Making Manifestos in Absentia: Of a World Without Curriculum Theory

Abstract

What if we lived in a world where there was no curriculum theory, where curriculum theory had never been nor would be, or of curriculum theory at its end? As we come together to consider both the current tasks of curriculum theorists, and those possibly to come, and the compelling makings of manifesto matters therein, we begin to ponder these questions. Here, we take them up: the vital presence or movement of curriculum theory, perhaps, felt and perceived most keenly in imagining and contemplating its absence. Yet we seek, in undertaking this endeavor, to promote and perform in some way, too, the import of living interpretation, and community. In proposing, thus, to think through, beside, against and with one another about such absence, and its implications for our loyalties and labors in curriculum, we do so from our own autobiographical grounds, and in relation to historical roots in the field that have nurtured and sustained us, and also regarding the work as an affirmative and transformative human project. Specifically, writ large we proceed in examining a world without curriculum theory through a vital thrust of the field: theory itself.