What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
How to Spell Conflict by Natasha Sadr Haqeian, in Arabic (Kayfa ta, 2018)
James R. Murphy is a teacher from LaGuardia, New York. Murphy considers mathematics to be the most powerful, abstract, and malleable language available to humanity. To introduce his students who don't "like" math to abstract and systematic thinking, he placed a thread between their hands and taught them how to make shapes with it. "How to Spell Conflict" traces a thread that has been running through our fingers for centuries. This thread has evolved from the tangible shapes our hands made in childhood to the more elusive computational algorithms that occupy our fingers today as they constantly interact with digital devices. By tracing this thread through its various twists and turns, the study evokes a discussion of the meaning of collective agency, aiming to rethink current models of perception, education, and power.