TEACHING AND GLOBALIZATION (original) (raw)

2006, Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.

The importance of educational and cultural decentralization and regionalization seems to spring from our daily practice and theory. Indeed, in times of crisis, the other’s face does not seem to complete our image of ourselves, but to nullify itself, to fade into our own image. As a consequence, we hope globalization will not make us choose perverse forms, the darker side of the transnational, fed by ultraliberal, no-holds-barred capitalism, now that its human dimension seems irretrievably lost. How can we believe a hidden power, or have faith in the humanity of the faceless powers behind major world financial groups that have long given up on telling part from whole? Alienation in the 80’s gave way to highly individualized modes of being in life and in the world in the 1990’s. That awe experienced before seductive materialistic sophistication fed by one economic boom after another seems to be gone. We now enter a period when individualism, in the guise of relatively enraptured “autonomy and subjectivity” , seeks to define new forms of re-foundation. Acting individually, acting collectively, yet without giving in to the ideological ecstasies of the 1960’s, seems to be the common denominator with the many generations that make up the general population. Despite acute social inequality resulting from the collapse of the welfare state, citizens all over the world seem keen on organizing themselves into interest groups. Upholding a common cause and common rights is therefore the basis of a regionalism that has less and less to do with restricted local interests. If one is striving for quality of life, or upholding ecological causes, one must remain aware that such strife leads to a certain vision, understanding and practice which overflow into the transregional and the transnational. That is the cement that often binds regions, social groups or even countries that have in common their exclusion from preponderant ruling bodies, economic lobbies, political or social forces.