Fictions from a researcher in the Jequitinhonha: When a woman of clay is confused with a pot of flesh and bones

Abstract

This article is an exercise in the power of fictional writing for investigations in/of Mathematics Education within an ongoing doctoral research project at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The research is being developed in collaboration with clay artisans from the communities of Campo Buriti and Campo Alegre, Turmalina, Jequitinhonha Valley, Minas Gerais. We are driven by the desire to understand how these clay artisans allow us to problematize a (non-)disciplinary [mathematics] school curriculum that is affected by sociocultural practices, the inconstancies of nature, and the bodily games of the characters in each scene. In this sense, a woman-body-territory emerges as a category of political, gender, and spatial resistance, and also contributes to our thinking about [mathematics] school curricula mobilized by subalternized figures that challenge Eurocentric and colonialist modes of knowledge production. Theoretically and methodologically, this study adopts the stance of the later Wittgenstein in dialogue with Jacques Derrida to explore the limits of an artisan curriculum. In diary form, based on fieldwork conducted in April 2024, the discussions are supported by the conduct of researchers/teachers anchored in sociocultural practices to break down the boundaries between inside and outside the school, inventing a [mathematics] curriculum that is not common to all humans, but particular to each context. Thus, there are no prescriptions for curricular methods, but rather opportunities to escape rigid frameworks that ignore pluralities.