Education, corporeality and the evolution towards digital learning. A «Stieglerian» perspective

Abstract

In this article we explore some philosophical perspectives on the current shift from traditional forms of class and group teaching to learning activities in digital environments. Our interest goes more precisely to the corporeal dimensions of this evolution. Showing that as a rule the issue at hand is discussed about in terms of the absence or obsoleteness of the body, we argue for the introduction of a new approach, that draws from the insights of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. He has developed a fully technology-centred approach that analyzes subject-formation in relation to a contingent history of material tools and related embodied practices (which function as a kind of external memory support in an original sense). This particular approach allows for concrete analyses that show the school to be a material dispositive of attention related to concrete practices such as writing or exercising. Although Stiegler is in the end not entirely consistent in following his own «materialist » assumptions, we will argue for a «Stieglerian» line of research that allows to fathom the meaning of today’s (traditional) and tomorrow’s (digital) educational reality, omitting a normative perspective (i.e. Refraining from directly denouncing or acclaiming the digital [r]evolution at hand).

Keywords

• el cuerpo en el aprendizaje y la enseñanza
• la digitalización
• interacción en línea
• stiegler
• subjetivación
• historia de la tecnología
• retenciones terciarias
• escritura
• el ejercicio
• las prácticas escolares