Pedagogy of hauntology in language education: Re-signifying the Argentinian dictatorship in higher education

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how hauntology can be enacted pedagogically in the foreign language classroom in higher education. It embeds a posthuman lens within place-conscious education and critical place pedagogies. These foci, hauntology, posthumanism and critical place pedagogies, have not been explored in the context of language teaching. An empirical case study undertaken in 2013 in Argentina on the theme of the last Argentine dictatorship is described. Language undergraduates, future teachers and/or translators of English, addressed this theme in a transnational online project in which they communicated via Skype with UK-based undergraduates studying Spanish as a foreign language. The project aimed to raise the students? awareness not only of human rights violations in recent history but also of others? suffering. Places acquired particular significance as the students were encouraged to take civic action beyond the classroom and the university and the ghosts of the disappeared became alive in the present in a variety of locations. Implications for language education are addressed.