Against the scandal: itinerant curriculum theory as subaltern momentum

Abstract

Purpose

Keeping Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in mind, the purpose of this paper is to examine the itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as a subaltern momentum unveiling how ICT informs subaltern ways of being and thus, potentially, the research lens for qualitative approaches. In this context, the paper examines how curriculum as an ideological devise produces an epistemicide – the killing of knowledge – an epistemological havoc cooked up daily in the process of qualitative studies promoting and legitimizing a specific modern western Eurocentric episteme.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper dissects modernity as a colonial zone, creating “abyssal thinking,” a eugenic system of visible and invisible distinctions that legitimizes the visible, i.e. “this side of the line” and produces “the other side of the line” as “non-existent.”

Findings

The paper urges the need to decolonize leading modern western Eurocentric counter-hegemonic traditions such as Marxism.

Originality/value

The paper analyzes ICT’s contribution to subaltern struggles, asserts ICT’s commitment against any form of canon, grabs the educational matrix of qualitative research as an eugenic beast from its very own ideological horns, alerting the need to examine any study of education and society within the ideological eugenic political economy and modes of production of systems pillared by poverty, exploitation, segregation, and intellectual rape.

Citation

Paraskeva, J.M. (2018), "Against the scandal: itinerant curriculum theory as subaltern momentum", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 128-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-D-18-00004