Università Roma Tre

The narrative-autobiographical principle as a pedagogical-educational paradigm.

Autobiographical writing, self-narration, appear rich in formative, emancipatory, reflective-critical implications. Underlying them, we can identify a radical need for self-expression, a "giving shape", a making oneself recognizable, to oneself and to others, thus making "recognition" a key category of identity development, which calls the intimately social, relational (and, as we shall see, political) nature of every "private", individual, intimate narration is at stake. The autobiography is, therefore, first of all "need", but also, secondly, method and model. And this has become within the pedagogical and training practices which, in recent decades, have taken shape, precisely starting from the everyday, "anonymous" dimension of telling oneself. Think of the experience of the Archives of memoirs in Pieve Santo Stefano, up to the Free University of Autobiography, at Anghiari. Within this perspective, the category of memory, personal and collective, has an essential importance and the theme of autobiographical narration could not ignore, as I pointed out, the conceptions of memory elaborated by Bergson and in particular by Maurice Halbwachs: the latter, has elaborated the principle of the "social frameworks" of memory, highlighting the decisive role that the reference contexts have in the very formation of our personal identities and in the very mechanisms of remembering, redefining, "re-writing", "re-recognizing" ( but see also the studies by Pierre Norà, a French-Algerian author, on "places of memory" and "ego-histoire"). We are, therefore, also in the field of adult education, and the reference to Malcolm Knowles is obligatory, but we are also in the field of social, historical and political experiences of great significance, which, during the twentieth century and beyond, have marked our history. Both those that refer to the American sociology of the Chicago School (think of the studies on the "Hobos" by Anderson, or on the youth "gangs" by Cohen and Trasher, or on migrants, by Thomas and Znaniecki, etc.), and those connected to African-American culture in the U.S.A. (from the ethno-anthropological research on blues music and Alan Lomax's bluesmen, to the more direct and emblematic expressions of the identity and political claim: see the Autobiography of Malcolm X) or to the cultures of the native Indians (Bruce Trigger among all). Without forgetting the crucial role played, in Great Britain, by sociologists/educators such as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggarth, Stuart Hall, founders of "Cultural Studies" (both with regard to the notion of "culture" and with regard to the use of the autobiographical method , etc.). But Italy too has known very significant experiences of a real "social and political pedagogy", thanks to authors such as Nuto Revelli, Danilo Montaldi, Danilo Dolci, fully-fledged educators on the front of the struggles for emancipation of the subaltern classes and supporters of experiences and methodologies that have drawn crucial elements in terms of good practices and theoretical and political elaborations precisely in the "experiences" and in the "life stories". Not to forget, again, the educational experience "in the field" of the masters, and Mario Lodi and Bruno Ciari have constituted precious examples, also on the basis of the French experiences of Jacques and Mona Ozouf.
Certainly the autobiographical method can have its crucial role in the professional-work environment, where it is a question of "re-reading" oneself and one's own baggage of experience, knowledge, skills, with a view to redefining oneself in the field of professional "retraining". Obviously, these processes always affect at least three aspects of personal identity: 1) the more intimate one connected to the "self-representation", imbued with affective, cognitive, imaginative values, which is played out on the level of a dialectic between what I am and what I would like to be, in the light of what I have been 2) That of a social nature, relating to my "being for others", and therefore also to how others see myself, which feeds, over the course of my life, of a series of expectations (family, social, work, etc.) that my social reference environment creates for me, and which in turn is received by me, always within a dialectic between adhesion/conflict 3) That of an eminently professional/working matrix which, especially in the current "liquid" condition, to quote Bauman, marked by flexibility, precariousness, by dynamics of sudden change, forces the person to a constant process of revision, re-adaptation and possible new developments of the acquired knowledge/skills, in view of a redefinition of one's professional role. In this sense, it is fundamental to be able to exploit the entire complex of one's experiences and knowledge, not only those already partially formalized (through study and work), but also the "informal", potential, expressive, relational ones that can become a source or an experiential pool to be put to use within new configurations and professional/working "adventures". These three moments, personal, social, professional (which are always, intrinsically, also "political", relating to life in a polis), obviously always appear intertwined and full of affective/cognitive/relational implications and this means that, for example, the abrupt interruption of a work experience always brings with it consequences and effects that concern all three of these levels (personal, social, professional), on the ground of a "crisis" even profound of the "self-representation", of one's role family, sexual, social, etc.
Laboratory part: narration and cinema
The experience we have of cinema, of watching a film, is part of a space characterized by profound and crucial educational values. It is a space in which the person can recreate, experiment, rework reality, without risks and constraints, within a dialectic that lives under the banner of a creative tension between identification and estrangement, between illusion and truth, between appearance and reality. The cinema screen, moreover, is comparable to a mirror that reflects, transfigures, deceives, deforms, invents, generating a kaleidoscopic dynamism of life forms, showing us the world and reality through a prism that dissolves and shatters our vision of things. and then recompose it according to unexpected and surprising configurations and associative principles, in the name of amazement and wonder. Our own emotions are subjected to stresses that come from our mimetic attitude which pushes us to relive them (or experience them for the first time) through "lives on the screen", allowing us to have important sentimental experiences for the purposes of elaborating and building our universe affective, of our thought contents, of our own identity and relational development, of our "giving ourselves shape". The performative pressure of the film induces in the spectator the possibility of feeling emotions, meditating, thinking. Cinema carries within itself, therefore, a peculiar educational value to the extent that it works on the possibility of bringing out the subject's experiences, the complex emotional dynamics, which are stimulated by the potential for cathartic fascination that the filmic language brings within itself, both on a narrative level and on an iconic-imaginative level, thus making its contents analyzable and conscientizable. cinema shows the "course of things", while inscribing them within the constant transformation that animates them

M. Giosi, Alfabeti della polis. L'educazione come spazio narrativo, Roma, Anicia, 2022.
D. Demetrio, Raccontarsi. L'autobiografia come cura di sé, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, 2022 (i primi 8 capitoli).
Un testo a scelta tra: E. Morin, Il cinema o l'uomo immaginario, Raffaello Corina Editore, Milano, 2016 e E. Morin, Sul cinema, Raffaello Cortina, Milano, 2018.
Di entrambi andranno studiate solo alcune parti indicate dal docente

Parte Laboratoriale: visioni, letture e letture di film, a scelta tra:

Il posto delle fragole di Ingmar Bergman
Truman Show di Peter Weir
Blade Runner di Ridley Scott
L'attimo fuggente di Peter Weir
Le vite degli altri di Florian Henckel
Ladri di biciclette di Vittorio De Sica
Farenheit 451 di François Truffaut 
Arancia Meccanica di Stanley Kubrick
American beauty di Sam Mendes
Un angelo alla mia tavola di Jane Campion
Bellissima di Luchino Visconti
Sweet Sixteen di Ken Loach
Storia di una ladra di libri di Brian Percival
Quadrophenia di Franc Roddam

Gloria di John Cassavetes
Gente comune di Robert Redford
Mignon è partita di Francesca Archibugi
Il signore delle mosche di Peter Brook