Pedagogies of Loss

[CW: I feel this post may be triggering to people who are working through trauma]

My to-do list this weekend is enormous and yesterday instead of tackling it, I decided to go for a walk because I have been swimming with ideas about memory and loss and teaching and learning all week. This is going to be one of those, oh no Ann is in deep phenomenological theory thought land posts, sorry.

There has been a lot of ink spilled on "learning loss" because of the pandemic, op-eds that ask how can we "catch-up," how can we support students to fill the gaps they have. All of these articles move towards how loss is a big bad when it comes to education; we don't want to lose anything, we want to make sure everything is built on in a scaffolded way which becomes difficult when the foundations are not there. And yes to the last part of that statement, but there is also so much that is not being said in this discourse of loss that goes beyond a need to reinforce foundations.

Deep breath. As someone who wrote a whole dissertation and then a book centering on "tactile residue" I really believe we need to have a talk about loss and memory when it comes to pedagogy. (As an aside it was really interesting to google "tactile residue" and find master theses using my work; it is nice to know it has been useful to some scholars.) For those of you new to my work, tactile residue as defined in my book is:

"Touch is always innately a liminal space, for there is a remainder to every instance of touch that seemingly belongs neither to the subject initiating the touch nor the object or person receiving the touch but rather belonging to the touch itself. This tactile remainder is, as I describe, being informed by memory. In every touch there is always a remembrance of touch whether that remembrance is immediately recalled or instantly forgotten only to be remembered many years later. This remainder, which I refer to throughout this work as a tactile residue, can never be erased and is perpetually carried and embodied." (Gagne, 2021, 15)

If you like this concept and want to know more here are some previous blog posts that may be interesting to you from February 2022, April 2022, and July 2013 (I love this blog post a lot).

So how does this connect to loss in education. When we focus on learning loss, it suggests that somehow there is a complete lacuna that is happening. Lacuna is possibly my favourite word, because of the symbolic nature of the word, it's connection to the written word, and just the way it sounds, lacuna... it's connection to nature, it really has it all. Learning loss suggests that somehow a part of the script is missing, a part that should be there, which is also pretty ableist. It suggests that everything should be held in cognitive memory and if it isn't then that's bad. It seems to also erase the fact that cognitive memory is not the only thing that is part of teaching and learning, and that bodies have memory, that tactile residue is a thing, and that we cannot be separated as brains on sticks, but that bodyminds are bodyminds.

I am here to ask what if we change that framing to reinforce loss as learning instead of learning loss? What would happen then? There are embodied memories that become part of our learning that stay with us our whole lives, that inform what we do, that inform who we become, and sometimes this tactile residue is apparent, and other times it just simply exists, there only to be recalled by a touch, a word, a sound, a thing that keeps happening in the classroom or the office. Learning loss ignores loss as learning, and erases the fact that those "losses", are in fact still there and not lost at all, they just show themselves in different places. Phenomenologically that epistemology still exists. (And that right there folks may be the most Ann sentence ever)

This week I have had so many ghosts waltz into my life and my thoughts. Memories of people or things past, folk no longer in my life, folk no longer here, lost, but also those losses bring learning opportunities for future (now) me. The etymology of loss is so interesting, from the Old English it also connects to the idea of dissolution. And I could not help but notice how this framing of dissolution, the push to dissolve oneself, to conform our boundaries to systems, to AI, to unwritten and unspoken rules of how to be in certain spaces that reinforce a neurotypical view of the world, is all around us in education. Those who are the most "successful" are the ones who readily can dissolve themselves into the system, those whose identities do not carry as much tactile residue. We are asked, with glee, to lose ourselves in the systems, that do not want to acknowledge our loss. Keep going, back to normal, keep going, ignore the tactile residue that is scratching at your skin, recalled in every way, keep going, don't stop, dissolve, conform. 

I am arguing that we need to make space for loss in our pedagogies and this is exactly a 100% what neo-liberal Higher Education is against. There is absolutely no space for loss anywhere in education as it exists now. There is no wanting to check-in, offloading feelings onto apps that will give you AI written scripts that are supposed to support your mental health. No room for loss in syllabi. Limits to grief and loss as dictated by HR policies. Remembering what we have lost is not useful; it does not fit neatly in learning outcomes and objectives. Because thinking about loss, giving space for loss, is seen as losing time for other things. But I ask you: we have lost so much already, to time, to lack of care, to individualism, to capitalism, wouldn't it be important to honour what we have learned in that loss, instead of carrying on like it never happened?

Reference 

Gagne, A. (2021). Embodying the Tactile in Victorian Literature: Touching Bodies/Bodies Touching. Lexington Press.