Chapter 7: From Text to Pretext: An Ethical Turn in Curriculum Work

From the ethical perspective developed in the work of French Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, ethics is “responsibility for the other” (Levinas, 1998) and more precisely: for the very otherness of the other. Thinking in terms of curriculum, the other is, of course, always present, even when we are dealing with the “self,” as has been Enlightenment’s fixation in the form of the “individual,” for the self is a reflection of and reflected in the other. The other in curriculum and the other of curriculum, as these reciprocally implicate each other, incites response about the urgent need for finding ways to conceptualize practices of curriculum in which the other truly could be considered through the subjective presence of ethics. Indeed, one can easily sense how ethical concerns immediately arise when curriculum conceptualizations and practices seek to unambiguously define and prescribe what and how teachers should teach and students must learn. In a globalizing era of neoliberal creep, where competitive internationalization of universities gives way to managerialist accountabilities and controls on knowledge, with increasing homogeneity and instrumentality in the delivery of such, ethical considerations of the other within prepackaged curricula is of increasing concern. This is of salient importance in the context of international curriculum work, when the other (a teacher or student) is of another country, another language, another culture, and so on. In Levinas’ words, imposing “knowledge” on the other of what and how things must be done proceeds from the reduction of otherness to sameness (Levinas, 1987). In so doing, we act as if we know what is best for the other, which requires a projection, under a claim of knowing who this other is, hence reducing his or her otherness to something we already know. In this sense, Todd (2003b) reminds us in quoting Derrida (1978), that this is also the case with the theory we construct as scholars: