Educational Consciousness: Breaking Open the Category of Knowledge in Footscray

This article is the beginning of a theoretical reading of a project undertaken by the Public Pedagogies
Institute a Pop Up School and Educational Consciousness. Drawing on Biesta’s notion of
publicness we initially describe the Pop Up School event. We argue that in this project we look
to extend the way the knowledge profile of an area can be more fully informed by turning to the
community itself for their articulations and representations of their knowledge. When then offer
distinct readings of this research/public event with Deleuze and Barad as they offer a dynamic
engagement with knowledge. The paper then moves between the small space of the public
event and the larger space of Footscray through Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cosmologies and
pedagogies. Time is called then into play as a psychoanalytic reading of Footscray, memory and
knowledge are read from the interview data. The final steps bring Footscray sharply through time
with a reading of ‘consumptionscapes’ of Footscray knowledge.