Brief Remarks on the Strategic Experimentation of Belonging and the Instauring of Cosmicities in the Context of Art Education

Abstract

This article considers the notion of belonging as an always incomplete and evolving journey integral to which is the gift of otherness; a journey that consists of a continuous mutation of self, others and world. This contrasts with the more fixed notion of ‘belonging-to’ that suggests prescribed identities affiliated to an established order, which can then invoke the negation of ‘not belonging’ and the subsequent violence of exclusion, marginalisation or dispossession that we witness almost endlessly. The negation of negation as manifested, perhaps unconsciously, in educational practices that need to respond empathetically to diverse pathways of learning, is central to this article. In this light perhaps in education we require a new declaration of rights, the right to have rights, that extends cartographies and obligations of belonging, in a world of increasing precarity. The article explores the notion of belonging in educational practices by articulating a series of scenarios in order to open up collective debate for possibilities in pedagogical practice.