and economic processes that reproduce inequalities, violence and oppression by problematizing perceptions that naturalize the figure of white male subjects “as if they were the reference universal of human being ”(^{RESTIER; SOUZA, 2019}, p. 9), devoid of race and gender.

We discuss very little the formation of masculinity that is aggressive. It is aggressive among men, you know. It is a debate that from a theoretical point of view is super difficult to do, in the sense that the homogenizing idea that machismo produces only privileges, ends up hiding the idea that privilege is also unevenly distributed among men. And that this experience with machismo kills men; it generates aggressors, violators, not only against women but also in the relationship between men. Talking about it with the boys and introducing this perspective into the intersectional debate in the classroom has produced some interesting reflections because in general in the debates about gender, the boys seemed a bit aloof like that, with the idea that "it doesn't concern me".

The narrative about Antônio's experience with feminisms in the curricula, therefore, points to the always contingent processes that constitute the production of teaching knowledge, permanently challenged by the dynamics constructed in educational contexts. In the midst of these always open processes, Antônio seeks “strategies to try to guide certain discussions” that seem relevant to him.

In these experiences always open to the unpredictable, a student perceived by other teachers as a student who created problems during classes, becomes an ally the moment during a class they establish a dialogue based on the theoretical matrices proposed by the student. "When I managed to make a dialogue with authors of classical economics or even the neoclassical that he saw at home, it turned out that he became a partner in the class process and the leader of these boys". In another moment, this same student and his colleagues have their conservative perceptions of the world destabilized when they are asked to produce a seminar on gender inequality in the Sociology class.

The boys were offended (when they were drawn with the theme 'gender inequality' at the Sociology seminar). But they did a good job. They did not fail to point out their criticisms of gender studies ...It was an interesting experience. Because even with a slightly insulted face, they could not refuse the debate with data on gender inequality. Unless there is intellectual dishonesty, you cannot ignore this cut. And as it was a job to be evaluated, even if they wanted to operate with intellectual dishonesty, they could not. I confess it was a fun experience. See boys with very conservative speeches, with macho behaviors that girls often complained about, having to present a paper on gender inequality. Anyway, it was a good experience.

Antônio's reflections on his educational experiences give the dimension of “communities without consensus” (^{MILLER, 2014}) that constitute school curricula, whose spaces, processes and relationships are always changeable and contingent. Almost at the end of the interview, Antônio asks:

What will be the result? I don't know. I have since students who are going to take on a militant stance and sometimes I will get answers from them reaffirming more conservative positions. You'll have it. There will be a student who will say to me: "I don't want to attend your class because your class hurts my faith." And I have to manage this.

Although he understands the character of unpredictability as constitutive of school curricula, Antônio reaffirms the political and privileged place of teaching for the introduction of debates that open possibilities for the creation of possible worlds.

I think there are many ways to do politics or to do militancy. I understand that being in the classroom ... I think that for teaching as a whole, especially in basic education, there are different forms of activism ...So what I have realized is that I have tried strategies to try to guide certain discussions that seem relevant to me ... to introduce certain debates that my privileged place as a professor of Sociology allows me. I can run the risk of becoming a public enemy, as many sociology professors have become public enemies in the state; before the State; in certain social sectors. But perhaps we have become public enemies precisely because of the possibility that we have of introducing certain debates.