Teaching as Memory Making

Amid ongoing efforts to make university teaching more diverse and inclusive and to address and undo the links that have tied it for centuries to systems of oppression such as colonialism and racism, it remains important to reflect on what conceptual frameworks we should adopt to discuss and promote such endeavours. This chapter explores an unduly neglected option which specifically concerns teaching that engages with the past, and that is inspired by the #RhodesMustFall movement with its dual focus on commemorative symbols and on curricula: namely, a conceptualisation of teaching as a way of building and shaping collective memory. Drawing on the burgeoning interdisciplinary research field of Memory Studies, this contribution proposes that institutions and individuals who engage in their teaching with the past are agents of collective memory, memory makers, who create, institute and shape collective memories. Among the advantages that this approach offers, this piece focuses on its potential to enrich our understanding of normative considerations relating to critical pedagogy. These normative considerations include both moral and epistemic desiderata. Moral considerations are relevant here mostly because academic disciplines and institutions are entangled in historical injustices such as European colonialism. On the epistemic side, this chapter distinguishes between accuracy, i.e. memory&s;s being faithful to the past and hence non-distorting, testimonial status, and productivity – the potential of memories and mnemonic artefacts to foster epistemic agency. This chapter illustrates this latter aspect applied to teaching through Angela Davis&s;s Lectures on Liberation and concludes with a brief critical discussion of proposals to frame critical pedagogy as a form of epistemic reparations.