REALLY USEFUL KNOWLEDGE (Libro en papel)

de VARIOS AUTORES

Sinopsis

The notion of "really useful knowledge" emerged at the beginning ofthe 19th century alongside the workers’ awareness of the need forself-education. In the 1820s and 1830s, working class organisations in the UK introduced this phrase to describe a body of knowledge thatencompassed various "unpractical" disciplines such as politics,economy and philosophy, as opposed to the "useful knowledge"proclaimed by business owners who had previously begun to invest moreheavily in their companies’ progress through financing workers’education in "applicable" disciplines like engineering, physics,chemistry and mathematics. In this reference to the long-forgottenclass struggles of early capitalism, the title of the exhibitionsuggests an inquiry into "really useful knowledge" from a contemporary perspective.The exhibition endeavours to position the notion of critical pedagogyas a crucial element in collective struggles, and explore the tensionbetween individual and social emancipation through education withexamples that are both historical and current, and their relation toorganisational forms capable of leading unified resistance to thereproduction of capital. In doing so, the exhibition highlights thecollective utilization of public resources, action and experiments,either forgotten or under threat of eradication, taking the museum asa pedagogical site devoted to the analysis of artistic formsinterconnected with actual or desired social relations.