Autobiography, Politics and Sexuality

William Pinar. (1994). NY: Peter Lang.

Working From Within (1972. pp.7-12)
Bringing Jackson Pollock's interview on his immediacy as a way of painting for greater directness as well as his emphasis on inner world, Pinar argues that the more immediate the class becomes, the more we become immersed in the moment such that students become more honest in expressing their thinking and feeling. To him, spontaneity is a key to bring about cognitive and emotional contact. [But, this requires tremendous capability of teachers themselves. In this sense, he stresses teacher's self-reflection.]

The Method of Currere (1975, pp.19-27)
Pinar delineates a process of culturing intellectuality through self-reflective biographical approach in four stages.
Regressive: Return to the past and observe as it is.
Progressive: Relax in a slightly darkened room and think of future, then bring back the attention to matters associated with one's intellectual interests and associatively.
Analytical: Describe the biographical present and respond to it freely.
Synthetical: See oneself concretely as if in a mirror.
[This meditative engagement is not so transparent to me. Nevertheless I highly regard the way he approaches for the second phase.]

The Trial (1976, pp.29-92)
His thoughtful interpretation of the Trial by Kafka is used to support his emphasis on self-reflection. Pinar explains that K, who is lack of self-reflection--attention on his own experience, on his body and on his emotion, is arrested intellectually and phycho-socially. In other words, he is dissociated from his subjective experience. On the other hand, Pinar argues that his task is to 'portray singularity, subjectivity, the process of self-knowing' and choose autobiography as a means of writing subjectively. He quotes Dewey (1960, On Experience, nature and freedom) to support his idea of self-awareness as a tool to dissolve intellectual arrest and its movement: "but that what I have learned from them ['philosophical writing'] has been technical in comparison with what I have been forced to think upon and about because of some experience in which I found myself entangled." In this light, Pinar describes the introduction of phenomenology to the social science as a significant event, that relieves theories to the 'primary experience' and the things themselves. [It is rather long, but interesting to read how he developed and support his ideas about the importance of self-reflection. It is very intellectual and persuasive.]

Notes on the Curriculum Field (1978, pp.77-99)
Pinar seeks new curriculum possibilities in emancipation based on Habermas's acknowledgment of a distinction between theory and praxis. Habermas argues, "Decisions for the political struggle, cannot at the outset be justified theoretically and thn be carried out organizationally. The sole possible jstification at this level is consensus aimed at in practical discourse, among the participants, who, in the consciousness of their common interests and their knowledge of circumstances, of the predictable consequences and secondary consequences, are the only ones who can know the risks they are willing to undergo, and with what expectations" (quoted p.93, Theory and Practice, p33). Pinar's methodology directly reaches Habermas' argument: "the methodological framework that determines the meaning of the validity of critical propositions of this category['critical social science'] is established by the concept of self-reflection. The latter releases the subject from dependence on hypothesized powers. Self-reflection is determined by an emancipatory cognitive interest" (quoted p.87, Habermas Knowledge and Human Interest(?), 310) [It is a good historical overview on curriculum theories and Pinar carefully keeps his position regarding self-reflection and emancipatory as new curriculum possibilities and this voice gets stronger towards the end of his argument. It is well written.]

Autobiography and an Architecture of Self (1985, pp.202-222)
Pinar articulates two reasons of the loss of authentic self-acknowledgement: 1) at schools children experience clashing of their identities brought from home and 2) a capitcal economy, where everything is commodified, results in self-estrangement in its essence. From psychoanalysis theories, existential phenomenology traverse Foucault and Derria and Nietzsche, Pinar argues "the running of the course is the building of the self, the lived experience of subjectivity. Autobiography is an architecture of self, a self we create and embody as we read, write, speak and listen" (p.220). [It is amazing to see how he connects trains of thoughts through such diverse and deep analysis, but after all, I do not see the point of doing it. It is only interpretation of theories. Where is the lived experience?]