Currere in a new tonality: A tetradic analysis

We write this paper as free association, but we conceptualize it more so as a musical improvisation – not completely 'free' improvisation, but structured by the 'harmonic progression' of ideas that Pinar (1975) provided with currere. In a metaphorical sense, we follow his thought progression as we would follow a chord progression. To demonstrate the spatiotemporal resonance of Pinar's notion of currere, we will (1) draw comparisons between the regressive-progressive-analytic-synthetic features of currere and the enhance-reverse-retrieve-obsolesce lens of McLuhan's tetrad, and (2) expand notions of the biographical and autobiographical to a re-conceptualized notion of autobiographical and autoethnographical. Out of the dialectic and tetradic processes we hope to arrive, however temporarily, at a synthesis of ideas regarding currere.