Abstract

Having been invited to a conference with the title of “The Pedagogics of Unlearning,” the first challenge I faced was to work out how to make sense of and respond to the rhetorical contortions of this title itself.1 Why this phrasing? What conceptualization did it imply? What could the conference organizers possibly have been thinking in coming up with such a phrase and setting it up as the very organizing “idea” of the conference, as the rhetorico-conceptual challenge for speakers to tackle? “The Pedagogics of Unlearning” is definitely an unusual and awkward phrase, for what may quite possibly be an unusual, awkward, or even impossible formulation. To make sense of it I had to translate it, expand it...