Desaprendre per imaginar alternatives viables
In her biography of the writer Hannah Arendt, Marie Luise Kott relates the philosopher’s thought to this notion: “Unlearning in order to see things from a completely renewed perspective and thus conquer new grounds of freedom.” Hannah Arendt’s unlearning had to do precisely with opening up new possibilities for thinking when reality (Europe in the years 1939-1945) closed off all options for reflection. Unlearning meant “going beyond the dead ends of the current and traditional representations of the world and man.” Perhaps we are closer to that scenario right now than we would like to think.
Does the artist Johan Grimonprez bring these ideas to the present, with regard to his work Close Encounter? “The contemporary condition of what it is to be human questions the relevance of politics and reality, which has collapsed under the weight of an overload of information and mass deception. Paranoia suddenly seems like the only sane state of being, where it is easier to contemplate the end of the world than to imagine viable political alternatives.”
In this new issue of Malart, we set out to explore the notion of unlearning. If until now we were aware of the importance of continuous learning (for people, professionals, organizations, institutions or companies), perhaps now the crux of the matter is not so much learning, but unlearning: unlearning mental models that now appear obsolete to us, that are no longer relevant. Unlearning is not so much forgetting what has been learned, but seeking to adapt to changes and imagine viable alternatives, leaving fear behind and being able to think for ourselves.
[Article published in Bonart, 2022]
