Erratology and the Ill-Logic of the Seismotic University

Abstract

With the tertiary education mantra of creativity, critical thinking and innovation in mind, we consider the critical-creativity of error. Taking the university to model social orthography, or 'correct writing', according to the norms of disciplines, we consider the role of error in the classroom. Looked at another way, error questions the norms governing norms and the instability of disciplinary grounds. Beyond correction, error involves a mis-taking, or taking another way. Tracing the origin of error we are able to reconstruct the social world in terms of which it is conceivable for a mistake of any kind to have been made. The university, we find, withholds worlds which are not new but are sources of creativity, and constitutes a pluriversity or poly-versity.

In the wake of the quake: Teaching the emergency

“…For example, to make a joke about a meeting in a meeting could produce this kind of reflexivity, exposing its real agenda and making too obvious the power relations among its participants. In our 'erratology' (Sturm & Turner, 2014), we draw on Virno's analysis to stimulate reflexive deliberation on the unstable grounds of a teaching situationand, in turn, of the university and its disciplines and location. We did not have events in Christchurch in mind when we called this procedure a 'seismotics' (Sturm & Turner, 2014).…”

“…In our 'erratology' (Sturm & Turner, 2014), we draw on Virno's analysis to stimulate reflexive deliberation on the unstable grounds of a teaching situationand, in turn, of the university and its disciplines and location. We did not have events in Christchurch in mind when we called this procedure a 'seismotics' (Sturm & Turner, 2014). 8 However, the event of the earthquake made us reconsider the nature and appropriateness of our method, and ask whether its provenance might be natural phenomena.…”

“…As a result, the Learning Quarter seems to be a world without accident, a world of 'constructive plastic[ity]' (Malabou, 2012, p. 38), that is, of gradual, superficial transformation to the mantra of 'change.' Yet what we teach for-and what we can sense all around us in the Learning Quarter-is 'destructive plasticity' (Malabou, 2012, p. 11), namely, the accidents, 'happy' (Virilio, 2007, p. 4) or otherwise but all-but-invisible to the entrepreneurial university, that suddenly and deeply transform the university as a collective body of affects (Sturm & Turner, 2014). As Virilio (2007) puts it, 'the accident is an unconscious oeuvre, an invention in the sense of uncovering what was hidden, just waiting to happen' (p. 9).…”

“…It is a place that accommodates accidents. In our work on 'erratology' (Sturm & Turner, 2014), we consider accidents, or error, to be the basis of world-making. In the first instance, a mis-taking of natural phenomena-a tree for shelter, and so a 'house,' or rock for a tool, and so a 'knife'-creates recognisable human worlds.…”