Call for Papers

17 Jul Call for Papers

Association for Visual Pedagogies (AVP) – Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy
Special Issue: Videography and Decolonising childhood

It is often assumed that videos accurately and objectively record children’s movements and represent the real world as it is, thereby making objective knowledge about children in educational settings possible.In contrast, we are looking for contributions that assume that video-practices are not passive, observing instruments and measuring devices, but are productive and performative in how knowledge is created.

We are wondering how videography can challenge the ontologies of humanism with its power-producing binaries that include and exclude the subhuman (e.g., child) and the nonhuman (e.g., cameras): nature/culture, mind/body, inner/outer, cognition/emotion, animate/inanimate, human/animal, human/machine, adult/child. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore how video recording technology can help rethink “what forms of intelligence, truth and expertise count” (Lorimer, 2010, p.238). So, we ask:

• What role could videography play in decolonising childhood?
• In what way can videography play creatively with different notions of time and space?

Through the use of posthuman theories, taken for granted elements of the traditional trajectory of educational research practices can be opened up for fresh investigations into both the process of producing empirical material, as well as analysing and communicating research.

Critical posthumanism connected to the works of thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Karen Barad and Rosi Braidotti creates a rich philosophical base for such an exploration and we hope that this will produce some creative cutting-age material that extends and challenges our view on childhood and pedagogies.

Here are some guiding questions:

1. How does posthumanism shift the role of the researcher using videography in educational settings?
2. How does the inclusion of the material (the use of camera and video as an apparatus) matter in knowledge production, ontologically, epistemologically and ethically?
3. How can ideas about time and space in education be challenged by developing new ways of seeing through videography?
4. What are the possibilities for decolonising childhood by using video recordings?

We would like to encourage contributions that reconceptualise educational research in ways that intervene in dominant child-nature discourses, troubling normative methodologies, and unsettling humanist ways of using videography.

Deleuze’s extensive work on cinema (1986, 1989) for example reveals interesting possibilities to redefine video research in education. However, to fulfil cinema’s (and videography’s) “potential to transform the structure of perception which has dominated the history of thought” one has to “realize the power of the cinematic apparatus” (Colebrook, 2006, p.39).

Where traditional video research is often communicated by drawing a line between the empirical material and a textual analysis, the format of the Video Journal of Education and Pedagogywhich integrates video, sound and text, allows diffracting some of these dichotomies and abandoning the idea of video and sound as lifeless matter.

The proposed article can involve video essays, short films and interactive text provided it is justified by arguing that this new type of form extends and opens up new knowledge and how it enables us to disturb or decolonise our thinking about children and pedagogical practices.

While the format of this publication does not limit the use of visuals and video, the length of the text should not exceed 6000 words.

For further information and submitting abstracts please contact the guest editors:
Prof Karin Murris, University of Cape Town, karin.murris@uct.ac.za
Mr Soern Finn Menning, University of Agder, Norway, soern.f.menning@uia.no

Deadline for abstract (about 250 words): Aug 31, 2018

Notification Acceptance/Rejection: Sep 15, 2018

Deadline for submission of article: Nov, 31, 2018

Colebrook, C. (2006) Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. (1986) Cinema I: The Movement-Image, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1989) Cinema II: The Time-Image, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lorimer, J. (2010). Moving image methodologies for more-than-human geographies. Cultural
Geographies, 17(2), 237–258. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474010363853