Agonistic Digital Storytelling for Critical Civic Education
摘要
Despite an increasing body of literature on implementing civic education for a global and sustainable world, a cohort of scholars has pointed out the students’ inadequate engagement in politically analyzing these global challenges. To counteract depoliticization and building upon the political theories of Mouffe (2005, 2013), educational theories have emerged that recognize social conflict and passions as essential components of what they term “agonistic civic education”. This chapter aligns with this trend by proposing the use of a polyphonic approach to videobased research. From a theoretical standpoint, it analyzes how the concept of “polyphony”—which was borrowed from musical theory by the literary critic and scholar Mikhail Bakhtin—can be effectively applied to video-based research. To illustrate this, the chapter discusses the documentaries Handsworth Songs (1986) by the Black Audio Film Collective, Speculation Nation (2014) by Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown, and The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) by Brett Story. Once the chapter presents the theoretical foundations of video-based research in agonistic civic education, it describes a workshop conducted with undergraduate students who were pursuing a Degree in Primary Education at the University of Valencia. By employing the polyphonic approach to video-based research, the workshop facilitated the creation of audiovisual narratives that shed light on socially and locally relevant issues.