Temporality and diffraction: visual possibilities

In this presentation, I propose the generative possibilities of using time as a methodology understood diffractively (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017) to examine the temporal (Lingard & Thompson, 2017; McLeod, 2017), political and iconological (Mitchell, 2015) spectacle of visual culture. I stitch together the intersections of temporality and iconology as a potential means to illuminate the lives of teachers and students who understand their worlds visually, against the backdrop of iconic visual events. Specifically, I focus on iconic visual events captured on film such as the first moon landing, 9/11 and the war on terrorism, 21st-century natural disasters, the rise of Trump. In doing so, I put this temporal methodological design to work as a means to interrogate the complexities of teachers’ and students’ lives and possibilities in a post-truth (Tesich, 1992) era.