What Are We Still Assessing? - Brief Considerations on Assessment, Curriculum, and Authorship in the Age of Generative AI

ABSTRACT

In this article, I offer brief considerations on the meaning of assessment practices at a time when students are frequently turning to generative artificial intelligence. First, I problematize the common understanding of educational processes as the transmission of knowledge content between rational subjects, as well as the atomistic ontology that underpins this view. I then present a relational ontoepistemology inspired by poststructuralist thought (in dialogue with Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari) as an alternative framework for rethinking what we understand as “knowledge,” “authorship,” and “assessment.” Finally, I propose an ethical orientation for educational processes, as well as for curriculum theories and policies: an ethical (dis)orientation guided by an ethics of singularity.

KEYWORDS:
Relational Ontoepistemology; Assessment; Artificial Intelligence; Curriculum; Singularity

RESUMO

Nesse artigo tecemos breves considerações sobre o sentido das práticas avaliativas num momento em que os alunos têm recorrido com frequência a inteligências artificiais generativas. Em um primeiro momento, procuro problematizar o sentido mais habitual atribuído aos processos educacionais, a transmissão de conteúdos de conhecimento entre sujeitos racionais, bem como a ontologia atomística que o sustenta. Em seguida apresento uma ontoepistemologia relacional de inspiração pós-estruturalista (em diálogo com Derrida, Deleuze e Guattari) como alternativa capaz de repensar o que compreendemos por “conhecimento”, “autoria” e “avaliação”. Por fim, proponho um sentido ético para os processos educacionais, bem como para as teorias e políticas curriculares: um sentido ético (des)orientado por uma ética da singularidade.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Ontoepistemologia relacional; Avaliação; Inteligência Artificial; Currículo; Singularidade

Preliminary Considerations: This Strange Monstrous Double

In the book The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond..., published in 1980, Derrida quotes a footnote from Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert, in which the curious situation of the “appearance” of the devil during a play-where one of the characters was precisely the devil-is described.

I read, when I was young, a tragedy, which was part of the Escalade, in which the Devil was actually one of the actors. I have been told that when this play was once performed, this character, as he came on stage, appeared double, as if the original had been jealous that they had had the audacity to imitate him, and instantly everybody, seized by fright, took flight, thus ending the performance (Rousseau ap. Derrida, 1987, pp. 270-271).¹

The anecdote draws Derrida’s attention for highlighting the endless anxieties and complications we become entangled in when attempting to firmly establish a clear line of separation between the supposed “original” and the “double” that represents it. As Derrida (1987, p. 270) emphasizes:

on a stage, the stage on which he was simply represented, as was conventionally believed. As an actor or as a character, the thing is unclear. An apparition, then, of the devil “himself,” over and above his representation; an apparition or presentation of the “original” over and above the representative that is supposed to supplement him; an apparition, in the sense of a visitation, of the “thing in itself” as the supplement of its “own” supplement. Such an apparition doubtless upsets the appeasing order of representation. However, it does so not by reducing double-effects but, on the contrary, by expanding them, by expanding the effect of duplicity without an original, which perhaps is what the diabolical consists of, its very inconsistency.²

On stage, an actor plays the devil. Jealous of the affront of duplication, the devil “in person” appears on stage, though there, he is the double of his double. The description could continue ad infinitum without ever arriving at the pure and simple origin of an identity-that is, without ever being able to securely establish “the original.” This, says Derrida, is the devilry itself: the ad infinitum multiplication of duplicity without origin.

The popularization of generative AI models has brought into the scene this diabolical double capable of creating texts, images, and music “just like us,” humans.

Generative AI-distinct from predictive machine learning models (predictive AI), which are centered on extracting patterns from data and making predictions in specific tasks-produces original content from large datasets. In other words, it uses data to generate more data, synthesizing text, image, voice, video, and code³ (Santaella; Kaufman, 2024, p. 39).

Initially received with suspicion and a sense of estrangement that bifurcated into curiosity and hostility, these models were soon embraced in the educational field by both students and teachers, reviving debates about the meaning of educational processes and, above all, of assessment practices. As a university professor, whether “with myself,” in groups of friends, or in working groups specifically formed to discuss the topic, I have repeatedly found myself confronted with the question: how to assess? How to formulate questions immune to the powers of generative AI models? Or, beyond that: if students are going to use generative AI models to answer the questions, then why develop assessments at all?

In this article, echoing Edgar Lyra (2024), we will take such questions as the tip of a “digital iceberg,”⁴ beneath which lie deeper and more difficult questions about the very meaning of educational and assessment processes. Adopting the form of a theoretical essay, we will first engage with some theoretical contributions from what is often called “post-structuralist” thought in order to rethink notions such as “intelligence,” “knowledge,” and “authorship” from a relational ontoepistemology. We will then turn to contemporary curriculum theorists who have drawn on relational ontoepistemologies inspired by post-structuralism to rethink curriculum theories and policies around key notions such as “knowledge” and “assessment.” Finally, we will offer a brief reflection on a possible ethical meaning for educational processes-an ethical meaning (dis)oriented by the notion of singularity.

1 Relational Ontoepistemologies and the End of Authorship

The “death of the author” is a recurring theme in French philosophy of the second half of the 20th century. Roland Barthes’s famous essay, published in 1967, condenses the main elements of the issue. In a literary text, after all, who is speaking?

We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes. (Barthes, 1989, p. 49).⁵

The Author, says Barthes, is a “modern figure,” invented through the investments-via the religious Reformation and the urban-commercial Renaissance, accompanied by English empiricism and French rationalism-in the development of an “individual” consciousness. For the writer, who is not an “Author,” the hand, detached “from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin-or at least with no origin but language itself, i.e., the very thing which ceaselessly calls any origin into question” (Barthes, 1989, p. 52).⁶ Far from referring to a single meaning guaranteed by the full presence of an “Author-God,” the text is a “multi-dimensional space in which are married and contested several writings, none of which is original: the text is a fabric of quotations, resulting from a thousand sources of culture” (Barthes, 1989, p. 53).⁷

The diagnoses of the “death of the author” are directly linked to the context of the reception of Saussure’s structural linguistics in continental philosophy. Saussure’s work inaugurates a trend that would resonate strongly across the human sciences throughout the 20th century: “language” would no longer be understood as a tool used by a subject to refer to reality. Language would become the very medium through which contexts of meaning are constituted-contexts in which subjects and realities may appear. Language precedes, transcends, and constitutes subjects and realities-while simultaneously dismantling their supposed substantially independent existence. This is why, in the classic The Birth and Death of the Modern Subject: De-centering the Subject, Stuart Hall includes Saussure’s structural linguistics among the decentering forces acting upon the modern ideal of the subject:

Saussure argued that we are not in any absolute sense the “authors” of the statements we make or of the meanings we express in language. We can only use language to produce meanings by positioning ourselves within the rules of language and the systems of meaning of our culture. Language is a social, not an individual system. It pre-exists us. We cannot in any simple sense be its authors. To speak a language is not only to express our innermost, original thoughts, it is also to activate the vast range of meanings which are already embedded in our language and cultural systems (Hall, 1992, p. 288).⁸

If structuralism had already greatly complicated the notion of “authorship,” the thought known as “post-structuralism” would carry the deconstruction of the ideal of the subject that sustains it to its ultimate consequences. Published in the same year as Barthes’s essay, Derrida’s Of Grammatology doubles down on Saussure’s wager. For Saussure, language is composed of signs that unite the signifier-the acoustic image-and the signified-the concept. The relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, which leads us to conclude that signs acquire meaning only in relation to other signs, assuming a certain relative position within the linguistic system. These relations privilege oppositional pairs, where the difference between signs constitutes each one’s very identity: “father” and “son,” “day” and “night,” “raw” and “cooked,” etc.

Derrida radicalizes this logic: if signification occurs only through a process of relations, deferrals, and differences, how then can we preserve the notion of “meaning”? Meaning is nothing more than the provisional stabilization of relationships between signifiers. And these relationships go far beyond binary form. What we have is a dynamic network of relations among signifiers (Derrida, 1982, pp. 10-11).⁹ Thus, it is no longer a matter of language, but of writing; not of signifiers, but of traces (Derrida, 1997, p. 65).¹⁰ And difference will no longer be just one type of relation between signifiers, but the very form of relation in general. Difference will not be “between” opposing binary pairs with established identities. Differentiality will be the very groundless ground from which relations, significations, texts, contexts, disputes, provisional stabilizations, contestations, and re-significations may emerge.

Each particular “signifier” carries with it the trace of all the other “signifiers” that it is not. It thus becomes necessary to think in terms of a system of differences. But the kind of difference at stake here is of another order: not a difference conceived as a relation between supposedly present things, given in themselves, and different from one another-in a word, not an oppositional difference as such (“a” as different from “b”). Every trace, it’s worth noting, is constituted always already as a differential trace: neither present nor absent; traces differ. It is the metaphysical paradigm of presence that imposes the binary possibility of presence or absence, being or nothingness. The logic of the trace escapes this binary. Traces “are” what they “are” by virtue of differences among “them”: which means that, at the core of every so-called “signifier” or “signified” (in quotation marks because, in truth, we are dealing with traces...), there resides a differentiality, or rather, a production, a play, of differences (Duque-Estrada, 2020, p. 25).¹¹

This is why it is no longer exactly a matter of difference between identities given in themselves, but of différance as the play of differentiality that produces significations, identifications, and differentiations.

Among many other things, the notion that “there is nothing outside of the text” (Derrida, 1997, p. 158)¹² implies that there is no “author” present to themselves, given in advance, who presides over and commands the writing of a text. “Text” is the very network of traces in its differentiality, in an unhalting movement that produces effects of presence-spectral apparitions (Solis, 2014) that, strictly speaking, are neither fully present nor fully absent. The Author relies on a metaphysics of subjectivity, which in turn relies on a metaphysics of presence (Derrida, 1997, p. 49) - the assumption that something can be given in itself as such, without always-already being referred and related to another (to many others). The logic of the trace implies that everything can only come to be anything at all within a network of differential relations with many “others” who both enable and disable its existence-who both promise and defer its presence. The logic of the trace is a logic of supplementation. The diabolical logic of the “supplement of (at) origin” (Derrida, 1997, p. 313)¹³- of the double without an original.

In another post-structuralist vein, Deleuze and Guattari make every possible effort to break away from the metaphysics of subjectivity. It is no coincidence that Tomaz Tadeu da Silva concludes his requiem for the modern subject in the introduction to Pedagogy of the Monsters with Deleuze and Guattari:

If with Foucault we learned that the “subject” is an artifice of language, with Deleuze and Guattari we learn that the “subject” is an artifice - period. This is precisely what they aim to underscore when they replace the spiritualist, idealist, transcendentalist language of “souls” and “subjects” with the profane, materialist, immanentist language of “machines” and “bodies without organs” (Silva, 2000, p. 18).¹⁴

The opening paragraph of Anti-Oedipus already introduces us to the notion of the machine:

Everywhere it is machines-real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. (...) Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. For every organ-machine, an energy-machine: all the time, flows and interruptions (Deleuze; Guattari, 2000, pp. 8-9).¹⁵

In Deleuze and Guattari, we are no longer dealing with the centered, rational, and conscious subject of modernity-nor even with the subject whose desire revolves around a central “lack,” making it possible to situate them within the Oedipal structure of a well-known family drama. What is at stake are assemblages: a network of articulations, compositions, and complex interactions in which heterogeneous materials experiment, awaken, amplify, and mutually constrain their capacities for affect-that is, their capacities to affect and be affected in multiple ways. In this sense, once again, there is no “author” to be found as the producing subject of a text. At the beginning of the first volume of A Thousand Plateaus, the authors describe the composition of a book as follows:

A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations. It is to fabricate a beneficent God to explain geological movements. In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. (...) One side of a machinic assemblage faces the strata, which doubtless make it a kind of organism, or signifying totality, or determination attributable to a subject; it also has a side facing a body without organs, which is continually dismantling the organism, causing asignifying particles or pure intensities to pass or circulate, and attributing to itself subjects that it leaves with nothing more than a name as the trace of an intensity (Deleuze; Guattari, 2005, pp. 3-4).¹⁶

Our point is this: post-structuralist thought stages a relational onto-epistemology according to which, as Nietzsche once put it, “There is no ‘essence-in-itself” (it is only relations that constitute an essence- )” (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 334).¹⁷ As Derrida would say, there is no fully constituted “presence-to-itself”; there are only differential relations between traces that, through their mutual interaction, constitute-and deconstitute-any “being.” Or, as Deleuze would put it, there is no such thing as an “individual”; there are networks of heterogeneous materials that mutually activate capacities for affect and, in doing so, produce diverse compositions and articulations. A relational onto-epistemology seriously complicates-if not outright undermines-any assumption of “authorship.”

We have offered this brief overview of the “death of the author” in part to avoid what Lucia Santaella calls “presentism”- “the idea that what is currently unfolding has not passed through the lines of force and tensions that led from the past to the present” (Santaella, 2022, p. 9).¹⁸ Generative AI models are not the “murderers” of authorship. The crisis surrounding the notion of authorship is much older and has been extensively documented and debated. At the same time, we aimed to introduce post-structuralist-inspired relational onto-epistemologies, as these will help us to think-and rethink-the meaning of curricular policies and theories (as well as pedagogical practices) related to “assessment” and “knowledge.”

2 What Are We Still Assessing?

If the “death of the author” is an effect of writing itself, what is it that troubles us so deeply about the use of generative AIs to answer assessments? But then again, the reverse question also arises: if generative AIs are going to answer our questions, what exactly are we still assessing? The use-or non-use-of generative AI in evaluations appears, to us, to be merely the tip of a “digital iceberg,” to borrow a recent expression from Edgar Lyra (2024). He explains:

if the educational standard is the dissemination of the endpoints of knowledge-production processes-that is, of stabilized models reached at the end of formidable historical and methodological sagas-without those sagas being made even minimally visible, then it was only a matter of time before a chatbot like GPT emerged and became the very measure of our cognitive horizons (Lyra, 2024, p. 113).¹⁹

The real question, perhaps, is how the “educational standard” has been constructed thus far, such that generative AIs seem to serve our students so well. Whether they truly serve them, whether they fail, whether they convey false, biased, superficial, or rigid information is, in this light, a secondary concern. What we would like to offer here is a brief reflection on why these tools, precisely, appear to be such effective instruments for “passing” assessments (Lyra, 2024, p. 113).

What is at stake for us, beneath the surface of the “iceberg,” is the question of the meaning of educational processes-and, by extension, of curriculum theories and policies. In this regard, I join Gert Biesta (2016) in his concern when he urges us to reflect on the very purpose of education.

I have consistently argued (Bogéa, 2019; 2020; 2021; 2023; 2023a) that education has long been understood in terms of two dominant and interwoven meanings: a cognitive one-transmitting “knowledge”-and a moral one-shaping human subjects according to supposedly universal and unquestionably valid moral values. The first has been the object of our “objective” assessments, the second the endless target of our “subjective” evaluations. Both, in general, tend to point toward the “failure” of education, of formation, of curricula, of teachers, of students, of society, and so on. I have also insisted that this prevailing understanding of educational processes is not only reductive and simplistic, but also anchored in a modern ideal of subjectivity: the rational, conscious, individual, unified, centered, and “free” subject (and, being free, therefore responsible and moral).

The critique of knowledge transmission as the fundamental aim of education is far from new. Brazil’s most influential educational thinkers, Anísio Teixeira and Paulo Freire, made this very critique one of the central themes of their major works. The problem is that they continued to uphold certain ideals that can only be sustained through a modern conception of subjectivity.

Teixeira critiques the transmission of outdated and hollow content and appeals to Dewey’s notion of experience to advocate for the transmission of knowledge that holds practical meaning-knowledge that helps address concrete problems. In this, he aligns with contemporary pedagogical theories of “competency” or “knowing how to do.” But only a subject conceived as rational, conscious, unified, and free could, through the acquisition of a set of theoretical and practical knowledges, ultimately attain the position of one who “knows how to do” for themselves what they need to know how to do. “We must prepare man to inquire into and solve his own problems” (Teixeira, 1978, p. 30),²⁰ as Teixeira puts it. But who can “solve their own” problems if not a subject conceived as an existence independent of interconstitutive relations?

Paulo Freire, for his part, made his most renowned contribution to his vast body of work through the chapter devoted to his critique of “banking education,” reduced to the mere transmission of knowledge content (Freire, 2005, pp. 71-86).²¹ However, in upholding ideals such as “freedom,” (Freire, 2005, pp. 87-124) “autonomy,” (Freire, 2005, p. 84) and “emancipation,” (Freire, 2005, pp. 37; 44; 86) it becomes evident that a modern conception of the subject still underpins his critique. As Elizabeth Macedo and Janet Miller argue, “we have been faced with reiterations of the idea of a rational, autonomous, and individual subject, as we project the subject of education as either an entrepreneur or a critical and reflective citizen” (Macedo & Miller, 2022, p. 10).²²

This “foundational fiction” - the modern ideal of the subject - has been one of the key forces shaping our understanding of “knowledge” and “assessment” within educational processes, curriculum theories, and policies. Talita Pereira has been challenging traditional notions of “assessment” through post-structuralist theoretical frameworks. According to the author:

The overvaluation of assessment emphasizes a conception of assessment as testing, focused on measuring the content learned by students at the end of a given period. Assessment policies, conceived as attempts at curricular control, follow this same logic, grounded in realist foundations and meanings of knowledge that have contributed to the sedimentation/stabilization of assessment practices that take place in and are naturalized by schools, creating obstacles to reflecting on other possible meanings of assessment (Pereira, 2023, p. 2).²³

If the purpose of education is the transmission of knowledge content between rational and conscious subjects, assessment becomes a “mechanism of control to verify whether what was planned to be learned was, in fact, learned” (Pereira, 2023, p. 3).²⁴ This control mechanism is sustained by the “expectation/illusion” that a proper selection of content to be transmitted and appropriate transmission methods can lead to an ideal situation in which “everyone will learn everything as it was planned” (Pereira, 2023, p. 3).²⁵ As Elizabeth Ellsworth aptly points out:

The bottom line for assessment purposes is for a student to get it, comprehend it, be “conscious” of it; even if she didn’t want to get it, didn’t enjoy getting it, or does not intend to use it - education is a success when the difference between a curriculum and a student’s understanding is eliminated (Ellsworth, 1997, p. 46).

Ellsworth draws on film theory to explore the notion of “address.” Filmmakers have grappled with the issue of “address” since the early days of cinema-that is, the ways in which ideas, sensations, and experiences are conveyed through the composition of scenes. By questioning “modes of address,” filmmakers invite the affective complexities of the audience into an uncontrollable and unpredictable play. Drawing a parallel with educational processes, Ellsworth invites us to consider, on the one hand, why we reflect so little on our own “modes of address”-for instance, when we design assessment activities. Could it be because we are immersed in the assumption that there exists an objective and universally valid content to be transmitted to all students, who must then offer proof that they have indeed learned it? On the other hand, she challenges us to engage with the affective complexities that permeate educational processes:

What if, like the relationship between a film and its viewer, a student’s relationship to a curriculum is a messy and unpredictable event that constantly exceeds both understanding and misunderstanding? This perspective doesn’t circulate very widely in the field of education. Nevertheless, like a student’s reading of a movie, her reading of a curriculum constantly and inevitably passes through the uncontrollable stuff of desire, fear, horror, pleasure, power, anxiety, fantasy, and the unthinkable. Inviting audiences out to play in and with this mess is the bread and butter of filmmakers. But it’s exactly what most educators stay up late on school nights trying to plan out of the next day. Classroom acts and moments of desire, fear, horror, pleasure, power, and unintelligibility are ехactly what most educators sweat over trying to prevent, foreclose, deny, ignore, close down (Ellsworth, 1997, p. 46).

Standardized assessment practices, widely disseminated across educational institutions, are certainly intensified by large-scale assessment policies promoted-and funded-by international organizations such as the OECD, UNESCO, and IEA (Dias, 2016). As Talita Pereira states:

Large-scale assessment policies have reinforced understandings of assessment as a mechanism for controlling educational quality and have fostered exclusionary processes; they intensify the circulation of particular meanings and discursively legitimize the argument that, when aligned with the production of universal and prescriptive curricula, large-scale assessments can ensure better learning outcomes-assuming that the results of performance measurement tests genuinely reflect students’ development and learning processes (Pereira, 2023, p. 7).²⁶

Rosanne Dias summarizes several assumptions and implications underlying large-scale assessments, which tend to prioritize ideals of “performance,” “efficiency,” and “effectiveness”:

a) the accountability of schools and their staff for the results expected of the institution by society; b) the strong linkage between the productive and educational systems, particularly emphasizing flexibility and “learning to learn” as a way to cope with the contingencies of precarious employment; c) the use of behaviorist psychology as the foundation for educational experiences, with an emphasis on performance assessment; and d) an overvaluation of teaching techniques and technologies oriented toward measurement (Dias, 2016, p. 599).²⁷

In this sense, the local and the global, the micro and the macro are intertwined, such that large-scale assessments place pressure on assessment practices within educational institutions to reproduce ideals of performance and effectiveness presumed to be objectively measurable. At both the micro and macro levels, these guidelines and assessment practices reinforce the notion that the purpose of an educational process is the acquisition of knowledge content-whether understood as valuable in itself or as constituting a “competence” or a form of “know-how.” What is at stake in this process is what Gert Biesta calls “learnification”: “the transformation of the vocabulary used to talk about education into one of ‘learning’ and ‘learners.’” (Biesta, 2016, p. 18). When “learning” is assumed to be the sole purpose of education, the very question of its meaning is lost from view: “Nowadays there is simply too much talk about learning and too little talk about what learning is supposed to be for. There is too little talk, in other words, about the ends of learning” (Biesta, 2016, p. 127).

Within the realm of “learnification” obsession, knowledge is understood as a “thing” (Pereira, 2017),²⁸ as an “epistemological object external to the subject” (Macedo, 2017, p. 547),²⁹ with which the subject comes to relate-through the educational process-by means of appropriation and mastery. “Knowledge” is thus defined “as property, as a thing, something we must ‘have in order to be someone,’ reinforcing the idea of knowledge as a private good” (Pereira, 2023, p. 3).³⁰ Elizabeth Macedo articulates a similar diagnosis:

Acquiring knowledge, in order to be someone, is the response curriculum theory has been producing to the question of the school’s function. This response marks a symbiosis between knowledge and content, which situates schooling within the realm of the proprietarization of knowledge-as-thing (Macedo, 2017, p. 549).³¹

The acquisition of this property - “knowledge”- would complete the formation of a subject who, until then, is presumed to lack certain contents or competencies. Yet in doing so, we enter into the logic of what Derrida calls calculation (Derrida, 1992),³² that is, a starting point grounded in a supposedly preexisting, predetermined understanding of what a life ought to be, oriented toward “the realization of possibilities already given in the present, programmed, scheduled, expected, anticipated, pre-established” (Duque-Estrada, 2020, p. 50).³³ As Hugo Costa and Alice Casimiro Lopes put it:

Within a logic of control, driven by distinct and conflicting visions of curriculum, we draw attention to the expectation of a form of knowledge capable of constructing a suitable subject-one able to operate fully in contexts projected as society, world, experience (Costa; Lopes, 2022, p. 3).³⁴

Thus, “knowledge tends to be affirmed as the means through which it becomes possible to control the production/signification of subjects (students, teachers, citizens, etc.)” (Costa, 2023, p. 6).³⁵

It is no coincidence that the vocabulary of “mastery” and “appropriation” of competencies/knowledge permeates the BNCC (Base Nacional Comum Curricular [National Common Curricular Base]) and the most recent national curriculum guidelines for teacher education. The latest resolution by the CNE (Conselho Nacional de Educação [National Council of Education]), which sets the Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Formação Inicial em Nível Superior de Profissionais do Magistério da Educação Escolar Básica [National Curriculum Guidelines for Initial Higher Education of Teaching Professionals in Basic Education] (Brazil, 2024), though less obsessively focused on listing “competencies” than the 2019 BNC-Formação, remains heavily shaped by the notions of “mastery” and “appropriation” of specific bodies of knowledge for the professional practice of teaching. It emphasizes the need for the “mastery and handling of content and methodologies, different languages, technologies, scientific evidence, and innovations” (p. 2),³⁶ the “mastery of Basic Education knowledge” (p. 3),³⁷ the “mastery of digital information and communication technologies” (p. 8),³⁸ the ability to “master knowledge related to school management” (p. 8),³⁹ and the “pedagogical mastery” of “content” (p. 10).⁴⁰ It also highlights the “appropriation of the knowledge necessary for teaching practice” (p. 2)⁴¹ (though it remains unclear what that knowledge entails), and the “appropriation of the professional knowledge required” to address “educational inequality” (p. 3).⁴²

Similarly, in the BNCC (Brazil, 2018), the notions of “mastery” and “appropriation” are pervasive-from the “mastery” of professional tools (p. 69) and tools for problem-solving (p. 538), to the “appropriation” of artistic works (p. 523) and of a personal collection of artworks (p. 525), including the “mastery” of modes of signification (p. 69) and of the writing system (p. 90).

We thus observe how the relationship to knowledge is primarily framed in terms of “mastery” and “appropriation.” This is only sustainable within an atomistic ontology in which subject and object (knowledge as object) are conceived as pre-existing, self-contained realities. In a relational onto-epistemology, existence is always already understood as the effect of a network of relations-or, to avoid implying a logic of cause and effect, existence only comes into being through a network of relations. To exist is to exist in relation. Every being is a network of traces or machines which, in their mutual interactions, activate powers of affectation. In this way, networks of affective compositions emerge, in which each existent-in its constitutive multiplicity-can affect and be affected in many and diverse ways, without any prior determination of how many or which ways those might be.

Thus, each existent, by virtue of its relational ontological constitution, is thrown into an affective experimentation co-moved by the desire to expand and intensify its capacities to affect and be affected-what Spinoza (2018)⁴³ called conatus and Nietzsche (1968)⁴⁴ referred to as will to power. This process involves multiple inter-affective negotiations and fluctuations in power, producing provisional stabilizations as well as more or less radical disruptions and transformations. In this relational process that constitutes the very dynamics of existence, each being gradually forms a perspective-a way of perceiving, interpreting, and engaging with other beings. This is why I have argued (2024) that intelligence and knowledge emerge within a process of inter-affective relational perspectivism.

In a relational onto-epistemology, knowledge cannot be a “thing” to be “acquired,” “mastered,” or “appropriated” by a “subject.” Knowing is a dynamic, relational process inseparable from the very process of existence itself. Therefore, the purpose of an educational process cannot be the acquisition of knowledge or the notorious concept of “learning”-and this is not a normative prohibition but rather the acknowledgment of a conceptual impossibility. We must instead consider learning in the etymological sense recovered by Talita Pereira (2023, p. 8):

To think of learning from the etymological root of the Latin verb apprehendĕre, which can also be understood as ‘to bring near to oneself’ (ad, ‘toward’ + prehendere, ‘to grasp’); this opens up new challenges for the act of assessment. We bring close to us that which affects us (...). It is a process in which the always-contextual relation we establish with the other cannot be disregarded-but this does not mean that the other can determine how or in what we will be affected.⁴⁵

I now return to the question posed in the title of this article: what are we still assessing? If we are still assessing the acquisition, mastery, or appropriation of knowledge content, then generative AIs will continue to seem like appropriate tools for answering our assessments. And the issue here is not that students might relinquish authorship, delegating the task of composition to an automatic tool. The issue is that they will continue to want to appear as the “author” of a text capable of presenting knowledge content they were supposed to have “mastered.” We insist: the real problem lies in the meaning we ascribe to educational processes. What follows is an attempt to sketch out another possible meaning.

3 Singularity: So Near, So Far...

A certain notion of “singularity” has been gaining popularity, referring to a hypothetical moment when technologies and artificial intelligences will reach such a level of development that they become entirely incomprehensible to us-at least within the frameworks of meaning and categories currently available. In 2018, Ray Kurzweil, a former Google engineer who identifies as a “Singularitarian,” published The Singularity Is Near. From the very beginning, the Singularitarians’ interests are made clear:

The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands. We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever). We will fully understand human thinking and will vastly extend and expand its reach. By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence. [...] The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations (Kurzweil, 2005, p. 25).⁴⁶

What is ultimately at stake for the Singularitarians is the wager that hyper-technological development will finally allow us to transcend all the limitations of our biological brains and bodies. We will gain power over our own destinies and extend our physical and mental capacities indefinitely. In other words: we will achieve a form of omnipotence. In this sense, the Singularitarian project-often described as “post-human”-seems to me, rather, profoundly hyper-human, insofar as it promises the human being the unlimited expansion of their powers.

I would like to propose an alternative sense of singularity. Within a relational ontoepistemology, every existing entity-composed of an astonishing multiplicity and diversity of relations and interactions-is absolutely singular. Each existent is unique and unrepeatable, not because it is an “individual” with an inherent essence, but precisely because its existence is the effect of an immense network of interactions, of multiplicities and diversities that have come together in a way that is entirely unique and unrepeatable. I have consistently argued (Bogéa, 2019; 2020; 2021; 2023; 2023a) for an ethical rather than purely epistemological understanding of educational processes-one guided (or disoriented) by an ethics of singularity.

Despite being grounded in an atomistic ontology-which conceives the world as a collection of “individuals,” “subjects,” and “objects”-the epistemological orientation of educational processes has often been tied to universalizing and totalizing moral projects that suppress or erase singularities in the name of collective identities. As Elizabeth Macedo aptly points out, the framing of knowledge acquisition as the aim of education is directly connected to a project of subject recognition within “one’s own” cultural identity: recognition “is secured through the private ownership of knowledge as content. It is the possession of this knowledge-which is nothing more than the possession of culture-that enables recognition” (Macedo, 2017, p. 547).⁴⁷ Education is thus defined as “a process aimed at allowing the subject to recognize themselves in culture” (Macedo, 2017, p. 540).⁴⁸

Within the realm of this pressure for cultural reproduction, each existent is led-very early on-to view their own formation as a process of preparing to fulfill a social function as a citizen. This citizen, who confusingly embodies both what Benjamin Constant (1988)⁴⁹ referred to as the “freedom of the ancients” (the freedom to participate in the political life of the city) and the “freedom of the moderns” (the freedom to pursue one’s private life and endeavors without interference from the State), is at once the political subject responsible for the conservative maintenance and/or critical transformation of social institutions, and the well-trained worker prepared to perform a role in the labor market:

… perhaps the most significant example of the attempt to sanction certain identities through education lies in the idea of the citizen. It appears as the passport for any and every educational intervention-from critical perspectives that emphasize the emancipated citizen to instrumental ones in which citizenship is synonymous with employability and consumer capacity (Macedo, 2017, p. 546).⁵⁰

Beyond this “social function” of education-one distorted by the assumption that “society” and its “functions” are already established, well-defined, and known to all-we propose an understanding of education as a process for cultivating each person’s existential singularity. This demands from each of us a radical openness to the other as an unrepresentable, ungraspable, and unrecoverable singularity-irreducible to any logic of identity. Above all, such a concern continuously puts our own sense of “identity” into question, fostering an openness to the unsettling realization that we ourselves-being likewise ungraspable and unrepresentable singularities-are also “others,” strangers to whatever we have grown accustomed to calling “ourselves.” As Deborah Britzman puts it, for the self to be more than a prisoner of its own “narcissistic” sense of identity, “the self must bother itself. It must learn to obligate itself to notice the breaches and losses between acts and thoughts, between wishes and responsibilities, between dreams and waking life.” After all, “To think is to haunt one’s thoughts, to be haunted by thoughts” (Britzman, 1998, p. 32).

It is important to emphasize that this is not about “respecting” or “valuing” the “knowledge,” “beliefs,” and “ways of being” of the “other,” as if education were always about “welcoming” the other as a different “identity” from my own. Nor is this about a “personalized” education tailored to individual consumer preferences. Educational processes (dis)oriented by singularity involve conflict, tension, provocation, disruption, and mutual estrangement. In fact, no step can be taken toward singularity without a fair dose of discomfort regarding one’s own knowledge, beliefs, and values-those that, once hardened and crystallized within us, begin to assert themselves as determinants of our “identity.” We agree here with Deborah Britzman, who points out the insufficiency of well-intentioned educational proposals that aim to “include” the other, to explain the other’s identity, or to accurately represent the other (Britzman, 1998, pp. 86-89). Such approaches still operate within a circle of identity that imprisons the other within a pre-established pattern, reinforcing socially normative frameworks. Britzman instead proposes a “queer pedagogy” (Britzman, 1998, p. 79) that is attentive to the differences and alterities that cross through, constitute, and unsettle “identities.” The idea is to provoke “an exploration that unsettles the sediments of what one imagines when one imagines normalcy, what one imagines when one images difference” (Britzman, 1998, p. 96).

This is not a matter of “individualism” either, since the “individual” is understood as an allegedly “independent” and “indivisible” being-an idea that cannot be sustained within a relational ontoepistemology. Each existent is composed of multiple and diverse dynamic interactions and relations. The challenges of education then become: how can we open space for the experimentation and expression of existence in its singularity? How can we cultivate a disposition toward engaging with singular existences?

In light of such concerns, the very meaning of evaluation is also transformed:

evaluation as an ethical and responsible decision about the other, received in their absolute singularity. For this, we must strive to dissolve the possibility of a pre-programmed intervention driven by a universalizing agenda, despite the political entanglement through which both evaluator and evaluated are constituted (Pereira, 2023, p. 9).⁵¹

Pereira speaks here of “ethics” and “responsibility” in the Derridean sense of responding to the other as radically other, in their incalculable singularity. This Derridean ethics of responsibility is thus summarized by Paulo Cesar Duque-Estrada (2020, p. 39):

Every time a trace is closed within the paradigm of presence-thus losing its intrinsic heterogeneity-in favor of a supposedly institutionalized homogeneity and self-identity, it is “reality” itself, or in more Derridean terms, its singularity, its uniqueness, that is excluded. This is the fundamental violence: the exclusion of singularity. What is fundamentally at stake here is (...) resistance, response, the very confrontation with that violence; in other words, it is the attempt to do justice to singularity in its nature as a trace-to free it from its reduction to objective truth, to the norm of the “as such.”⁵²

We know, however, that such an ethical sense of education cannot be institutionalized-not as a matter of prohibition, but of impossibility-nor can it be turned into a public policy accessible to “all” through a “common” base. This ethical sense resounds as a call to be taken up daily as a challenge, every time a singularity resists the identity assigned to it. In contrast to the logic of “recognition,” this would be an education capable, perhaps, of provoking a radical estrangement from one’s “own” culture. A difficult, demanding task, which makes singularity-in this existential, singular, and not singularitarian sense-always so near, yet always so distant. In the words of Elizabeth Macedo and Janet Miller (2022, p. 14):

Curriculum theory can only attempt to intensify (…) assemblages that disrupt normalcy. To that end, it must embrace the responsibility of leaving unanswered the question of how to think education for a subject constituted in relationality. Curriculum is the lived text of which Pinar speaks and, as such, bears a non-negotiable commitment to alterity. The question remains, however, as a [discomforting and necessary] reminder that we must let the unknown take hold of us-it is the very condition of the dependence on the other that constitutes us. Only in this way can we continue the ongoing struggle against the certainties sustained by foundational fictions, a struggle that will never be won [nor lost], because it has no end.⁵³

Final Considerations

In this article, we have sought to problematize the notion of “knowledge” as a thing to be mastered and appropriated by a subject. This conception, we argue, is precisely what makes generative AIs so appealing to our students, who have increasingly delegated to them the task of responding to their assessments. The issue, as we have tried to show, is not that students relinquish “authorship” of their writing when they turn to generative AIs. Framed in this way, the indiscriminate use of AI is merely the tip of the iceberg of a deeper and more serious problem: an atomistic ontoepistemology continues to underlie much of our curricular theories and educational policies, as well as the educational processes in both basic and higher education institutions. This atomistic ontoepistemology conceives of human existence in the mold of the modern subject: unitary, centered, rational, conscious, and free-in other words, as an “independent individual.” Within this framework, knowledge is treated as an object to be appropriated and mastered by a “subject.” Once acquired, this knowledge would then make the subject into a perfect embodiment of a cultural identity in which they might come to recognize themselves.

As an alternative to this view, we have proposed a relational ontoepistemology inspired by poststructuralist thought, understanding existence as a network of “traces,” in the Derridean sense, and of affective “machines” (capable of affecting and being affected in multiple ways), in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari. In this framework, every being is conceived as inherently entangled and interwoven within a network of interactive, interconstitutive, and interaffective relations. Nothing exists outside of relation. The ways in which each being experiences and expresses its powers of affectation are formed within mutual interactions. Knowledge, therefore, cannot be conceived as an “object” to be appropriated, but must instead be understood as a relational, dynamic, perceptual, and interpretive process-inseparable from the very act of existing.

Finally, within the scope of this relational ontoepistemology, we propose an ethical sense for education: a sense (dis)oriented by an ethics of singularity. The notion of singularity as relational composition disorients any educational proposal grounded in the assumption of a secure “foundation” - whether that foundation is the full development of the rational subject, the conservative ideals of God, country, and family, the material “success” of the individual entrepreneur, or the social transformation foreseen by a pre-established sociological theory. In this regard, we align with Alice Casirimo Lopes in defending a “curriculum without foundations,” one that admits “politics in a scenario of uncertainties and without definitive answers,” while always seeking “to dissolve the possibility of a pre-programmed intervention with a universally pretentious design” (Lopes, 2015, p. 461).⁵⁴ To orient oneself by singularity is, at the same time, to embrace a certain degree of disorientation and estrangement in relation to the prefabricated socio-cultural identities that crystallize around each of us.

Accordingly, the very notion of “assessment” is radically altered. It is no longer about finding a new, recovering an old, or reinforcing a current “method” of evaluation that works “better.” What shifts is the very meaning of assessment processes. Instead of testing how much knowledge a subject has accumulated in order to climb one more step on the ladder of “recognition” within a cultural identity, we propose assessment processes committed to estrangement from prefabricated cultural identities and to the opening of space for the experimentation of existential singularity - in relation to oneself and to others (considering, in this case, that any “self” and any “other” is a relational composition, not an independent atom).

To return to the anecdote recalled by Derrida in the first paragraph of this text, perhaps what generative AIs, as diabolical and monstrous doubles, truly reveal (Monster, in its Latin root monstrare, means “to show,” “to reveal.”) by replicating the “authorship” we once believed so uniquely “proper” to our special species, is that we too are not the “authors” of the works we create. It is networks of relations, interactions, and articulations that produce texts, images, music, and everything else. The question, then, may be: how much pre-formatted standardization - or how much openness and availability for rearticulation into singular forms - will these networks of relations encounter as they pass through our existences?

• 1
  DERRIDA, Jacques. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• 2
  For reference, see footnote 1.
• 3
  Original in Portuguese: “A IA generativa, distinta dos modelos preditivos de aprendizado de máquina (IA preditiva) - centrados em extrair padrões de dados e fazer previsões em tarefas específicas -, produz conteúdo original a partir de grandes bases de dados, ou seja, usa dados para gerar mais dados, sintetizando texto, imagem, voz, vídeo, códigos.”
• 4
  Original in Portuguese: “iceberg digital.”
• 5
  BARTHES, Roland. The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.
• 6
  For reference, see footnote 5.
• 7
  For reference, see footnote 5.
• 8
  HALL, Stuart. The Question of Cultural Identity. In: HALL, S.; HELD, D.; MCGREW, T. Modernity and Its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.
• 9
  DERRIDA, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1982.
• 10
  DERRIDA, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
• 11
  Original in Portuguese: “Cada ‘significante’ particular carrega consigo o rastro de todos os outros ‘significantes’ que não ele mesmo. Torna-se, então, necessário pensar em um sistema de diferenças. Mas a diferença aqui em questão é uma diferença de outro tipo: não uma diferença pensada como relação entre coisas supostamente presentes, dadas em si mesmas, e diferentes entre si; numa palavra, não como uma diferença opositiva, como tal (‘a’ diferente de ‘b’). Todo rastro, cabe notar, se constitui, já e desde sempre, como rastro diferencial: nem presentes nem ausentes; rastros diferem. É o paradigma metafísico da presença que, efetivamente, impõe a dupla possibilidade de presença ou ausência, ser ou nada. A lógica do rastro escapa a essa dupla possibilidade. Rastros ‘são’ o que ‘são’ em função de diferenças entre ‘eles’; o que quer dizer que, no cerne de todo e qualquer ‘significante’ ou ‘significado’ (entre aspas porque, em verdade, trata-se de rastros ...), habita uma ‘diferencialidade’, ou melhor, uma produção, um jogo, de diferenças.”
• 12
  For reference, see footnote 10.
• 13
  For reference, see footnote 10.
• 14
  Original in portuguese: “Se com Foucault aprendemos que o ‘sujeito’ é um artifício da linguagem, com Deleuze e Guattari aprendemos que o ‘sujeito’ é um artifício - ponto. É precisamente isso que eles querem enfatizar quando substituem a linguagem espiritualista, idealista, transcendentalista de ‘almas’ e ‘sujeitos’ pela linguagem profana, materialista, imanentista de ‘máquinas’ e ‘corpos sem órgãos’” (Silva, 2000, p. 18).
• 15
  DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Felix. Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
• 16
  DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
• 17
  NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufman and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
• 18
  Original in Portuguese: “presenteísmo”, “a ideia de que aquilo que está agora em curso não passou por linhas de força e de tensões que levaram do passado ao presente.”
• 19
  Original in Portuguese: “se o standard educativo é a divulgação dos pontos de chegada dos processos de produção de conhecimento, isto é, de modelos estabilizados ao fim de sagas históricas e metodológicas formidáveis, sem que essa sagas sejam minimamente evidenciadas, então teria sido apenas questão de tempo o aparecimento de um chat como o GPT e sua possível transformação em medida mesma dos nossos horizontes cognitivos.”
• 20
  Original in Portuguese: “Precisamos preparar o homem para indagar e resolver por si os seus problemas.”
• 21
  FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2005.
• 22
  Original in Portuguese: “temos estado diante de reiterações da ideia de sujeito racional, autônomo e individual, ao projetarmos o sujeito da educação como empreendedor ou como cidadão crítico e reflexivo.”
• 23
  Original in Portuguese: “A sobrevalorização da avaliação enfatiza a concepção de avaliação como testagem, focada na aferição dos conteúdos aprendidos pelos estudantes ao final de um dado período. As políticas de avaliação, pensadas como tentativas de controle curricular seguem essa mesma lógica sustentada em fundamentos e sentidos realistas de conhecimento que têm contribuído para sedimentar/estabilizar práticas avaliativas que ocorrem e são naturalizadas na e pela escola, criando obstáculos para a reflexão sobre outros sentidos possíveis de avaliação.”
• 24
  Original in Portuguese: “mecanismo de controle para aferir se aquilo que foi planejado para ser aprendido, foi de fato aprendido.”
• 25
  Original in Portuguese: “todos aprenderão tudo como foi planejado.”
• 26
  Original in Portuguese: “políticas de avaliação em larga escala têm acentuado sentidos de avaliação como mecanismo de controle da qualidade educacional e favorecem processos de exclusão; intensificam a circularidade de sentidos e legitimam, discursivamente, o argumento de que, articuladas à produção de currículos universais e prescritivos, as avaliações em larga escala podem garantir melhores aprendizagens, assumindo que os resultados dos testes de aferição de desempenho dizem de fato respeito aos processos de desenvolvimento/aprendizagens dos estudantes.”
• 27
  Original in Portuguese: “a) a responsabilização da escola e dos agentes que nela trabalham em relação aos resultados que são esperados da instituição pela sociedade; b) a forte vinculação entre o sistema produtivo e o educacional, em especial voltado à flexibilidade e o ‘aprender a aprender’ para enfrentar as contingências de empregabilidade com vínculos precários; c) a utilização das orientações da psicologia comportamental como base para as experiências educacionais, com ênfase na avaliação do desempenho; e, d) uma supervalorização das técnicas e tecnologias no ensino voltadas à mensuração.”
• 28
  Original in Portuguese: “coisa.”
• 29
  Original in Portuguese: “objeto epistemológico externo ao sujeito.”
• 30
  Original in Portuguese: “como propriedade, como coisa, algo que precisamos ‘ter para ser alguém’, reforçando a ideia de conhecimento como bem privado.”
• 31
  Original in Portuguese: “Adquirir conhecimento, para ser alguém, é a resposta que a teoria curricular vem produzindo à interpelação sobre a função da escola. Tal resposta marca uma simbiose entre conhecimento e conteúdo, que joga a escolarização no terreno da proprietarização de um conhecimento-coisa.”
• 32
  DERRIDA, Jacques. Force of Law: Tthe Mystical Foundation of Authority. New York: Routledge, 1992.
• 33
  Original in Portuguese: “realização de possibilidades já dadas no presente, programadas, agendadas, esperadas, antecipadas, preestabelecidas.”
• 34
  Original in Portuguese: “No âmbito de uma lógica de controle, dinamizada por distintas e conflitantes visões de currículo, chamamos a atenção para a expectativa de um conhecimento hábil em construir um sujeito adequado e capaz de operar plenamente em contextos projetados como sociedade, mundo, experiência.”
• 35
  Original in Portuguese: “o conhecimento tende a ser afirmado como meio pelo qual é possível controlar a produção/significação de sujeitos (estudantes, professores, cidadãos etc).”
• 36
  Original in Portuguese: “domínio e manejo de conteúdos e metodologias, diferentes linguagens, tecnologias, evidências científicas e inovações.”
• 37
  Original in Portuguese: “domínio dos conhecimentos da Educação Básica.”
• 38
  Original in Portuguese: “domínio das tecnologias digitais de informação e comunicação.”
• 39
  Original in Portuguese: “dominar conhecimentos relativos à gestão das escolas.”
• 40
  Original in Portuguese: “domínio pedagógico” de “conteúdos.”
• 41
  Original in Portuguese: “apropriação dos conhecimentos necessários ao exercício da docência.”
• 42
  Original in Portuguese: “apropriação de conhecimentos profissionais necessários” ao combate da “desigualdade educacional.”
• 43
  SPINOZA, Baruch. Ethics. Translated by Michael Silverstone and Matthew Kisner. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• 44
  For reference, see footnote 17.
• 45
  Original in Portuguese: “Pensar o aprender a partir do sentido etimológico do verbo em latim apprehendĕre, que também pode ser entendido como ‘levar para junto de si’, (ad, ‘junto’, mais prehendere); colocando novos desafios para o ato de avaliar. Trazemos para perto de nós aquilo que nos afeta (...). Um processo em que a relação sempre contextual que estabelecemos com o outro não pode ser desconsiderada, o que não significa que esse outro possa determinar em que e como seremos afetados.”
• 46
  KURZWEIL, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When We Merge With AI. New York: Viking Penguin, 2005.
• 47
  Original in Portuguese: “é garantido pelo domínio privado do conhecimento como conteúdo. É a propriedade desse conhecimento, que nada mais é do que a propriedade da cultura (...) que permite o seu reconhecimento.”
• 48
  Original in Portuguese: “um processo que visa permitir ao sujeito se reconhecer na cultura.”
• 49
  CONSTANT, Benhamin. Political Writings. Translated by Biancamaria Fontana. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• 50
  Original in Portuguese: “talvez o exemplo mais significativo da tentativa de sancionar determinadas identidades via educação se faça com a ideia de cidadão. Ela se apresenta como o passaporte para toda e qualquer intervenção educativa, de perspectivas críticas - cidadão emancipado - a instrumentais em que cidadania é sinônimo de empregabilidade e capacidade de consumo.”
• 51
  Original in Portuguese: “a avaliação como decisão ética e responsável sobre o outro acolhido em sua singularidade absoluta. Para isso, é necessário que busquemos dissolver a possibilidade de uma intervenção pré-programada e com projeto de pretensão universalizante, a despeito do jogo político em que nos constituímos, avaliador e avaliado.”
• 52
  Original in Portuguese: “Toda vez que um rastro se encerra no paradigma da presença - perdendo, assim, a sua intrínseca heterogeneidade - em favor de uma - suposta institucionalizada - homogeneidade e autoidentidade; (...) é a ‘realidade’ mesma das coisas ou, em termos mais derridianos, a sua singularidade, o seu caráter único, que é excluída. Essa é a violência fundamental: a exclusão da singularidade. O que se encontra fundamentalmente em jogo aqui é (...) a resistência, a resposta, o enfrentamento mesmo dessa violência; em outras palavras, é a tentativa de fazer justiça à singularidade em seu caráter de rastro; libertá-la de sua redução à verdade objetiva, à norma do ‘como tal’.”
• 53
  Original in Portuguese: “Às teorizações curriculares cabe apenas a tentativa de intensificar (...) agenciamentos que rompem com a normalidade. Para tanto, elas têm a obrigação de deixar a questão sobre como pensar a educação de um sujeito constituído na relacionalidade sem resposta. O currículo é o texto vivido de que fala Pinar e, como tal, tem compromisso inegociável com a alteridade. A pergunta fica, no entanto, como uma [desconfortável e necessária] lembrança de que é necessário deixar o desconhecido tomar conta de nós - ele é a condição mesma da dependência do outro que nos constitui. Só assim podemos seguir na luta contínua contra as certezas fomentadas pelas ficções fundacionais, luta que não será ganha [nem perdida] porque não tem fim.”
• 54
  Original in Portuguese: “a política em um cenário de incertezas e sem respostas definitivas”, porém buscando sempre “dissolver a possibilidade de uma intervenção pré-programada e com projeto de pretensão universalizante.”

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues from the research line “Curriculum: subjects, knowledge, and culture” in the Graduate Program in Education at UERJ.

• Reviews
  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

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Edited by

• Editors in Charge
  Luciana Salazar Salgado (Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar)
  Lucia Santaella (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo – PUC-SP)
  Tony Berber Sardinha (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo – PUC-SP)

Review I

About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review I

Relevance of the Work to the Proposed Theme - The article is relevant and well-aligned with the proposed theme, offering an in-depth discussion of assessment practices in times of widespread use of generative Artificial Intelligences. The author addresses a timely and significant issue for educational studies and curriculum theory, proposing a critical reflection on the concepts of knowledge, authorship, and assessment. The work is consistent with the approach announced in its title. Clarity of the Work’s Objective and Coherence of Its Development - The article’s objective is clearly stated in the introduction and is pursued consistently throughout the text. The reflection on the “death of the author” and the problematization of knowledge as something to be appropriated are developed in a logical and progressive manner. The structure of the text - including a theoretical foundation, a critical problematization, and an alternative proposal - is clear and well-organized. Criticisms: (a) The text opens with a discussion on the multiplicity of the double and how it affects the concept of authorship in the face of generative AIs. However, this multiplicity also seems to affect the very text under review, and the author would do well to address this issue explicitly. After all, what exactly am I assessing? (b) The author does not explain what generative AIs are, which could help the reader better understand the problem discussed. A brief explanation of this concept is recommended in the introduction. Theoretical Consistency and Demonstration of Up-to-Date Knowledge of Relevant Literature - The author demonstrates extensive knowledge of the relevant literature, drawing on both classical and contemporary thinkers of post-structuralist philosophy such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari, as well as scholars who explore the relationship between knowledge, curriculum, and assessment, such as Elizabeth Macedo, Alice Casimiro Lopes, and Talita Pereira. The theoretical articulation is solid and well-grounded, although a deeper engagement with contemporary debates on generative AI could be considered. Criticisms: (a) The long paragraph on the terminology adopted by Brazil’s National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) is excessively detailed and becomes tiring to read. It is recommended to reorganize this part into a table to facilitate reading and comprehension. (b) The relational ontoepistemology proposed by the author seems to bear similarities to Bruno Latour’s relational ontology. It would be helpful for the author to clarify how their proposal differs from Latour’s approach, especially since Latour also works with a network of interconnected actors that challenges the modern conception of the subject. Originality of the Reflection and Contribution to the Field of Knowledge - The article presents an original and bold reflection on the implications of generative AI for educational processes and curriculum theories. The proposal to consider an ethics of singularity as an alternative to the transmission and appropriation model of knowledge is compelling and contributes meaningfully to current debates. Criticism: The contrast between Kurzweil’s transhumanist Singularity and the author’s relational Singularity is relevant, but it is clear that the author aligns with a posthumanist perspective that opposes the Cartesian rational subject inaugurated by modernity. It is recommended that the author elaborate more explicitly on this aspect to strengthen their argument. Clarity, Accuracy, and Appropriateness of Language for a Scholarly Work - The language used is clear, precise, and appropriate to the academic genre. The writing is well-structured, with effective use of citations and references. Some passages - particularly in the section on singularity - could benefit from slight refinement to enhance clarity and cohesion. Final Considerations - The article is relevant and well-grounded, offering a significant contribution to the debate on assessment, curriculum, and authorship in the context of generative AIs. I recommend its acceptance, suggesting only minor revisions to enhance clarity in certain sections and potentially deepen the engagement with contemporary approaches to AI and education. ACCEPTED.

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  29 Mar 2025

Review II

About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

1. Relevance of the Work to the Proposed Theme: The article pertinently connects the issue of assessment in times of generative artificial intelligence with broader discussions on authorship, curriculum, and knowledge. The focus is timely and highly relevant to the field of discourse studies and curriculum discussions. 2. Clarity of the Work’s Objective and Coherence of Its Development: The objective - to rethink the meaning of assessment and education by shifting from an atomistic ontology to a relational ontoepistemology inspired by post-structuralism - is clearly articulated and developed with coherence and consistency throughout the article. 3. Theoretical Consistency and Demonstration of Up-to-Date Knowledge of Relevant Literature: The article demonstrates strong command of foundational post-structuralist literature (Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari), as well as effective articulation with recent Brazilian authors in the field of curriculum and critical assessment (Macedo, Pereira, Costa). However, to further enrich the article’s connection with the contemporary international debate, it is suggested that the author incorporate current international references that directly engage with the topics addressed, such as:

Gert Biesta - on the critique of the “learning” paradigm and education as subject formation:

Biesta, Gert. Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2010.

Deborah Britzman - on subjectivity, resistance, and alterity in education:

Britzman, Deborah P. Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.

Elizabeth Ellsworth - on performative pedagogies and difference:

Ellsworth, Elizabeth. Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997.

Bernard Stiegler - on the impact of technologies on the constitution of subjectivity:

Stiegler, Bernard. Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Yuk Hui - on technodiversity and alternative technologies:

Hui, Yuk. The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2016.

Incorporating these interlocutors could expand the international reach of the article and further strengthen the originality of its analysis.

4. Originality of the Reflection and Contribution to the Field of Knowledge: The proposed reflection is highly original. The article shifts the debate on AI in education from a technical perspective to a deep ontoepistemological analysis, offering a significant contribution to the theoretical renewal of the field of educational assessment and discourse studies. 5. Clarity, Accuracy, and Appropriateness of Academic Language:

The language is sophisticated and suitable for high-level academic work. Despite the theoretical density - which is expected given the complexity of the themes - a light revision is recommended to streamline some of the initial passages, especially in the section on the “death of the author,” to make the text more accessible and fluid.

Final Summary: This is a sophisticated, innovative, and rigorous article that makes a very significant contribution to the debate on assessment, curriculum, and authorship in times of generative artificial intelligences. The suggestions provided aim solely to enhance the theoretical strength and broaden the international reach of the work. ACCEPTED.

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  28 Apr 2025

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 July 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  05 Mar 2025
• Accepted
  31 May 2026