Lord Krishna as A Deconstructionist Teacher in the Bhagavadgita

Abstract

The Bhagavadgita, simply known as the Gita, is a widely-read text among the seekers of truth. When I first went through it, I realized its profoundness that no knowledge discovered until now can go beyond it. As a teacher educator, in my subsequent readings I paid attention to how Lord Krishna has taught Arjuna in the Gita. After some readings I had a hypothesis that Lord Krishna is a deconstructionist teacher in the pedagogy of the Gita. This laid a foundation for this project. As this study came to a conclusion, the report has been organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 consists of the fundamental concepts to set background to this study. So it introduces the Gita; presents Lord Krishna as a teacher; links deconstruction to pedagogy and then to religion and presents other fundamental concepts required to the research processes. Chapter 2 contains commentaries on the Gita and reviews of the studies on the Gita; it has established the research gap that there is no study to establish the relation between deconstruction and the pedagogy in the Gita. Chapter 3 contains the theoretical review of the study, identification of theoretical data, process of deconstructive reading and its relation to religion and scriptures, and identification of the constructs of deconstruction—binary oppositions and differance—in the pedagogy of the Gita. Chapter 4 justifies Lord Krishna as a deconstructionist teacher in the pedagogy of the Gita and relates it to postmethod pedagogy in terms of teacher roles and teacher identities from the perspective of deconstruction. Furthermore, chapter 5 presents the conclusion of the study that the pedagogy in the Gita contains the constructs of deconstruction, and that Lord Krishna is a deconstructionist teacher. The ending section of this chapter reviews the postmethod pedagogy on the ground of deconstruction and recommends ‘deconstructionist’ as the role of a teacher in postmethod pedagogy in order to develop it into deconstructive pedagogy and make it more effective in context.