Creative lines in a history class: the paradox of thinking faced with the dispositif of banality

Abstract

This article discusses history class as an opportunity to consider and problematize time, based on the creations of teachers. This opportunity is constructed in mediations with youth and their cultures, with historic knowledge and with sentient issues. In times when common public opinion appears to have an important position, when attacks on history classes multiply and when there is a deliberate process of devalorization of thinking and scientific production, particularly in the field of history, we propose to problematize what we call the dispositif of banalization, based on ideas from Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. Our objective is to reflect on history classes, using scenes of practices of student teachers and literature from the field as sources for research and producing knowledge. For this article we have selected a class that problematizes imaginaries constructed about Ancient Egypt. The connection that we establish is that, while the dispositif of banality produces and reproduces perspectives, readings and relations in society in general, the history classroom creates a refuge for thinking by opening a space “between” the past and future – a space of imagination that allows the creative re-encounter with others.