Abstract
This paper delves into pedagogic practices that privilege the remote over the proximate, the
unfamiliar over the familiar, and the far-off over the intimate. It delineates how this pedagogy of
alienation entails embedding of ‘the west’ in cognitive spaces of the subjects and conditions ways
in which they negotiate their familiar terrain: the national space. Spatial dynamics of the
humanistic functions attached with the teaching of E. literature: “the shaping of character, the
development of aesthetics and the disciplines of ethical thinking” will also be identified. The
paper investigates how English literary texts in an institutionalized space win assent for their
judgments in a “clandestine” manner. An attempt has been made to equate these acts of assent, on
part of the subjects, as steps of spatial alienation ensuring successive approximation to a desired
behavior or a reconfiguration of the cognitive space, ultimately “transforming the way in which
objects of knowledge are constructed.” The resulting epistemes have then been mapped onto the
fatal fault lines of the proximal, national space to test their political efficacy.
Shahzeb Khan. (2016) Pedagogy of Alienation: Epistemic Hegemony of the Mental Space and Fatal Fault Lines in the National Space, South Asian Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1.
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