Abstract

With the tertiary education mantra of creativity, critical thinking and innovation in mind, we consider the critical-creativity of error. Taking the university to model social orthography, or ‘correct writing’, according to the norms of disciplines, we consider the role of error in the classroom. Looked at another way, error questions the norms governing norms and the instability of disciplinary grounds. Beyond correction, error involves a mis-taking, or taking another way. Tracing the origin of error we are able to reconstruct the social world in terms of which it is conceivable for a mistake of any kind to have been made. The university, we find, withholds worlds which are not new but are sources of creativity, and constitutes a pluriversity or poly-versity.