Forget This Article: On Scholarly Oblivion, Institutional Amnesia, and Erasure of Research History

Abstract

Eternal return is a condition that characterizes the world of art education and its scholarship, though it seems that the phenomenon goes largely unnoticed by many writing in the field today. The failure to name our work as part of an existing family of ideas, with themes that may date back to the years 1950-1970 or earlier, has implications not only for how we understand the evolution of the field’s knowledge base but also for the sophistication and depth of our scholarship. This article reveals how, as a custom, contemporary researchers in art education rarely reference early research from the field. Citing evidence from personal experience and from an analysis of citations in research articles published over the past 5 years in Studies in Art Education, I present reasons why the condition exists generally in art education scholarship. Finally, I argue that our custom of not acknowledging early research results in a fragmented, incoherent knowledge base, a condition that may ultimately deter substantive refinements in our practice.