Sharon Todd 
The Touch of the Present [EPUB ebook] 
Educational Encounters, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Senses

How are educational encounters understood, experienced, and lived? How are they conceptualized? How do they shape our being in and of the world? In this time of apparent distance and disconnect, this volume emphasizes the role of contact and connectedness in education, above all by understanding education as encounters, as embodied, sensory experiences. Drawing on a range of theoretical positions that highlight our profound interconnection with things and other bodies—from feminism to Buddhism to new materialism and beyond—Sharon Todd argues that educational encounters are formations of ‘touching’ and ‘being touched by.’ They are singular in their eventfulness and yet bring us into relation with our environment. Focusing particular attention on two key issues for teachers and students today—the climate emergency and online education—
The Touch of the Present offers unique insights into the aesthetics and politics of educational practices, seeing them as embodied processes that not only contribute to how one is socialized into a given order but also carry the transformative potential for ‘becoming’ beyond the cultural scripts we are given.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments



Introduction: Why Encounters?




Part One: Theoretical Framings



1. The Present Tense Incarnate: Education as Encounters/Encounters as Education



2. Senses of Encounter



3. Enculturation, Regimes of Perception, and the Politics of the Senses



4. Forms and Formations of Encounters



5. Becoming as a Time of Unfolding




Part Two: Encounters in/of Education



6. Digital Encounters: Online Education and the Space-Time of the Virtual



7. Encounters with Climate Change: Teaching in the Presence of Climate Sorrow



Afterword: The Touch of the Present and Education
as Social Justice



Notes

References

Index

About the author

Sharon Todd is Professor of Education at Maynooth University in Ireland. Her many books include
Toward an Imperfect Education: Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism and
Learning from the Other: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education, also published by SUNY Press.