Teaching unawareness: the curriculum of desire and love in the risk society

Abstract

We are living in a world risk society where different forms of risk have become a part of daily life, such as energy crisis, financial crisis, global terrorism, and ecological crisis. Beck (World risk society, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1999) argues that knowing about ‘unawareness’ might provide another way for us to reconsider the problems of the risk society. This paper focuses on the discussions of the unawareness of the social practices of desire, because it may be the key point of the neoliberal world that has the strongest influence in this world. There are three main parts in this article. The first discusses the interlinked relationship between the risk society and desire, and the unawareness of the social practices of desire. Unawareness is identified according to three aspects: dualism, individualism, and rationalism. The second part focuses on the discussion of the possible ways to solve the three aspects of unawareness, for example, co-presence, holistic epistemology, and compassion. Finally, three suggestions are proposed for the future curriculum: reconstructing the subject-centered knowledge, the curriculum of desire, and the curriculum of love.