From Critique to Ascesis: Articulations in the Cultural Curriculum of Physical Education

Abstract

This article proposes an articulation between the notions of critique and ascesis in Michel Foucault as a framework for a possible reading of the Currículo Cultural (Cultural Curriculum) in Physical Education. Accounts of pedagogical experiences constitute the empirical material of this investigation. A careful and sensitive analysis of these accounts revealed how the study of bodily practices can operate both in the invention of the self and in the problematization of norms. Critique is proposed here not as denunciation, but as an ethical attitude toward the transformation of subjects. In this sense, the Cultural Curriculum seeks to shift school practice from reproduction to creation, and from technique to lived experience, activating alternative modes of existence. Ascetic critique thus emerges as a pedagogical gesture that implicates the subject in the reinvention of both self and world.

Keywords
Physical Education; Curriculum; Pedagogical Practice; Critique