Ricardo Basbaum, Or That Elusive Object of Emancipation

object of mediation: it is a ‘mere’ bilingual book, one that is the product of human intelligence, and that, precisely because of this, can serve as a mediating tool that posits the equality of all intelligences, including those of Jacotot and his students. The NBP object is perhaps like Télémaque in this sense: it is an abstract object, one that doesn’t in the first instance relate to those who eventually are in touch with it. It comes from elsewhere: in the case of Télémaque, from over a hundred years earlier, from a different country and a different language. NBP, taken from a ready-made design by an artist, similarly comes with a minimal set of demands and expectations, and, because of this, in order for any type of pedagogical process to take place, it is necessary that those who come into contact with it have already decided this is what they want to spend their time and energy with. The education of wills is, then, a prior, necessary condition for any pedagogical engagement and any potential emancipatory process. But, as The Ignorant Schoolmaster shows, when the pedagogical process is mediated by an abstract object, something needs to be left behind. While Rancière tells us Jacotot’s story, we never learn who his students are, where they come from and why have they decided to be his students. Speculating on who could attend courses at the university of Leuven in the 1810s is not necessary — it is enough to point out that they could attend the university, and dedicate themselves to studying a bilingual text of which one of the languages was alien to them. The abstraction of the object of pedagogical mediation, it seems, is accompanied by an abstraction of the sociopolitical conditions in which the pedagogical process takes place. For Rancière, this is a matter of principle: those conditions need to be rendered abstract in order to make sure emancipation is not denied by the context. But, in avoiding this, something is risked: by attempting to universalise an abstracted object of mediation (and not considering the possibility of contextual determinations), material inequality might remain untouched, and, because of this, equal access to the process of emancipation become impossible. In Paulo Freire’s ‘Education as Practice of Freedom’ (1973) a very different object of mediation leads the pedagogical process.17 The text proposes an educational model that lays its emphasis on the concrete situation of the ‘students’, on the perception of matters affecting daily life as one’s own matters, and on the realisation that intervention into context and even its transformation is possible: The education our situation demanded would enable men to discuss courageously the problems of their context — and to intervene in that context; it would warn men of the dangers of the time and offer them the confidence and the strength to confront those dangers. 18 As a response to the four-million school-age children who were not in school, and the sixteen-million illiterates of fourteen years and older that could be found in Brazil in the 1950s, 19 Freire, as coordinator of the Adult Education Project of the Movement of Popular Culture of Recife, launched a model of education based on ‘culture circles’ — discussion groups in which those gathered attempted to ‘clarify situations’ or ‘seek action arising from that clarification’, led by an individual acting in a ‘teacher’ position. 20 The topics — nationalism, profit, remittances abroad, the political evolution of Brazil, development, illiteracy, suffrage for illiterates, democracy — were introduced by a discussion focusing on the notion of culture and its distinction from nature, leading to questions about agency in the form of men and women’s intervention on the world around them. NBP becomes concrete through the familiarisation, within an art environment, of the language of abstraction and through the creation of a situation in which such language can be practised within a dynamic of play and interaction. 17 Paulo Freire, ‘Education as the Practice of Freedom’ (trans. Myra Bergman Ramos), Education for Critical Consciousness, New York: The Seabury Press, 1973, pp.1—84. 18 Ibid., p.33. 19 Ibid., p.41. 20 Ibid., p.42. The circles began with the search for a vocabulary for the groups, selecting generative words — words phonemically rich, and with a pragmatic tone. Words like ‘rain’, ‘land’, ‘bicycle’, ‘brick’ or ‘work’ were used as generators of sounds through their syllables, which, recombined, resulted in new words and sentences that contributed to progress in literacy and simultaneously incited debate on local and national problems. The pedagogical process generated in this manner learning content within and throughout itself. As well as the generative words, the groups used a series of ten figurative drawings by Francisco Brenand that were meant to spark a discussion of what culture and civilisation might be, 21 depicting situations such as the ‘unlettered hunter’, a drawing of an indigenous hunter shooting birds with arrows; the ‘lettered hunter (lettered culture)’, a man in hat and boots shooting at birds, but this time with a rifle; or ‘the hunter and the cat’, a cat chasing two mice. The last drawing showed the culture circle itself: the group, and the ‘teacher’, all looking at one of the illustrations, seeing themselves as part of the pedagogical process. Like in Rancière’s example of Jacotot, the goal here is emancipation, and because of that transmission of knowledge (and therefore of hierarchies) is avoided. But, unlike in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, context comes to the fore, and the object of mediation must speak directly to it. So while Télémaque was an abstract object of mediation, Brenand’s images and the generative words must to be concrete: to guarantee that those entering the process of education actually care about learning, the pedagogue must ensure that the starting point is something close to them and that they see themselves as an originating part of that process. Basbaum’s NBP object is also, perhaps, concrete in this manner — in its awareness that participation within an art project (Would you like to participate in an artistic experience? ) could involve a specific size and a specific shape that primes interaction, as well as implying, perhaps, a familiarity with a certain set of codes and forms that are the result of a historical development. A historical development that, in his case, might be traced back to Lygia Clark’s work of the late 1950s and early 60s with abstract forms susceptible to manipulation — a characteristic that turned them into the material support for social relations. The abstract form of the NBP project becomes concrete through the familiarisation, within an art environment, of the language of abstraction — abstraction as a mere form and as an art-historical language — and Artists: Ricardo Basbaum | 87 Ricardo Basbaum, me-you + systemcinema + passageway (NBP), 2008, iron structure, fabric cushions, foam, closed-circuit cameras, sequencer, monitors, DVD, headphones, press-on vinyl diagrams and text, monochrome wall-painting 840 × 450 × 240cm (structure), variable dimensions (diagrams and text), 7th Shanghai Biennial. Photograph: the artist. Courtesy the artist 21 The ones printed in the book are versions of those drawings by Vicente de Abreu, as the originals were lost.