“Brutti, Sporchi & Cattivi”: Towards a Non-Abyssal Curriculum

• Main Author: João M. Paraskeva
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Sergipe 2016-04-01
• Series: Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação
• Online Access: https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/revtee/article/view/4966

The Western Cartesian Modernity model as an hegemonic model with its arrogant claim to address global social issues is not just moribund, it is dead. This article claims the twentieth century as ‘the last Eurocentric century’. Relying on the work of some key decolonial thinkers, such as Sousa Santos, the article denounces the way Western eugenic curriculum of modernity created an abyssal thinking in which ‘this side’ of the line is legitimate and ‘the other side’ has been produced as ‘non-existent’. In so doing curriculum as we knowing is part of the ‘epistemicide’. The article argues for an Itinerant Curriculum Theory that will help create new avenues to understand the field in the light of the classes within and beyond Eurocentrism, paying attention to other epistemologies beyond the Western framework. The article echoes Ettore Scola metaphor “Brutti, Sporchi Cattivi” to challenge how hegemonic and specific (or so called) counter hegemonic curriculum platforms – so connected with Western Eurocentric Modernity - have been able to colonize the field without any prudency to “fabricate” and impose a classed, raced and gendered philosophy of praxis, as unique, that drives the field to an ideological surrealism and collective suicide. The article challenges curriculum studies to assume a non-abyssal position one that respects epistemological diversity. This requires an Itinerant Curriculum Theory, which is a commitment with da ruthless epistemological critique of every existing epistemology.