THE CONCEPT OF POST-CRITICAL CURRICULUM IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION: A GEOPHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS¹

ABSTRACT:

This study aims to problematize the concept of post-criticality in curricular uses in the field of school Physical Education. To this end, we used theorizations from both the philosophical and educational fields, as well as their effects on the epistemological discussions of the aforementioned component. As a working method, we took as inspiration the concept of geophilosophy from the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Deleuze; Guattari, 2010). At first, based on its territorialization in the curricular field and its reterritorialization in Physical Education, we highlight the conditions of immanence and the potential of the concept in question and then de-territorialize it, pointing out the risks that accompany classificatory thinking. As a final reflection, we propose a radicalization of the differential process in curricular production, positioning all propositional minority creations in the field of Physical Education as important for a fairer and less violent society, requiring the continuity of work that avoids reductionism and sectarianism.

Keywords:
curriculum; post-critical; geophilosophy

RESUMO:

O presente estudo visa problematizar o conceito de pós-criticidade nos usos curriculares no campo da Educação Física escolar. Para tanto, utilizamos as teorizações advindas tanto do campo filosófico quanto do educacional, bem como seus efeitos nas discussões epistemológicas do componente supracitado. Como método de trabalho, tomamos como inspiração o conceito de geofilosofia a partir dos filósofos franceses Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari (Deleuze; Guattari, 2010). Em um primeiro momento, a partir de sua territorialização no campo curricular e reterritorialização na Educação Física, destacamos as condições de imanência e as potencialidades do conceito em pauta para, em seguida, desterritorializá-lo, apontando os riscos que acompanham pensamentos classificatórios. Como reflexão final, lançamos a proposta de uma radicalização do processo diferencial na produção curricular, posicionando todas as criações propositivas minoritárias no âmbito da Educação Física como importantes para uma sociedade mais justa e menos violenta, sendo necessária a continuidade dos trabalhos que evitem reducionismos e sectarismos.

Palavras-chave:
currículo; pós-crítico; geofilosofia

RESUMEN:

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo problematizar el concepto de poscriticidad en los usos curriculares en el campo de la Educación Física escolar. Para ello, utilizamos teorizaciones provenientes tanto del campo filosófico como educativo, así como sus efectos en las discusiones epistemológicas de dicho componente. Como método de trabajo, tomamos como inspiración el concepto de geofilosofía de los filósofos franceses Gilles Deleuze y Félix Guattari (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 2010). En un primer momento, a partir de su territorialización en el campo curricular y reterritorialización en Educación Física, destacamos las condiciones de inmanencia y las potencialidades del concepto en cuestión, para luego desterritorializarlo, señalando los riesgos que acompañan a los pensamientos clasificatorios. Como reflexión final, proponemos una radicalización del proceso diferencial en la producción curricular, posicionando todas las creaciones propositivas minoritarias en el ámbito de la Educación Física como importantes para una sociedad más justa y menos violenta, exigiendo la continuidad de obras que eviten reduccionismos y sectarismos.

Palabras clave:
currículo; poscrítico; geofilosofía

INTRODUCTION

The history of the Physical Education curriculum includes proposals forged in a variety of socio-political contextual processes, initially ranging from a bourgeois liberal project carried out through gymnastic means (Soares et al., 1992) to the sports hegemony formulated to meet post-war capitalist transformations (Bracht, 2005). The 1980s marked the critical dawn of the component, with an epistemological crisis added to a renewal movement that brought with it new methodological proposals, based on other social and educational perspectives. Although some of these possibilities presented "new epistemologies", at the end of the day, they were also anchored in the psychobiological sciences, commonly characterized in the area as uncritical (Neira; Nunes, 2006; 2009). Nevertheless, in the same vein, critical proposals also emerged, such as the critical-supervisory curriculum (Soares et al., 1992), based on historical-dialectical materialism; and the critical-emancipatory perspective (Kunz, 1991; 1994), linked to the theory of communicative action, a current of thought developed by the Frankfurt School.

More recently, with works such as Pedagogy of body culture: critique and alternatives (Neira; Nunes, 2006) and Physical education, curriculum and culture (Neira; Nunes, 2009), another perspective inaugurated in Physical Education, known in the curricular field as post-critical thinking. Roughly speaking, the cultural curricular perspective aims to provide the subjects of education with a broad knowledge and understanding of the body's cultural repertoire, by reading and producing a diversity of bodily practices. The ultimate aim is to produce non-fascist subjectivities (Bonetto; Vieira, 2021), by placing the problematization of power relations, discursive regulation and the construction of identity and difference within the pedagogical process. To this end, it draws inspiration from various discursive fields, such as critical multiculturalism, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, queer theory, gender studies and the philosophy of difference, among others.

From this condition of emergence, some theoretical confrontations - which, to some extent, were already present within the critical theories of the component - became inevitable. Most of the time, these are absolutely legitimate conflicts that occur as a result of the theoretical clash between different epistemological affiliations. On other occasions, perhaps out of mere ignorance or fear of losing hegemony to what would be a new avant-garde proposition, some orthodox theorists - in the sense of understanding their vision as the only correct one - aligned with critical conceptions, have associated post-critical theorizing with neoliberalism, relativism and conservatism, with the jocular title of "post-modern" being common² . On the other side of this clash, theorists affiliated with post-critical thinking (Neira; Nunes, 2009; Borges, 2019; Vieira, 2020; Bonetto, 2021) question, among other things, the teleological, essentialist and representational character, as well as the emancipated and rational subject required by critical structuralist proposals. In order to delve into the manifest possibility, we do not intend to resort to the classic and extensive works on the history of Physical Education, nor do we intend to revisit the epistemological and didactic characteristics of each curricular conception, which has already been done in several works. Our intention is simply to problematize some points of what has come to be called the "post-critical curriculum", as well as to point out some of its possible effects in the field of Physical Education. Methodologically, this article is inspired by the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (2010), which launches us into a double intellectual exercise, based on the concepts of territorialization and deterritorialization. Thus, we seek to point out the risks and potential of each movement, either by reaffirming-territorializing, albeit provisionally, categories, classifications and differentiations, or by breaking up-deterritorializing supposed conceptual trenches that prevent curricular thinking and its creations from moving.

That said, our analysis distances itself from judging existing theories as more or less true, better or worse, outdated or avant-garde, since we understand that any classification or category, no matter how pedagogical and judicious, is loaded with power relations. In view of the above, we have directed our efforts towards pointing out the different notions of subject and knowledge, thus aiming to open up paths and potentialize other pedagogical practices, strategies and conceptions for a Physical Education that is "in action", in other words, understood as a constant act of creation.

THE GEOPHILOSOPHICAL METHOD

Discussions concerning the theoretical space of post-structuralism or philosophy(s) of difference, treated here as synonyms, defend the impossibility of capturing reality accurately (knowledge as representation) and refute the idea of essentiality in knowledge or objects (knowledge as differential production). Given this, knowable reality can become chaotic. According to Deleuze and Guattari (2010), in order to guide itself through the infinite possibilities, philosophy traces planes of immanence that cut out the chaos, establishing a conceptual character and, from these planes, concepts are created to operate on specific problems. This way of looking at philosophy is a radical break with the classical Greek conception, of which Western civilization is deeply indebted and whose goal is contemplation or reflection (Gallo, 2013).

Deleuze and Guattari (2010) propose a geology of philosophical concepts, or rather of thought, through what they call "geophilosophy". In the geophilosophical conception, philosophizing is an inventive task in an always immanent act, with plans made up of concepts. This plane does not refer to a linearity, but is a territory crossed by many other planes (also immanent and with their own concepts). In these multiple crossings, concepts can connect, repel, duel or ally with other concepts, within the same plane or countless others. This philosophical perspective understands the concept in a non-essentialized way, as it cannot be defined in an ultimate way. Faced with the processuality of invention, any concept is always an immanent act of creation, far removed from a transcendent entity. Therefore, concepts are not discovered, but invented, in other words, an event in the act of thinking. The idea of a conceptual character, in turn, seeks to answer who undertakes philosophical activity, which does not simply refer to the philosopher. The philosopher plunges into chaos in a non-rational, non-controlled, non-conscious way - he is therefore not a subject. This defense of chaos, protection of thought, true heteronyms of the thinker, make up the image of a conceptual character (Deleuze; Guattari, 2010).

Given the above, we can understand the geophilosophical perspective proposed by Deleuze and Guattari as movements of thought, operative binomials of land-territory and territorialization-deterritorialization. "Subject and object offer an approximation of thought. Thinking is neither a thread stretched between a subject and an object, nor a revolution of one around the other. Rather, thinking takes place in the relationship between territory and land" (Deleuze; Guattari, 2010, p. 113).

Peters (2002, p. 79) helps us understand:

Against the conservatism, apoliticism and a-historicism of analytical philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari develop, starting with the Greeks, a geography of philosophy: a history of geophilosophy. Instead of a history, however, they conceptualize philosophy, in spatial terms, as a geophilosophy. Such a conception immediately complicates the question of philosophy: by being linked to a geography and a history - a kind of spatial specificity - philosophy cannot escape its relationship with the City and the State. In its modern and post-modern forms, it cannot avoid a link with industrial capitalism and the knowledge society.

Land and territory, in this case, do not make up a fixed unit, an identity representation, but two neighboring zones that demarcate a conjunction between a plane and its immanence.

Territory can refer to both a lived space and a perceived system within which a subject feels 'at home'. Territory is synonymous with appropriation, with self-enclosed subjectivation. It is the set of projects and representations into which a whole series of behaviors, investments, in social, cultural, aesthetic and cognitive times and spaces will pragmatically flow (Guattari; Rolnik, 2013, p. 323).

Simply put, Deleuze and Guattari (2012, p. 224) define it as: "[...] we can say that deterritorialization is the movement by which one abandons the territory, it is the operation of the line of flight", and reterritorialization is the movement of constructing the territory. Referring to the cartographic movements of territorialization and deterritorialization, Santos (2013) points out that, based on Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy, a geophilosophy of concepts and thought mobilizes unstable topologies.

The movements of deterritorialization cannot be separated from the territories that open up on the other side, and the processes of reterritorialization cannot be separated from the land that restores territories. There are two components, territory and land, with two zones of indiscernibility, deterritorialization (from territory to land) and reterritorialization (from land to territory). We can't say which comes first. One wonders in what sense Greece is the territory of the philosopher or the land of philosophy (Deleuze; Guattari, 2010, p. 103).

A warning is in order: deterritorialization and reterritorialization are not dissociable processes, because whenever there is a movement of deterritorialization, there is also a movement of reterritorialization happening at the same time. The importance of this caveat lies, beyond the conceptual explanation, in the unfolding of this text where we will seek to highlight both movements.

Finally, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari (2010) use the concept of geophilosophy as an opposition to the historical view that sees thought as something evolutionary. If concepts reflect their immanence, they are created to deal with particular issues, tools for thinking about problems created with contextual, specific, contingent interests: it is the right to reflect on one's own problems, or even create them, based on singular desires (Gallo, 2013).

In the light of what has been explained, it is clear that the field of education often sees movements of deterritorialization, or rather, relocation in its own field, of the theoretical productions of leading philosophers. This was the case with some classical Greek philosophers, as well as with Rousseau, Nietzsche and Marx, and it is now the case with Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari and Butler, among many others. We understand that this way of operating in education research is not something specifically bad that prevents the field from being original, making it a replicator or copycat of knowledge produced by other areas of the human sciences. We think, like the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, that when we steal or deterritorialize concepts from certain fields and territorialize them in another in order to answer certain questions, we are creating other concepts and producing new possibilities. In the words of Carvalho (2016, p. 49), "the thought that is summoned by philosophical experimentation has the fundamental aim of producing a certain chaos in educational experiences".

Still from the perspective of creation, Gallo (2013) draws arguments from Deleuze-Guattar's philosophical work to defend a fight against the philosophy of education as reflection, understanding that this form impoverishes and paralyzes the movement of thought. One of the consequences of this obstacle is that education is addressed as an opinionated arena full of empty disputes, incapable of mobilizing the field. The philosopher also states that the multiple field of education is crossed by a double cut, namely the planes of immanence of education and philosophy. These, in turn, are the result of an intersection between the philosophical, artistic and scientific planes. Thus, in education, from this perspective, the attitude of thinking about one's own problems based on concepts subverts the purpose of modern education.

The movements in the Physical Education curriculum are also expressions of these territorial shifts. It's not much of a stretch to say that, from this point of view, the conversations we're interested in are the ones that kick-started a critical perspective - a movement that began in Physical Education in the mid-1980s, even though this is a field crossed by multiple conceptual production plans, many of which we don't have alliances with. In the following decades, new plans were outlined, new territorializations-reterritorializations. Below, under the aegis of geophilosophy, we outline some of these processes as a way of characterizing their nuances and problematizing their effects.

TERRITORIALIZING POST-CRITICAL AS A PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT

In this topic, we will try to present some effects of the territorialization of the post-critical concept in the field of Education and, consequently, in Physical Education, as a way of marking some possible distances between critical and post-critical curriculum theories. Territorializing, in this sense, is the act of claiming a use for such a dichotomy, it is about defining boundaries and affirming the difference between curricular strands. Before this characterization, however, we will briefly outline some configurations of irruption and the presuppositions of each of the aforementioned curricular conceptions.

With regard to the term "post-critical", we find Professor Tomaz Tadeu da Silva as its most prominent disseminator in Brazil, who, from the mid-1990s onwards, began writing, translating and organizing a series of works that revolutionized the Brazilian academic curricular field. For Silva (2007), every pedagogical theory is also curricular, with respective visions of society, reflecting, therefore, different political positions. In a very pedagogical way, Silva classifies the curriculum field into three categories: traditional, critical and post-critical curricula. In the field of education, the traditional curriculum would be, in short, all those that do not question the social arrangements and do not problematize the contents that make up the school process, limiting themselves to methodological discussions on how to achieve the school's social function determined by its modern-bourgeois genealogy (Noguera-Ramírez, 2011). Through a reterritorialization of the theoretical lens formulated by Silva (2007), Neira and Nunes (2006; 2009) classify Physical Education curricula, understanding gymnastics, sports, developmental and psychomotor perspectives as traditional, as well as the renewed version of the health perspective from the end of the 20th century.

During the 1960s and after, social movements emerged that challenged the prevailing order from various angles. Examples include the student protests in France, which peaked in May 1968; similar student movements in several other European countries; protests against the Vietnam War in the USA; the feminist movement gaining strength in Europe and the USA; and the struggles against the military dictatorship in Brazil. It should be noted that it was in this context that curricular proposals emerged questioning traditional educational models, known as critical theories. Critical theories began to emerge in Brazil in the 1980s, driven by political openness and re-democratization: "It was at this time that a more progressive pedagogical literature exploded throughout the country" (Moreira, 2003, p. 15).

In Documents of identity: an introduction to curriculum theories, Silva (2007) discusses the main works of critical curriculum theorizing and chooses as representatives of the movement the essays of Louis Althusser, based on the Marxist analysis of society; in the idea of rational pedagogy of Pierre Bordieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, who proposed a curriculum in which children of the dominated classes had the same conditions as children of the dominant class; in the movement idealized by William Pinar, called reconceptualization, with influences from phenomenology and hermeneutics; Michael Apple's neo-Marxist critique, which understands the curriculum in its connections with power relations; Henry Giroux's proposal of curriculum as cultural policy; Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed, influencing post-colonialist studies; Michael Young's new sociology of education, whose central concern is the connection between knowledge and power; and Basil Bernstein's sociology of education, questioning the role of the school in the process of cultural and social reproduction.

According to Moreira (2003), from the 1980s onwards and more intensely in the following decade, the critical theoretical approach became more consistent in the country, always dealing with issues such as "concern for school knowledge" and valuing "the student's culture in the process of selecting content". Strongly opposed to traditional curricula, the critical vanguard confronts hegemony with the aim of deconstructing current models, always preaching the need for collective questioning of uncritical assumptions. In these terms, problematizations are incidents that allude to some concepts that would become widespread, such as critical consciousness, individual and social emancipation, reason and alienation, just to name a few. Silva (2007) reinforces the argument when he states that the formulations of theorists linked to critical theorizing will understand the curriculum as capitalist, since the school transmits discriminatory ideology through the curriculum, teaching the subordinate class submission and the dominant class control.

In Physical Education, again in the light of Neira and Nunes (2006; 2009), we can understand the critical-emancipatory and critical-supervisory perspectives as critical curricula. The first emerged in 1991, with Elenor Kunz's Physical Education: teaching and change. In this work, Kunz draws on Frankfurt's critical theorizing to create an educational environment that goes beyond physical and sporting development, promoting critical awareness and emancipation through the active participation of students, aiming to transform society by challenging the traditional norms of sports teaching. Later, in the book Metodologia do ensino de educação física (Methodology of physical education teaching) (Soares et al., 1992), we are introduced to the second and possibly more widespread critical view of Physical Education, entitled by its creators as "critical-superador", whose greatest "advance" is to establish body culture - loaded with historically produced meanings in a given context - as the object of study of Physical Education. What's more, the perspective incisively questions the conventional teaching of Physical Education, hegemonically supported by the anatomical-physiological perspective and didactically inspired by high-performance sport. The critical content of the text is immediately evident. In the wake of historical-dialectical materialism, the critical-supervisory curricular perspective advocates that, in the course of the pedagogical project, historical processes be considered, as well as the contextualization of the body expressions studied, understood as language. A few years later, Eleonor Kunz's work reappeared in a more systematized way with the work Didactic-Pedagogical Transformation of Sport (Kunz, 1994), which was based on the "critical-emancipatory" proposal, criticizing the technical teaching of sport and making use of the concept of movement culture, since the concept of body culture conveyed by the critical-supervisory proposal, in Kunz's view (1994, p. 19), would be "dualistic". 19), would be "dualistic" and "tautological, since there can be no activity culturally produced by man that is not bodily". In this way, he proposes a didactic transformation of Physical Education, which revolves around the concept of "if-movement". Both works gained a lot of prestige in the academic field and became very widespread in school Physical Education. We recognize, however, that only with this light epistemological and didactic description of each conception is it clear that there is a risk of placing them as critics in the same way without the slightest pasteurization. However, for reasons of delimitation and the scope of the study, we don't have the space at the moment to scrutinize these curricular proposals, since the focus of analysis here is the concept of post-critical. However, as you can see, the problematization of the categories that we will be discussing in the final third of the text is already on the horizon.

Let's return to the broad context: in his investigations into the field of curriculum in Brazil and the United States, Moreira (2003) points out that, despite the contributions of critical theories, in the mid-1990s there was a kind of crisis in the critical conception of curriculum, mainly due to the difficulties of applying its theoretical principles in practice. In addition, some ideas that are very dear to critical theorizing, for example, reproduction, social class and emancipation, for many people are unable to investigate social complexity, which requires new conceptual formulations. The stage is set for new theoretical movements in the curriculum field, precisely the context in which post-critical theorizing emerged³ .

Silva (2007) believes that the post-critical curriculum seeks to overcome the limits of previous discussions by not limiting itself to issues of power relations and the economics of capitalism, but broadens the scope and incorporates various themes and categories linked to difference, including critical multiculturalism, feminist studies, queer theory, ethnic and racial studies, post-modernism, post-structuralism, cultural studies, post-colonialism, among other existing theoretical movements or those that may be formulated. If another conception of the issues of identitarianism wasn't enough, the post-critical perspective is linked to new conceptions of the subject, knowledge and the social function of the school, among others.

It's not uninteresting to point out, however, that each field of knowledge commonly referred to as post-critical, which is widely used in curriculum studies today, has its own issues and problems and, therefore, does not constitute a set of common doctrines, so that sometimes they even oppose each other; However, it is not uncommon to use the term post-critical theories to name these discursive theoretical forms, as explained by Lopes and Macedo (2011), in Teorias de currículo, and Lopes (2013), in "Teorias pós-críticas, política e currículo". The productions in question present in depth some reading keys which, among other issues, mark the differences between the post-structuralist, post-colonial, post-modern, post-foundational and post-Marxist movements.

All these movements intersect, merge and sometimes also clash, belonging to a tradition that goes back to the thoughts of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. They are markedly anti-essentialist, anti-objectivist, critical of determinism and value language as central in mediating the understanding of the social, replacing structures with discourse and broadening philosophical discussions of culture. In this sense, they have a particular impact on the field of curriculum by problematizing critical sociological theories [...] (Lopes, 2013, p. 17).

Silva (2002) offers a similar, but not entirely coincidental, diagnosis. In the wake of Nietzschean perspectivism, the author presents a kind of map that, in our view, accurately summarizes some of the main themes of post-critical curricular theorizing. Let's take a closer look:

Truth as fiction, invention and creation. A perspectivist and interpretative view of knowledge. The concept as production and intervention and not as discovery or reflection. Insistence on the productive nature of language. The privileging of difference and multiplicity over identity and sameness. Rejection of the transcendentality and originality of the subject. The heterogeneous, derivative character of subjectivity formations. The non-identity of the "subject" with itself. The choice of a genealogy over an ontology. The search not for essences and substances, but for forces and intensities. Insistence on the "power" to invent, fix, make permanent and not on the cognitive capacity to discover, reveal, unveil. Against the dubious taste for essence, a declared predilection for appearance. Not the presence (of being?), but its deferral, its difference, its delay, its spacing. Horror at the thought of negation and contradiction. Becoming instead of being. Not values, but their valuation. Not morals, but their origin (Silva, 2002, p. 35).

In a very didactic way, Silva (2007) helps us to understand the boundaries between the categorizations by listing four questions to the principles of Modernity, on which critical theories are based: 1) objection to "master narratives", considered an expression of modernity's will to dominate and control; 2) profound doubt of the notion of social progress present at the heart of modern principles; 3) combat against the transcendence of privileged principles in the foundation of systems of thought, considered unquestionable axioms; 4) disbelief in the subject as the center of social action, as possessing an identity essence in which his existence is the expression of his thoughts - the principle of the rational subject.

Where does this philosophical position begin? For Hicks (2011), even though Kant is sometimes seen as a defender of rationalism, when we take the theme of the relationship between reason and reality, explained in the Critique of Pure Reason, the Könisberg philosopher states that reason is not capable of knowing reality as it "is". In this sense, if reality is forever separated from rationality, because the latter is limited to perceiving and understanding its substrates immersed in subjectivity, reason cannot access anything outside of it - so any dogmatism is arbitrary and merely an imposition. Despite being an advocate of universal rationalities, Kant's position on the question of the relationship with reality is more important for the construction of contemporary thought: without universality, coherence is the result of subjective constructs. Human singularity does not access reality, so knowledge is about how our subjectivity has structured reality based on perception. Truth is only an individual relationship of coherence.

Despite Kant's importance, it was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who radicalized the anti-realist stance. For Larrosa (2008), Nietzsche saw the world as two infinitudes, the material and the interpretative, so all knowledge is a fable, a creation that thinks it is true. Nietzsche's writing reflected this thinking, so he didn't intend to transmit truths, educate or counter other convictions, but to express forces that combine, promoting experiences. Objectivity, in this sense, is not that of scientific positivity, but the rigor of multiplicity. In this sense, the importance of Nietzsche is reinforced when we note that the philosopher figures in many analyses as the landmark of the break with Modernity, such is his importance and originality.

Fensterseifer (1999), an important interlocutor in Physical Education and defender of rationalism, on the other hand, warns of a kind of civilizational vacuum resulting from the deep questioning of modern precepts, which would open up space for a mythical fundamentalist revival, which would be taking the lead in reorganizing the fragments of Western reason. Let's note his reflection on this: "Why this bet on reason? Because I believe, like Freud, that, although limited, this god/logos is what we have left, and I don't think that's a small thing either" (Fensterseifer, 1999, p. 183). Now, with the support of post-critical works, it is possible to broaden the author's analysis, since it is not a question of abandoning the tool of thought, but of enhancing its forms with what is possible that is not proper to reason.

Here it is important to draw a line: thinking from a post-critical perspective cannot be confused with linguistic balancing as a way of pursuing narrow interests - we are far from the relativist trap. The defense is for the multiplicity of perspectives in the rigorous construction of knowledge. Therefore, it is not a question of abandoning any and all rationality, but of questioning a form of reason, an Enlightenment heritage, as the only way forward. It is the subordination of reason to history, without an essence or a priori, shifting rationality from transcendence to contingency. If thought is historical, it doesn't make sense to talk about a guiding, master reason, but rather a multiplicity of reasons, or rather, multiple ways of thinking.

The post-critical perspective, in this sense, brings together heterogeneous theoretical matrices, especially those stemming from contemporary French philosophy, heir to Nietzsche and his perspectivism, whose publications gained strength in the last half of the 20th century. In general, the thinkers linked to the theorization in question are based on discourses that question many of the "premises" of Modernity, especially the belief that scientific "discoveries" could put an end to human misery, excessive work and the teleological vision of human civilization. Therefore, there is a hasty and mistaken view that the so-called post-critics would be those who no longer believe that scientific progress can bring about, among other things, the happiness of humanity, as well as greater social equality.

Post-critical proposals are not free from counter-arguments and are often perceived as neo-liberal, accused of weakening critical proposals by fragmenting class identities or even depotentiating resistance to capitalism and depoliticizing the school. Fensterseifer (1999) is, once again, one of the debaters in the field of Physical Education who repudiates the "postmodern stance": "I sometimes wonder if this kind of aversion to all forms of teleology is not a positivist residue that runs through analytical philosophy, and which thinks that total exemption from presuppositions is possible" (Fensterseifer, 1999, p. 147). We disagree with his position, because it's not a question of aversion, but of distrust. Without rejecting the profound advances that have been made, especially the technological ones and their positivity (in the sense of productive action), the critical perspectives on Modernity seek to analyze why many of the transformations that have taken place, in addition to not generating the expected social advances, have produced some harmful effects in their production.

In Physical Education, post-critical theories give rise to the curricular perspective academically disseminated as cultural curriculum, multicultural, culturally oriented proposal, among other similar names. The proposal, initially disseminated in the works of Neira and Nunes (2006; 2009), after almost two decades of scientific research and school experiences, has many other authors supporting a post-critical Physical Education. Supported by a procedural⁴ (Borges, 2019) and a⁵ (Bonetto; Vieira, 2021) principles, drawn mainly from the fields of cultural studies, critical multiculturalism and post-colonialism, the cultural curriculum bets on a curricular writing that is sensitive to the immanent flows of everyday school life and detached from academic metanarratives, modern teleologies and salvationist models.

It is clear from a geophilosophical analysis that these are different conceptions of knowledge, the subject, the body, language, science, the social function of education and Physical Education. Thus, critical theories and post-critical theories are categories that lead to different political strategies, although some agendas, especially those of a macro nature, are articulated. The result of the epistemological paths in the curriculum field is also unequivocal: we are talking about different stakes, different perspectives, different teleologies, different strategies.

As you can see, epistemological plurality is very present in the field of Physical Education, where different pedagogical proposals coexist, with their own approaches and didactic approaches. We believe that this effervescence is very important for the field, but it is not a question of defending an apolitical diversity, since our repulsion to certain positions does not refer to the widespread conception of curriculum as a field of epistemological confrontation, since such clashes can easily be understood as the very propulsion of the field.

Veiga-Neto (2022) presents an argument highlighting a position that seems interesting to us: in the impossibility of a transcendent judgment on which knowledge is superior to the others, philosophical choices result more from an attitude of questioning the discourses that subjectivize us. The debate between different thoughts is perfectly possible, but it cannot orbit around the modern concepts of reason, freedom, conscience and subject. Disputes therefore resemble acts of persuasion. In this direction, far from a sectarian position, we make our choices without, however, condemning other efforts of thought or comparing them as more or less "correct". From this direction, it is possible to think of Physical Education curricula that seek to confront the hegemonic conditions of contemporaneity, whether from a critical or post-critical perspective, as minority curricula, as Vieira (2022) does. Based on the concept of the minor, coined by Deleuze and Guattari (2014), Vieira (2022) states that the curricular field of Physical Education has, since the mid-1980s, been constantly coining pedagogical conceptions in a process that aims to resist capitalist authoritarianisms from the molecularity of difference. In this sense, despite the epistemological discrepancies and consequent different strategies, critical and post-critical theorizations are aiming at similar targets.

DETERRITORIALIZING: THE RADICALIZATION OF CURRICULAR DIFFERENCES

Although post-critical theories emerged in the wake of critical curriculum theories and are not exactly a complete opposition, since they incorporate some of their ideas and broaden their concepts, Moreira (2003) emphasizes that some analyses place these curricular currents as incompatible. However, the same author does not rule out careful approximations, and even points out some names that he believes have achieved this - thinkers such as Michael Apple, Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux, who are world-renowned for their work in the critical current and who, in more recent phases, have incorporated post-critical concepts.

As we can see, there is not necessarily antagonism between the proposals, and the more general approximations highlight the struggle for a less unjust society in efforts to transform contexts fraught with violence, exclusion and inequality. Both theoretical positions are also similar in the forces they mobilize with minority characteristics, in other words, they are proposals articulated on the margins by a few researchers who distance themselves from discussions traditionally focused on socio-economic issues of a capitalist nature. Both critical and post-critical supporters confront contemporary common sense aligned with neoliberalism, individualism, consumerism and other values of hegemonic capitalism. Critics and post-critics, in this sense, although they have theoretical differences that culminate in different strategies of struggle, defend values such as social justice, combating misery, prejudice, violence and exclusion of all kinds.

From this perspective, critics and post-critics align themselves with progressive social forces that are uncomfortable with certain structures that perpetuate deplorable conditions for a large part of the planet's inhabitants. Thus, it seems to us that the two curricular currents share a left-wing position, as defined by Deleuze (1995, video transcript):

If I were asked to define what it means to be left-wing, or to define the left, I would do it in two ways. Firstly, it's a question of perception. The question of perception is this: what does it mean not to be left-wing? Not being left-wing is like a postal address. You start with yourself, then the street you're in, then the city, the country, other countries and so on. You start with yourself and, to the extent that you are privileged, that you live in a rich country, you usually think about how to make that situation last. [...] And being left-wing is the opposite. [...] First they see the outline. They start with the world, then the continent of Europe, for example, then France and so on, until we get to the Rue de Bizerte and me. It's a phenomenon of perception. First you perceive the horizon.[...] And secondly, to be left-wing is to be or become a minority. Not becoming a minority. The left is never a majority as the left. For a very simple reason: the majority is something that presupposes, even when you vote, not just the largest number voting for something, but the existence of a pattern.

In this sense, it seems to us that the exacerbated polarization between these theories is unreasonable and unnecessary, and it is therefore important to deconstruct rivalries that create epistemological ghettos within a philosophical guerrilla war. We find it much more interesting and powerful to develop thought in a way that is free of dialectical tensions, avoiding impositions while at the same time forging alliances with other planes of affinity.

In this spirit, the intention in this final stretch is to intensify the geophilosophical analysis within the "conceptual drawer" called post-critical. When we look more carefully at the works of the authors listed as part of the same philosophical movement or similar curricular classification called post-critical, the risks of generalizations, shallow seams, conceptual errors and misuse, to say the least, become evident. Under a category such as post-critical (and, how can we not say, critical) there are authors who, in absolute terms, come down to the same systems of thought, with important concerns between the fields listed as belonging to the supposed same category (post-modernism, ethnic-racial narratives, post-colonialism, feminism, queer theorizing, etc). Therefore, using certain classifications requires philosophical acuity at the risk of producing reductionisms and generalizations. For example, intellectuals such as Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida, among many others, are often included as important influences on the post-critical category. However, each of these has erected philosophical systems that, even with certain approximations in terms of decentralizing foundational premises anchored in the philosophy of consciousness, are absolutely distinct in terms of philosophical problems, concepts and productions.

One of the few aspects that unite them is the constant presence of the German philosopher Nietzsche. The framing of thought in the field of identity/representation goes back to Platonic philosophy, and Nietzsche was one of its most voracious critics. Schöpke (2012, p. 39-40) explains how Nietzschean thought inaugurated a critique of representation:

According to Nietzsche, all knowledge is the effect of a double metaphor: in the first, we transform a nervous stimulus into an "image"; in the second, the acquired image is shaped into a "sound". This would be, primarily speaking, the foundation of representation and language. The problem lies in the fact that we take these metaphors for the things themselves and assume we know the world when we have nothing but images of it. It is in this sense that language does not say things, but is only a metaphor for them. And it is also in this sense that knowledge, in Nietzsche, is nothing more than the production of a separate territory - a human construction that tends to equalize the non-equal, excluding individual differences and singular events.

This way of thinking leads us to understand the construction of the social fabric, the field of culture, as an arena of intersubjective confrontations updated in the material field and imperatively inserts the question of power. However, even starting from the same point, post-critical creations are not free from the tensions of forces, from confrontation with each other. On the contrary, very often the same author produces research that distances, contradicts and confronts each other in this philosophical arena.

Perhaps the most obvious cases of these confrontations are the productions of gender theories and queer theorizing, which point out the limits of male, cis and heterosexual thinkers, even though they are intellectually close and start from similar points. The works of Judith Butler and Paul Beatriz Preciado are exemplary in these problematizations. Another case in point is post-colonial and decolonial criticism, which demonstrates the Eurocentric nature of the questionings of thinkers who are often used by post-critical theorists - we can cite the work of Achille Mbembe, to name but one of many. These two tensions could be accused of safeguarding identity remnants that, to some extent, refer to a certain essentialization in the conception of the subject, a certain place of speech. It is possible to look for other more complex tensions that highlight the radical difference between the multiple philosophical projects. As a final point, let's look at some examples.

In his works, Foucault problematizes epistemes⁶ , looking for continuities and discontinuities in historical knowledge, always critical of discursive production. It is important to note that Foucault's critique of modern rationality is not a denial of reason, but a questioning of Enlightenment transcendentalism, of the unifying metanarrative that understands the social plane as the terrain where human action takes place guided by a rational nature. It is an archaeological critique, as it treats discourses as historical events, and a genealogical critique, as it considers the contingency of ontology. In the words of Veiga-Neto (2003, p. 28-29): "[...] Foucauldian critique is a critique of critique, which is always ready to turn against itself to ask about the conditions of possibility of its existence, about the conditions of its own rationality. [...]. That's why I usually call it hypercriticism".

In this direction, but in other ways, Deleuze and Guattari (2011a) radicalize the discussion by not respecting disciplinary walls between the regimes of signs and their objects. From a transversal perspective of thought and ignoring the artificial divisions of knowledge, the French understand reality as machinic processes (in the sense of production, not mechanistic), in which signs, individuals and materiality enter a system of incessant correlations driven by intensities - understood here as the result of modes of affectation by encounters of all kinds: "The collective agencies of enunciation function, in effect, directly in the machinic agencies, and one cannot establish a radical cut between the regimes of signs and their objects" (Deleuze; Guattari, 2011b, p. 22). Thus, any form of language is always the response to a certain historical contingency that does not exist in itself, heterogeneities linked to a desiring micro-politics, constant connections and transformations that do not refer to an origin. Enunciations, like flows of desire, are not interpretations, but productions of the unconscious understood as a factory, opposed to Sigmund Freud's Oedipal conception.

The differences between the theoretical constructions of Foucault and Deleuze are not limited to their understanding of knowledge, but also to their conceptions of the philosophical subject. Although both start from the non-essentiality of human subjectivity, while the former focuses attention on the processes of subjectivation, the latter, with Guattari, shifts the perspective of analysis from power relations to desiring productions, replacing the idea of the subject with the concept of hecceity - the fruit of collective enunciation and machinic agency of desire. Within the same philosophical theme, Cultural Studies, mainly from the perspective of its main exponent, Jamaican social communicator Stuart Hall, i.e. the post-structuralist strand, prefers the concept of identity (under erasure, i.e. recognizing its limits and potentialities) understood as a temporary point of attachment for subject positions created in processes of signification and social representation immersed in power relations. Preciado, for his part, extrapolates Foucauldian and Deleuze-Guattarian ideas to conceive of sexuality as a prosthetic production, an issue barely touched upon by his predecessors.

We can list another tacit example: while cultural studies start from the centrality of culture in the human sciences as a motto for understanding the relations of force that create the boundaries between identity and difference, using the concept of culture as an arena for confrontation, a locus for the production of injustices and oppressions in social materiality, for Guattari, the very idea of culture is a reactionary concept, since it conceives of the productions of becoming in identity terms that circumscribe desire (and difference) in watertight categories that limit revolutionary potentials⁷ .

What the examples show us is that the term post-critical, although it carries potential, can hide a series of traps in thought by: a) creating superficial rivalries that bifurcate research and research subjectivities into doctrinaire philosophical identities; b) generalizing and reducing complex philosophical systems into simplified and simplifying terms.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

With the radicalization of the deterritorialization of the post-critical concept, we don't intend to deny its academic-didactic use, much less reduce any curricular debate that delves into epistemologies about the subject, knowledge and educational teleologies to a single spectrum. Similarly, we cannot ignore the fact that the appropriations around the post-critical concept are part of the immanent movements of a field in process, at a pace typical of academia. We therefore understand that the important production of post-critical/post-structuralist curriculists, which fortunately is not limited to the works of Tomaz Tadeu da Silva, is still generating reverberations, even if a large part of them are aimed at overcoming certain elements.

We believe that the same process applies to the field of Physical Education. It branches out like a rhizome, in which new theories expand the ways of looking at everyday school life. We are not advocating radical opposition and denial of communication between the classifications known as critical and post-critical theories. The difference is that, far from the idea that "it's all the same", we argue that each curricular proposal is a multiplicity of thoughts that come closer together or move apart in the pursuit of a common project: the fight against the homogenizing forces of capitalist society.

Here, we raise an important reflection: What strategies should those who engage in a certain critical or post-critical conception adopt? Should they seek approximations via academic debate, in rigorously well-founded discussions in their respective fields, or should they seek trench thinking that closes in on its propositions? We emphasize that even propositions that are classified as critical have relevant and significant distinctions, so the answer to this question is not only relevant to the critical/post-critical dichotomy.

Perhaps geophilosophy presents a more interesting possibility than simply judging the (im)pertinence of the concept, because we won't be looking for dialectical syntheses, but rather the constant movement of philosophical thinking in the face of the immanence of problems; in common, the will to put into action forces that refute the violence of the world. In this sense, minority curricula, whether critical or post-critical, are multiplicities composed in endless ways, coming closer or not to each other in the search for a micro-politics on the school floor. Hopefully, one day, we will gain strength in the creation of a better society, regardless of what it is called. The strategy, unequivocally, is incessant creation - a far cry from intransigent positions that lose sight of what we have to lose.

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• 1
  Article published with funding from theConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico- CNPq/Brazil for editing, layout and XML conversion services.
• 2
  An example that we consider illustrative is the following: "[...] it is with regret that we are afraid to say that we have 'bad legs', because they - the critical theories - (not only) in the field of Physical Education, especially since the 1990s, have been banished from the academic environment. Firstly due to the consequences of the strong rooting of post-modern thinking in the academic world" (Castellani Filho, 2020, p. 37). "We also find studies and proposals by Professor Marcos Neira that are conservative in nature - though of a different kind of conservatism to the one mentioned above - given his episteme affiliated with postmodern thought and, within it, post-critical and post-structuralist theories, but undoubtedly of a progressive ethic" (Castellani Filho, 2020, p. 48).
• 3
  It is important to clarify that this is a position taken by Moreira (2003) at the beginning of the 20th century, which means that many critically conceived productions continued to seek new paths and possibilities. In this respect, see, for example, Apple; Au; Gandin (2011). In addition, one must consider the limits of the author himself, although renowned in the field of curriculum, in exploring all the critical theorizing that existed at the time. By using this reference, we are not trying to reinforce an academic discourse as true, but rather to present the chain of ideas that led a number of curricular intellectuals to look for other epistemic bases. Given the limits of language in the writing process, despite the care taken, it is a risk that we can run at various times, which is to crystallize educational discourses as hierarchically superior, instead of presenting their dispersions interspersed in power relations. This warning is an attempt to mitigate these risks.
• 4
  According to Foucault (2014, p. 8), "we could call 'alethurgy' the set of possible procedures, verbal or otherwise, by which what is given as true is revealed in opposition to what is false, hidden, unspeakable, unpredictable, forgotten, and say that there is no exercise of power without something like alethurgy".
• 5
  In the concept of an alethurgy of principles and procedures, as understood by Bonetto and Vieira (2021), we highlight didactic guidelines such as: mapping, deepening, broadening, reframing, recording and evaluating; and pedagogical principles, including: recognizing cultural identities, curricular justice, decolonizing the curriculum, avoiding cultural color blindness and social anchoring of knowledge.
• 6
  A set of rules and local and particular conditions that give meaning to and are signified by discursive practices, which allows the emergence of statements that make up the archive as a game of discursive relations (Veiga-Neto, 2003).
• 7
  It is important to note that the whole argument of Cultural Studies, especially with Stuart Hall, is based on a conception of culture that is not the same as that on which Guattari focuses his criticism, namely an elitist vision that produces ghettos and hierarchies. Drawing on Jacques Derrida and his studies on language, Hall understands culture as an arena of confrontation in which difference is constantly produced. Although the post-critical concept became popular in the curricular field with the work of Silva (2007), Lopes and Macedo (2011) broadened the debate by deepening this linguistic discussion with greater rigor.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Aug 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  02 June 2023
• Accepted
  15 Apr 2024
• Preprint posted on
  06 Mar 2022
  10.1590/SciELOPreprints.4189