Derridan ThoughT

Curriculum studies advances through the work and thought of Jacques Derrida. Derridian thought, like curriculum studies, advances complicated conversations and difficult memories. Curriculum studies is a field that examines issues on teaching, the university, democracy, race, class and gender, sexuality, politics, ethics, responsibility, nation, place, and geography. Derrida complicates ideas such as these by deconstruction. For Derrida, deconstruction is a way to think through ideas. Deconstruction is not destruction; rather, it is a form of generative interpretation. Thus, to deconstruct terms in curriculum studies such as geography, nation, and identity—for example—Derrida suggests that each term founders under the sign of an aporia. Every idea is unstable as it entails its opposite. Derrida coined the term differance. The a in differance signifies that this is not the same as difference. Differance suggests that ideas are subject to delayed meaning. Differance is a maneuver, a shifting, a slippery movement between signified and signifier. Thus, for curriculum studies, the word nation—for example—is subject to the movement of differance. What nation means now is not what it will mean in the future. Meaning delayed.

Derrida thought that the dogmatic thought inherent in totalitarianism are dangerous. Much of Derrida's work is a reaction against dogmatisms in French occupied Algeria—as he grew up there as a Jewish child and suffered from anti-Semitism and colonialism—and the dictatorships of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini and the shame that was Vichy France. In response to the sameness that dictatorship demands, Derrida emphasizes the notion of the alterity. Alterity means absolute otherness; nothing can be reduced to sames. Derrida makes much of the word archive, which is subject to the movement of the aporia and differance. The archive is overdetermined by memories, histories, cultures.

Derrida makes much of the term revenant. In relation to the archives of curriculum studies, the revenants of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud are relevant. For Derrida, Marx and Freud haunt. Marx has made an impression on culture. No matter what, we are stuck with him. With the affront of neoliberalism, we have seen an explosion of Marxist theory in curriculum studies. And yet Marxism, some claim, is dead. Think of the former Soviet Union and the former East Germany, for example. The revenant of Marx haunts curriculum theory. It seems that many Marxists do not want to call themselves Marxists—although they use Marxist theory in curriculum studies. Likewise, the revenant of Freud haunts the psychoanalytic wing of curriculum studies. Some scholars would rather not say that they are Freudians. They might say that they are post-Freudians or Lacanians, but not Freudians. The name Freud haunts. There is something about the name Freud that makes some people uncomfortable. Curriculum studies advances through Derridian thought, especially through its psychoanalytic and political implications.