Auto-didacticism : the 3As of bodyworld and the case of invisible hours

Abstract

This chapter on performance pedagogy in the realities of the twenty-first century opens with a retrospective cue from a traditional instructional device: a proverb. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs cites a twelfth-century source for the old adage that ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’ (Speake 2015: 156). This proverb is re-read in the present chapter to highlight a foundational aspect of learning: that at the basis of knowledge acquisition lies self-learning. That is, irrespective of set-up, method, teacher, or institution, the final responsibility rests with the learner, with their capacity or ability, motivation or discipline, or any other factor that enables one’s own learning. For one can indeed lead a person to different founts of knowing but, at the end, it is the individual who actions and embodies that knowledge into learning. Accordingly, the selected pedagogical object for this chapter is auto-didacticism, which I exemplify via a temporal dimension denoted by ‘invisible hours’.