Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education (Postcolonial Studies in Education)

Palgrave Macmillan’s Postcolonial Studies in Education Studies utilising the perspectives of postcolonial theory have become established and increasingly widespread in the last few decades. This series embraces and broadly employs the postcolonial approach. As a site of struggle, education has constituted a key vehicle for the ‘colonization of the mind’. The ‘post’ in postcolonialism is both temporal, in the sense of emphasizing the processes of decolonization, and analytical in the sense of probing and contesting the aftermath of colonialism and the imperialism which succeeded it, utilising materialist and discourse analysis. Postcolonial theory is particularly apt for exploring the implications of educational colonialism, decolonization, experimentation, revisioning, contradiction and ambiguity not only for the former colonies, but also for the former colonial powers. This series views education as an important vehicle for both the inculcation and unlearning of colonial ideologies. It complements the diversity that exists in postcolonial studies of political economy, literature, sociology and the interdisciplinary domain of cultural studies. Education is here being viewed in its broadest contexts, and is not confined to institutionalized learning. The aim of this series is to identify and help establish new areas of educational inquiry in postcolonial studies.

Series Editors: Peter Mayo is Professor and Head of the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta where he teaches in the areas of Sociology of Education and Adult Continuing Education, as well as in Comparative and International Education and Sociology more generally. Anne Hickling-Hudson is Associate Professor of Education at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) where she specializes in cross-cultural and international education. Antonia Darder is a Distinguished Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Latino/a Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Editorial Advisory Board Carmel Borg (University of Malta) John Baldacchino (Teachers College, Columbia University) Jennifer Chan (University of British Columbia) Christine Fox (University of Wollongong, Australia) Zelia Gregoriou (University of Cyprus) Leon Tikly (University of Bristol, UK) Birgit Brock-Utne (Emeritus, University of Oslo, Norway)

Titles: A New Social Contract in a Latin American Education Context Danilo R. Streck; Foreword by Vítor Westhelle Education and Gendered Citizenship in Pakistan M. Ayaz Naseem

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Critical Race, Feminism, and Education: A Social Justice Model Menah A. E. Pratt-Clarke Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education Vanessa Andreotti

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education

Vanessa Andreotti

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ACTIONABLE POSTCOLONIAL THEORY IN EDUCATION

Copyright © Vanessa Andreotti, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–11161–5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andreotti, Vanessa. Actionable postcolonial theory in education / Vanessa Andreotti. p. cm.—(Postcolonial studies in education) ISBN 978–0–230–11161–5 (hardback) 1. Education—Philosophy. 2. Education—Methodology. 3. Postcolonialism. I. Title. LB14.7.A545 2011 370.1—dc22

2011011994

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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This book is dedicated to my family, in all its manifestations, especially to my children: Bruno, Giovanna and Tiago.

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

Part 1 One Two

1

Postcolonialisms and Postcolonial Theories

Contextualizing Postcolonialisms and Postcolonial Theories

13

Homi Bhabha’s Contribution and Critics

25

Three Gayatri Spivak’s Contribution and Critics Four

Comparative Framework: Selected Theories of Institutional Suffering

Part 2

37 57

Actioning Postcolonial Theory in Educational Research

Five

Contextualizing the Research Process

85

Six

Analysis of Policy I: Focus on Western Liberal Humanism

97

Seven

Analysis of Policy II: Focus on Neoliberalism

119

Eight

Analysis of Practice I: The Other Who Validates Our Superiority

135

Analysis of Practice II: The Other Who Should Be Grateful for Our Efforts

149

Nine

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viii Ten

Contents Analysis of Practice III: The Other Who Desperately Needs Our Leadership

Part 3

161

Actioning Postcolonial Pedagogies

Eleven

Contextualizing Pedagogical Processes and Contexts

175

Twelve

Relativizing Western Knowledge Production in Spaces of Dissensus: The OSDE Methodology

191

Thirteen Engaging with Other Knowledge Systems: The Through Other Eyes Initiative

217

Fourteen Wrestling with Meaning and Life: Being a Mother of “Southern” Immigrant Children

241

(In)Conclusion

261

Notes

267

References

271

Index

285

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Tables and Figures

Tables 4.1

A pedagogical comparative framework of selected approaches against institutional suffering 5.1 Different approaches to multicultural and global justice education 6.1 Engagements with ideas, values, beliefs, and traditions of Others 12.1 Differences between traditional reading, critical reading, and critical literacy 12.2 OSDE suggested procedures

59 94 105 195 200

Figures Figure of Family (Author Photo) 12.1 Legitimate knowledge constructed in context 12.2 Seeing differently 12.3 Unpacking knowledge production 13.1 Silhouette of identity construction 13.2 Relational hand 13.3 Trying to help 13.4 Coming to know 13.5 Trying other shoes 13.6 Scales of worth 13.7 Enquiry river

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xi 196 196 197 222 223 225 226 227 228 229

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Preface

Figure of Family (Author Photo)

Let me start this book with a well-known story: Once upon a time there was a magic ladder that started on earth and finished in the sky. Only worthy human beings could climb the ladder. The ladder was very specific in its definition of who was worthy: one had to believe the sky was the limit for one’s knowledge and ingenuity, and that knowledge and knowledge alone could solve all problems and engineer all things, including perfect human beings and a perfect society. Thus, there were only two conditions to climb the ladder: one had to dare

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to know and put in the hard work to pull one’s body up against gravity. There was one catch as well—gravity changed according to the climber, and this was a defence mechanism of the ladder to make sure that only the best reached the top. If the ladder chose you, your climb was easy, and you were worthy. If it did not, your body felt heavier, you had difficulties breathing, your climb was much slower; it could even make you stop and in that case you would listen to the insults both from the other climbers wanting to pass and from those continuing to climb: give up, you are not worthy of the ladder! But you could also wait for a benevolent climber whose gravity was lighter and who was happy to increase his weight as double proof of his worth. Those who fell from the ladder and those who refused to climb were lost to those who were climbing—they had proved their unworthiness and inhumanity, as only humans could dare to pursue knowledge. Those who could not climb were weak, lazy, and feeble minded. Their lives were based on animal instincts rather than rational thought and that is why they preferred the earth to the sky. They were also perceived as a threat to the climbers and therefore it was necessary to keep them under control at the bottom. However, these systems of control forced those at the bottom to use their bodies to keep the ladder in place as the ladder grew larger and heavier to accommodate more climbers. Those at the bottom were also forced to provide food and resources to worthy climbers and to collect their waste. The infinitely wise magical ladder had given the fast climbers, those who had dared to know, worked hard, and proven their worth, the means to climb and enable the progress and evolution of humanity, while those who failed the test were recruited to work at the bottom to make up for their shameful inability to climb, for their inhumanity—and that is why, those at the bottom should be happy for the opportunity to sacrifice for the collective good: the betterment of humanity. I was born in a mixed-heritage family in Brazil, where my father, of German ancestry, was a fierce defender of the magical ladder, while my indigenous grandmother had bravely attached herself to the ground and annoyed everyone by stubbornly refusing the opportunities to be lifted up the ladder. My mother’s heritage counted as high gravity in my father’s books, but trying to be a worthy and capable climber, he took it upon himself to carry her up and produce children who had his genes and therefore would be strong and wise enough to climb by themselves. I was a front-row witness of the relationship established when you allow yourself to be carried up: my mum believed in the ladder too and in the possibility for lesser gravity for her future

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xiii

generation. My guess is that she did not predict the costs of being carried through. Given their disadvantaged economic backgrounds, my mum and dad’s firm grip on the ladder was probably motivated by a deep fear of inadequacy as “capable climbers” or “worthy human beings” that they carried themselves. As I was growing up I was also very confused, trying to understand and survive both a forceful push toward the ladder and the unmarked violence that was made very explicit at any sign of questioning, insubordination, or contemplation of alternative ways. At those times, I was threatened with the fate of my indigenous grandmother who died “with nothing in the middle of nowhere.” This grandmother passed away when I was 8 and she was 84. I had been born and brought up in the city while she lived in the countryside. What I remember of her is that, despite the insistence of all the family for her to live in a “proper” house in the city, she insisted on living in a “tapera”—a very precarious dwelling made of old and cracked wood, with no separate rooms, no floor, and no windows. She had a fire in the middle of the “house” and animals around her. She used to spend her days crouching in front of the fire, cooking, smoking a homemade cigarette, and chanting prayers. There were onions and tobacco hanging from the ceiling and some hay and wood in a corner with blankets on top of it. As an urban child, although I liked my grandmother, I did not like going to her house. At every visit, my mother would try to convince her to come and live with us, in a “proper” urban house where she could be looked after. She would just listen and continue to smoke, to pray, and to look at the fire. Meanwhile, I would sit in a corner wishing to go home: the house smelled of smoke, she smelled of smoke, and I would smell of smoke if I spent too long there. All I could think of was that it would be much better for her to come with us and have a shower every day, so that she could smell nice. Sometimes, I wish I could turn back time and tell her that I am sorry. I was too young to understand the force of history in what was happening. Sometimes I feel she still connects with me: the blueprint of stories that shaped her aspirations still reach me, she still gives me hope. Sometimes she also speaks through me, especially when I need to stand up for myself and stare at life’s fires. She did not have the technology of alphabetic literacy when she was alive, but I would not have been able to write this book without her—what an irony! Postcolonial theory gave me the gift of a language to talk about my own existence in-between cultures in historical and political

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dissonance. In such conditions, the lack of a language can drive one mad, as the burden of difference, of being always “not quite,” is internalized as an individual’s inadequacy, which generates constant guilt. Postcolonial theory gave me the means to reinterpret this inadequacy as a projected violence embedded in historical and political contexts. Once this message was assimilated, my first reaction was relief (I may not be to blame for everything), the second was to look for a culprit (that is when I became really angry at my family), the third was a realization of another irony: we are all victims in this (although material vulnerability is indeed severely unevenly spread). Therefore, if we are to imagine possibilities and relationships “otherwise” we need to unlearn the roots of what created this type of violence in the first place. Postcolonial theory brought the relationship with my family back to my life—if I cannot relate to and love them unconditionally beyond what they say and even what they do, I will leave to my children only the possibility of violence, through my own example. Loving my family (which is not just defined by blood ties) unconditionally does not mean loving the stories they tell (like the story of the ladder), though. Postcolonial theory emphasizes that it is my responsibility, as a family member, to offer my relations an array of possible stories, as well as the means, strength, wisdom, and courage to negotiate between stories and make choices. It is also my job to nurture (first in myself) an ethical awareness that one becomes responsible for the intended and unintended implications of every choice one makes and every relationship one creates. Beyond the level of cognition, of intellectual engagement, the ideas in this book shaped and are/were (re)shaped by my life and the lives of those around me. As a real gift cannot be paid back, just passed forward, this book is offered as such a gift.

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Acknowledgments

This work is based on a learning journey that is both personal and collective. Therefore I would like to thank all of those who have made it possible: my “tīpuna,” parents, children, partners, mentors, friends, and students who not only provided the core motivation of this book, but who also supported me throughout this journey. A special thank you goes to those who have significantly contributed to the development of the projects Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry and Through Other Eyes, coordinated by myself and Lynn Mario T. M. de Souza with the support of Linda Barker: Amosa Fa’afoi, Andrew Robinson, April Biccum, Bob Randall, Bronwyn Thurlow, Chris Moore, Clarissa Jordao, Clive Belgeonne, Dennis Banda, Doug Bourn, Ingrid Hoofd, Jai Sen, Juan Carlos Macchicado, Katy Neil-Jones, Katya Brookes, Laiz Rubinger Chen, Lisa Taylor, Madhuresh Kumar, Maree Grant, Margaret Burr, Matthias Fiedler, Mereana Taki, Noemi Condori, Paul Warwick, Raul Pardinaz-Solis, Rob Bowden, Simon Tormey, Sujatha Raman, Veronica Voiels, Wera Mirin, Yousria Hamed and groups of teachers in Brazil, Peru, England and New Zealand who provided invaluable insights and feedback on the initiatives taken.

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Introduction

The title of this book Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education plays with the ambivalence of meaning of the word “actionable.” According to the Oxford Dictionary, “actionable” can mean: (1) able to be done or acted on; (2) having practical value; and (3) giving sufficient reason to take legal action. The first two meanings, emphasized in this book, highlight the productive potential of postcolonial theory to disrupt parochialisms and prompt significant shifts in thinking and practice in education. The third meaning can be turned on its head with a view to challenge the legal structures that reproduce global injustice. Postcolonial theory is defined and interpreted in different ways, and therefore, its political project depends on the assumptions that inform such definitions and interpretations. In order to situate my own interpretations of postcolonial theory and define its use in this book, I begin with the proposition that postcolonial studies’ main contribution to social and educational thinking is that it creates the conditions for “the possibility of theorizing a non- coercive relationship or dialogue with the excluded ‘Other’ of Western humanism” (Gandhi 1998, 39) and for “thinking our way through, and therefore, out of the historical imbalances and cultural inequalities produced by the colonial encounter [through a] systemic critique of institutional suffering” (176). As a starting point for the realization of these possibilities I offer the question: What aspects of Western/Enlightenment humanism (or other discourses) could stop or prevent a noncoercive relationship or dialogue among different ways of being in the world? The response of postcolonial theory, as presented in this book, is an examination of the hostility to difference embedded in the normative teleological project of Western/Enlightenment humanism, which is the basis of dominant Western epistemologies. From this perspective, the investment of Western/Enlightenment humanism in rational

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unanimity (i.e., universal consensus through rational thought) in regard to conceptualizations of humanity, human nature, progress, and justice only produces opportunities for relationships and dialogue that are “structured, from the very beginning, in favour of certain outcomes” (Chakrabarty 1995, 757). The ethnocentric privileging of Western rationality (as a universal form of reasoning) and of dialectical thought (as a universal form of deliberative engagement) establish specific parameters of validity and recognition of what can be known and how that is to be communicated. These parameters are intimately associated with aspirations for unanimity and consensus and make it impossible for other forms of thinking, knowing, being, and communicating to “disagree” or even to make intelligible contributions in Western-led and structured sites of conversation. This creates a tension where challenging the terms of dialectical engagement can acquire the tone of a heretic challenge to humanity, progress, and justice itself, which, not surprisingly, often results in the challenge being discarded as abnormal, marginal, or irrelevant. As a result, difference can be either discarded as barbaric, wild, and heretic, or be domesticated or “made similar” in order to be accommodated as a colorful (or exotic) variation of the dominant epistemology within the boundaries of the predefined rules of validation. As such parameters of knowledge-validity and modes of communication are disseminated through modern institutions and forms of organization, the hegemony of the Western/Enlightenment humanist epistemology and its blindness to other epistemologies become naturalized in modern social life. Thus, in response to my first question, the hegemonic ethnocentrism of Western/Enlightenment humanism becomes the central target of postcolonial critiques in their attempt to enable the emergence of noncoercive “ethical solidarities.” In terms of ethnocentrism (defined here as an unacknowledged and naturalized desire to possess and produce universal and unequivocal knowledge), the focus of postcolonial critiques often lies on the anthropocentric, all-knowing and self-sufficient Cartesian subject of Western/Enlightenment humanism who “violently negates material and historical alterity/otherness in its narcissistic desire to always see the world in its own self image” (Gandhi 1998, 39). As the Cartesian subject projects his knowledge as unequivocal, complete, and universal, the foreclosure of his epistemic choices and his “indifference to difference” (ibid., 47) create a form of blindness where Otherness is conceived as a deviance that threatens his identity as a universal knower, creating anxieties that often prompt repression and different

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Introduction

3

forms of violence toward the Other. In its attempt to interrogate ethnocentrism, postcolonialism works in the agonistic space between the Cartesian subject and his Other, calling for, (1)a recognition of the limitations of Western/Enlightenment thought, and of the necessity to understand historical violences, and (2) the construction of knowledge and alterity beyond such limitations. In terms of global hegemony (defined as the power to enforce, normalize and naturalize local ethnocentric perspectives on a global scale), the emphasis is on how a local (European/Western) epistemology came to occupy a position where it could project itself as global and universal (through institutions such as schools and universities and modes of organization such as nation-states and democracies): how the sovereignty of the modern intellect has been established in ways that give it “the power to define and make definitions stick” (Bauman 1991, 9). The global dissemination of the imposed universalization of Western/Enlightenment ideals and aspirations places the focus of postcolonial analyses firmly on European colonialism and its material and epistemic violences. Postcolonial critiques engage the political interests at work in processes of knowledge production, with particular attention to the production of knowledge about the Other and the (Western/European) self. In terms of moving beyond coercion, postcolonialism champions a form of solidarity enacted as an ethical imperative toward the Other (Spivak 2004) where the Other is recognized as having a right to fundamentally disagree. This type of solidarity starts with an understanding of epistemic arrogance and a call for a conceptualization of inter- and codependence based on individual/collective, social/cultural, ontic and epistemic insufficiencies with a view to recognize the productive (and nondeterminable) value of our common differences (see chapter eleven). Ethical solidarities challenge the normative project of unanimity, consensus, and singular rationality of Western/Enlightenment humanism enabling the emergence of a kind of contestatory dialogue where knowledge is perceived as situated, partial, and provisional and where dissensus serves as a safeguard against fundamentalisms, forcing participants to engage with the origins and limitations of each others’ and, specially of their own systems of production of knowledge and sanctioned ignorance (Said 1978). In this sense, it does not aim to delegitimize or discard Western/Enlightenment humanism, but to engage its limitations in an attempt to transform and pluralize it from within. Ethical solidarities, far from promoting paralysis of analysis or absolute relativism, focus on the possibility of the contextual and

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education

ongoing co- construction of meaning that can happen when people care to know— as opposed to “dare to know”— of/about/with each other (Gandhi, 1999). In my pedagogical work, I have often used a metaphor to illustrate the problematic nature of globally hegemonic ethnocentrism and the possibility of ethical solidarities. I invite readers to construct this metaphor with me. First, imagine a field of ripe corn cobs; harvest the corn cobs in your field; take out the corn cobs’ husks and display the corn cobs in front of you. Next, compare the corn cobs in the picture in your mind with the photograph on the cover of this book. The multicolored corn cobs in the photograph are real and accessible in certain regions of Latin America.1 When this visualization exercise is performed in places other than such regions, invariably people in the audience notice that the corn cobs imagined by most people are yellow and more or less uniform. Some people even question whether the photograph has been digitally altered to produce corn cobs of impossible colors. The prevalence of the yellow corn cob in people’s imagination and their “surprise” at the existence of multicolored varieties can be used to illustrate the institutionalization of the globally hegemonic ethnocentrism of the Western/Enlightenment epistemology and the implications of Cartesian subjectivities described before: the yellow corn cob, as a Cartesian subject, projects his local worldview as global, foreclosing the local roots of his epistemological and ontological choices. Many people argue that this ethnocentric practice in itself is not exclusive to Western/Enlightenment humanism. However, when such practice happens in a context of imperial or colonial relations, where the yellow corn cob has the power to define and control the production of meaning (i.e., define meanings that stick), and has control over the establishment of laws and institutions, and the distribution of wealth and labour, not only in its local context, but on a global scale, I would argue that the global hegemonic force of the yellow corn cob’s ethnocentrism puts it in a different category from other ethnocentrisms. The capacity for harm through epistemic dominance, epistemic violence and “epistemicide” (Santos 2007) and the vulnerability to such practices are severely unevenly distributed on a global scale among yellow and multicolored corn cobs. The metaphor can also be used to predict the implications of the ambivalent relationship (Bhabha 1994) between the yellow corn cob and the multicolored varieties of corn cobs. Postcolonial studies (and other theories that focus on institutional suffering) may be deployed to identify four important tendencies that arise as a result of a yellow

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5

corn cob’s ethnocentric global hegemony. First, it is the tendency of yellow corn cobs to see other varieties as deficient or lacking (i.e., deficit theorization of difference), which often generates the desire to help multicolored corn cobs to turn yellow (i.e., paternalism). Second, it is the tendency of some yellow corn cobs to see the color of other cobs as something superficial, often relying on the maxim “we are all the same under the kernel skin” (i.e., depoliticization and ahistoricism), which allows the yellow corn cobs to “forget” their cultural roots and project their “substance” or “essence” (as well as their naturalized desires and aspirations) as the substance and essence, desires and aspirations universal to all corn cobs (i.e., we are all human and aspire to similar notions of progress and justice). Third, it is the tendency of many multicolored corn cobs that have been historically and continually exposed to such treatment to see themselves through the eyes of yellow corn cobs: to aspire to become yellow and to see themselves and other multicolored varieties as lacking and deficient (i.e., internalized oppression). Fourth, it is the tendency of some multicolored corn cobs to resist yellow ethnocentric global hegemony and categorizations by reaffirming their “color” in reversed-ethnocentric (and often locally hegemonic) ways, speaking back to power using the language and tools of the dominant variety, but remaining trapped in the logic of the yellow corn cob. Although this strategy is often successful in providing a critique of dominance, it generally fails to enable the emergence of alternatives to ethnocentrism and hegemony. In this sense, it is important to emphasize that, although an analysis of the ethnocentric global hegemony of Western/Enlightenment humanism is key to an understanding of the unequal distribution of value, wealth, and labour among different social groups, the yellow corn cob metaphor can also be used to refer to processes of normalization and unequal power relations within any social group. Used in this way, the metaphor helps to bring the complexity of issues of representation to the fore and to highlight the problems of homogenization and essentialism that often emerge in simplistic analyses of power and oppression. It also highlights the dynamic nature of the production of culture: rather than seeing varieties of corn cobs as static and unchanging, it shows that different varieties are always in negotiation: they change in their interaction with each other and with their environment. In this way, the location of the problem shifts from the yellow corn cobs themselves (which are a legitimate and changing variety) to the arrogance of ethnocentricism and the knowledge/ power production of global hegemony.

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education

In pedagogical terms, the metaphor can be used to refer to the process of equipping both yellow and multicolored corn cobs to become sensitized to difference: to unlearn their (possible) epistemological arrogance, to learn to listen beyond their tendency to project and appropriate, to relate to Other corn cobs in ways that legitimize different ways of knowing and being, and to engage in ethical solidarities without the need for consensus, a common cause or a common identity. This kind of solidarity involves a double recognition: first the recognition of the Other as equal when ideas of superiority threaten the relationship; second, the recognition of the Other as different when the push towards “sameness” threatens the other’s difference and ability to disagree (Santos 2002). The first recognition of equality works as a safeguard against a yellow corn cob’s historically and socially framed desire to see itself as the norm and to enlighten, educate, know, study or civilize other corn cobs. The second works against the yellow corn cob’s tendency to project its own ideals, desires, and aspirations as natural to all corn cobs. In its stance toward an uncoercive relationship or dialogue with the Other who has been historically at the receiving end of epistemic violence, this pedagogy entails a provisional paradoxical construction of a general epistemology that announces the impossibility of general epistemologies (i.e., ahistorical and de- contextualized knowledge claims) (Santos 2007). This is enacted through a conceptualization of knowledge as socially, culturally, and historically situated: no knowledge is ever only individual knowledge (as it relies on situated collective referents). Therefore, as every knowledge is based on ontological and metaphysical choices that foreclose other choices, every knowledge is also an ignorance of other knowledges produced in different contexts. From this perspective, knowledge is understood as a process (not a product) that is constantly renegotiated in encounters with difference and every knowledge snapshot is at the same time legitimate (in its context of production), provisional, and insufficient. By exploring different knowledge systems and their limits, one can cast a fresh glance at one’s own context of knowledge production and be in a better position to redefine the terms of knowledge construction. This redefinition is enabled by the expansion of one’s frames of reference through the ethical imperative to work with the Other upholding the principles of mutuality, reciprocity, and equality (which means keeping one’s own learned epistemic arrogance in check and working without guarantees). This book proposes that a postcolonial educational project is about expanding frames of reference while upholding an ethical stance

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Introduction

7

toward the Other: opening the imagination to different varieties of corn cobs while acknowledging their status as situated producers of knowledge who have an equal worth and a right to signify differently. However, this book applies insights from postcolonial theory (as well as other theories) as tools-for-thinking rather than as descriptions- oftruth. This distinction forces the proposed postcolonial educational project to be open to different perspectives and interpretations of truth/reality. Rather than creating a manifesto that noble “progressive” educators can subscribe to, the intention is to invite educators to a type of scholarship that engages with both the gifts and limitations of any theory in an attempt to imagine dialogue, relationships, and education “otherwise” beyond the confines of dominance, ethnocentrism, and coercion that have characterized institutionalized processes of modern schooling and education in general (including “progressive” strands). The arguments in this book are offered as partial, provisional, and situated contributions to an ongoing debate that is not conceived through teleological lenses: it does not aim to reach a specific stable condition of harmony and it does not promise heroic or salvationist glories at the end of a revolutionary struggle. Instead, it proposes a recognition that the work of moving toward mutuality, reciprocity, and equality needs to be recognized as an ongoing process: any proposed solution will generate different problems, and the struggle to engage with new problems is a condition for contextresponsive continuous (mutual and reciprocal) learning and (co-)construction of new realities.

The Potential Contribution and Limitations of Postcolonial Theory in Educational Research and Practice I place postcolonialism in the agonistic interface in-between unequal systems of knowledge/power production that have been in tension. Thus, I find it useful (although also problematic) to think that postcolonial theory can be relevant in different degrees and for different purposes to at least five different political communities:

1. those in the global North (and in the north of the South) oversocialized in the ethnocentric hegemony of Eurocentric modernity and benefiting from it (yellow corn cobs who cannot imagine other corn cobs);

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education 2. those in the south of the global North and in the global South aspiring to benefit from the ethnocentric hegemony through voluntary socialization and defence of Eurocentric modernity (multicolored corn cobs who want to be yellow); 3. those in the south of the global South and the global North suffering the effects of ethnocentric global hegemonies and fighting to reassert their right to self-governance or self- determination (multicolored corn cobs struggling to become visible in the yellow corn cob’s imagination in order to disrupt their violence and dominance); 4. those bearing the brunt of the violence of ethnocentric hegemonies whose main priority is survival and who cannot afford to be engaged in political mobilizations (multicolored and “crooked” yellow corn cobs fighting predatory Darwinist extermination); 5. those (translators and catalysts) in-between political communities who both benefit from and are critical of ethnocentric global hegemonies and who aspire to use their privilege/lines of social mobility in the work against the grain of ethnocentrism and hegemony (both yellow and multicolored corn cobs).

Postcolonial theory is arguably most useful for individuals in the fifth community, working with the first, second, third, and fourth communities. It enables the design of pedagogical processes that may prompt a “disenchantment with the epistemic privilege of modernity” (Mignolo 2002b), offering an opportunity for the first and second communities to expand their imagination, to rearrange their desires, to establish more nuanced relationships of solidarity, and to pluralize the future of all communities. As a result, the third and fourth communities would benefit indirectly from the possibility of nonantagonistic, nonmanipulative, or nonhegemonic support and understanding for their struggles through better-informed and more ethical relationships grounded in the principle of solidarity (rather than charity, benevolence, or arrogant “progressive” triumphalism). In terms of political-pedagogical possibilities for the third community, although the strand of postcolonial theory represented in this book can complement existing critiques and offer new tools of internal critique that may address the emergence of ethnocentrism and hegemonies in resistance struggles themselves, it does not provide, or aim to provide, a coherent project of emancipation that can command political mobilization around a consensual common cause. Therefore, for such ends, it needs to be thought through alongside other antioppressive theories.

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Introduction

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My Contribution to the Debate This book seeks to add to the body of literature that highlights the potential contributions of postcolonial theory to educational theory, research, and curricular practices (see for example, Hickling-Hudson, Matthews, and Woods 2004; Cannella and Viruru 2004; Kanu 2006; Coloma 2009). It offers an overview of a discursive strand of postcolonial theory and provides examples of its application and operationalization in educational research and practice. This work is organized into three parts: (1) postcolonialism and postcolonial theories; (2) actioning postcolonial theory in educational research; and (3) actioning postcolonial pedagogies. Part 1 outlines key concerns and discussions in the field of postcolonial theory (chapter one) focusing on the contributions of Homi Bhabha (chapter two), and Gayatri Spivak (chapter three) to educational debates. It also offers a comparison between a discursive strand of postcolonialism and three other theories of institutional suffering: decolonial studies, indigenous studies, and critical race theory (chapter four). The second part of the book provides examples from educational research in the form of analyses of policy and practice. It starts with a contextualization of research processes highlighting methodological issues that may arise in the use of postcolonial theory in educational research and the types of outcomes that could be expected from a postcolonial analysis (chapter five). Two analyses of policy and three analyses of educational practice related to global and development education are presented in the subsequent chapters. The first analysis emphasizes problematic discourses related to liberal humanism in curriculum policy (chapter six). The second focuses on neoliberal agendas driving policies of internationalization of higher education (chapter seven). The analyses of practice offer different examples of paternalistic constructions of the Other: the Other who validates our supremacy (chapter eight); the Other who should be grateful for our efforts (chapter nine): and the Other who desperately needs our leadership (chapter ten). The third part of the book illustrates how postcolonial theory can be put to work (although not unproblematically) in educational practice. The first chapter provides an outline for the principles of a postcolonial pedagogy and contextualizes the projects and processes presented in the subsequent chapters (chapter eleven). The Creative Commons International initiatives “Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry” and “Through Other Eyes,” which focus on a relativization of Western

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knowledge production and engagement with different knowledge systems, are described as illustrations of funded high-impact projects that were based on insights from postcolonial theory (chapters twelve and thirteen). The last chapter of part 3 presents an auto-ethnographic account of my ongoing “wrestling with meaning and life” as a mother of two immigrant children who often “bring home” the complexities of re-negotiating the colonial encounter, and help me “earn my theory” through the pain (and joy) of being constantly undone (chapter fourteen).

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Part 1

Postcolonialisms and Postcolonial Theories

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Chapter One Contextualizing Postcolonialisms and Postcolonial Theories

Postcolonialism and postcolonial theory are contested terms with contested origins and associations. They work in the interface between economic and cultural processes, placing emphasis on how cultural/ epistemological assumptions frame relationships and injustices. For an introduction to postcolonialism in a study in education, the interdisciplinary dimension and transdisciplinary scope of the debates generated in this field demand various levels of translation. Hence, contextualizing postcolonialism and postcolonial theory in the context of this book requires a strategy of situating different perspectives in relation to other perspectives and debates, and in relation to education. Postcolonialism is defined in different ways from different perspectives, and each perspective tends to critique other uses and definitions. In the late 1960s, the term “postcolonial” was used in Commonwealth literature to refer to cultural interactions within colonial societies in literary circles. It has subsequently been widely used to refer to the political, linguistic, and cultural experience of societies in former European colonies, characterizing it as a site of disciplinary and interpretative contestation (Ashcroft et al. 1995). Slemon (1995) gives an overview of other uses of the term: [Postcolonialism] has been used as a way of ordering a critique of totalising forms of Western historicism; as a portmanteau term for a retooled notion of “class,” as a subset of both postmodernism and post-structuralism (and conversely, as the condition from which those two structures of cultural logic and cultural critique themselves are seen to emerge); as the name for a condition of nativist longing in post-

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education independence national groupings; as a cultural marker of non-residency for a third world intellectual cadre; as the inevitable underside of a fractured and ambivalent discourse of colonialist power; as an oppositional form of “reading in practice;” and . . . as the name for a category of “literary” activity which sprang from a new and welcome political energy going on within what used to be called “Commonwealth Literary Studies”. (45)

Gandhi (1998) defines postcolonialism as a set of concerns that “hold out the possibility of theorizing a non- coercive relationship with the excluded Other of Western humanism” (39). Mcleod (2007) states that a postcolonial project requires finding “new conceptual modes (however modest) of resisting, challenging and even transforming prejudicial forms of knowledge in the past and the present” (5), while Kapoor (2008) argues that this “involves estranging, contaminating or misreading the master discourse, at times imposing suppressed knowledge and at others making unanticipated, slight alterations, with the overall effect of denying or subverting dominant authority” (8). In my engagements in this field of study, I have observed a major fault line in relation to postcolonial approaches and definitions related to postcolonialism’s relationship with two antagonistic theoretical orientations: a discursive orientation that focuses on the instability of signification and the intimate relationship between the production of knowledge and power that is skeptical of grand narratives of progress and emancipation (i.e., its association with post-structuralism and postmodernism, [e.g., Spivak 1990]), and an orientation based on Marxist historicism that focuses on a critique of capitalism, a teleological reading of history, and the project of international solidarity around emancipatory social action (e.g., Young 2001). Depending on a theorist’s leaning toward one or the other, postcolonial definitions and approaches may differ widely. Therefore, it is important to contextualize postcolonial theory in relation to both. Prasad (2005) suggests a useful framework for contextualizing postcolonial theory in relation to post-structuralist and postmodernist orientations. She maps the origins and influences of these three orientations of the “post-” in terms of five broader traditions of critique that are located within the modernity/Enlightenment metanarrative itself: 1. artistic and literary modernism (i.e., the works of Joyce, Kafka, Picasso, Dali);

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2. anti-Enlightenment discourses (i.e., the works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger); 3. critiques of colonialism and Western supremacy (i.e., the works of Gandhi, Senghor, Fanon, Cesaire) 4. semiotics and structuralism (i.e., the works of Saussure, Levi- Strauss, Barthes); and 5. Marxism and critical theories. (Prasad 2005, 214)

Prasad argues that postmodernism (i.e., the works of Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari) are primarily influenced by 1 and 2. She suggests that post-structuralism (i.e., the works of Foucault, Derrida, and Luce Irigaray) are primarily influenced by 2 and 4, while postcolonialism (i.e., the works of Said, Spivak, Nandy, Young, and Bhabha) are primarily influenced by 2, 3, 4, and 5. Prasad’s interpretation may help identify the influences they share in common. According to Prasad all three “post-traditions” share a deep suspicion of the Enlightenment project, of the central logics and dynamics of modernity (such as individualism, freedom, progress, liberation, and universal reason), and of the institutions engendered by it (such as scientific rationality, the nation-state, and liberal democracy), which are regarded as oppressive. They also share a discursive orientation toward language and representation (which is emphasized to different degrees), and an explicit concern with the discursive constitution of subjectivities by modernist ideals, liberal humanism and, in the case of postcolonialism, imperialism. The debate over the meaning of the prefix “post-” could also be considered a commonality.1 Prasad offers a discussion of different interpretations of the term that can be summarized as: a state of aftermath (e.g., after colonialism, modernity, or structuralism); a negation of or rupture with past traditions; a regeneration and reconstitution of past traditions; a relationship of dependence and continuity with past traditions; and all of the above at the same time. She also identifies shared criticisms and hostility toward the three “post-traditions” based on the subversive nature of their agendas that can potentially undermine “the pillars of authority and legitimacy that hold up contemporary society, with their assaults on the existence of a rational human subject, the tyranny of science and liberal values, and the oppressive nature of the nation-state” (213). Prasad encapsulates the common ground of the “post-traditions” as coming to terms with the left- over hopes and disappointments of modernity [in particular] the disenchantment over communism, the

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education harmful excesses of fast- capitalism, and the painful realization that many of the grand meta-narratives of post-Enlightenment Western civilization such as individualism, progress and liberal humanism have not only failed to materialize into a promised empowerment, but may well have resulted in lasting damage to certain cultural and environmental resources. (218)

She asserts that, although postcolonialism shares much with postmodernism and post-structuralism, the influence of Marxism and its commitment to wider political engagement both within and outside the academy (unlike postmodernism and post-structuralism) brings its agenda closer to those of historical materialism and radical feminism. In terms of historical materialism, the commonality is postcolonialism’s stress on the “importance of colonialism as a distinctly materialist force (even when refusing to accord class and surplus value a central place in its analysis)” (267). Postcolonialism’s critical stance toward dominant epistemologies and attention to the intersections of race, gender, and geographical positions in processes of knowledge/subjectivity production can also be considered to share a common ground with radical feminism (Prasad 2005). Prasad also emphasizes the heterogeneity of the field in comparison with other “post-traditions.” She believes postcolonialism to be “remarkably focused and distinctly unruly” (262) as it insists on an emphasis on colonialism while being eclectic in terms of ideas and methodologies. Said (1995) also emphasizes the distinctions between postmodernism and postcolonialism. He argues that postmodernism enacts a greater Eurocentric bias in its focus on the aesthetic, the local, the contingent, as well as “the almost decorative weightlessness of history, pastiche, and above all consumerism” (351). Postcolonialism, on the other hand, makes use and transforms the grand narratives of progress and emancipation of the Enlightenment by placing an explicit focus on historical and political imperatives. Postcolonialism is also critiqued from traditional Marxist perspectives that reject the idea of colonial discourses (as opposed to class) as the basis of experiences of social reality. Ahmad (1992), for example, opposes the notion that Third World societies have a common ground in their experience of colonialism and that Western colonial discourses are stable throughout history. He proposes that class is a category of analysis that takes better account of pervasive systems of oppression in the world today and that socialism can be conceived as a common ground of resistance to capitalism: “Socialism is not

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restricted to something called the ‘the Second World’ but is simply the name of a resistance that saturates the globe today, as capitalism itself does” (Ahmad 1992, 103). Gandhi (1998) helps contextualize postcolonialism in relation to Marxist interrogations of empire that provide a better interface with postcolonialism by conceptualizing colonialism as a constitutive dimension of the globalization of capital. However, she argues that Marxism’s specific teleological reading of history has failed to address key questions that are central to postcolonial studies: For reasons of its own very specific reading of the development of capitalism in the late nineteenth century, Marxism has been unable to theorize colonialism as an exploitative relationship between the West and its Others. Accordingly [ . . . ] it has also neglected to address sympathetically the historical, cultural and political alterity, or difference, of the colonial world and, in so doing, it has relinquished its potential to appeal to postcolonialist thought. (24–25)

In a pedagogical attempt to summarize the implications of the Marxist/post-orientations split in postcolonial approaches (and conscious of the risk of oversimplifications), I have tentatively constructed a distinction between two strands of postcolonialism: one, leaning toward Marxist historicism (and metanarratives of progress and emancipation), focusing primarily on changing material circumstances of exploitation structured by assumptions of cultural supremacy and on the struggles for liberation of subjugated peoples (e.g., Young 2001); and a discursive orientation, leaning toward poststructuralism, focusing on contestation and complicity in the relationship between colonizers and colonized and on the possibility of imagining relationships beyond coercion, subjugation, and epistemic violences (e.g., Spivak 1990). Both strands share a critique of colonial and imperial relations, but they propose different solutions to the problem of cultural supremacy. The first deploys concepts of emancipation and humanism to propose a teleological change in history based on liberation from and transcendence of colonial relations, where the oppressed and their subjugated knowledges (rather than the oppressors’) would hold the key to a better society. The second proposes a constant and immanent problematization of knowledge production (even knowledge produced by the “oppressed”) that defies traditional conceptualizations of history, teleology, and emancipation. This constant problematization relies on hyper-self-reflexivity

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as a strategy that acknowledges everyone’s complicities and investments (of oppressors and oppressed) in coercive and repressive belief systems, at the same time that it opens possibilities and offers an invitation for signifying, narrating, and relating otherwise. It is through this second strand of postcolonial theory, more explicitly informed by post-structuralism, that I would like to explore in more depth the works of Bhabha and Spivak. This strand recognizes the instability of signification, the location of the subject in language or discourse, and the dynamic operations of power associated with knowledge production. It sits in an ambivalent and conflictual space between Marxism, postmodernism, and a specific form of identity struggle. From a traditional Marxist perspective, its skepticism toward grand narratives and use of post-structuralist tools to problematize knowledge production challenge the search for an objective truth, and the teleological and rationalist foundations of traditional Marxist projects grounded in (Western) dialectical thought and ideas of emancipation from false- consciousness. From a postmodernist perspective, highly dismissive of metanarratives, its “modernist” agenda of transforming the world and relationships of inequality is not consistent with radical forms of relativism and provisionality. Furthermore, postcolonial theorists and activists who make use of marginalized identities as essentialist categories for political mobilization tend to accuse this strand of postcolonialism of being too Eurocentric for its use of post-structuralism (a “Western” epistemology) to critique Eurocentrism. Thus, this strand of postcolonialism can be accused of inconsistency and incoherence from at least three perspectives: of being “too postmodern” by Marxists, “too Marxist” by postmodernists, and “too Eurocentric” by activists and intellectuals involved in identity politics. While I concur with the argument that post- structuralist, postmodernist, and Marxist theories embed an inherent Western ethnocentric stance (see for example, Said 1978 and Gandhi 1998), I also concur with Chakrabarty’s (2000) statement that European thought (post-structuralism and Marxism, in this case) is both “indispensable and inadequate” (18) to help us understand the complexities of histories and experiences of political modernity (Chakrabarty 2000). This paradox of “inadequacy and indispensability” emphasizes the ideas of partiality, complicity, uncertainty, and ambivalence that critics from specific Marxist or essentialist standpoints find difficult to accept. On the other hand, within this discursive strand of postcolonialism “the problems of representation, assume a very different tone

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from the radical provisionality of postmodernism” (Ashcroft, et al. 2000, 118). Therefore, rather than a “postmodernism with politics,” it highlights “a sustained attention to the imperial processes in colonial and neocolonial societies, and an examination of the strategies to subvert the actual material and discursive effects of those processes” (ibid.). Through the use of hyper-self-reflexivity (Kapoor 2008), special attention is paid to how strategies of contestation and resistance often inadvertently and ironically reproduce the very coercive and repressive traits they claim to object to. In the next section of this chapter, I explore aspects of Edward Said’s seminal text Orientalism presented here as foundational to the postcolonial approach I adopt in this book. In subsequent chapters I explore in more detail, the works of Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri C. Spivak in terms of their potential contributions to educational research and practice.

Orientalism Foucault’s insight that knowledge is not innocent but profoundly connected with the operations of power—what he calls the “relations between discursive formations and non-discursive domains (institutions, political events, economic practices and processes)” (Foucault 1972, 162)—is what informs the text of Orientalism, Said’s first book, published in 1978. This is a book about Western representations of non-Western cultures in which Said points out the extent to which knowledge about the Orient as it was produced and circulated in Europe was an ideological necessary accompaniment of coercive power and the justifications for colonialism. Said’s text represents a decisive move forward in the transformation of how literature from the “Empire” and colonized nations was approached (Moore- Gilbert 1997). The central seminal aspects of Said’s work are related to its “persistent emphasis on the relationship between Western representation and knowledge on the one hand, and Western material and political power on the other” (34), coupled with an approach to issues related to race, empire, and ethnicity that exposed their complicities with ethnocentric ways of thinking (ibid.). Loomba (1998) states that the most significant contribution of Said’s work is in the use of literary materials to discuss historical and epistemological processes. Childs and Williams (1996) conclude that Said was the first to identify that different disciplines such as geography, politics, literature, history, ethnography, and linguistics

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produced similar discourses about the Orient that operated “as selfpolicing regimes, establishing their own categories of truth . . . as well as discouraging or rejecting those which violate the norms of that particular discourse” (99). Said used the concept of discourse to examine how the formal study of the “Orient,” along with other literary and cultural texts, consolidated certain ways of seeing and thinking that in turn contributed to the functioning of colonial power. He argued that certain texts are accorded “the authority of academics, institutions and governments” and can create not only knowledge but the very reality they appear to describe. In time, such knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it. (Said 1978, 94)

Said refers to the project of studying, teaching, and writing— or simply producing knowledge— about the Orient as “Orientalism.” He examines how this knowledge was constructed to determine how the Orient would be viewed and controlled, but also how this knowledge itself created these ways of knowing, studying, believing, and writing. He emphasized how knowledge about and power over colonized peoples are related enterprises (Loomba 1998). Loomba observes that Said’s project is to demonstrate how knowledge about the Orient was used by colonial administrations and to demystify the status of this knowledge as “neutral knowledge.” Said constructs this demystification by associating the expansion of Orientalism with the Enlightenment and its effects on the proliferation of disciplines, on the universalizing character of knowledge production in Europe, and on the systematizing classificatory approaches adopted to “understand” the world (Loomba 1998). Said (1978) argues that knowledge produced about the Orient, although classified as scientific and objective, was negative, stereotypical, and anecdotal: Along with all other people variously regarded as backward, degenerate, uncivilized and retarded, the Orientals were viewed in a framework constructed out of biological determinism and moral-political admonishment. The Oriental was linked thus to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) having in common an identity best described as lamentably alien. Orientals were rarely seen or looked at: they were seen through, analysed not as citizens, or

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even people, but as problems to be solved or confined, or— as the colonial powers openly coveted their territory— taken over. (207)

Said’s work shows that discourses are “heavily policed cognitive systems which both control and delimit both the mode and the means of representation in a given society” (Gandhi 1998, 77). Therefore, the stereotypes created about Orientals and the Orient affirmed the superiority of the West and the inferiority of the East in order to confirm the necessity of colonialism (ibid.), or in other words, “a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves” (Said 1978, 35). Said concludes: From its earliest modern history to the present, Orientalism as a form of thought for dealing with the foreign has typically shown the altogether regrettable tendency of any knowledge based on such hard-andfast distinctions as “East” and “West”: to channel thought into a West and East compartment. Because this tendency is right at the center of Orientalist theory, practice and values found in the West, the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth. (46)

On the other hand, Said suggests that it was not that Europeans individually disliked non-Western peoples or cultures or that they were telling lies, but that their cultural bias and interests were filtering their knowledge, as the study of the Orient was not objective but a political view of reality making a distinction between the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the Other (Orient, East, them). Said argues that When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy [ . . . ] the result is usually to polarize the distinction— the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the Westerner more Western— and limit the human encounter between different cultures, traditions and societies. (Said 1978, 45–46)

From this perspective, the study of the Orient is the study of Europe’s “Other,” an interested political vision of reality that produces a binary opposition between “them” (the strange, the Orient, the East) and “us” (the familiar, Europe, West). This binary becomes essential for European identity, as Loomba (1998) points out: If colonised people are irrational, Europeans are rational; if the former are barbaric, sensual and lazy, Europe is civilisation itself, with

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education its sexual appetites under control and its dominant ethic, that of hard work; if the Orient was static, Europe can be seen as developing and marching ahead; the Orient has to be feminine so that Europe can be masculine. This dialectic between self and other . . . has been hugely influential in subsequent studies of Africans, Native Americans and other non-European peoples. (Loomba 1998, 47)

In this binary opposition, the relationship of dependency becomes explicit: the construction of the “Other” as backward, is necessary for the construction of the “self” as culturally superior, which justifies the exercise of domination and control as a burden to intervene in the name of progress— to civilize, to educate, to modernize, and to develop the Other. In the analysis carried out in Orientalism, the Western/European ethnocentric and hegemonic construction of the “Other” is not disinterested and is determined by the will to dominate as the relationship between the cultures in question is unequal and the knowledge produced is “consistently put at the service of the colonial administration” (Moore- Gilbert, 1997, 38). Said shows that this construction of the Other is in essence “both a condition of, and an integral aspect of, the dynamics of political and economic colonialism” (Seidman and Alexander 2001, 26).

Said’s Critics The critiques of Orientalism come from different quarters. Said is criticized by Ahmad (1992) from a Marxist perspective, for two reasons: first, for homogenizing the West by focusing on ideology and culture, and not on capitalism, overlooking the material repressive enforcement of colonialism; second, for his privileged academic position in an institutional framework that is complicit in the reproduction of the current divisions of labor. Porter (1983) accuses Said of overlooking variations in history and constructing a fixed East versus a fixed West divide. Although Said engages critically with Foucault’s ideas, he is accused of theoretical inconsistency in trying to combine and adapt different epistemologies (e.g., Marxist and post-structural analysis) by Young (2001). Moore- Gilbert (1997) summarizes some of the criticisms toward the perceived contradictions in the text as: 1. the relationship between discursive and material practices and politics of colonialism (different passages of the text point to different relationships of causality);

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2. the claim of misrepresentation of the Orient (which would imply the possibility of a correct representation); 3. his own apparent objectivity and “truthful” analysis of Western representations of the East (a lack of self-reflexivity); and 4. a theoretical inconsistency in relation to the claim of the “will to power” as the basis of knowledge production.

Mignolo (2000a) argues that Said’s notion of Orientalism is misleading, as it locates the beginning of modernity in the eighteenth century, and that “Orientalism” cannot be conceived of without “Occidentalism”: although Orientalism is a significant part of the coloniality of power, the history of Occidentalism started before the Enlightenment.2 He claims that Orientalism turned the lights of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries off and re-defined Europe in time and space: the eighteenth century, the emergence of the nation-state after the French Revolution and the colonization of Africa and Asia. But of course, coloniality linked to Orientalism is only a part of the problem. The rules of the game had already been established by then. And they had been established in the sixteenth century when “The Indias Occidentales” (and not America!!!) emerged in the conceptual map of Christian cosmology and in the commercial map of mercantile capitalism. (29)

In conclusion, the assumption of a flat relationship of domination and subordination between the West and the East is the major problem with “Orientalism,” an issue that Said addresses in his later work. The problematic nature of this flat relationship is the starting point for Homi Bhabha’s work. Bhabha (1983) criticizes Said for promoting a static model of colonial relations in which “colonial power and discourse is possessed entirely by the coloniser” with no room for negotiation or change (Bhabha 1983, 200). In Bhabha’s work, he conceptualizes this relationship as “ambivalent” and open to negotiations. His work is presented in more detail in chapter two.

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Chapter Two Homi Bhabha’s Contribution and Critics

Although Bhabha is critical of the oversimplification of the binaries of East and West and colonizer and colonized in Said’s early work (as both “poles” are hybrid and implicated in each other), their locus of enunciation and intellectual positions can be considered similar as both examine processes that divide, categorize, and dominate the world. However, their approaches differ in focus: while Said focuses on differences and oppositions between colonized and colonizer, Bhabha generally examines points of similarities (Childs and Williams 1996). He combines psychoanalysis and post-structuralism to approach colonial discourse (as the discourse of the colonizer— not referring temporally to all discourse existent during colonization), whose objective he defines as being “to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and inclusion” (Bhabha 1994, 70). Therefore, he suggests that postcolonial critique bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority within the modern world order [and that] they formulate their critical revisions around issues of cultural difference, social authority and political discrimination in order to reveal the antagonistic and ambivalent moments within the rationalizations of modernity. (171)

Bhabha affirms that the reconstitution of the discourse of cultural difference demands not simply a change of cultural contents and symbols [but] a revision of the social temporality in which emergent histories may

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education be written, the rearticulation of the “sign” in which cultural identities may be inscribed. (171)

Ambivalence and the Relational Construction of Identities The concept of “ambivalence,” central to Bhabha’s work, provides a framework for understanding how stereotypes and identities are constructed in a complex relational process and how they are related to the notion of cultural supremacy. In Bhabha’s work, ambivalence is conceptualized as “a complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and colonized” (Ashcroft, et al. 1995, 12). The implication is that “as much as the colonizer is repulsed by and repressive towards the colonized, the colonizer is also attracted to, influenced by, and open to the claims of the colonized” (Seidman and Alexander 2001, 26). It is important here to remember that Bhabha sees the identities of both the colonizer and the colonized as being implicated in each other and not as essentialist wholes. He illustrates how ambivalence works in different moments of the colonial discourse. For instance, he states that colonial discourse wants to produce subordinate subjects who reproduce its assumptions, values, and behaviors (mimic the colonizer), but it does not want to create subjects that are too similar to the colonizer as this would threaten the colonizer’s sense of superiority. The example Bhabha offers is of Charles Grant, who introduced Christian doctrine to Indians, mixing it with caste practices for fear of them becoming “turbulent for liberty” if Christian beliefs were assimilated (Bhabha 1994, 87). This desire to create copies that are “almost the same, but not quite” (86) compels colonial discourse to be ambivalent. As the colonizer perceives the possibility of the equality of the colonized, he simultaneously seeks to eliminate this possibility as a means of maintaining control over the colonized and, therefore, maintaining the colonial difference, which guarantees his perceived supremacy. This ambivalence (where the colonizer sees the colonized as possibly equal, but necessarily inferior) produces ambivalent colonial subjects who produce “translated” copies of the colonizer’s cultural habits, assumptions, institutions, and values in a process Bhabha calls “mimicry.” For Bhabha, mimicry disturbs the colonizer because it is never far from mockery: “It is at once resemblance and menace” (Bhabha

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1994, 86). Ashcroft et al. (2000) point out that mimicry exposes a crack in the certainty of the colonizer of the validity of the right to control of the behavior of the colonized Other: “Mimicry reveals the limitation in the authority of colonial discourse, almost as though colonial authority inevitably embodies the seeds of its own destruction” (140). In dealing with the fear created by mimicry, according to Bhabha, colonial authority is essentially dependent on the notion of “fixity” in the ideological construction of Otherness, a process that defines racial differences and produces the colonized as entirely knowable, unchangeable, and predictable. He asserts that fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference in the discourse of colonialism is a paradoxical mode of representation: it connotes rigidity and an unchanging order as well as a disorder, degeneracy and demonic repetition. (Bhabha 1994, 66)

This fixity may be seen as a desperate attempt by colonial discourse to eliminate the ambivalence at its basis— the ambivalence that recognizes the possibility of equality of the colonized, but that simultaneously needs to eliminate this possibility. This fixity is used by the colonizer in the construction of a positive image of itself and a negative image of the colonized Other to assert, as Souza (2004) points out, “ethnocentric transcendence, resulting in racist and discriminatory perceptions of the colonized that are seen as truthful and authentic representations” (116, my translation). It is this necessity of fixity that creates the discursive strategy of the “stereotype,” which is conceptualized by Bhabha as “a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated” (Bhabha 1994, 66). Bhabha claims that it is the force of this internal ambivalence that gives the stereotype its “validity,” working as a strategy of discriminatory power. Bhabha says that this strategy is based on a myth that justifies the domination and absolute supremacy of the colonizing “race,” which is the “impossible desire for a pure undifferentiated origin” (81). He claims that the problem of origin is at the root of the production of racist and stereotypical knowledge: Stereotyping is not the setting up of a false image which becomes the scapegoat of discriminatory practices. It is a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement, over-determination, guilt, agressivity, the masking

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education and splitting of “official” and phantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse. (82)

Therefore, racism is not based on a false image or stereotype of the other, but in an ambivalent process of construction of “self” in relation to the Other. As mentioned above in relation to fixity, this construction of self is often disrupted by the need to eliminate the possibility of the equality of the Other, and therefore justifies other strategies of control. In this sense, Bhabha (1994) suggests that the ambivalence of the stereotypical chain creates a perverse articulation of multiple beliefs: The black is both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simple-minded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar, and manipulator of social forces. In each case what is being dramatised is a separation— between races, cultures, histories within histories— a separation between before and after that repeats obsessively the mythical moment of disjunction. (82)

In denying the capacity of the colonized for self-government, independence, and Western modes of civility, colonial discourse uses this disjunction or separation to justify the authority of the mission of colonial power. The differences of race, culture, and history elaborated by stereotypical knowledges, racial theories, administrative colonial experience, and other political and cultural ideologies create racist stereotypical discourses that present the colonial subject as knowable and inferior, justifying authoritarian forms of political control. Bhabha refers to the moral and normative imperative to “improve” the Other as the “Civilizing Mission” or “White Man’s Burden.” Bearing in mind the need to reject the possible equality of the colonized, and the fact that this results in the creation of a self-image of superiority for the colonizing subject, the image of the colonized as inferior, therefore, may be seen as the cause and effect of the system of colonization. Thus, the existence of strategies of hierarchization and marginalization may be better understood in the management of colonial societies to objectify, normalize, and discipline colonial subjects (Bhabha 1994). As a result, the establishment of cultural supremacy reflecting the perceived fixed identities of colonizer and colonized is a necessary feature of colonial domination.

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Culture as a Verb and Authenticity Bhabha’s conceptualization of culture is of extreme significance for education. For him, the process of social marginalization of the colonial experience demands an engagement with culture different from the dominant canonical or essentialist definitions of the term. He conceptualizes culture as “an uneven, incomplete production of meaning and value often composed of incommensurable demands and practices produced in the act of social survival” (Bhabha 1994, 172). From this definition, culture is not something static or essentialist—it is hybrid, dynamic, productive—not a noun, but a verb, a strategy of survival that is both transnational (carrying marks of diverse experiences and memories of dislocations) and translational (as it demands a re-signification of traditional cultural symbols that were associated with cultural references of a homogeneous and holistic culture). (Souza 2004, 125–26)

His notion of translation uses a “language metaphor” to illustrate his point: Language as communication must be understood as emerging from the constant state of contestation and flux caused by the differential systems of social and cultural identifications. (Bhabha 1994, 227)

This translation is complex and “agonistic and antagonistic.” As Souza (2004) emphasizes, it makes explicit that “cultural values are hybrid, cultures are heterogeneous processes, myths of authenticity and cultural specificities— that generate the traditional concepts of ‘people’ and ‘nation’— cannot be easily sustained” and that “cultures are constructions and traditions are inventions” (Souza 2004, 126). Bhabha suggests that cultural translation based on such principles rejects claims to cultural supremacy and sovereignty by challenging celebrations of “past traditions, seamless narratives of progress and the vanity of humanist desires” (Bhabha 1994, 2) and becomes a site for struggle for “the historical right to signify” (ibid.).

Hybridity and the Third Space of Enunciation For Bhabha, the naturalization of a superior fixed and knowable subject who constructs knowledge about another inferior fixed and

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knowable subject is based on a radical denial of hybridity, as well as of the relational social construction of self and Otherness (Souza 2004, 122). Bhabha questions the premise of the very possibility of this knowledge. He questions “authentic representations” of both in the sense that any representation—is necessarily already contaminated by multiple systems of representation and, therefore, hybrid (Souza 2004, 114–15). The implication is that no representation can exist in isolation from its cultural or ideological categories— all systems of representation are imbricated in other systems of representation, and not dependent on anchored, objective external referents outside discourse—which makes the idea of authenticity indefensible. This notion is particularly important in the analysis of how ethnic minority cultures are represented or self-represent in education. Bhabha suggests that colonial discourse fails to produce stable and fixed identities, as different systems of representation are involved in this construction, showing the existence of hybridity in the construction of any representation. As Loomba (1998) points out, colonial discourses are diluted and hybridized in their process of delivery “so that fixed identities that colonialism seeks to impose on both the masters and the slaves are in fact rendered unstable [ . . . ]colonizer and colonized are both caught up in a complex reciprocity” (232). For Bhabha, identities are relational and not formed in “perceiving a self-reflection in human nature or a place for the self between culture and nature, but in relation to the Other [ . . . ] only through the Other can the subject locate its identity” (Childs and Williams 1996, 124–25). Bhabha does not separate the construction of the identity of the colonizer from the construction of the identity of the colonized. He conceptualizes this mutual construction as a “relational, agonistic and antagonistic” process (Souza 2004, 121) and understands ambivalence and hybridity as enabling opportunities for rearticulations of meaning: Hybridity [ . . . ] reverses the effect of the colonialist disavowal, so that other “denied” knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority— its rules of recognition. (114)

For Bhabha, all cultural statements and systems, and therefore cultural identities, are constructed in a contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation [which] constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the

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same signs can be appropriated, translated, re-historicised and read anew. (Bhabha, 1994, 37)

He calls this space the “Third Space of Enunciation” and uses the concept to demonstrate that claims of hierarchical purity of cultures are untenable and to articulate a different notion of resistance: the third space is where it is possible to return the colonial gaze and subvert the ambivalent construction of cultural supremacy itself, where colonial rule and the relational construction of colonizer and colonized can be destabilized from within. Bhabha’s third space asserts a “different model for resistance, locating this in the subversive counter-discursive practices implicit in the colonial ambivalence itself and so undermining the very basis on which imperialist and colonialist discourse raises its claim to superiority” (Ashcroft, et al. 2000, 121). Unlike Said, who proposes a struggle of interrogating Orientalism and the misrepresentation of the Other, Bhabha (1994) proposes a postcolonial strategy that intervenes at the level of the sign (or ontology) as differences in culture and power are constituted through the social conditions of enunciation [and] without such a reinscription of the sign itself—without a transformation of the site of enunciation—there is the danger that the mimetic contents of a discourse will conceal the fact that the hegemonic structures of power are maintained in a position of authority through a shift in vocabulary in the position of authority. (242)

The transformation of the site of enunciation involves a “seizure of the sign” that allows subaltern agency to be articulated as relocation and reinscription: In the seizure of the sign [ . . . ] there is neither dialectical sublation nor the empty signifier: there is a contestation of the given symbols of authority that shift the terrains of antagonism. The synchronicity in the social ordering of symbols is challenged within its own terms, but the grounds of engagement have been displaced in a supplementary movement that exceeds those terms. This is the historical movement of hybridity, as camouflage, as a contesting, antagonistic agency functioning in the time lag of sign/symbol, which is a space in-between the rules of engagement. (193)

Bhabha’s project can be summarized as the “possibility of cultural contestation, the capacity to change the foundation of knowledge”

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(Bhabha 1990, 310) where the postcolonial agent must continuously work for the recognition of “the construction of culture and the invention of tradition” (Bhabha 1994, 172) by recognizing discourse as both “incitement and interdiction” (72) and by taking advantage of its doubleness, ambivalence, and undecidability (Kapoor 2008). This transformation of the foundation of knowledge and of sites of enunciation/signification is what opens up opportunities for living and being “otherwise”: What is crucial to such a vision of the future is the belief that we must not only change the narratives of our histories, but transform our sense of what it means to live, to be, in other times and different spaces, both human and historical. (Bhabha 1994, 256)

Cultural Diversity and Cultural Difference Bhabha’s distinction between cultural diversity and cultural difference provides an important tool for the analysis of discourses of multiculturalism and liberal pluralism in education. Bhabha considers that an understanding of the ambivalence of cultural identity can help overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity, whereby diversity is reified and celebrated as essentialist. If hybridity (difference) is present in any system of identity construction, then the notions of authenticity, originality, and origination—based on myths of pure and traceable origins—become indefensible. Therefore, in his conceptualization of cultural difference, Bhabha distinguishes cultural difference from cultural diversity in the sense that cultural difference emphasizes the nonessentialist relational and hybrid constructions of each culture; on the other hand, cultural diversity generally implies the coexistence of diverse cultures, each of which sees itself as an essentialist, authentic, pure whole with a fixed origin totally unrelated to and with the other cultures which are co-present in the presumed “diversity.” Bhabha places emphasis on the notion of cultural difference as a category that has the potential to engage the ambivalence of cultural authority: Cultural diversity is an epistemological object— culture as an object of empirical knowledge—whereas cultural difference is the process of enunciation of culture as “knowledgeable,” authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification. If cultural diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics or ethnology, cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements

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of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability and capacity. Cultural diversity is the recognition of pre-given cultural contents and customs; held in a time frame of relativism it gives rise to liberal notions of multiculturalism, cultural exchange or the culture of humanity. Cultural diversity is also the representation of a radical rhetoric of the separation of totalized cultures that live unsullied by the intertextuality of their historical locations, safe in the Utopianism of a mythic memory of a unique collective identity. (34)

Bhabha accuses discourses of multiculturalism and cultural relativism of preserving the “organicist” mythology of the host community or nation as a means of refusing to address cultural difference. As Moore- Gilbert (1997) summarizes: Multiculturalism does this by implicitly constructing cultures as essentially equivalent and therefore interchangeable in their various parts, leading inevitably to an emphasis on assimilation to the dominant. Cultural relativism, in Bhabha’s eyes, necessarily manages cultural difference in relation to a normative centre, which also serves to reinforce the authority of the dominant culture. (125)

Souza (2004) exemplifies Bhabha’s point in relation to multiculturalism and cultural relativism and introduces the problems with syncretism: Pluralism generally entails the simultaneous and pacific coexistence of various groups, cultures, languages, etc. in which each one is inserted in a concept of homogeneity: each one sees itself as whole, authentic, independent from others, existing in an empty and homogeneous space— in this context it is the strongest that benefits most. Syncretism, on the other hand, suggests the overcoming of difference in which two opposites come together forming a third entity, transforming, paradoxically, heterogeneity into homogeneity (131–32, my translation).

Contrary to the common view that equates syncretism with homogeneity, Bhabha sees all cultures as (always and already) hybrid and proposes the recognition of hybridity in order to transform attitudes and assumptions toward cultural difference. He suggests that the concept should be deployed as a strategy to disrupt homogeneity and challenge claims of colonial authority based on authenticity and origin (connected to a seamless notion of progress). For him, this

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would focus on the processes of construction of identities in the third space, emphasizing its conflictual structure and (subversive) potential “openness to the new.” Bhabha suggests that this “may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity” (Bhabha, 1994, 38 emphasis in original)— a model of cultural difference that destabilizes cultural supremacy (as well as dialectics and teleological readings of history), at the same time that it “respects and preserves the peculiar and multiple histories and identities of the marginalized”(MooreGilbert 1997, 124).

Bhabha’s Critics Bhabha is criticized primarily for the language and style of his texts. He is considered hermetic and vague in the application of his concepts and theories. Childs and Williams (1996) describe other accusations from different perspectives: (1) the situation of ambivalence in language and writing and not in colonialism; (2) the failure to reconcile his psychoanalytic approach with reading of actual colonial events (a lack of attention to history); and (3) the association of stereotypes with fetishism (when according to Holquist, it is just a normal “fixing” strategy of consciousness). From postcolonial perspectives leaning toward Marxist historicism, Bhabha is accused of obscuring the antagonism between colonizer and colonized, of disabling the articulation of liberation movements by claiming that anticolonial discourse necessitates different questions and different strategies, of a lack of a discourse of resistance that can answer colonialism back, of using Western theory rather than oppositional writing, and of representing colonialism as “transactional rather than conflictual” by reducing the social to textual representation (Childs and Williams 1996). It could be argued that his language and theoretical style are performative— an attempt to destabilize and change the norms of knowledge construction, which is consistent with post-structuralism. Most of the other criticisms can be considered anti-post-structuralist as well, aiming to articulate a teleological narrative of oppositional resistance. This conflict arises from differences in the conceptualization of power, agency, culture, and subjection of (neo-)Marxism and post-structuralism. From a perspective based on post-structuralism, power is pervasive and yet fractured, and agency and subjection are intimately related: “The type and degree of agency is tied to the type

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and degree of power” (Kapoor 2002, 656). A neo-Marxist perspective tends to see power as pervasive, but in a totalizing and relatively homogeneous way. Therefore, agency is conflated with resistance. It arises from “emancipation” or liberation from subjection and can be exercised as a counterpower launched from an uncontaminated space (from outside the hegemonic system). Therefore, the most consistent strategy is oppositional politics. Although seen as problematic by his critics, Bhabha’s analysis based on post-structuralism and psychoanalysis blurs the binary opposition of colonizer and colonized and constructs a robust critique of essentialism and multiculturalism, which are characteristics of mainstream discourses in education. Gayatri C. Spivak uses a relatively similar analysis based on post-structuralism, but, unlike Bhabha and Said, she concentrates on counterdiscourses to problematize subalternity, voice, ethnocentrism, and resistance itself, maintaining clear distinctions between hegemonic imperial power, native elites, and subalterns who “cannot speak.” Her work speaks more directly to the possibility of a postcolonial project of education “to come.”

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Chapter Three Gayatri Spivak’s Contribution and Critics

Spivak is a scholar who is notoriously very difficult to define (Ray 2009). She critiques imperialism from a feminist-deconstructivist standpoint using (and being critical of) Marxism to articulate a critique that makes explicit the connections between the cultural and economic dimensions of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization. She prefers to use the term “imperialism” rather than “colonialism” to point out that critics of colonial discourse often forget that colonialism is at work now, but in a different form. She is interested in examining “not just imperialism in the nineteenth- century sense, but as it was displaced into neo- colonialism and the international division of labor” (Spivak 1985, 7). As a result of this dimension of her work, she focuses on examinations of the representations of, and engagements with, the “Third World” subaltern, the positioning of migrants in the metropolis, and the role and place of education (both actual and potential) in relation to the encounter with the “subaltern.” In Spivak’s work, subalternity is defined as a space of difference where “discursive regimes locate/imprison the body or voice of the marginalized” (Schur 2002, 457). In Spivak’s words: Everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern— a space of difference. Now who would say that’s just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It’s not subaltern. (Spivak 1992, cited in De Kock 1992, 35)

However, similar to Bhabha, her style of writing and mode of critique make it very difficult to classify or present a clear-cut picture of her work, which is much more related to finding contradictions (aporias) to open up debates than to propose coherent and consistent solutions.

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On the other hand, her mode of analysis enables the emergence of productive ways of interrogating educational theories and practices, especially those concerned with globalization and social responsibility, and creates opportunities for the transformation of education toward more ethical encounters with Otherness.

The Link between Colonialism and Globalization: The West Becomes Global In her critique of imperialism, Spivak (1999a) states that colonialism started a process of global inequality and socioeconomic impoverishment for the Third World by incorporating the colonies into the international division of labor. She argues that globalization is a continuation of this process, and that “the subaltern woman is now to a rather large extent the support of production” (Spivak 1999a, 67). She emphasizes the role of the cultural dimension of imperialism in the creation of the Third World— a process of cultural production and domination she calls “worlding of the West as world” in which Western interests are universalized and naturalized in the rest of world (Spivak 1990). Kapoor (2004) points out that “for Spivak, the epistemic violence of imperialism has meant the transformation of the ‘Third World’ into a sign whose production has been obfuscated to the point that Western superiority and dominance are naturalized” (629). Spivak argues that this naturalization occurs by a disavowal of the history of imperialism and the unequal balance of power between the “First” and “Third” Worlds in the global capitalist system. The outcome of this naturalization is a discourse of modernization in which colonialism is either ignored or placed securely in the past, so that we think that it is over and does not affect— and has not affected— the construction of the present situation. The result is a sanctioned ignorance (constitutive disavowal) of the role of colonialism in the creation of the wealth of what is called the “First World” today, as well as the role of the international division of labor and exploitation of the Third World in the maintenance of this wealth. Within this naturalized logic, the beginning of the Third World is post-World War II “with ‘First’ World growth patterns serving as history’s guide and goal” (Kapoor 2004, 669). This ideology produces the discourse of “development” and policies of structural adjustment and free trade, which prompt Third World countries to buy (culturally, ideologically,

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socially, and structurally) from the “First” a self- contained version of the West, ignoring both its complicity with and production by the “imperialist project” (Spivak 1988). Also within this framework, poverty is constructed as a lack of resources, services, and markets, and of education (as the right subjectivity to participate in the global market), rather than a lack of control over the production of resources (Biccum 2005, 1017) or enforced disempowerment. This sanctioned ignorance, which disguises the worlding of the world, places the responsibility for poverty upon the poor themselves and justifies the project of development of the Other as a “civilizing mission.” For Spivak the epistemic violence of colonialism makes this sanctioned ignorance work both ways with complementary results, as the Third World forgets about the worlding and “wants” to be civilized/catch up with the West . In line with Said, Bhabha, and Fanon, Spivak affirms that the colonial power changes the subaltern’s perception of self and reality and legitimizes its cultural supremacy in the (epistemic) violence of creating an “inferior” other and naturalizing these constructs. Spivak illustrates that, in the “First World,” it reinforces Eurocentrism and triumphalism, as people are encouraged to think that they live in the center of the world, that they have a responsibility to “help the rest,” and that “people from other parts of the world are not fully global” (Spivak 2003a, 622). However, in terms of the reproduction of this ideology, for Spivak, the class culture is more important than geographic positioning: she refers to an international elite global professional class (consisting of people in or coming from the First and the Third Worlds) marked by access to the Internet and a culture of managerialism and of international nongovernmental organizations involved in development and human rights. She maintains that this global elite is prone to project and reproduce these ethnocentric and developmentalist mythologies onto the Third World “subalterns” they are ready to help to “develop.” Both the speed and ideological base of the interventions can potentially reproduce a great deal of damage to the subaltern, as such class-divided internationalism imposes “what belongs [to one class] upon the whole world” (Spivak 2008, 225). Spivak (in Hedge and Shome 2002) illustrates this pattern with reference to human rights and microenterprise interventions: Human rights interventions on the subaltern level produces nothing more than a spirit of litigious blackmail because there is no effort— there can’t be because of this speed of transaction one after the other— to suture the great subject of the Universal Declaration of Human

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Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education Rights to already existing patterns of conflict resolution that have been disenfranchised, delegitimized, for hundreds of years. So these are ways in which the subaltern is made to unspeak himself or herself, these ways in which the subaltern is converted into the production of data, the way in which through so- called microenterprise, without involvement in the infrastructure, the subaltern is made to produce a general will for exploitation. (285)

Double Bind of the Subaltern: Critique of Voice and Representation Spivak suggests that a baggage of sanctioned ignorances, as well as one’s institutional positionings, always mediate the representations and engagements with the Third World subaltern. In her critique, she shows that attempts to speak for the subaltern, to enable the subaltern to speak, or even to listen to the subaltern can very easily end up silencing the subaltern. Her most influential essay, “Can the subaltern speak?” (1988), draws on the example of the British intervention, and the local reaction, in relation to the practice of widow sacrifice (sati) in India to demonstrate how both colonial and “native” representations of the oppressed are similarly problematic. She examines how the British tried to ban the practice on the basis of their “civilizing mission” (justifying the imposition of the liberating and modernizing regime of Empire), which Spivak illustrates in the sentence “White men are saving brown women from brown men,” in contrast with the dominant Hindu opposition illustrated in the sentence “But they want to die” (committing a “pure” and “courageous” act) (Spivak 1988). This process confirmed the self-image of the British as civilizationally superior in comparison to both the native woman and the local oppressors (Moore- Gilbert 1997). For Spivak, the voice of the widows is ignored in this exchange. She concludes that “between Patriarchy and Imperialism, subject constitution and object formation, the figure of the woman disappears [ . . . ] There is no space from which the sexed subaltern can speak” (Spivak 1988, 306–7). She also uses the example of the political suicide of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri that was interpreted in the local scene in India as sati to illustrate that even when the subaltern tries to say something, she is “re-interpreted” from an ideological-political standpoint. When she asks, “Can the subaltern speak?” her point is that, in the examples she gives, two meanings of representation are conflated: that of “speaking for” (political representation) and that of “speaking about” or re-presenting (making a

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portrait “as people are or would like to be”). This conflation ends up silencing the widows and erasing the role and the complicity of the “representers” in the process of representing others. She also accuses Deleuze and Foucault of the same mistake of making gross generalizations when speaking of/for the Third World subaltern (referring to categories such as “the workers” or “the struggle”) through a discourse of emancipatory politics, assuming cultural solidarity among a heterogeneous people and ignoring the international divisions of labor, as well as their ties to a history of appropriation that reinforces their own prestige as interpreters of subaltern experience (Moore- Gilbert 1997): “The banality of leftist intellectuals’ list of self-knowing, politically canny subalterns stands revealed: representing them, the intellectuals represent themselves as transparent” (Spivak 1988, 275). Being transparent means being able to “escape the determinations of the general system of Western exploitation of the Third World— in which Western modes and institutions of knowledge (such as universities and cultural theory) are deeply implicated” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 89). Spivak suggests that progressive intellectuals representing themselves as the “saviours of marginality” and intervening “benevolently” to further the struggle of the subaltern for greater recognition and rights end up reproducing the same power relations that they seek to put an end to. The claim that the subaltern cannot speak means that she cannot speak in a way that would carry authority or meaning for nonsubalterns without altering the relations of power/knowledge that constitute the subaltern in the first place (Beverley 1999). However, Spivak also questions the assumption that the subaltern necessarily has a privileged insight into her own predicament— a pure or essential form of self- consciousness independent from the colonial discourses and practices that have constructed her as a social category. If the subaltern is constructed by the hegemony of the dominant (even as an intending subject of resistance), by definition, she cannot be autonomous (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 87). Thus, Spivak questions the subaltern’s ability to speak “for herself” (without being a mouthpiece) and suggests that, if the subaltern is speaking (given a voice) she is not a subaltern anymore, and that the terms determined for her speech (the space opened for her to speak) will affect what is going to be said and how her voice will be heard. Therefore, she is suspicious of attempts to retrieve a pure form of subaltern consciousness and suggests that the effort to produce a transparent or authentic (and heroic) subaltern

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is a desire of the intellectual to be benevolent or progressive that ends up silencing the subaltern once again (Kapoor 2004).

Western Knowledge Production Spivak’s critique of knowledge production provides a framework for the problematization of essentialism in looking at the South (or Southern cultures) as an object to be studied. Spivak rejects all definitions of identity that are based on essentialist conceptions of origins or belonging. Her argument relies on two premises: the decenterdness of the subject resulting from its emergence through the symbolic order inscribed in language and affected by a discontinuous network of contexts (referring to Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan); and that “any notion of a “pure” or “original” form of postcolonial (or subaltern) consciousness and identity implies that (neo)colonialism has had no role in constructing the identity of its subjects” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 86). However, she sees the desire for the most “authentic” and “pure” Third World subject coming from the West as well. She is critical of researchers/academics who place native informants as authentic and exotic “insiders” and claim that they (the Western researchers themselves) are just “good white people [who] do not speak for the blacks” (Spivak 1990, 121). This outside/ inside binary results either in a depoliticization of ethnicity or in the placement of the onus for change on the Third World subaltern (or the informant as its representative) (Kapoor 2004). Spivak suggests that the disavowal of geopolitical determinations or the complicity of the investigating subject (the material and cultural advantages resulting from imperialism and capitalism and the privileged identities as Westerner or native informant) in the attempt to champion marginality result in increased privilege for the investigating subject as s/he becomes liable to speak for the subaltern, justifying power and domination, naturalising Western superiority, essentialising ethnicity, or asserting ethnocultural or class identity, all in the name of the subaltern. (Kapoor 2004, 631)

This can actually harm the subaltern as it may reinforce racist, imperialist conceptions that affect the possibility of the subaltern being heard (ibid.). Spivak’s suspicions of the benevolence of Western

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engagements in the name of Third World peoples has led her to conclude that “whether organised by a liberal-humanist vision, or by the anti-humanism of Foucault and Gilles Deleuze [ . . . ] such interventions characteristically embody the same kind of vision as that which informs the imperialist narratives promising redemption to the colonized subject” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 77). She subjects benevolent engagements to scrutiny, reminding us that such engagements always offer the risk of exacerbating the problems they are trying to address (ibid.). Besides her critique of engagements with subalterns or “native informants,” Spivak’s critique also focuses on the production of knowledge about the Third World. She stands with Foucault in saying that knowledge is always loaded with power and that getting to know (or “discursively framing”) the Third World is also about getting to discipline and monitor it, to have a more manageable Other: and helping the subaltern is often a reaffirmation of the social Darwinism implicit in “development,” in which “help” is framed as “the burden of the fittest.” (Spivak 2004, 57)

She sees the “field” data collection—that she calls “information retrieval”— carried out by Western university researchers (with personal/institutional interests) in the global South as another form of imperialism in which the Third World provides resources for the First World. Spivak argues that this cultural imperialism supplements socioeconomic imperialism as the Third World produces “the wealth and the possibility of the cultural self-representation of the First World” (Spivak 1990, 96). As an illustration, she contends that it is the manipulation of the Third World labor that sustains the resources of the U.S. academy that produces the ideological supports for that very manipulation (ibid.). Spivak identifies two specific aspects of this cultural imperialism. First is the (benevolent) appropriation and reinscription of the Third World as an Other—which can result in an exoticization and “Orientalization” of the Third World, an approach to the margin “as a tourist” which in turn advances the project of knowing the Third World to control it. The second aspect is the transformation of the South as a repository of data and the Western academy as the center for value-added theory that transform the raw material collected in the (Southern) “field” into (Western) “knowledge”— keeping Western academy and the Western academic at the center.

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“Southern” Minorities Living in the “North”: Trap of Tokenism and Idealized Representation Spivak maintains that one cannot leave one’s own baggage— or historical, geographic, and class positionings—when encountering the Third World, and that her own discipline and positioning, as a Third World academic in the West, is complicit in the reproduction of forms of Western hegemonic power over the Third World. This is one of the reasons why she looks into the role of Third World migrants living in the West, who take advantage of discourses of multiculturalism and marginality to essentialize their ethnic identity and romanticize their national origins. For Spivak (1996), “Liberal multiculturalism is interested, basically, in bottom-line national origin validation” (83). As Hoofd (2006) points out, Spivak discusses how the revalidation of the West (which is dependent on national origin validation) and the fantasy of the Cartesian subject as the power center of evolution and action (whether capitalist or liberatory) rely upon the constant precarious “reproduction of marginality.” People who can empower themselves through this claim of marginality, then, have the paradoxical effect of becoming the agents of Eurocentrism, since they are a “group susceptible to upward mobility [that pose as] authentic inhabitants of the margin” (Spivak 1993, 59) and as such seemingly prove and extend the application of the humanist subject and its technologies (Hoofd 2006). For Spivak, this attitude can lead to ahistorical or fundamentalist claims and claims about the native informant as keeper of ethnic or subaltern knowledge. She implies that prioritizing the “ethnic” may end up “rewarding those who are already privileged or upwardly mobile, at the expense of the subaltern” (Kapoor 2004, 631). Spivak claims that upwardly mobile Third Worlders can also play an important role in the commodification of difference by packaging their culture and selling it to a niche-market. She proposes that this new nativism conceals a reverse ethnocentrism that can lead to the perpetration of a new “Orientalism” (ibid.). Spivak (1999a) states that the migrant insistence on cultural markers through multicultural trends does not help undo Orientalism or marginalization: Demands for “cultural” autonomy within a multicultural state is no more than a reaction to xenophobia and the lack of access to untrammeled upward class mobility, combined with reaction-formation to cover over the guilt at having left the very “culture” that one wishes to conserve. (82)

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Pedagogical Implications Unlike Bhabha and Said, Spivak’s writings specifically address educational issues, with particular attention paid to pedagogical processes. Although she does not delineate a comprehensive educational project, she (1999b) offers a series of principles for a pedagogy for cultural suturing that could prompt “a re-reading of the idea of being human, which is irrevocably associated with the ability to think the other, to be intended toward the other”(46). She refers to this relational stance as an ethical responsibility toward the Other, “before will” (Spivak, 2004). She conceptualizes education “to come” in the humanities as an “uncoercive rearrangement of desires” (Spivak 2004, 526) which would work (in different ways) as a supplementary education both for the metropolis and for the rural “subalterns.” This education should aim to build the habit of democratic civility through the activation of an ethical imperative conceptualized as a responsibility to the Other (as answerability or accountability) and not “for” the Other (as the burden of the fittest). In this sense, she refers to the necessity of addressing the epistemic discontinuity between “those who ‘right wrongs’ [from above] and those [below] who are wronged” (Spivak 2004, 563). She affirms that this discontinuity “undergirds the question of who always rights and who is perennially wronged” (527). Kapoor summarizes her project as “a deconstructive position followed by a process of self-implication” (Kapoor 2004, 640). Four distinct propositions in relation to this project of establishing an “ethical relation to the Other” are analyzed below. The first is “negotiation from within.” In contrast with what is implied in Orientalism, Spivak rejects the idea that there is an uncontaminated space “outside” discourse, culture, institutions, or geopolitics, where one has access by virtue of lived experience or cultural origin or can claim purity, transparency, or triumphalism and launch a critique without being implicated in it. Therefore, rather than a simple rejection of Western cultural institutions, texts, values, and theoretical practices, she advocates negotiation from within, which does not mean that this task is to be done uncritically. She suggests that “opponents have to be fought on their own ground with their own methods being used against them, at least in the first instance” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 78). In other words, she argues that people should engage in a persistent critique of hegemonic discourses and representations as they inhabit them. This is why she promotes “deconstructive” strategies

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for the critique of imperialism (Spivak 1976). For her, deconstruction “points out that in constructing any kind of an argument, we must move from implied premises, that must necessarily obliterate or finesse certain possibilities that question the validity of these premises in an absolute justifiable way” (Spivak 1999a, 104). She also insists that deconstruction does not say there is no subject, there is no truth, there is no history. It simply questions the privileging of identity so that someone is believed to have the truth. It is not the exposure of error. It is constantly looking into how truths are produced . . . That is why deconstruction doesn’t say logocentrism is a pathology, or metaphysical enclosures are something you can escape. Deconstruction, if one wants a formula, is, amongst other things, a persistent critique of what one cannot not want. (Spivak 1994, 278)

As the enterprise of deconstruction always falls prey to deconstruction itself, Spivak sees it as producing a “success-in-failure” that creates “constructive questions and corrective doubts” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 112) that lead to better practice. For her, deconstruction as a tool is a political safeguard against fundamentalisms and totalitarianisms (however seemingly benevolent) in its suggestion that master words such as “the worker” or “the woman” have no political referents: For when you are succeeding in political mobilizations based on the sanctity of those master words, then it begins to seem as if these narratives, these characteristics, really existed. That is when all kinds of guilt tripping, card-naming arrogance, self-aggrandizement and so on, begin to spell the beginning of an end. (Spivak 1990, 104)

However, she firmly maintains that deconstruction cannot found a political project of any kind. If it is foundational, it becomes “something like wishy-washy pluralism on the one hand, or a kind of irresponsible hedonism on the other” (ibid.). She insists on the strategy of unsettling the dominant discourse from within because she believes that a counterdiscourse of reversal (e.g., valorizing East over West to counter Orientalism) involves remaining within the logic of the opponent and “is more liable to cancellation or re-appropriation by the dominant than a ‘tangential’ or ‘wild’ guerrilla mode of engagement” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 85). A similar pattern is found in the valorization of specificity over universalism: “To every invocation of

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singularity is attached the double bind of the call for rational universalism” (Spivak 2008, 13). She suggests that while reversal is a necessary position or stage in certain contexts, it must be followed by the displacement of the terms of opposition (through self-reflexivity/ deconstruction)— or a position and counterposition will continue to legitimize one another (ibid.). This negotiation from within could be illustrated, for example, in the interrogation and rearticulation of contemporary discourses of “social responsibility”: We are now teaching our children in the North, and no doubt in the North of the South, that to learn the movement of finance capital is to learn social responsibility. It is in the remote origins of this conviction— that capitalism is responsibility— that we might locate the beginning of the failure of the aboriginal groups of the kind I am describing: their entry into (a distancing from) modernity as a gradual slipping into atrophy. (Spivak 2004, 551).

Therefore, educators interested in working against systems that create subalternity could use self-reflexivity and deconstruction, not only to analyze the epistemic and structural violence of capitalism, and the role of education in preserving class apartheid, but to resignify “social responsibility” in their contexts in ways that are ethically responsive to the Other. Her second proposition is that critics need to acknowledge and be scrupulously vigilant (hyper self-reflexive) in relation to their complicities. Spivak makes it impossible to conceive of an “innocent or inherently politically correct denunciation of (neo)colonialism derived from an unexamined identification with, or “benevolence” towards, the oppressed” (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 112). While Said, in Orientalism (1978), sees colonial history as a continuous narrative of oppression and exploitation, Spivak sees oppression, domination, and their effects as much more complex. In contrast to Said and Bhabha, she enacts this complexity by consistently and scrupulously acknowledging the ambiguities in her own position as a privileged Westernbased critic of (neo)colonialism, and draws attention quite explicitly to her “complicitous” position as an academic located in a workplace engaged in the ideological production of neocolonialism (MooreGilbert 1997). This acknowledgment of complicities and complexities also affects the way she addresses imperialism: while never underestimating its destructive impact, she nonetheless insists on a recognition

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of its positive effects too, which she calls “enabling violations,” comparing them to children of rape (Spivak 1994, 277). Her third proposition is that for an ethical encounter with the Third World, people should unlearn their privilege and learn to learn from below (from the subaltern [Spivak 2004]). The effect of such learning would be an undoing of the “consciousness of superiority lodged in the self” (Spivak 2004, 534) through a suspension of conviction that I am necessarily better, I am necessarily indispensible, I am necessarily the one to rights wrongs, I am necessarily the end product to which history happened, and that New York is necessarily the capital of the world. (532)

Kapoor has summarized this learning as the development of predispositions to “retrace the itinerary of our prejudices and learning habits (from racism, sexism and classism to academic elitism and ethnocentrism), stop thinking of ourselves as better or fitter and unlearn dominant systems of knowledge and representation” (Kapoor 2004, 641). McEwan (2009) interprets unlearning privilege as a double recognition: First, recognizing that one’s race, ethnicity, class, gender and nationality create relative privilege. Second, having recognized one’s relative privileges, recognizing one’s own prejudice and learned responses that are conditioned by these privileges. In short, our relative privileges have given us a limited knowledge, but have prevented us from gaining other knowledge, which we are not equipped to understand. This is very different from Western rationalism, which, since the Enlightenment, has deemed that the world is knowable through observation. (68)

Beverley (1999) defines “unlearning privilege” as “working against the grain of our interests and prejudices by contesting the authority of the academy and knowledge centers at the same time that we continue to participate in them and to deploy that authority as teachers, researchers, administrators and theorists” (Beverley 1999, 31). Moore- Gilbert (1997) refers to unlearning as the “imperative to reconsider positions that once seemed self- evident and normal” (98). Kapoor (2004) concludes that unlearning means “stopping oneself from always wanting to correct, teach, theorise, develop, colonise, appropriate, use, record, inscribe, enlighten” (Kapoor 2004, 642). He quotes Alcoff’s statement that “the impetus to always be the speaker and speak in all situations must be seen for what it is: a desire for

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mastery and domination” (Alcoff 1999, 24 cited in Kapoor 2004, 642). This implies that, in representing the Other “over there,” careful scrutiny is needed “over here” (ibid.). Spivak has given up using the term “unlearning privilege” in recent years, but she insists on the term “learning to learn from below,” which in any case implies unlearning privilege and “giving up convictions of triumphalist superiority” (2004, 551). She argues that learning from below is an old recipe that generally results in more of the same. She claims that learning from the subaltern requires a previous step: learning to learn— or clearing the way for an ethical relation with the subaltern. She continues to warn against ambivalent structures of “enabling violations” like human rights, which generally promote the righting of wrongs as the burden of the fittest. In this case, for example, learning to learn from below demands learning about “human wrongs,” the legacies that have created the position of the dispenser of rights (and his sanctioned ignorances), about the historical conditions/contingencies for the emergence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and about the current use of the human rights agenda for political and economic ends or “the great economic circuits that often remotely determine the shots in the human rights sphere” (Spivak 2004, 539). She affirms that [a]ll that seems possible to surmise is that redressing work of Human Rights must be supplemented by an education that can continue to make unstable the presupposition that the reasonable writing of wrongs is inevitably the manifest destiny of groups— unevenly classdivided, embracing North and South— that remain poised to right them; and that, among the receiving groups, wrongs will inevitably proliferate with unsurprising regularity. Consequently, the groups that are dispensers of human rights must realize that, just as the natural Rights of Man were contingent upon the historical French Revolution, and the Universal Declaration upon the historical events that led to the Second World War, so also is the current emergence, of the human rights model as the global dominant, contingent upon the turbulence in the wake of the dissolution of imperial formations and global economic restructuring. (Spivak 2004, 530)

Without this previous learning, the result is the unexamined reproduction of Eurocentrism, which prompts the imposition of concepts such as “democracy,” “nation,” “participation” as universal, natural, good, unproblematic, and incontestable, while the contexts and historical circumstances in which these concepts were written are forgotten

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(Kapoor 2004, 2008). Learning to learn from below is related to “a suspension of belief that one is indispensable, better or culturally superior; it is refraining from thinking that the Third World is in trouble and that one has the solutions; it is resisting the temptation of projecting oneself or one’s world onto the Other” (Spivak 2002, 6). It involves realizing a historically established discontinuity between the subalterns and the activists and educators who are trying “to help,” and changing the notion of responsibility as the duty of the “fitter self” for the other into responsibility toward the Other— as being called by and answerable to the Other, “before will” (Spivak 2004, 535–37). Rather than the ‘“doing of the right thing,” the ethics Spivak proposes is an “openness towards the imagined agency of the other” (541). She also proposes that one needs to learn to work without guarantees based on what she calls “success-in-failure.” Kapoor (2004) summarizes that, in practice, this means becoming aware of the vulnerabilities and blind spots of one’s power and representational systems. It is accepting failure, or put positively, seeing failure as success. The implication is that [ . . . ] we need to learn to be open, not just, in the short-term, to the limits of our knowledge systems, but also to the long term logic of our profession: enabling the subaltern while working ourselves out of our jobs. (644)

Spivak (1999b) also outlines an imperative to reimagine the planet, where the “planet overwrites the globe” (44) so that planetarization controls globalization by deflecting the rational imperative of capitalist globalization toward “the indefinite radical alterity of the other space of a planet” (82). She explains: Globalization is achieved by the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere . . . It is not fanciful to say that, in the grid work of electronic capital, we achieve something that resembles that abstract ball covered in latitudes and longitudes, cut by virtual lines— once the equator and the tropics, now drawn increasingly by other requirements—“imperatives”— of Geographical Information Systems. The globe is on our computers. No one lives there; and we think that we can aim to control globality. The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan. It is not really amenable to a near contrast with the globe. (44)

She proposes an education of epistemic transformation based on persuasion and not coercion, where the idea of the planet inscribes

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“collective responsibility as a right” (56) through an elusive and discontinuous experience of alterity, “as an experience of the impossible” (ibid.). She suggests that if we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us, it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away— and thus to think of it is already to transgress, for, in spite of our forays into what we metaphorize, differently, as outer and inner space, what is above and beyond our own reach is not continuous with us as it is not, indeed, discontinuous. (46)

In conclusion, Spivak combines a Marxist critique of capitalism with deconstruction, making capitalism and the distribution of wealth and labor in the world central to her analysis. She is much sharper than Bhabha in her critique of the role of local elites (including the academic elites) who claim authenticity and do not acknowledge their complicity in the reproduction of hegemonic processes. She also challenges the notion of an uncontaminated or authentic voice, knowledge, or epistemology of specific groups, “the periphery” or the subaltern. She argues that this strategy may lead to ethnocentrism and to the unexamined romanticization of the subaltern or of social movements, resulting in fabricated solidarity (that ignores problematic power relations within), reverse Orientalism and reverse racism, or the substitution of one power for another. She lays the foundations for a position of “critical engagement” with social relations where the critic is implied in her critique and where both romanticization and censorship of the subaltern become untenable.

Spivak’s Critics Like Bhabha, Spivak is criticized for the language and style of her texts, as well as for the lack of theoretical “coherence” in her (selected) use of Marxist methodologies combined with post-structuralism (Moore- Gilbert 1997, 100). Her deconstructive approach has also been the subject of criticism. She has been interpreted as saying that the subaltern cannot speak and has no agency (Parry 1987; MooreGilbert 1997; Kapoor 2004) and has responded that her argument is that elite or hegemonic discourses are deaf to the subaltern even when he or she speaks or resists (Spivak 1999a), so it is not a matter

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of denying the subaltern agency or insurgency. Kapoor (2004) lists other criticisms: (a) that the acknowledgement of complicity paralyses the intellectual and the pursuit of knowledge (Varadharajan 1995); (b) that, although she traces how the subaltern is silenced, she does not offer ways to validate and support the subaltern (Moore- Gilbert 1997); (c) that she reinforces the West’s self-obsession by focusing too much on self-reflexivity (Li 2006); and (d) that her pedagogical project, which requires a one-to-one encounter with the subaltern, is untenable (Kapoor 2004). Li (2006) provides an interesting and important critique of Spivak’s work. His work on primitivist discourses shows how modern (Cartesian) thought has often placed difference at the service of ethnocentrism to justify its own hegemony: Nineteenth century primitivism, which relied generally on evolutionary arguments to delegitimize European superiority (and European colonialism) gave way to twentieth- century primitivism that used the concept of the primitive to critique a Western civilization seemingly mired in chronic crisis. In the earlier primitivisms, the primitive is regarded as inferior and justifiably superseded by modern civilization, whereas in the later version the primitive is seen as a corrective to the malaise of modernity. But in both cases the primitive is known, given a value, and exists only as an anti-thesis to the modern West, which not only remains the central point of reference but also the source from which the idea of the primitive emerged in the first place. (15)

Li identifies the emergence of another form of primitivism in twentyfirst- century scholarship, which he calls neo-primitivism. Different from the two other forms of primitivism, where difference was classified as either negative (through ethnocentric blindness) or as positive (through ethnocentric generosity), the neo-primitivist stance frames difference as “incommensurable and irrecuperable.” This conceptualization of difference, according to Li, can still be used to mark the epistemic superiority of a Western subject who needs the absolute alterity of a radically different Other (a “primitive” antithesis of the West) to mark its limits and “achieve a non-ethnocentric, critically reflexive, ethical stance that he aspires to” (19). This stance embeds an awareness of its own limitations, however this is “nonetheless an awareness that confers greater knowledge and enlightenment” (23). Li explains:

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This anti- ethnocentric generosity, in turn, allows [Western subjects] to gain a position of knowledge not available to the Other to whom they address their generosity. They are able to de- center their own knowledge, critique their culture’s ethnocentrism, and in the process become aware of their culture’s limitation, an awareness they do not attribute to others. They achieve a critical reflexivity made possible but not necessarily shared by the Other. (20)

Spivak insists that the strength of subalterns’ opposition lies in them being “non-narrativisable” (1990, 144), in their refusal to be the objects of “emancipator benevolence” (135). Li sees the refusal of categorizing and naming the Other/subaltern, of keeping the subaltern beyond the reach of modern knowledge claims, in Spivak’s work, as an attempt to refuse the ethnocentric appropriation of the Other or the romanticization of the Other as an alternative to the self. He claims to have identified a potential contradiction between, on the one hand, constructing the subaltern Other as an absolute alterity, as something that cannot be recuperated, and on the other, Spivak’s invitation to learn to learn from the subaltern: Any form of accessibility to subalternity, if it is not to become another ethno- or Euro- centric act of violation and appropriation, has to acknowledge a subalternity that must, paradoxically remain impenetrable and inaccessible. (27)

Li sees in Spivak a concealed desire for the subaltern’s radical alterity to “save us” by providing a way out of modern civilization: the Other is placed radically apart, “defined by our drama of guilt, remorse and redemption” (30). For Li, the risk of this conceptualization is the creation of a Western fantasy that the subaltern herself will find difficult to live up to. What Li identifies is indeed an unintentional potential outcome of postcolonial theory in general if it is confined to the bounds of abstract discussions or if it is reified into a recipe for purely rational and unequivocal engagements with the Other. Beyond seeing difference as a negative deficit (through blind ethnocentrism), turning it into a domesticated “positive” (through ethnocentric benevolence), or placing it in the space of the irrecuperable for the purpose of knowledge trading in academic markets, there are other contexts of practice where the idea of the Other as incommensurably different opens

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productive possibilities for relationships. Spivak hints toward this possibility in her conceptualization of a “unifying moment”: People are similar not by virtue of being similar, but by virtue of producing a differential, or by virtue of thinking of themselves as other than a self-identical example of the species. (Spivak 1990, 136)

When successful in relativizing modern rational thought, postcolonial theory can enable a form of relationality that upholds this possibility of undefined uniqueness that can work against arrogance, hegemony, and ethnocentrism, that is comfortable with complexity and uncertainty, that welcomes equivocal and provisional certainties and that does not require consensus or a common language, identity, or cause to assert the legitimacy and desirability of difference as a force of complementarity (of insufficient, interconnected selves) rather than a force of threat or separation (of self-sufficient and identical selves). In this sense, I see a resonance of Spivak’s insights in the words of postcolonial poet Jacqui Alexander (2005), who brings metaphysical questions into the picture: Since colonisation has produced fragmentation and dismemberment at both the material and psychic levels, there is a yearning for wholeness, often expressed as a yearning to belong, a yearning that is both material and existential, both psychic and physical, and which, when satisfied, can subvert, and ultimately displace the pain of dismemberment. (281)

Alexander suggests that strategies of membership in coalitions, like those of citizenship, community, family, political movement, nationalism, and solidarity in identity or ideology, although important, have probably not addressed the source of this yearning. For Alexander, these coalitions have reproduced the very fragmentation and separation that she identifies as the root of the problem. She states that the source of this yearning is a “deep knowing that we are in fact interdependent— neither separate, nor autonomous” (282). She explains: As human beings we have a sacred connection to each other, and this is why enforced separations wreak havoc in our Souls. There is a great danger then, in living lives of segregation. Racial segregation. Segregation in politics. Segregated frameworks. Segregated and

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compartmentalised selves. What we have devised as an oppositional politics has been necessary, but it will never sustain us, for a while it may give us some temporary gains (which become more ephemeral the greater the threat, which is not a reason not to fight), it can never ultimately feed that deep place within us: that space of the erotic, that space of the Soul, that space of the Divine. (282)

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Chapter Four Comparative Framework: Selected Theories of Institutional Suffering

In this chapter, I offer a situated comparison of postcolonial theory with selected theories that aim to work against institutional suffering. My intention is not to provide an authoritative “last word” on similarities and differences between theories, but to offer categories of analyses such as approaches to humanism, nation-states, private property, and so on, that can spark further dialogue between different fields. The rationale is that the productive power of comparing differences and similarities in these approaches lies in the acknowledgment of their contextual contributions and insufficiencies, as well as their potential to bring each other into creative crisis and into something new. I do recognize that whatever is presented in this chapter is one possible interpretation of such approaches, that meanings and definitions will always be produced “in context” and that, therefore, what I present here will be highly contested. I welcome the contestation as an opening for relationship and dialogue. Before presenting a framework for comparison, I offer a brief outline of my preferred postcolonial theoretical framework and then highly selective (and grossly oversimplified) outlines of the approaches that will be included in the comparison. In order to instigate curiosity and engagement beyond dominant perspectives in education, I have chosen to include approaches that have originated in other fields and whose translations into education are still not “mainstream.” These include: (de)colonial studies, international indigenous studies, and critical race theory. I use the metaphor of “lenses” in order to emphasize the idea of theory as a tool-for-thinking rather than a description- of-truth: a specific lens will provide a focus of analysis that is consistent with

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its purpose—what it was made for. Therefore, lenses will be limited by their scope, the aims and ability of whoever is handling it, where they are placed, the thickness, constitution and quality of their material, and the dust and dirt that they may have accumulated over the years. No lens will offer a “true” and complete picture of an entire landscape (neither will a naked eye), but perhaps, comparing imperfect pictures (taking the constitution of lenses into account) may help improve the lenses, the processing techniques and the pictures themselves, in the future. Thus, the table on pages 59–60 (table 4.1) is offered as a pedagogical tool or a heuristic one that does not engage with the complexity of each lens and that, therefore, invites deconstruction.

One (Possible) Discursive Postcolonial Lens My preferred postcolonial framework, which I refer to in this book as simply “a postcolonial lens,” informs and structures an analysis of knowledge production and power relations that attempts to identify ethnocentric, paternalistic, depoliticized, ahistorical, and hegemonic tendencies (or assumptions of cultural supremacy) and their implications in the discursive production of self and Other in institutionalized discourses. Central to this framework and analyses are colonial violences and their implications, as well as the acknowledgment and strategic appropriations of “enabling violations” of colonialism as strategies of resistance and transformation. This postcolonial lens: • examines the causal relationship between cultural/epistemic processes (claims of truth), relational/political possibilities (operations of power) and material circumstances (unequal distributions of wealth and labor); • connects the production of knowledge with the generation of wealth and creation of poverty; • problematizes the epistemic privilege of producers of knowledge, dispensers of rights, educators, researchers, and representatives of the oppressed; • challenges unexamined benevolence and charity (i.e., help as the burden of the fittest); • works against subalternity toward an ethical imperative toward the Other, “before will” (Spivak 2004, 535) based on an uncoercive relationship;

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Relationship construction, vision of the future

Agent and purpose of contestation in academia

Possible strategies to address the problem

Nature of problem

Problem Coloniality of power as the basis of epistemic racism Darker side of Eurocentered modernity: violent appropriation and exploitation of capitalism border thinking; transmodern ethics and philosophy of liberation; critical cosmopolitanism

Decolonial studies lens

Territorial occupation, genocide, continuous epistemic, geographical and economic subjugation, pathologizing practices

Dispossession, destitution, cultural loss, historical trauma and its effects

Indigenous studies lens

Open agenda against subalternity (constant re-negotiation) grounded on ethical imperative of mutual ongoing learning

Solidarity with struggles Self- determination based on and social movements rejuvenated and revitalized in the periphery traditional values that should provide alternative to current unequal system

ethical (noncoercive) self- government, cultural revival, relationship with the decolonizing methodologies, Other; learning to learn multiepistemic governance, from below; taking traditional spirituality/healing advantage of discursive ambivalence to renegotiate meaning and power in Third Spaces Teachers and scholars Teachers and scholars Indigenous teachers, academics and tackling colonialism within from the global critics decolonizing their contexts and academia and society and periphery opening seeking to mainstream indigenous reaching out to the Other spaces for uncontested knowledges without domesticating peripheral knowledges them

Cultural supremacy at the basis of justification for inequalities European colonialism based on Enlightenment humanism and its legacies

Postcolonial lens

Critical Race theory lens

Continued

Change the quality of lives of people of color in society (social mobility)

Black and colored teachers and scholars encouraging multiple consciousness guided by voices of the oppressed

Endemic racism, colorblindness Failure of liberalism to deliver substantive changes Confluence of property rights and human/civil rights based on the principle of interest convergence (i.e., civil rights benefitting mainly white people and not changing dominance); whiteness as property critical white studies; storytelling and counter stories

Table 4.1 A pedagogical comparative framework of selected approaches against institutional suffering

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Potential sympathetic critique

Cultural supremacy, civilizing mission, ethnocentric benevolence, Cartesian subject, Enlightenment humanism, universal reason, rational consensus, nation- state ideology, “Orientalism”, essentialism, unexamined universalization of Western schooling, “development,” human rights, democracy Overreliance on Western Teleological project of theories “liberation” Lack of a vision that desire for consensus in could inspire a subaltern the periphery, risk revolution of essentialism and Focuses on work with romanticization of privileged audiences oppressed voices with limited relevance for the oppressed, risk of ‘trashing of modernity’, unintentional reproduction of Cartesian mode of being

Focus of contestation

Indigenous studies lens

Risk of essentialism (as internal colonialism), ambivalent role of indigenous elites, unexamined hope for an alternative to modernity

Geopolitical economy of Governance, philosophy, sociology, knowledge production education, health, social work, law in sociology, social sciences, and philosophy Hegemony, Primitivism, teleological time, property Eurocentrism, linear/ ownership, nation- state ideology, developmental humanism, Christianity, Western time, capitalism rationality, individualism, Western (accumulation schooling, pathologizing practices, of wealth), deficit theorizing anthropocentrism, global designs

literary, management, development studies, international relations, education

Decolonial studies lens

Locus of contestation

Postcolonial lens

Table 4.1 Continued

Romanticization, essentialism, salvationist narrative concealed as liberating voices; Although there is a critique of property rights, the pragmatist solution based on human rights (for social mobility) uncritically reproduces humanist ideals and does not grant enough challenge to capitalist ontology,

Race, racism, property rights, whiteness, objectivity, neutrality

Law, governance, education

Critical Race theory lens

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• attempts to move discourses beyond ethnocentric hegemonies toward a politics of “friendship to come” (Spivak 2003b, 13) and “the turning of identitarian monuments into documents for reconstellation” (ibid. 91); • champions hyper-self-reflexivity as a constant examination of complicities and a safeguard against fundamentalisms and moral-high-ground critical engagements as it postulates that there is no “outside” position where one can launch a critique without being implicated in it; • submits progressive initiatives to work for/with the subaltern to rigorous scrutiny (i.e., deconstruction) in relation to origins and implications of assumptions with a view to produce more informed and ethical practices; • is highly skeptical (but not entirely dismissive) of Western/Enlightenment discourses while recognizing its own implication in it, it seeks to identify features of these discourses that can sustain ethnocentrism and hegemony (such as obsessions with Cartesian thought, universal reasoning, consensus, transcendence, anthropocentrism, nation-state ideology, teleological readings of history, ideas of development as economic growth, etc.) while also seeking to transform these discourses from within (intervening at the level of the “sign” taking advantage of their ambivalence); • highlights complexity, uncertainty, provisionality and complicity in strategies of working against the grain of (neo)colonial and imperial processes.

Three sets of assumptions inform the construction of this lens: assumptions about discourse, culture, and unequal power relations. First, discourses are conceptualized as “heavily policed cognitive systems which control and delimit both the mode and the means of representation in a given society” (Gandhi 1999, 77). This conceptualization of discourse recognizes the instability of signification, the location of the subject in language or discourse, and the contingency of knowledge, which implies that (1) there is no secure outside ground on the basis of which different representations can be objectively studied or compared; (2) no sign is identical with what it signifies— there is always a gap between the signifier and the signified; and (3) meaning is not self-present in the sign or in the text, but is the result of interpretation from the space of the gap or slippage between the signified and the signifier, also known as “differánce” (Loomba 1998). Second, culture is a dynamic (and incommensurable) process of reproduction/ contestation of meaning in the act of survival (Bhabha 1994), hybrid by nature and thus rendering claims to purity, authenticity, and origination untenable. However, strategic essentialism is recognized as an important strategy of resistance albeit remaining within the logic of

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the oppressor and potentially reproducing ethnocentrism and hegemony “internally.” Third, cultural supremacy is the projection of a local (European) epistemology as universal, unmarked, and neutral, which resulted in the creation of “myths of modernity,” which dictate that the modern (Western) civilization is the most developed culture and has an obligation to civilize, uplift, educate, and develop the lesser (barbarian) cultures (Mignolo 2000b). Hence, the idea of an ethnocentric (global) hegemony (used in this book as a synonym of cultural supremacy) is a way of knowing and representing that claims universality for itself, forecloses its origins and projects itself as “global” through the neocolonial dominance of the Western power that it sustains. Whenever I refer to a “postcolonial perspective” or “postcolonial theory” in parts 2 and 3 of this book, I am referring to the framework described in this section and acknowledging that other frameworks or sets of assumptions would provide a different basis for analysis which would produce different outcomes.

A Decolonial Studies Lens The decolonial studies lens I present here is based on the work of what is known as the “Latin American Modernity/Coloniality Group.” This group consists of four Latin American scholars (Enrique Dussel, Anibal Quijano, Arturo Escobar, and Walter Mignolo) who have published in dialogue with one another in the areas of philosophy and social sciences, about the importance of reimagining modernity as a project of violent epistemic and territorial expansion in order to clear its past and point toward different futures. I start with a description of two key paradigms of modernity as presented by Enrique Dussel, and two macronarratives as described by Walter Mignolo in order to introduce the concept of “coloniality of power” developed by Anibal Quijano. Next, I examine the implications of the paradigms and metanarratives described in relation to the internal critiques of modernity and what Mignolo calls the “geopolitics of knowledge.” I also introduce the concept of “colonial difference” developed by Mignolo, Dussel’s perception of the limits of the civilizing mission of modernity, as well as a summary of the group’s common ground in relation to knowledge production and political articulation. Dussel (1998) asserts that the question of modernity is characterized by two opposing paradigms: one Eurocentric, and the other planetary. The Eurocentric paradigm constructs modernity as exclusively European, something that developed in the Middle Ages and

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subsequently expanded to other parts of the world. He argues that, within this paradigm, Europe is believed to have exceptional internal characteristics that justify its superiority over other cultures. This superior state within this paradigm, according to Dussel, is achieved through rationality. On the other hand, the planetary paradigm positions Europe as the “center” of a world-system, not as an independent system that has expanded. This centrality comes from the comparative advantage gained from the colonization and integration of Amerindia, which becomes Europe’s first “periphery.” It portrays modernity as the product and not the cause of European planetarization, and Eurocentrism as the superideology that establishes the legitimacy of the domination of the world system by its center, justifying its “management” functions. Within this perspective, modernity is a planetary phenomenon, which people from its peripheries have heavily (and forcibly) contributed to, but these contributions have not been acknowledged. Mignolo (2002a) distinguishes two macronarratives that can be associated with the paradigms described by Dussel: that of Western civilization and that of modern world-systems. According to Mignolo, the former is a philosophical narrative associated with literature, philosophy, and the history of ideas, beginning in ancient Greece and developing toward modernity, which began in the eighteenth century. In contrast, the modern world-systems paradigm is a narrative of the social sciences that situates the beginning of the process of world-systems formation in the incorporation of the Americas in the Atlantic commercial circuit in the fifteenth century connected to the beginning of capitalism. Mignolo explores the effects of both narratives on colonized peoples: “The colonized areas of the world were targets of Christianization and the civilizing mission, as the project of the narrative of Western civilization, and they became the target of development, modernization, and the new marketplace as the project of the modern world-system” (84). Mignolo argues that both metanarratives have their own defenders and critics and he places Dussel (and the work of the group in general) in-between the two in terms of disciplinary location, but speaking from a different epistemological position, which becomes an important feature of this type of critique. The modern world-system macronarrative described by Dussel and Mignolo is centered on an articulation of power based on space, rather than on a succession of events in linear time. Quijano (1997) has called this articulation of power “coloniality of power.” This

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coloniality can be conceptualized as a global hegemonic model of power in place since the conquest of the Americas that articulates race and labor, space and peoples, according to the needs of capital and to the benefit of white European peoples (Escobar 2004, 218). If modernity is conceptualized as the project of the Christian and secular West, then coloniality is: “ . . . on the one hand—what the project of modernity needs to rule out and roll over, in order to implant itself as modernity and— on the other hand— the site of enunciation where the blindness of the modern project is revealed, and concomitantly also the site where new projects begin to unfold” (e-mail exchange between Mignolo and Escobar cited in Escobar 2004, 218). Quijano’s coloniality of power features as the overall dimension of modernity (its “darker side”) and is different from colonialism, which is placed as derivative from modernity in the modern world-systems macronarrative. Within this framework, both metanarratives described before can be situated within Dussel’s Eurocentric paradigm as they place colonialism as part of a process of expansion of a mode of knowing and representation “that claims universality for itself, derived from Europe’s position as centre” (Escobar 2004, 217). These categories are important for the subsequent discussion on the crisis of modernity and the concept of colonial difference. Dussel (1998) argues that the crises of modernity, after five centuries of development, emerges from internal critiques (e.g., Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the “postmodernists”) that have been important, but have not been able to go beyond Eurocentrism, as the peripheral world does not appear to be more than a passive spectator, “still in need of being modernized” (17). In a similar way, Mignolo (2002a) claims that it is problematic to think from the canon of Western philosophy, “even when part of the canon is critical of modernity” (66). He concludes that such a movement reproduces “the blind epistemic ethnocentrism that makes difficult, if not impossible, any political philosophy of inclusion” (ibid.). In an attempt to formulate this political philosophy of inclusion, Mignolo (2002a) expands on the planetary paradigm and the concept of coloniality by introducing the notion of colonial difference, which refers to the cultural and epistemological effects of the coloniality of power. He asserts that colonial expansion was also the expansion of forms of knowledge, even if critical of colonialism, and that the Eurocentric paradigm of modernity has been blind to the subalternization of knowledges. His concept of colonial difference can be described as a loci of enunciation, a “connector that . . . refers to the changing faces of colonial differences throughout the history of

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the modern/colonial world-system and brings to the foreground the planetary dimension of human history silenced by discourses centering on modernity, postmodernity, and Western civilization” (Mignolo 2002a, 80). The colonial difference is an effect of coloniality that, as Mignolo points out, can be either foreclosed or revealed (ibid.). Dussel (1998) also argues that the Eurocentric paradigm that conceptualizes modernity as “an exclusively European phenomenon that expanded from the seventeenth century on throughout all the backward cultures” (18) can generate two positions about the future. The first position says that modernity needs to be concluded (he asserts that Habermas and Apel defend this position). The second says that modernity does not have any positive qualities and proposes that the project should be abandoned (he asserts that the postmodernists are its defenders). For the second paradigm that considers modernity the rational management of a world-system, he identifies his own position, speaking from the world periphery (the colonial difference), as one intending to “recoup what is redeemable in modernity and to halt the practices of domination and exclusion in the world system” (20). He conceives a project of liberation of the periphery, of “overcoming the world system itself” by formulating an “ethics of liberation” defined as “transmodern.” Dussel asserts that he is coming from a different starting point from “continental philosophy,” a different locus of enunciation that, according to Mignolo (2002a) is based on a different concept of time: Since the Renaissance— the early modern period or emergence of the modern/colonial world— time has functioned as a principle of order that increasingly subordinates places, relegating them to before or below from the perspective of the “holders (of the doors) of time.” Arrangements of events and people in a time line is also a hierarchical order, distinguishing primary sources of thought from interesting or curious events, peoples, or ideas. Time is also the point of reference for the order of knowledge. The discontinuity between being and time and coloniality of being and place is what nourishes Dussel’s need to underline the difference (the colonial difference) between continental philosophy (Vattimo, Jürgen Habermas, Karl- Otto Apel, Michel Foucault) and philosophy of liberation. (21)

From this perspective, the location of the speaker, her/his experience of colonial or imperial difference needs to be revealed and become the starting point for thinking. Mignolo justifies his position by stating that “global designs (religious, economic, social, and epistemic)

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emerged as responses to the propagation of an epistemology that was assumed to have universal value across time and space” (69). From a similar standpoint, Escobar (2004) affirms that “the seeming triumph of Eurocentered modernity can be seen as the imposition of a global design by a particular local history, in such a way that it has subalternized other local histories and designs” (217). The implication is that within discourses of progress and civilization, time acts as a principle that arbitrates and ranks not only what counts as knowledge, but also what it means to be human (Taylor 2006). Non-European traditions, cultures and ways of knowing and organizing are translated into universalized European epistemological parameters as inferior, less evolved, primitive, erroneous, or eccentric “culturally different” derivatives. This violence affects cultural difference: “Those who stubbornly insist on maintaining their own vision of ‘progress’ or ‘reason’ face the danger of being isolated, impoverished and discriminated against” (Canagarajah 2002, 245). What Canagarajah describes is similar to the “double bind” facing African philosophers according to Bernasconi (cited in Mignolo 2002a, 70): “[E]ither African philosophy is so similar to Western philosophy that it makes no distinctive contribution and effectively disappears; or it is so different that its credentials to be genuine philosophy will always be in doubt.” The end of this civilizing system of Western epistemology, according to Dussel, is marked by three limits. The first is the ecological destruction of the planet based on the conceptualization of nature as an exploitable object with the increase of the rate of profit of capital as its goal. The second is poverty (the destruction of humanity) based on the premise that exploitation and accumulation of wealth are the main causes of the unequal distribution of wealth and labor in the planet. The third is the impossibility of the subsumption of peoples and cultures through modernization processes (Dussel 1998). In relation to this third limit, Mignolo, Dussel, Quijano, and Escobar attempt to create a common ground for peoples in the periphery by proposing that the colonial difference should be the starting point for knowledge and thinking. They claim that their “border” position should be revealed and become the epistemological position where people “speak from” (i.e., a locus of enunciation). Mignolo conceptualizes border thinking as an epistemic mode that works as a “double critique” to crack the imaginary of the modern/colonial world-system away from Eurocentrism as an epistemological perspective. As a double critique, border thinking establishes “alliances with the internal

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critique of modernity [ . . . ] at the same time that it marks the irreducible difference of border thinking as a critique from the colonial difference” (Mignolo 2000b, 87). As an epistemic mode, border thinking affirms the maxim: “I am where I think” (89). Escobar (2004) summarizes the theoretical differential of the Latin American Modernity/ Coloniality Research Group as: 1. the location of the origins of modernity in the fifteenth century—with the conquest of America and the control of the Atlantic; 2. the conceptualization of colonialism, postcolonialism, and imperialism as constitutive of modernity; 3. the adoption of the planetary paradigm which sees modernity as a world— rather than an European— phenomenon; 4. the identification of domination of non-Europeans as a central and necessary feature of modernity; 5. the formulation of the link between modernity and coloniality represented in the notion of Eurocentrism as a mode of knowing and hegemonic representation derived from Europe’s position as center that claims universality for itself.

The group acknowledges the importance of the internal critique of modernity (i.e., postmodernism and post-structuralism), but recognize its limits in the foreclosure of colonial difference. Their proposal for political articulation can be summarized as “the need to take seriously the epistemic force of local histories and to think theory through the political praxis of subaltern groups” (Escobar 2004, 217). A distinctive feature of the Latin American Modernity/Coloniality group is their critical appropriation of world-systems theory to launch a critique of capitalism that is sensitive to the colonial difference. Grosfoguel (2008) offers a comparison of world-systems and postcolonial analytical approaches arguing that both share a “critique of developmentalism, of Eurocentric forms of knowledge, of gender inequalities, of racial hierarchies, and of cultural/ideological processes that foster the subordination of the periphery in the capitalist worldsystem” (10). However, according to him, postcolonial critiques focus on agents of colonial cultures, while world-system critiques focus on structures of capital accumulation. He perceives a divide in terms of disciplinary associations: postcolonial critiques tend to come from academics in the humanities in areas related to literature, cultural studies, or rhetoric, while world-systems critiques tend to come from academics in social sciences in areas related to politics, economics, and sociology. Grosfoguel affirms that while postcolonial theory tends

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to be limited in its analysis of political-economic relations, worldsystems theory tends to be limited in its analysis of culture: “Both literatures fluctuate between the danger of economic reductionism and the danger of culturalism” (2008, 11). He identifies a number of questions central to debates in both camps: Can we produce a radical anti- capitalist politics beyond identity politics? Is it possible to articulate a critical cosmopolitanism beyond nationalism and colonialism? Can we produce knowledges beyond Third World and Eurocentric fundamentalisms? Can we overcome the traditional dichotomy between political- economy and cultural studies? Can we move beyond economic reductionism and culturalism? How can we overcome Eurocentric modernity without throwing away the best of modernity as many Third World fundamentalists do? (Grosfoguel 2008, 1)

An Indigenous Studies Lens Indigenous/aboriginal people inhabit a very agonistic space between, on the one hand, a dominant racist epistemology that inflicts incessant violence through continuous dispossession (e.g., Stewart- Harawira 2005), destitution (e.g., Turner 2006a), cultural and religious repression (e.g., Deloria 1994), deficit theorizing (e.g., Valencia 1997), pathologizing practices (e.g., Shields, et al., 2005), and cognitive imperialism (e.g., Battiste 2000; Battiste and Henderson 2005), and, on the other hand, an elusive reality of other (indigenous) epistemologies that have taken the brunt of colonial violence, and are now in need of protection, cognitive recovery and revitalization (e.g., Tuhiwai- Smith 1999), and rejuvenation (e.g., Royal 2009). Varadharajan (2000) refers to this as a space where indigenous people must “consort with one world that is dead and another that remains powerless to be born” (142). In this context, communities are torn between survival in cognitive assimilation (embracing modernity wholesale), survival in resilience (embracing a revitalized or not indigenous tradition), biepistemic negotiation (appropriating and pluralizing or hybridizing modernity) and self-destructive loss (rejecting all systems and falling through the cracks). Bi- epistemic negotiation within settler societies is often marked by the paradox of the need to resist the dominant epistemology while fighting to revive and protect indigenous epistemologies through

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the dominant epistemology itself (i.e., its institutional discourses, governance, education, funding schemes, etc.) (see Buendia 2003; Kovach 2009). Thus, the strategic appropriation (Kovach 2009), or strategic playing of the dominant game through its languages, modes of knowledge production and systems of organization is perceived as a complex, conflictual, difficult and often painful task. The knowledge brokers who engage in this game have to construct paradoxical discourses that respond to different configurations of power, accountabilities, communal and individual aspirations, and restrictive possibilities for dissent. They have to choose to distance (e.g., Bastien 2004) or approximate (e.g., MacFarlane 2004; Ball 2009) indigenous and dominant epistemologies accordingly. In this context— and similar to postcolonial theory— it is often difficult to tell whether one is playing the game (strategically) or being played by it. This is what Tuhiwai- Smith (1999) reminds us when she cites: “The Master’s tools can never dismantle the Master’s house” (Lorde 1979 cited in Tuhiwai- Smith 1999, 19) as she gracefully appropriates and uses the tools herself. However, what precisely the master’s or indigenous tools are and who is qualified to handle them are highly contested issues. Therefore, there are many types of indigenous approaches that address institutional suffering, which may share a common general critique of Eurocentric/colonial discourses. However, their analyses and rejection of different aspects of these discourses will vary according to what is possible in the historical, political, and ontological configurations within their contexts. For example, projects of decolonization grounded on direct critiques of (and indigenous alternatives to) Christianity, Cartesian thinking, property ownership, nation-state ideology, and (Kantian) universalism are more frequent in indigenous literatures in the Americas than in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. In the Māori context, indigenous resistance literature tends to rely more on critical humanism as a form of critique and as a basis for a political/economic project that can be institutionalized through the mechanisms of a nation- state that was founded on a bicultural treaty (the Treaty of Waitangi). However, in both contexts, there has been a renewed interest in issues of hybridity, philosophies of language that take account of “storying” in oral traditions, and the potential of epistemological pluralism as a complement or alternative to strategic essentialism (e.g., Webber 2008, Cooper 2008).

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For the purpose of comparison with other theories, my outline of an indigenous theory of institutional suffering will rely on specific First Nations’ scholarship that emphasizes: • the need to engage with dominant discourses from within through conscious rigorous and contestatory epistemic hybridism (where different epistemologies are not merged, but held in productive tension); • the idea that adaptation and multiplicity are inherent characteristics of (some) indigenous epistemologies that should be deployed in healing the trauma of colonization; and • the power of indigenous metaphors to offer strategies for healing of the “soul wound” of both aboriginal and nonaboriginal communities.

Turner (2006a) addresses the problematic engagement with dominant knowledges by acknowledging the difficulties of working within ethnocentric systems built around theories that do not recognize the inherent racism of their intellectual tradition. He asserts that naturalized discourses of title, rights, and sovereignty within nation-state ideologies hide their Eurocentric sources of knowledge, which have traditionally used indigenous people as a contrast to European superiority (which justified domination). Arguably, the idea of political sovereignty and the language of rights goes back to Plato and Aristotle, through the Stoics, then on to Augustine, Aquinas, Vitoria, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Berlin, Oakeshott, Arendt, Strauss, Rawls, Sandel, Taylor, Kymlicka, Tully, and too many others to mention. . . . Many of these thinkers have written about indigenous peoples. For example, . . . Hobbes has a notion of power and political sovereignty that requires a distinction between a “state of nature” and a “civil society,” where, incidentally, American Indians are permanently located in the nasty and brutish state of nature. Immanuel Kant’s views of rationality imply that indigenous ways of thinking are irrational. Hegel defends the view that colonialism is a natural extension of civil society. Political liberals view indigenous rights as a form of minority right, which therefore can be subsumed within a more general theory of rights. (236)

He suggests that none of the proposals to resolve the unequal relations between aboriginal and nonaboriginal people proposed by the state have been “peace-pipes” (Turner, 2006b), as, despite their good

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intentions, they have failed to establish ethical grounds to engage with aboriginal people precisely because they were locked in the ethnocentrism of Western liberalism. He argues that throughout the history of the Indian-white relationship, although indigenous voices have been marginalized, appropriated, or ignored, indigenous people are still confident that their ways of knowing can contribute to collective understanding and survival (2006a). However, he warns against naïve hopes of survival that do not take account of the force of the dominant system. He proposes that the American Indian intellectual has a responsibility “to defend the integrity and legality of tribal governments in the hostile intellectual community of the dominant culture” (237). Turner advocates that indigenous scholars should become “word warriors” who use their intellect to engage in the legal and political battles for signification in order to defend the right of indigenous peoples to establish their own terms for governance and relationship with the nation-state. Turner states that, as Canadian and American courts of law do not have to justify their ontological choices, if American Indians want to survive as distinct political communities, “word warriors” need to be versed in Indian and Western philosophies. He proposes key questions to be addressed by the next generation of Indian intellectuals: What is the just relationship between our oral traditions and knowledge systems and the philosophical discourses that drive American legal and political thought? Should we leave our oral traditions in our communities? Or should we approach the relationship as a commensurable one— all we need to do is to find the right template, the right theory, to help us explain our stories? If we choose to leave our oral traditions in our communities, how do we then protect our oral traditions, and the sovereignty of our communities, using the language and intellectual traditions of the oppressor? (237)

He defends an approach where word warriors would reassert meaning from a different location, based on a careful and strategic translation of the productions of meaning in their communities, which requires deep knowledge of both sites of production of meaning. He implies that, in order to do their work, word warriors need to understand language as unstable and have a pluri-epistemic orientation. Cajete hints that this pluri-epistemic orientation is already inherent in Native American cosmologies. This orientation is enacted through

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their metaphorical relationship with the land, language, learning, and metaphysics and illustrated in his depiction of the medicine wheel: The four or more directions generally serve as allegories for sacred orientations to places in Indigenous traditions. Each has associated plants, animals and natural phenomena. And each of the plants and animals represent a perspective, a way of looking at something in the centre that humans are trying to know. The idea of moving around to look from a different perspective, from the north, the south, the east and the west, and from above, below or within, is contained in the creative process [ . . . ]. Indigenous logic moves between relationships, revisiting, moving to where it is necessary to learn or to bring understandings together. This might be called the sacred dimension of Indigenous science. Western science has struggled mightily to remove the role of spirit from understanding the world. Indigenous science works from the other side, continually infusing relationships with spirit through its discovery and rediscovery. (Cajete 2000, 210–11)

This discovery and rediscovery through an elusive spirit (i.e., open metaphysical questions) has the potential to pluralize possibilities and work as an alternative to global ethnocentric hegemonies. The antiethnocentric stance of this relationship may create an alternative that works as a safeguard against local ethnocentric hegemonies. Garroute (1999) suggests that indigenous philosophies of language may offer one unexplored avenue for understanding pluri- epistemic orientations. She suggests that some indigenous conceptualizations of language present a relationship between word and world that is very different from Western humanism. Rather than an indexed relationship, where language describes reality in unequivocal ways, in such aboriginal ontologies language is perceived as a symbolic code for a reality that is constantly on the move and that allows for multiple symbolic and situated interpretations. Each of these interpretations produces a different effect in reality itself— they “bring a different reality into being” (953). Garroute states that “different readings [of the same, single text] are created for different ceremonies, and they produce different effects” (ibid.). She explains that [d]iscursive performances not only shape the world, but the same text can do so in different ways, depending upon which reading is selected from the various possibilities available within it. Here, different accounts clearly matter, and they matter very much. New accounts

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are never simply a matter of an infinite regress of equally defensible readings: each distinct account is powerful. Speakers or writers assuming such a philosophy of language would have reason to take great care over the texts that they produce— because they would understand that, in doing so, they also produce the world— the Real world— in a very literal sense. (954)

This production of the world in and through language (which is both similar to and different from post- structuralism) requires a renewed attention to the production of meaning. This can be demonstrated in the work of several indigenous scholars who defend a hybrid epistemic position. I will focus on the works of Duran (2006) and Nabigon and Mawhiney (1996) to illustrate this epistemological hybridism. Braveheart, Duran, and Duran (1998) started a movement of indigenous scholarship that calls for a shift in “root metaphors” in discourses of health. They defend the idea that “shifting root metaphors” is a key strategy in healing the torn fabric of relationships that resulted from colonialism, which they refer to as “the soul wound.” In his later work, Duran (2006) attempts to bridge Western and Native American worldviews by shifting root metaphors for health and healing in clinical practices in the field of psychological counseling. He produces a hybrid epistemic space where different ways of knowing are not merged, but held in tension in order to create the conditions for a “liberation discourse” to emerge for his patients. He uses Foucault’s analysis of the connections of the mental health profession and social control, the idea of the collective unconscious of Jung, as well as the Native American medicine wheel to produce clinical practices that are responsive to the cultural and epistemic needs of his patients. He affirms that this epistemological hybridism is critical in addressing health issues in culturally competent ways that “takes the actual lifeworld of the person or group as the core truth that needs to be seen as valid just because it is” (14). Duran criticizes the objectification of healing in Western positivist epistemologies that happens under the guise of “empirically tested therapies,” which disguise ideas of Western supremacy as scientific objectivity reproducing neocolonial patterns. Duran’s starting point with aboriginal communities is the systematic genocide inflicted upon aboriginal peoples and the incremental historical (and intergenerational) trauma and internalized oppression that emerged as a result of that. He uses the metaphor of a collective and deep soul wound

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to represent this process. This metaphor emerged in interviews with aboriginal people in a needs assessment exercise in the United States early in his career. He reports that his surveys and techniques were inadequate to address the protocols and perceptions of aboriginal peoples when referring to the problems in their communities. Their ideas of spiritual injury, soul sickness, soul wounding, and ancestral hurt challenged the expected symptom- oriented framings of the research methods he was deploying. After experiencing failure when reviewing the literature in the area of “soul wounding,” he resorted to oral traditions to explain the phenomena. What he found in the stories of the elders was a concept of wounding that involved the colonizers, the colonized, and the earth itself. This earth wounding affects people at a deep soul level and “speaks to the process whereby people become destructive to the natural environment and disturb the natural order” (16). As the soul wound is a collective wound (where people on different sides self-medicate differently), healing is also necessarily a collective process. Therefore, the focus of his therapy is to help individual aboriginal patients establish a different relationship with their pain and stop self-medicating with self-harming responses (e.g., alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide). In this sense, the conceptualization of mental and psychological disturbances moves from a Western paradigm based on individualized pathologies, to one where patients are supported to reinterpret and “form [new] relationships with their life-world [which] includes forming relationships with the source of their pain so that they can make existential sense of what is happening to them” (15). His approach emphasizes that “an understanding of historical context must underline the use of intervention strategies with Native people” (17). In Duran’s work, this contextual-historical understanding involves the acknowledgment of internalized oppression, or the identification with the aggressor/perpetrator of violence. Duran uses Butz’s (1993) concept of vampire biting to extend the metaphor of the soul wound to make the reproductive effects of violence more explicit. The idea of the vampire emphasizes that once someone is touched by violence, there is a poisonous infection of violence at the soul level, which means that “some of the vampire or perpetrator is already in the person after the person is victimized” (18). Making use of traditional healing epistemic practices, one of the strategies used by Duran is the renaming of the metaphor of pathology, so that issues of health such as depression and addictions can be interpreted as living entities— as spirits. He uses archetypal material in root metaphors in order to

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sidestep ego defense mechanisms that tend to diffuse spiritual events through positivistic patterns. Duran explains why shifting root metaphors is so important, not only for aboriginal patients, but also for nonaboriginal therapists: In essence, we have all internalized much of the personal and collective wounding of our [Western] culture. Our culture has been affected by a long history of violence against other cultures which continues to the present. The wounding that is sustained by the collective culture has an impact on the psyches of the individuals and in society. The fact that the soul has been eradicated from our healing circles is an indicative of a collective wounding process that has never been grieved or healed. It is from this wounded inner self that we, in the metal health field, seek to wound others through the secrecy and darkness of our practice, and we attempt to ward off our shadow through exhaustive ethical codes. (20)

Like Duran, Nabigon, and Mawhiney (1996) shift root metaphors in aboriginal social work. They draw on Cree teachings to propose a model for balance and well-being based on the medicine wheel. Their model emphasizes key aboriginal principles that healing is a lifelong journey for aboriginal and nonaboriginal people alike. They emphasize the spiritual dimension of healing and the interdependence of life by challenging the Cartesian distinction between mind, body, and spirit, as well as the humanist distinction between culture and nature. Their representation of the medicine wheel consists of a “hub” of three nested circles. The inner circle represents the inner self in its relationship with the metaphysical aspects of existence (the inner fire at the core of one’s being), and the outer circles represent the external selves in their relationship with the outside world framed by social historical contexts. The external outer circle represents negative (disabling) sides of the external self; the middle circle represents positive and enabling sides of the external self. The internal circle also has negative and positive sides to it (represented by connectivity and relationality versus refusal to listen or learn). The circles are divided into four directions. The purpose of the movement of (and between) the circles is learning and healing toward balance of the three parts of the wheel. Feelings of inferiority/superiority and shame are represented in the outer circle in the east. The corresponding enabling/positive aspect of the external self, represented in the middle circle, is the possibility of unconditional acceptance of one’s learning journey and where

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one is at. The outer circle, south, represents envy and greed, while the corresponding middle circle represents a connection with one’s inner voice and a sense of inner value. The outer circle in the west represents resentment and attachments to past emotions enacted in a single view of a situation. The corresponding middle circle represents respect—for self and others— through acknowledgment and honoring of different perspectives. The north of the outer circle represents apathy and disregard for the self, which implies that one cannot contribute to the healing and learning of others if one cannot do it for oneself. Similarly, the corresponding middle circle represents caring first for the (balance and healing of) the self, which then translates into caring for everything else one is interconnected with. Nabigon and Mawhiney’s medicine wheel highlights the need for looking at and healing the self first before one tries to change one’s environment (or “the world”) as a person’s imbalance can be projected in his/ her relationships with everything else, creating more imbalances as a consequence. In conclusion, in both examples (i.e., the works of Duran and Nabigon and Mawhiney) pluri-epistemic (and anti- ethnocentric) practices are deployed through the use of metaphors to enable healing and suture relationships in contexts of epistemic racism. As a clinical or educational practice, the deployment of metaphors aims “to create moods, to form patterns, and to evoke various physical and mental changes” (Dion-Buffalo 1990, 120). These types of metaphors are also used as a “means to relay information about the unconscious and spiritual realms” (121). This formulation is based on a distinction between a rationalistic and a metaphorical mind (Cajete 2000) where the use of metaphors serves as a balancing mechanism that may disrupt and subvert the meaning, consciousness, and subjectivities created by the rationalistic mind. The strategies described in this chapter of engagement with and disruption of dominant discourses through interventions at the level of meaning and the promotion of pluri-epistemicism and epistemically hybrid forms of engagement are congruent with postcolonial strategies and objectives. However, other strands of indigenous scholarship have also criticized postcolonial approaches for their stance against reversed ethnocentrism and their critique of essentialism. Some of this scholarship has critiqued the use of the “post-“ in postcolonial theory arguing that colonization is still a reality for indigenous peoples: a context that is not often reflected in postcolonial literary work (as the literary production of diasporas). Others have argued that the

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discursive focus of postcolonial theory creates a situation of paralysis of analysis, where indigenous people are left without the tools to challenge the forces that shape the material inequalities of colonialism. Postcolonial theory points to the tensions between the strategic use of essentialism for speaking truth to power and negotiating material advances; and the potential reproduction of internal colonialism precisely through this form of resistance. Postcolonial theory, as a tool of critique, also points to the paradoxes of indigenous appropriations of capitalism.

A Critical Race Theory Lens Critical Race Theory (CRT) was developed in the 1970s as a dissenting offshoot of critical legal studies led by scholars of minority status who felt that race concerns were overlooked in the critical legal studies movement. Ladson-Billings (1998) defines CRT as “a counterlegal scholarship to the positivist and liberal legal discourse of civil rights [which] critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation” (7). CRT legal scholarship is known to reflect six key themes: (1) CRT recognizes that racism is a pervasive and permanent part of American society; (2) CRT challenges dominant claims to objectivity, neutrality, colorblindness, and merit; (3) CRT challenges ahistoricism and insists on a contextual/historical analysis of the law; (4) CRT insists on a recognition of the experimental knowledge of the people of color in analyzing law and society; (5) CRT is interdisciplinary; (6) CRT works toward eliminating racial oppression as part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression. (Matsuda et al., 1993, cited in Dixson and Rousseau 2006a, 4)

In education, the work of Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) was seminal in introducing CRT in the examination of inequity in schools and schooling. They detailed the intersection of race and property rights by focusing on tension between property rights and human rights to explain the continuous disadvantage and dispossession of black people in America. Their argument is that in democracies built on capitalism, the role of government is to protect property rights. Thus, despite the efforts of the civil rights movements, the fundamental contradiction between the role of government in protecting property rights and dispensing human and civil rights creates a context where

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the latter is subverted to protect the interests of the former, which translates in the protection of white privilege (as traditional, longstanding property ownership). In other words, their critique proposes that the liberal discourse of civil and human rights promises equality to those who have been wronged while, at the same time, securing the dominance of those who commit the wrongs to be righted. Therefore, civil and human rights are only dispensed when there is “interest convergence” in terms of property rights benefits for the dominant group. If this is the case, the sweeping changes required to eradicate racism are made impossible within liberal traditions (Ladson-Billings 1998). The key concepts of interest- convergence and whiteness as property are particularly important in this sense. Donnor (2006) defines interest- convergence as a central analytical construct in CRT that “describes the tensions between legal redress for racism and maintenance of the political and economic status quo” (157). Donnor uses an example provided by Bell (1992, 2004) to illustrate interest- convergence in America. The example refers to America’s efforts to sell democracy to unaligned countries during the Cold War. At the time, the negative press of the segregation and repression of black Americans “at home” during the civil rights movement was creating an embarrassing situation that affected America’s foreign policy. Therefore, to secure America’s credibility in selling democracy and containing communism abroad, in the name of “social progress,” America started to support the desegregation of public schools (Donnor 2006). Hence, Donnor argues that interest convergence puts into full view the limitations and contradictions of law and public policy by pointing out how they operate to secure the dominant class’s interests. Paradoxically, if the rights of oppressed groups are recognized and legitimized only when they further the interests of the dominant class and of society’s governing institutions. (158)

Whiteness as property is another important analytical construct in CRT. From this perspective, white privilege is the benefit accrued by those who possess whiteness or are seen as white (Manglitz 2003; DeCuir- Gunby 2006). DeCuir- Gunby (2006) explains that enjoying white privilege means experiencing whiteness as normalcy and that this is “commensurate with exclusive access to societal resources facilitated by other powerful whites who already utilize this socially inherited racial privilege” (93). She argues that power and privilege are accorded to white people who protect this privilege, view it as normal

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and not related to race, and deny their complicity in the maintenance of inequalities. According to Decuir- Gunby (2006), the concept of whiteness as property is rooted in the slavery systems’ “confluence of racial identity and property rights[where] being white meant having the right to own property while being black meant being considered property” (101). In conceptualizing whiteness as property, DeCuirGunby asserts with reference to Harris (1995) that a possessor of whiteness has the same rights associated with other forms of property, including possession, use and disposition. More specifically, these property rights include transferability , the right to use and enjoyment, reputation rights and the right to exclude others. Transferability means the transference of whiteness from one generation to another. The right to use and enjoyment refers to the maintenance of white privilege and white identity. Reputation rights suggest that white identity is an individual’s most salient characteristic and must be protected. And the right to exclude means that white identity gives a sense of entitlement, including the rights to include and exclude others from its privileges. (101)

The right to exclude is exemplified by Ladson-Billings and Tate in relation to schooling in the United States. She argues that it was demonstrated initially by denying access to school to black people, later by school segregation and recently by tracking, white flight and “the growing insistence on vouchers, public funding of private schools, and schools of choice”(60). The concept of equality is also contested in CRT. Crenshaw (1989) makes a distinction between restrictive and expansive views of equality in antidiscrimination law. Expansive equality focuses on the eradication of the present effects of historical oppression and subjugation of black people in America, while a restrictive view forecloses historical outcomes and focuses on preventing “wrongdoing” against individuals in the future. This denial of historical violences shaping present inequalities and the disadvantages of certain groups in restrictive views of equality are translated into “color-blind” approaches, where equity is equated with “treating everyone the same” and seeing racial differences as neutral, ahistorical, and apolitical categories. This approach in court, Crenshaw (1993) maintains, “obscures its active role in sustaining hierarchies of racial power” (xxviii), while in schools, it works to sustain an unexamined deficit in theorizations of racial difference (Yosso 2006). This is used to justify unequal outcomes by placing the blame on the students and their families using

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the argument that “(a) students enter school without the normative cultural knowledge and skills, and (b) parents neither value not support their children’s education” (173). Color-blindness can further harm students of color by masking the historically and socially reproduced overvaluation of whiteness as “normalcy” and devaluation of blackness as “malady” that is experienced in social life, but denied in language articulations: If we accept the notion of whiteness as normal, then any person who is not white is abnormal. Thus, within polite, middle class mores, it is impossible to see when someone is different, abnormal, and thus, not white. Hence, it is better to ignore, or become colorblind, than to notice that people of color have the physical malady of skin color, or not whiteness. (Dixson and Rousseau 2006b, 41)

This denial of color, power, and privilege generates a fierce resistance to recognize the unique voices and experiences of people of color, especially in relation to the subject of racism. Meanwhile, the feeling of shame and inadequacy produced in this denial and resistance, if internalized by people of color, adds to the violence of explicit racism (ibid.). Within CRT color-blindness can be seen as part of a broader critique of liberalism that “calls into question the faith in the system to provide equal opportunity for all” (Dixson and Rousseau 2006b, 41). In education, this is expressed through the critique of appeals to depoliticized and ahistorical forms of multiculturalism that fail to generate a call for action that can advance the cause of justice of people of color. Dixson and Rousseau critique the focus of multicultural education on celebrations of diversity through foods and festivals at the expense of an analysis of structures of power that use “difference” to distribute privilege. It is argued (Duncan 2002; Dixson and Rousseau 2006b) that this liberal approach to multiculturalism creates a paternalistic “false empathy” for colored children as it leads educators to believe that their job is to help unfortunate, disenfranchised, or underprivileged children to “take advantage of the offerings of a fundamentally just society” (Duncan 2002, 91). This belief adds weight to white property and prevents further reflections on the ideological and political nature of the creation of systemic inequalities. As a counterdiscourse, CRT proposes the strategy of focusing on the cultural wealth of communities of color through the narratives of people of color. Yosso explains that examining racism empowers

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the victims of racism and liberates their voices by enabling victims to discover that they are not alone in their struggle against racism and by sharing techniques of resistance. Narratives of victims of oppression are conceptualized as “alternative epistemologies” (Mills 1998, 21 cited in Dixson 2006, 217) that are grounded in collective experiences of racism. For Yosso, these alternative epistemologies can express the knowledge funds of oppressed communities, such as their aspirational capital (the ability to maintain high hopes in the face of adversity), their familial capital (collective models of caring and coping in community), their navigational capital (maneuvering through racially hostile institutions), and their resistant capital (oppositional behavior to subordination), among other forms of capital. For Duncan (2006), the stories of people of color illustrate their capacity to name their realities and serve to disrupt racist epistemologies: Racist epistemologies are deeply embedded in the meaning making structures that inform the naturalization of oppression and the normalization of racial inequality in public schools [where] racially signified normative- evaluative notions about the backwardness of black children and youth inform the subjective and objective dimensions of their experiences in schools in ways that undermine their capacities. (200)

The goal of using stories and auto/biographies in CRT is to enable people of color to “name one’s own reality” (Ladson-Billings 1998, 13) and “to encourage an ethics in scholarship that prompts a kind of multiple consciousness” (Duncan 2006, 205). Delgado (1989 cited in Ladson-Billings 1998) cites three reasons why these stories are important in legal discourse: they emphasize the social construction of reality; they enable psychic self-preservation of members of marginalized social groups; and they help overcome ethnocentrism as a drive to see the world in only one way. CRT also uses “chronicles” as fictionalized counternarratives that can embed the historical and social evidence of the operation of racism and oppression (Dixson and Rousseau 2006b). Honoring a long tradition of the use of fiction to mask thoughts and aspirations in repressive systems, these chronicles “give authority to imagination” (63) and are used to contextualize events in ways that “shed light on reality” (62), and that challenge the status quo by counteracting “the stories or the grand narratives of the dominant group” (63). In conclusion, CRT aims to change the quality of life of people of color in schools and society guided by the voices of those who were most injured by racism (Duncan 2006).

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Schur (2002) argues that postcolonial theory and CRT examine shared problems, which he defines as “how Eurocentric, liberal legal models of political and social theory have only offered partial liberation to formerly colonized and legally disadvantaged peoples” (456). He explores how the telling of autobiographical stories in CRT can be interpreted as a form of speaking catachrestically— a strategy employed by postcolonial theory to disrupt the logic of dominant discourses. However, there are also differences between the two projects. The most salient difference is the emphasis on hyper-self-reflexivity and antiessentialism in discursive strands of postcolonial theory which question the construction and use of representations of marginalization, the homogenization of experiences of oppression (without denying the violence of dominant systems, groups, or discourses) and the role of the academic in representing the subaltern. A postcolonial analysis can also point to a problematic complicity of CRT with modernist, humanist, and capitalist discourses that is performed in CRT’s focus on “equality of outcomes” (i.e., the appropriation of “property rights”) in an American system that is sustained by inequalities and violence at home and elsewhere. Given its context of emergence, selfreflexivity, problematizations of essentialism, or critiques of imperialism are not declared preoccupations of CRT. Instead, the specific goal of changing the life circumstances of colored people in America forces it to speak simultaneously within and against dominant discursive practices in that context that both restrict and enable its performance in particular ways.

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Part 2

Actioning Postcolonial Theory in Educational Research

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Chapter Five Contextualizing the Research Process

This chapter contextualizes the research process used to action postcolonial theory (as described in part 1) in five analyses of policies and practices in education related to engagements with the global South. These analyses are presented as illustrations of how postcolonial theory can be put to work in negotiating educational discourses. The key methodology for the application of postcolonial theory in this section can be described as a form of “colonial discourse analysis.” An outline of the methodology, research process, and findings is presented in this chapter.

Key Research Methodology: Colonial Discourse Analysis Colonial discourse studies examine processes of knowledge production and their role in the creation and perpetuation of (neo)colonial violences and inequalities. Said (1978) inaugurates the first phase of colonial discourse analysis (Gandhi 1998) in his study of how the Western construction of knowledge about the Orient (as an Other of the West) contributed to the functioning of colonial power and consolidated the construction of the European identity as superior. Said (1993) affirms: Neither imperialism nor colonialism is a simple act of accumulation and acquisition. Both are supported and perhaps even impelled by impressive ideological formations which include notions that certain territories and people require and beseech domination, as well as forms of knowledge affiliated with that domination . . . (8)

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In Orientalism, Said focuses on the exposure of the connection between these ideological formations, knowledge produced about the Other, and the operationalization of colonial ethnocentric hegemonies with global reach. Subsequent waves of postcolonial studies expanded the focus of colonial discourse analysis to include the ambivalent relationship between colonizer and colonized (Bhabha 1994), and problematic issues of voice and representation in colonial resistance (Spivak 1990). Loomba (1998), argues that colonial discourse studies indicate a new way of thinking in which cultural, intellectual, economic or political processes are seen to work together in the formation, perpetuation and dismantling of colonialism. It seeks to examine the intersections of ideas and institutions, knowledge and power. Thus colonial violence is understood as including an epistemic aspect, namely an attack on the culture, ideas, and value systems of the colonised peoples. [ . . . ] Colonial discourse analysis seeks to offer an in-depth analysis of colonial epistemologies and connect them to the history of colonial institutions. (54)

Colonial discourse analyses challenge the neutrality and objectivity of academia and its role in constructing stereotypes, images, and knowledge of colonial subjects and cultures which support and legitimize institutions of economic, administrative, judicial, and biomedical control (ibid.). On the other hand, it constructs academia as an essential sphere of influence where postcolonial intellectuals can “facilitate dialogue between the Western and non-Western academies, and in so doing, to think a way out of the epistemological violence of the colonial encounter” (Gandhi 1998, 63). Colonial discourse analysis has been conceptualized as a form of “reading against the grain” whose commitment to an end of institutional suffering makes it distinct from postmodernism (Bhabha 1994; Mitchel 1995). Nevertheless, colonial discourse analysis has been critiqued for erasing the distinction between the material and ideological dimensions of operations of power. Colonial discourse analysis deploys a poststructuralist philosophy of language and discourse, where meaning is conceptualized as unstable and discourses as “heavily policed cognitive systems which control and delimit both the mode and the means of representation in a given society” (Gandhi 1998, 77). As a result, different from other forms of discourse analyses, the discursive focus of the examination of texts is ideological and not semantic

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(not relating to language form, language function, or individual language choice).

Epistemological Considerations The application of postcolonial theory informed by post-structuralist insights produces a discursive epistemology that challenges traditional thinking in educational research. Post-structuralism assumes that language is a discursive practice that is ideological and unstable, which implies that interpretations of the world create the world or reality itself. This statement prompts two competing interpretations. One, that there is no absolute world “out there” (no absolute reality), just the realities constructed in language. Two, that the world “out there” (as it is experienced by different people) cannot be described in language in ways that are objective (with universal validity and intelligibility) or uncontaminated by culture, and that the construction of one’s world through (collective) discursive practices is permeated with power, as Loomba (1998) explains: discursive practices make it difficult for individuals to thinks outside them— hence they are also exercises in power and control. This element of control should not be taken to mean that a discourse as a domain of utterance cannot admit of contradictions. [T]he concept of discourse extends the notion of a historically and ideologically inflected field— no utterance is innocent and every utterance tells us something about the world we live in. But equally, the world we live in is only comprehensible to us via its discursive representations. (39–40).

Therefore, in either case, establishing a universal, absolute, neutral, or objective way of accessing reality or the truth becomes untenable. This does not mean that there are no truths or realities, but that all truths and realities are discursively located (they are tied to referents and conventions of specific social, cultural, and historical contexts) and, therefore, they are interpretations that reflect the location of the interpreter. Research frameworks that construct parameters of validity, reliability, and rigor around the objectivity, detachment, and neutrality of the (Cartesian) researcher/observer (and his obsession with universal categorizations) require him/her to embark on a quest to “discover” unbiased facts/truths that describe the world in complete and objective ways through universal (rational) communication (i.e., a

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language that describes the world, rather than creates it). However, within a postcolonial/post-structuralist framework, the assumption is that knowledge is constructed in a relational process, it is a product of societies and the medium of power, therefore, the academic enterprise is not about the discovery of truth, but about its construction (McBride 2002). As researchers/observers cannot eliminate their cultural biases, the aim of an analysis is to unpack taken-for-granted assumptions of reality in order to expose how power operates through the production of meaning, and to open spaces and possibilities for the insurgence of other modes of signification (Foucault 1980). In this sense, the critical exercise is to trace the possible discursive origins and implications of assumptions, as a product of ideological discourses which constitute both the text and the subjectivity of the interpreter. The criteria of rigor and reliability applied in this case are related to the depth and consistency of engagements with theory and its implications, as well as with its complexity and limitations when tested against specific contexts. The criteria for validity is related to the potential effects of the research outcomes in changing patterns of production of meaning that sustain unequal relations of power. Applying these concepts in practice requires three important strategies that may challenge traditional assumptions in educational research and (power) games of academic legitimacy. First, it is necessary to situate and examine the positioning of the researcher as an expression of self-reflexivity in a way that does not turn this expression into a navel-gazing exercise. The critique, through a more positivist lens, is that this can be considered a disclosure of “bias,” which the researcher should try to eliminate instead of making explicit. Second, it is crucial to recognize academia as a privileged site of knowledge production, and the researcher as a privileged knowledge producer, therefore, it is important to uphold an ethical stance in relation to all communities she is engaged with (or mediating between), which may or not involve co- construction of knowledge with research participants. Third, in most contexts, it is advisable to avoid the mode of “speaking truth to power” (and its defiant/arrogant tone of universal validity), by presenting analyses and results in ways that emphasize and make explicit the partial, provisional, tentative, equivocal, and situated nature of knowledge construction. Gandhi (1998) proposes that the political commitment of the postcolonial intellectual comes with “an infrequently heeded obligation of humility” (63). Honoring this obligation means walking the talk of uncoercive engagements: making a contribution in a given discursive community in ways that

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initiate a form of dialogue that, while questioning the production of meaning, respects the Other’s rights to signify (i.e., that keep motivations for revenge and reversal, and aspirations to “convert the world,” eliminate difference or arrive at universal consensus under check). In my modest attempt to live up to these objectives, I acknowledge that my interpretations are socially, culturally, and historically situated: they are informed by my interpretations of postcolonial theory, which bear traces of my lived experiences, desires, and traumas (some of which I am not even consciously aware of!). Their theoretical location constructed as a “lens” implies that people looking at the same texts using other lenses (including other lenses based on postcolonialism) could legitimately produce interpretations that can be very different from mine. I offer the analyses in the subsequent chapters as partial, provisional, tentative, and equivocal—and invite readers to produce their own interpretations and “disagree” in dialogue with me and one another, in support of Mouffe’s (2005) and Todd’s (2009) call for a lively contestatory radical democracy.

Research Processes The analyses of policy presented in chapters six and seven examine two documents published in England by the former Department for Education and Skills (DfES). These documents were chosen because they were considered the most influential documents, in the period of the research, related to international and North-South engagements in education in England. The first document, the Curriculum Guidance: “Developing a Global Dimension in the School Curriculum” (DGDSC), commissioned by DfES for the Development Education Association (DEA), was published in 2000 and sets guidelines for schools for the introduction of global issues and perspectives into the formal school curriculum in England. The second document, the Strategy Paper “Putting the World into World Class Education: An international strategy for education, skills and children’s services” (PWWCE), that was published in 2004, presents the vision of the U.K. government in relation to its international strategy for education and incorporates and reinterprets elements of the first document. Both documents present guidelines or strategies for the implementation of a global or international dimension in the formal or higher education curriculum, providing a productive site for the study of representations of the “global South” and their implications in terms of potential pedagogies and social relations.

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The analyses of educational practices presented in chapters eight, nine, and ten offer three “telling case studies” (Mitchell 1984) of pedagogical practices focusing on engagements with the global South where discursive practices related to the Other are examined through colonial discourse analysis. Each of these case studies presents different assumptions about identity and Otherness and raise different theoretical issues in terms of pedagogy and ethics. As the analyses of case studies of practice relied on various modes of data collection, it becomes necessary to explain my research choices further, particularly in relation to the notion of “telling case studies.” Mitchell (1984) argues that telling case studies illustrate theoretical relationships: What the [researcher] using a case study to support an argument does is to show how general principles deriving from some theoretical orientation manifest themselves in some given set of particular circumstances. A good case study, therefore, enables the analyst to establish theoretically valid connections between events and phenomena which previously were ineluctable. From this point of view the search for a ‘typical’ case for analytical exposition is likely to be less fruitful than the search for a ‘telling’ case in which the particular circumstances surrounding a case serve to make previously obscure theoretical relationships suddenly apparent. (239)

He justifies the use of “telling case studies” in critical anthropology as a counterpoint to the tendency of positivist-oriented researchers who tend to focus on typicality of research subjects, the nature of samples, or enumerative induction. He argues that this kind of induction is inappropriate for the type of work anthropologists do, which is better conceptualized as “analytic induction,” as opposed to enumerative induction which focuses on typicality of representative samples (which is in line with colonial discourse analysis). Furthermore, for Mitchell (1983), the analysis of a telling case study focuses on logical inference, a process whereby the researcher draws conclusions based on theoretical propositions. He also asserts that it is justifiable for the researcher to use a simplified account of the context within which the case is located as long as the impact of relevant events in that context are incorporated into the analysis as the purpose is to present sufficient evidence to demonstrate how events and actions are linked to one another in theoretically significant ways. Furthermore, he adds that the extent to which generalizations can be made depends on the adequacy of the underlying theory and the corpus of related

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knowledge of the field in question (Mitchell 1983). His proposition, compared to traditional quantitative survey methods, implies that, when telling case studies are used, the analysis depends heavily on articulated theory (as opposed to being theory-neutral or ‘grounded’), which is also the basis for claims of validity (as opposed to the typicality of the data sample or frequency of data patterns, for example) and inferences are based on situated logical connections (as opposed to data correlation). Therefore, the case studies were selected based on their explanatory power: the extent to which they helped articulate a connection between the production of knowledge about the self and Other, and their implications in terms of the reproduction of unequal relations of power and possibilities for more ethical social relations. The data of the case studies was collected from published and unpublished materials: reports, information booklets, book chapters, and public presentations, as well as extensive personal observations registered in a research diary in the case studies presented in chapters eight, nine, and ten. When unpublished reports or comments were used, I sought informed consent from organizations and research subjects, and I offered the opportunity for organizations to comment on a draft version of my analysis. The case studies presented in chapters eight and nine are related to the educational practice of “school linking”: connecting schools in the North with schools in the South for educational exchanges (see note in 89). Chapter eight presents an award winning school link between a school in London and a school in Pampawie in Ghana. Chapter nine presents a link cluster between five schools in the EastMidlands, England (which will remain anonymous) and schools in India, coordinated by an educational nongovernmental organization (NGO) referred to as NGOA. Chapter ten presents a training course for young activists organized by an NGO (NGOB) focusing on the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign. The three case studies represent different sets of assumptions that construct the Other in ways that implicitly or explicitly reinforce ethnocentric and hegemonic epistemologies.

Summary of Analyses of Policy and Practice Analyzed through a postcolonial lens, the document “Developing a Global Dimension in the Curriculum” presented a strong influence of Enlightenment humanism through a juxtaposition of liberal

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discourses on multiculturalism and discourses of modernization. The emphasis of this document was on pedagogical engagements with different cultures, particularly cultures from the global South. Essentialist (nationalist) notions of cultures and identities framed very specific terms of engagement in which southern cultures were exoticized, homogenized, and rendered as objects of analysis. The conceptual framework of the document concealed power differentials and hybridity, as well as the possibility of the existence of different knowledges or logics. The universalization of Western knowledge and history in the concept of a “common history” placed other forms of knowledge as secondary or inferior to Western knowledge and foreclosed the historical and violent construction of the projection of the West as global. Hence, an ethnocentric and hegemonic epistemology was implicit in the discourses of global citizenship, poverty, knowledge, development, and multiculturalism presented in the document. The strategy paper “Putting the World into World- Class Education,” unlike the first document, presented an explicit set of assumptions related to market neoliberalism based on the association between knowledge production and accumulation of wealth (i.e., development) in a hyper- capitalist global context. The main emphasis in the document was on maximizing economic advantage by learning from other “First World” countries or emerging economies, while “teaching” the “Third World” by attracting students to the United Kingdom, building campuses overseas, or providing aid for education in Africa in the form of British expertise or models to be followed. Globalization (as the financialization of the globe) was presented as an inherently benevolent force toward progress and development of all nations in accordance with universal standards of development established by the “First World.” Although they had different focuses, both frameworks were based on ethnocentric and hegemonic epistemologies. They projected seamless notions of progress, history, and development as unproblematic givens (with one notable exception in the first document). Contrasting the stances expressed in the policy documents with that of postcolonial theory makes the differences and possibilities for action clearer. As a starting point, there are different assumptions of what problem needs to be addressed. While the documents depict the problem as the poverty or helplessness of the Other, resulting from a lack of development, education, resources, skills, knowledge, culture, or technology, postcolonial theory presents the problem as inequality and injustice originating from complex structures and systems

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(including systems of belief and psychological internalizations), power relations and attitudes that tend to eliminate difference and maintain exploitation and enforced disempowerment. In the policy documents, the position of privilege and material wealth in the global North is associated with a seamless notion of progress, economic development and justified by achievements in science and technology that clearly demonstrate an unmatched high performance in a “universal” history and epistemology. From a postcolonial perspective, this privilege comes mostly from northern control over unjust and violent systems and structures that are sustained on the basis of exploitation and inequalities. While the documents present humanitarian and moral grounds for action based on the notion of a “common humanity” and a sense of responsibility for the Other, a postcolonial perspective presents political and ethical grounds for action based on the notion of justice and complicity in harm, or responsibility toward the Other. The documents emphasize the need for change in terms of capacity building in structures and institutions, as well as cultures (belief systems) that are a barrier to development in order to achieve universal economic growth, equality, and tolerance. A postcolonial perspective emphasizes a change of cultures, relationships, and structures, so that injustices are addressed, more equal grounds for dialogue are created, and people can have more autonomy to define their own development. The basic principle for change in the documents analyzed is the universal attainment of universal knowledge through universal education for universal development. Thus, the goal of education is to empower individuals to act according to what has been defined for them as development, a good life, and/or ideal world. From a postcolonial perspective the basic principle for change is contingency, dialogue, an ethical relation to difference and reflexivity— a way of engaging critically with the past in order to imagine other possible futures. Therefore, the goal of education is to enable individuals to reflect critically on the legacies and processes of their cultures and contexts, to imagine and negotiate “otherwise,” and to take ethical responsibility for their decisions and actions. Finally, the understanding of interdependence in the documents overly emphasized how the global North can affect the South in positive ways and how the South can affect the North in negative ways (e.g., by increasing environmental degradation), which helped justify interventions on the grounds of self-interest. Neither document addressed unequal power relations, the history of colonialism, or the

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Pedagogy

Proposed way forward

Nature of the problem

Problem

Knowledge about other cultures; active (local and global) citizenship through the nation state; promotion of empathy, commonality (i.e., common humanity) and good will; redress through knowledge sharing and exchange of ideas. Focus on individual skills Strategies to “include” minorities, feel good approach of “making a difference” to those who are disenfranchised

Enlightenment: Cartesian subject, anthropocentrism, rational consensus over questions of humanity, justice and progress Human Rights, sustainable development (as selfinterested interdependence), commonalities of aims, culture as content to be studied Human beings have not yet been able to agree on the best course of action due to misunderstanding and miscommunication; humanity needs to be cultivated Lack of (rational) focus on commonalities and positive ideas about living together Intolerance and lack of good will— prejudice as violation of democratic rights

Roots

Preferred topics

Common humanity Consensus Nation states as primary identity

Master signifiers of educational discourse

Western humanism

Working with other cultures Exporting education, importing international students Ethical consumerism (e.g., product red) Celebrity/media activism Focus on becoming a world leader/manager of solutions Capacity building for self— global skills, multiple literacies, for others, basic literacy and numeracy

Under- development due to a lack of knowledge; ‘culture’ (i.e., tradition) as a barrier to development

Business case for multicultural and global justice Entrepreneurship Corporate responsibility Show business Late capitalism, hyper rationalism, human capital theory Market interdependence Global skills Employability Individuals and societies need to adapt quickly to the shifting needs of the market economy

Neoliberalism

Table 5.1 Different approaches to multicultural and global justice education Postcolonialism

Social critique focusing on knowledge production, power and representation reflexivity: unlearning privilege Imagining otherwise, learning to learn from below

Ethnocentrism, hegemony, unequal power relations and distribution of wealth and labor: humanity needs to be faced and its potential for harm recognized Coercion and subjugation of difference: concealed racism as an integral part of the social order; ideology of cultural superiority leading to discrimination, hatred, deficit theorizing and violence Promotion of systemic awareness and ethical engagement (as solidarity/ethical responsibility) with margins/minorities. Fundamental structural/societal/relational change

Interrogation of violences and effects of colonialism, particularly in knowledge production Solidarity, difference, openness, relationality, reflexivity

Ethical responsibility toward the Other Recognition of complicity in harm Uncoercive dialogue

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Learning about others Partnerships to help others Working toward harmony Conflict resolution, good stories, global governance institutions and policies, Trust in world leaders and institutions to solve problems

complexity, diversity, uncertainty

Ethnocentric benevolence does not challenge domination. Potential problematic outcomes: triumphalism, paternalism, narcissism, sentimentalism, intolerance to complexity and uncertainty

Members of equal nations coming together in rational consensus to define a better, prosperous and harmonious future for all

Ethno/national cultures co- existing in harmony

Activities

Highlight

De- emphasize

Critique

Idea of global citizenship

Idea of multiculturalism

United colors of capitalism

Exploitative imperialism eliminates other possibilities for conviviality. Potential problematic outcomes: triumphalism, paternalism, narcissism, egotism, hedonism, alienation Members of a global, borderless market economy who make ethical rational choices (in favor of capital accumulation and property ownership) that benefits them and others

Building capacity of self through experience Building capacity of others through teaching Potential of markets, capital and consumerism as forces for the good of the planet Need to understand and adapt to complexity, diversity and uncertainty of market economies contradiction in exploitative mode of production

Members of a diverse planetary community of interdependent species who recognize their insufficiency and the facts that current dominant modes of being, thinking and organizing are unsustainable and that survival requires a shift of ways of knowing and relating Self-reflexive solidarity Interdependence based on self-worth and insufficiency

Commonalities (to address ethnocentrism), “Positive” side of colonialism (i.e., enabling violations) Brings out feelings of resistance, sadness and skepticism towards traditional strategies to “make a difference”. Potential problematic outcomes: paralysis, ethnocentric critique, guilt trips.

Critical engagement with debates Learning from/with others Working toward ability to work together based on mutuality and reciprocity Conflict/difference as learning opportunity complexity, diversity, uncertainty Social movement responses, globalization from below, dissenting voices

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violent Northern track record of current unjust practices of dominance and exploitation in its relationship with the South. Table 5.1 (on pages 94–95) summarizes the differences of assumptions between the discourses found in the policy documents and in postcolonial theory using the context of multicultural education and education for global justice as a central category of analysis. In terms of analyses of practice, the three case studies tended to reflect different aspects of the discourses and patterns examined in educational policy. All case studies presented problematic conceptualizations of the Other and ethnocentric, depoliticized, ahistorical, and/ or paternalistic approaches in education about the Other or about global injustices. The case study of the link between England and Ghana (chapter eight) offers an example of a benevolent (and ethnocentric) strategy to enable students to “make a difference” and to “learn from” another culture, that may reinforce unequal power relations and assumptions of cultural supremacy. The case study of the cluster schools in England and India (chapter nine) illustrates how a partnership with the aim of “celebrating diversity” in an attempt to address racism, can conceal paternalistic practices that, ironically, may reinforce and exacerbate racism. The case study on the MPH campaign demonstrates how unexamined educational approaches to active citizenship and social justice, especially those based on “celebrity activism,” may alienate learners and reproduce relational patterns that are at the core of the injustices allegedly being addressed. In ideological terms, the modernization and (neo)liberal approaches identified in the policy documents were also identified in the case studies in chapters eight and nine. The content of the MPH campaign of the case study in chapter ten challenges some of the assumptions about poverty presented in the policy documents, but this dimension is not emphasized in methodological terms during the training course for young activists and the liberal “civilizing mission” approach that seemed to prevail. In conclusion, the telling case studies of practice indicate undertheorized approaches to politics and pedagogy that were also present in the policy analyses.

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Chapter Six Analysis of Policy I: Focus on Western Liberal Humanism

The Curriculum Guidance document “Developing a Global Dimension in the School Curriculum” (DGDSC), developed by the former Central Bureau of the British Council and the Development Education Association (DEA), and published by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in 2000 was the main reference document for schools in relation to teaching the “Global Dimension” (GD) of the curriculum in England from 2000 to 2004. The document was integrated to the National Curriculum and recommended to schools by DfES. DGDSC’s text was updated by the DEA and reprinted in March 2005 with minor changes in structure. However, only the version of 2000 is analyzed in this chapter.

DGDSC Outline: Definitions, Aims and Justifications of GD DGDSC describes what it means to include GD in the school curriculum: Including a global dimension means that the content of what is taught is informed by international and global matters, so preparing pupils to live their lives in a global society. It means addressing issues such as sustainable development, interdependence and social justice at both the local and global level. (DfES 2000, 1) It also means that young people are given opportunities to examine their own values and attitudes, to appreciate the similarities between peoples everywhere, to understand the global context of their local

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From these statements, GD can be interpreted as the establishment of connections between local and global issues in a way that involves the examination of an individual’s role in the world and of her values and attitudes. The values GD promotes are related to combating prejudice and discrimination and to becoming an “active citizen” in a “global community.” The document justifies GD on the basis of globalization, which is defined as intensified trade, travel, and communication across the world from the perspective of people who have access to such commodities: Global issues are part of young people’s lives in a way that they never were for previous generations. Television, the internet, international sport and increased opportunities for travel, all bring the wider world into everyone’s daily life. (DfES 2000, 2)

It portrays the intensified contact with cultural difference as a societal improvement that opens opportunities for broadening pupils’ experience and knowledge: Society today is enhanced by peoples, cultures, languages, religions, art, technologies, music and literature originating in many different parts of the world. This provides a tremendous range of positive opportunities to broaden pupils’ experience and knowledge. (DfES 2000, 2)

The document conceives poverty as a lack of access to healthcare, water, education, and opportunities for improvement of conditions. It implies that global environmental damage is worsened by poverty: Whilst there have been huge improvements that have changed the lives of millions of people, one in five of the world’s population still lives in extreme poverty. They lack access to basic healthcare, education and clean water, with little opportunity to improve their condition. Moreover, there is increasing acknowledgement of the far-reaching

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impact of levels of global poverty. Environmental damage, for example, which is exacerbated by poverty, does not stop at national boundaries. (DfES 2000, 2)

Another reference to global processes that justify the inclusion of GD in education is made in the assertion that economies around the world are more than ever interdependent on both trade with, and investment from, other countries [ . . . ] the importance of education in helping young people recognise their role and responsibilities as members of this global community is becoming increasingly apparent. (DfES 2000, 2)

The document identifies three quotations from the English National Curriculum that justify the introduction of GD. The first is related to the role of education in shaping individuals committed to equal opportunities, a liberal pluralist democracy, and sustainable development: Education is [ . . . ] a route to equality of opportunity for all, a healthy and just democracy, a productive economy, and sustainable development. Education should reflect the enduring values that contribute to these ends. These include valuing [ . . . ] the wider groups to which we belong, the diversity in our society and the environment in which we live [ . . . ] The school curriculum[ . . . ] should secure commitment to sustainable development at a personal, national and global level. (QCA 1999, 1 cited in DfES 2000, 2)

The second is related to communication and the changing nature of society due to globalizing forces acting upon the economy and society and the expansion of communication technologies that change work and leisure patterns: Education must enable us to respond positively to the opportunities and challenges of the rapidly changing world in which we live and work . . . we need to be prepared to engage as individuals, parents, workers and citizens with economic, social and cultural change, including the continued globalisation of the economy and society, with new work and leisure patterns and with the rapid expansion of communication technologies. (QCA 1999, 1 cited in DfES 2000, 2)

The third statement is related to the construction of pupils’ identities; of cultural heritages of British society and of different geographical dimensions of their lives:

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The school curriculum should contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society and of the local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of their lives. (QCA 1999, 1 cited in DfES 2000, 3)

The U.K. National curriculum at the time was divided into four keystages corresponding to eight years of basic education. DGDSC presents a framework for the progression of understandings of GD in relation to the four key-stages. In the document’s framework, key- stage 1 and 2 focus primarily on identity, diversity and the development of a sense of common humanity “with similar needs but differences in how these needs are met” (DfES 2000, 3). Disparities in the world and notions of social justice and interdependence are introduced in key-stage 2 and “developed” in key-stages 3 and 4. It is only in keystages 3 and 4 that critical thinking and poverty are mentioned. The document also outlines eight key concepts underpinning teaching about global issues. These are: citizenship, sustainable development, social justice, values and perceptions, diversity, interdependence, conflict resolution, and human rights (DfES 2000). For each key-stage and also for the key concepts, the document offers guidelines for each subject with 15 case studies offering examples of good practice. Four of the case studies illustrate links between schools in England and schools in developing countries and a special section at the end of the document is dedicated to school linking, which is justified primarily as way to enrich the life in schools, to offer opportunity for research and knowledge exchange, and to “bring issues vividly to life” (DfES 2000, 14). Another justification given for linking is that it offers an opportunity to open subject areas to add “wider global input and perspectives” (ibid.). It is also stated that exchanging ideas with teachers and pupils on an equal basis, whether it is about science, environmental issues, the arts, or culture, can challenge the stereotyped, ‘problem oriented’ image of people in less affluent countries and thereby contributes to education in values and attitudes in a multicultural global society. (DfES 2000, 14)

However, what is meant by “equal” or how an “equal partnership” with a “less affluent country” can be established are issues that are not addressed in the guidelines. The document also offers a special section on whole school approaches (or approaches that involve the whole school as opposed

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to isolated disciplines) which features examples like “international school days,” school clusters working together, and the involvement of parents, organizations and the wider community to “contribute their knowledge and experience of the wider world in assemblies and as part of classroom discussions” (DfES 2000, 15). Internet links and addresses directing readers to materials, resources, and organizations are listed at the end of the document together with quotations from educators on the perceived value of GD.

DGDSC Content Analysis The way the document defines what the introduction of GD in the curriculum means puts an emphasis on making links between local and global contexts and the inclusion of “international matters” in the school curriculum, which, from the information in the links section, can also be interpreted as international perspectives. It also stresses the creation of opportunities for pupils in the United Kingdom to examine their own values and attitudes, exemplified in the idea of challenging discrimination and stereotypes and critical assessment of information (in key-stage 3), to develop an appreciation for diversity and to build the knowledge, understanding and skills to become active citizens in a global society. This definition foregrounds the content (i.e., connections between local and global contexts) and methodology of GD (i.e., incorporating different perspectives and assessing information critically). However, when analyzed through a postcolonial lens, the discourse presented in the document contradicts some of these principles as the text presents a complex juxtaposition of two different sets of assumptions: a liberal pluralist view of diversity, identity, and culture, and a dominant approach to development and poverty based on modernization ideals. Both the approach to culture and the approach to poverty and development reproduce Enlightenment humanist tendencies, including narratives of a linear teleological collective history, of a common humanity (who mirror the Western subject), and of a seamless narrative of progress. Underlying its pedagogical project, is an assumption that there is only one version of reality that is considered “knowledge,” which should be pursued by (Cartesian) knowledge producers who are unmarked by culture. Therefore, from a postcolonial lens, both discourses identified, despite claims to challenge Eurocentrism, still operate within Eurocentric-hegemonic epistemologies. I analyze the approach to culture and the approach to

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poverty separately using examples from the guidelines to support and illustrate these claims.

DGDSC’s Approach to Culture DGDSC seems to be trying to change the perceptions of a target teacher/student audience that supposedly believes in “modernity” as an exclusively European project and achievement (looking at the “Third World” as a problem) and that deficit theorizes (Valencia 1997) non-Western cultures (i.e., other cultures have not contributed and cannot contribute to the universal project of modernity). This is illustrated in two passages with guidelines and justifications for activities. One concerns school links, which aims to challenge the stereotyped, “problem oriented” image of people in less affluent countries and thereby contributes to education in values and attitudes in a multicultural global society. (DfES 2000, 15)

The other concerns mathematics: Mathematics: where pupils begin to use number in a range of different contexts and explore number patterns from a range of cultures. By doing this they can learn to appreciate the mathematical ingenuity of other cultures. (DfES 2000, 4)

Hence, achieving the aims of the document of “becoming a multicultural society” involves changing learners’ perceptions in relation to the contribution of other cultures to the “common history” of a “common humanity.” In other words: changing the idea of modernity as an European project to that of modernity as a universal project shared and celebrated by the whole world, which different cultures have also contributed to. This can be observed in some of the guidelines for the introduction of GD in history and mathematics: History: where pupils learn about the lives of significant people and past events. By doing this they can appreciate the significant contribution made by people from all over the world to our collective history. (DfES 2000, 4) Mathematics: showing that mathematicians from many cultures have contributed to the development of modern day mathematics. (DfES 2000, 4)

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However, the seamless linear narrative of progress and evolution informing the narrative of a “collective history” or the humanist/ Cartesian assumptions informing ideas of humanity are not questioned. Therefore, the progress of the single common history toward the goal of modernity (and what it means to be human in such a context) can only be measured against “First World” (or European) parameters of reality, knowledge, time, development, and human achievement. Thus, a Eurocentric-universalist and ethnocentric and hegemonic notion of a more advanced epistemology is reproduced under the guise of inclusion of other cultures. Throughout the document, other epistemologies are referred to as “ideas, values and beliefs” (never “knowledge”). Such ideas, values, and beliefs that do not have the status of “knowledge” are the object of analysis for pupils to “develop knowledge and understanding” about, echoing Orientalist attempts to frame and objectify the Other, as in the example: Pupils analyse and evaluate how ideas, beliefs and values are represented in different cultures and traditions, and develop knowledge and understanding of the diverse purposes and audiences of artists, craftspeople and designers [ . . . ]. They explore the ways in which artists working in different cultures produce images, symbols and objects to convey meaning. By doing this they can [ . . . ] extend their knowledge of different cultures. (DfES 2000, 12)

As Said, Bhabha, and Spivak point out, by transforming the other culture into a knowable, fixed, and predictable object of study, and conceiving the student as a transparent knowledge “producer,” DGDSC reproduces Orientalist assumptions constructing a Northern transparent, knowledge-producer subjectivity, in relation to a “knowable” colored Other who may have culture (i.e., values, traditions, and beliefs) but not (universal) knowledge. In doing so, the document generates the ideological support for the legitimation of North-South representations that reify unequal North-South power relations. Both within the liberal pluralist approach to culture and the modernist approach to international development, “science” (which involves modern mathematics and technology) becomes the authorized form of knowledge production. This perception is emphasized in the passages: Mathematics: where pupils develop an understanding of the universality of mathematics. (DfES 2000, 6).

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Science: promoting discussion of the science-based issues that may affect pupils own lives, the direction of society and the future of the world. (DfES 2000, 4)

The questions “Whose mathematics holds universal status, and how come?” and “Whose science can affect the future of the world, and how come?” are not raised in the document. Similarly, the possibility that knowledge production is culturally situated is not contemplated in the document. The acceptance of science becomes a parameter for “cultural advancement,” which directly implies Western cultural supremacy as cultures that do not accept Western science are perceived as an obstacle to the universal-linear progression of the history of humanity. In the document, this is illustrated in the following guidelines: Science: showing how perceptions of different cultures can influence the extent to which scientific ideas are accepted, used and valued. (DfES 2000, 9) Science: where pupils [ . . . ] explore the cultural contexts that may affect the extent to which scientific theories are accepted. Opportunities exist within science to use data from different parts of the world. By doing this they can appreciate the international nature of science and the contribution scientists from all over the world have made. (DfES 2000, 10 emphasis introduced)

Therefore, the contributions of other cultures that are perceived to “fit” in what is considered universal “knowledge” (i.e., modern science and mathematics, which are devoid of culture) are valued and recognized. While, those contributions that do not meet this criteria are considered “ideas, values, beliefs, and traditions” that become either an obstacle to development (i.e., acceptance of the universality of Western science), or a site of data collection for the Western subject to develop knowledge about. Difference is appreciated as something that contributes to the “diverse nature” of British society or to modern popular culture, but that is not considered equally valid knowledge, as illustrated in the example: Music: where pupils learn about the music of different cultures and traditions. They perform music, and can use instruments from a range of different cultures. By doing this they can begin to appreciate and recognise the contribution of world music to, for example, modern popular culture. (DfES 2000, 7)

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Table 6.1 (below) compiles some of the guidelines and justifications presented in the document in relation to the need for engagement with different “cultures” (as ideas, values, beliefs, and traditions). Table 6.1 indicates that DGDSC strongly emphasizes engagements with different cultural traditions in order to “understand, appreciate, gain knowledge and experience, and raise awareness and access” Table 6.1 Engagements with ideas, values, beliefs, and traditions of Others Suggested activity

Envisaged outcomes

To read books about peoples, places, and cultures in other countries To gather information about different cultures

To broaden pupils’ experience and knowledge (DfES 2000, 4) To deepen knowledge and understanding of self and the world in which they live in (DfES 2000, 4) To examine language patterns, sequence To increase global awareness of of events and patterns of behavior similarities and differences (DfES 2000, 4) To talk about differences and To develop an understanding and similarities appreciation of richness of cultures (DfES 2000, 3) To play games and dance dances from To learn to cooperate and appreciate the other cultures role of dance in other cultures (DfES 2000,12) To learn about different belief systems To respect different points of view (DfES 2000, 5) To learn the dance of other cultures To recognize the contribution of others to life in the UK (DfES 2000, 5) To listen to music and become familiar To take an interest in and to value with instruments different cultures(DfES 2000, 7) To compare ideas, methods and To experiment with different methods approaches of different cultures and To learn about the context traditions to art and design To use this to inform pupils’ own work (DfES 2000, 6) To learn about music To appreciate the contribution of different cultures to world music (DfES 2000, 7) To explore the representation of cultures To understand how language relates to identity (DfES 2000, 8) To use materials from other cultures To increase cultural awareness (DfES 2000, 12) To explore the ways artists produce To appreciate the variety and diversity images, symbols and objects to convey of art and design, to extend their meaning knowledge of different cultures (DfES 2000, 12) To use ICT to share experience To gain access to ideas and experience (DfES 2000, 11)

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to Other (i.e., Southern) cultures at the “Northern” end. Although, this self-interested tone of DGDSC could be justified in the context of trying to convince skeptical teachers about the value of introducing GD in the school curriculum, several potential problematic issues arise when the Other is framed as an accessory to maintain and add to the privilege of the dominant culture. First, the conceptualization of culture underpinning the document as other peoples’ “values beliefs and traditions,” and of knowledge as transparent, objective, and apolitical, severely compromise the possibility of the emergence of mutuality, reciprocity, and equality in educational practice. If one side has knowledge and the other has only ideas, values, beliefs and traditions, objectifying other cultures and producing knowledge about them is justified on the grounds of an ethnocentric benevolence that forecloses its hegemony and is perceived as an innocent and well intentioned “deepening of understanding.” As a result, learning with/ from Others only applies to surface, exotic or folk cultural activities, like music, dancing, cooking, or drumming. The disavowal of the epistemological and ontological choices and assumptions that are behind both “ideas, values, beliefs and traditions” of other cultures and of allegedly “neutral and innocent” knowledge production can be associated to an iceberg metaphor,1 in which what can be “seen” of a culture— its art, music, dances, costumes, cooking, games, stories, and subsistence— is only the tip of the iceberg. Below the water lies an immense mass of meaning constructed in the act of a community’s survival in their specific environment. From an ethnocentric/ hegemonic perspective, as this mass of meaning cannot be “seen,” it does not exist, and this applies to the observer as well: as one can only perceive the tip of one’s own iceberg. If the tip of the iceberg is perceived to be the “whole” of a culture, it can be analyzed, categorized, measured, known, and apprehended in order to extend and expand the observer’s knowledge, as illustrated in the examples in Table 6.1. Second, this analysis, categorization, and measurement that happens to the tip of the iceberg from an ethnocentric/hegemonic perspective generates an essentialist notion of culture. This happens as a result of a convenient forgetfulness that the fabric of a culture (or mass of an iceberg) is inherently hybrid and heterogeneous. As an iceberg changes constantly according to the weather conditions, seasons, the water environment and the clashes with other icebergs, objects and land masses, the body and foundation of the production of meaning of different cultures also change according to internal

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and external factors. Moreover, just as an iceberg carries (temporarily) frozen waters that have been to different environments, a culture also carries the traces of the encounters with other cultures— or the encounters with difference within the culture itself. The disavowal of this internal constitutive dynamism and hybridity leads to the fixity, essentialism, and homogenization of representations of cultures and identities which may reinforce assumptions of cultural supremacy and result in racism, as theorized by Bhabha (1994). The idea of geographically determined “national” cultures/identities and fixed religious or “ethnic” cultures/identities are still central notions in the Statement of Values of the National Curriculum quoted in the document, as well as in other passages, which portray fixed layers of belonging/identity that prioritize predefined geographical affiliations based on the idea of the nation-state and nested in a hierarchical fashion (from the local to the global): The school curriculum should contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society and of the local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of their lives. (QCA 1999, 1 cited in DfES 2000, 2) English: exploring the way that cultures are represented in stories and poems; showing how language relates to national, regional and cultural identities. (DfES 2000, 8) RE/Citizenship: celebrating different national, religious and ethnic identities. (DfES 2000, 9)

In educational terms, the uncritical celebration of fixed identities and ethnicities in the discourse around multiculturalism in the document has three problematic implications: the depoliticization of difference (which implies the disavowal of power in North- South relations); the commodification of culture; and the reinforcement of a Western ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology and perceived cultural supremacy. In DGDSC, multiculturalism is used to promote a movement away from the notion of monoculturalism within the United Kingdom (or within Europe), recognizing the “diverse nature of British society” (with reference to cultural minorities), the contributions of different cultures to a shared history and the shared humanity of a “worldwide community.” Such discourse of multiculturalism presents the

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United Kingdom as a diverse nation that is also homogeneous and unproblematic, despite its inherent heterogeneity in terms of identity associations and power relations. This homogeneity is framed around tolerance, civic pride and the celebration of the diversity of cultural practices of ethnic minorities. In this sense, it promotes assimilation and integration through a discourse of liberal pluralism that “fails to address the continuing hierarchies of power and centres of cultural legitimacy which define the way [people] live” (Jackson 2002, 316). Within this discourse, cultural differences are presented as apolitical ethnic accessories that are celebrated in multicultural festivals of costumes, cooking, and concerts (Gunew 1990). The resulting scenario is one where ethnic cultures are domesticated, romanticized and idealized by the dominant culture, while the (ethnic) “community” assumes the role of the representative of cultural diversity responsible for displaying “cultural content” as static and ahistorical. Meanwhile, internally (within the ethnic culture), power differentials (e.g., gender and class) and hybridity are suppressed, and compensatory nostalgias lead to rigid constructions and adherence to purported traditions, particularly those related to the maintenance of religious beliefs (Gunew 1990). In representing cultures as homogenous, apolitical, whole, authentic and independent from others, coexisting in an empty and homogeneous space, this multiculturalist discourse depoliticizes cultural difference (Jackson 2002), blending all power struggles into a “celebration of diversity.” It is useful to evoke Bhabha’s (1994) distinction between cultural diversity and cultural difference. He argues that cultural diversity is the recognition of pre-given cultural “contents” and customs, held in a time frame of relativism; it gives rise to anodyne liberal notions of multiculturalism, cultural exchange or the culture of humanity [whereas] cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate, and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability and capacity. (34)

In other words, cultural difference focuses on culture as a process of production of meaning and value “often composed of incommensurable demands and practices produced in the act of social survival” (Bhabha 1994, 172), whereas cultural diversity emphasizes culture as stable and homogeneous units, depoliticizing its internal and external power related dimensions. Therefore, the depoliticized focus on

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diversity in the document can be interpreted as, again, contributing to the reproduction of unequal power relations and of the ethnocentric hegemony of the dominant culture. Another implication of this approach to diversity is the commodification of difference, characterized by Mitchel (1995) as the “united colors of capitalism.” Liberal multiculturalism produces a discourse of cosmopolitanism based on the blending of essentialist and “authentic” ethnic accessories or identities, resulting in a kind of supermarket “happy hybrid” cosmopolitanism that becomes part of the mainstream culture. Jackson (2002) argues that through the process of commodification, “liberal” theories of multiculturalism tend to aestheticise and depoliticize difference, converting it into a safe and sanitized form that conceals an underlying racism. (317)

Jackson uses culinary culture to illustrate his point. He states that the consumption of “exotic” food can be seen as a form of cultural capital, exercised as a display of status and power. But he also points out that some cultural critics go as far as to say that culinary culture is a site of cultural imperialism where “bourgeois consumers exercise their power over racialised minorities by simply ‘eating the other’” (Jackson 2002, 320) or that “ethnic difference is a commodity used to spice up the dullness of mainstream white culture”(ibid.). Although these arguments can be interpreted as reductionist, in educational terms, the commodification of ethnic difference and the idea of liberal cosmopolitanism based on the consumption of difference tend to reinforce the perception that we live in a “truly” global community that allows for the free flow of commodities and cultures within an epistemologically homogeneous and power free global space. A multicultural discourse based on such assumptions frames cultural diversity as “an epistemological object” (Bhabha 1994, 34) and culture as “an object of empirical knowledge” (ibid.) producing several outcomes that serve to maintain unequal North- South power relations. First, the stated objectives to experience or to access the dances, arts, ideas, methods, beliefs and traditions of the other culture (in the United Kingdom or in the Third World) in order to “construct knowledge about it,” can be interpreted as an approach to the margin “as a tourist,” that, according to Spivak, advances the project of knowing the Other to control it (Spivak 1990). Second, the very idea of “constructing knowledge” by

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“decoding” or understanding the “raw material” of “ideas, beliefs, values and traditions” of others places the Western subject at the center and constructs “culture” in opposition to knowledge or reason, as Spivak (1999, 50) states: “the word ‘culture’, with its claim to a pattern of behaviour beyond reason alone, is opposed to the claim of the culture of the European Enlightenment to reason as such”. Third, it reinforces the ideas of authenticity, originality and origination that imply traceable cultural origins or roots, which, according to Bhabha (1994) are the basis of the construction of stereotypes and of racism itself. Bhabha (1994) refers to colonialism to illustrate that it was precisely the myth of a pure and undifferentiated origin that justified the domination and absolute supremacy of the colonizing “race.” He argues that the construction of identities is relational and ambivalent and implies that, in a situation where we have North-South power differentials, from an ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology, the Southern Other is perceived as potentially equal, but as necessarily inferior. Thus, the construction of stereotypical knowledge is an indispensable strategy to reaffirm cultural supremacy. For Bhabha, stereotyping “is not the setting up of a false image which becomes the scapegoat of discriminatory practices” (82), but a strategy of producing the self and the Other as entirely knowable, unchangeable, and predictable in order to eliminate the possibility of the equality of the Other and to reaffirm claims of cultural supremacy, which, in turn, justify domination and control (Bhabha 1994). This is illustrated in the examination of educational practice in chapter nine. Bhabha argues that racism is not based on a false image or stereotype of the other, but on an ambivalent process of construction of “self” in relation to the other rooted in the necessity of eliminating the possibility of the equality of the Other. This process relies on ideas of fixity and purity that are used for the construction of images (both positive and negative) considered truthful and authentic representations of both self and Other. Bhabha suggests that the ambivalence of the stereotypical chain creates a perverse articulation of multiple beliefs in an attempt to mark a separation between races. In this obsessive articulation of juxtaposed beliefs to justify supremacy, the Other is, at the same time, exoticized, romanticized, sexualized, infantilized, and demonized (see chapter nine). This articulation is enacted in the document in the strategy of creating/reaffirming positive images of the “Other” in order to challenge

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stereotypes (i.e., the negative images), as shown in the following example: PSHE and Citizenship: where pupils discuss and debate topical issues, including global problems and events. They learn to understand other people’s experiences, to appreciate the range of religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and to recognise and challenge stereotypes. By doing this they can develop a sense of themselves as members of a world-wide community in which there exists a wide range of cultures and identities but a common humanity. (DfES 2000, 15)

An ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology enables the possibility of a position that can legitimately establish a definition of “humanity” and of a “world-wide community” as a reflection of “self,” projecting its local values as global and universal. Moreover, the strategy of replacing negative with positive stereotypes creates a kind of positive Orientalism that may generate different outcomes. When successful it can produce “political correctness” and/or homogenize and romanticize the object of knowledge (e.g., all Latin Americans are happy people who can dance the samba), when not so successful, it may reinforce the discourse of cultural exception, which redeems individuals from perceived cultural/collective deficits (e.g., “she is Brazilian, but she is very capable”). In conclusion, the analysis of the DGDSC’s approach to culture represents knowledge in an ethnocentric, hegemonic, and essentialist way. Such knowledge is constructed by Western subjects (i.e., teachers and pupils) who construct unequivocal universal knowledge (unmarked by culture) about other cultures in order to expand their worldview. Although there is an emphasis on acknowledging the contributions of other cultures to “a common history” or to science and mathematics (perceived as universal forms of knowledge production), the epistemologies of other cultures that are radically different from a dominant European epistemology are perceived as “ideas, beliefs, values and traditions” and are not accorded the status of knowledge. The document draws on liberal pluralism to produce a discourse of multiculturalism that creates fixed notions or identity and culture that implicitly reproduce assumptions of the supremacy of a dominant Western mode of knowledge production and that sustain its ethnocentric hegemony.

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DGDSC’s Approach to Development and Poverty The approach to development and poverty in the document is based on a modernization discourse that equates development with economic growth and that places the “Third World” at a backward stage of modernization according to “First World” parameters. Therefore, the “Third World” needs “First World” assistance to modernize and grow economically through the rational use of resources brought by Western modes of organization, science and technology. The document seems to be addressing a context of assumed political apathy and indifference in relation to poverty in its target audience. This can be observed in the documents’ emphasis on “active citizenship”: At key stages 3 and 4 pupils develop their understanding of their role as global citizens and extend their knowledge of the wider world. Their understanding of issues such as poverty, social justice and sustainable development increases and they realise the importance of taking action to improve the world for future generations. (DfES 2000, 3) Citizenship: Gaining the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to become informed, active, responsible global citizens. (DfES 2000, 8) History: explaining the role of national and international organizations throughout history; highlighting different forms of action to effect change. (DfES 2008) Citizenship: teaching about democratic institutions and different political and societal structures; encouraging pupils to participate and become active citizens. (DfES 2000, 8)

This discourse of active global citizenship is based on the premise that individuals have a moral responsibility toward others grounded on their “position in the world” and (resulting) capacity to affect global processes, or “the future of the planet and its people”: At key stage 2 pupils develop their understanding beyond their own experience [ . . . ].They develop their sense of social justice and moral responsibility and begin to understand that their own choices can affect global issues as well as local ones. (DfES 2000, 3 emphasis introduced)

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RE: teaching about the moral and social obligations we have towards each other. (DfES 2000, 9) Geography: inspiring pupils to think about their own place in the world and their rights and responsibilities to other people. (DfES 2000, 8) Citizenship: showing how pupils can become citizens making a contribution to the future well being of the planet and its people. (DfES 2000, 8)

However, depending on how “development” and “well- being” are defined, this moral responsibility can take different forms and imply different assumptions about the role of the North in relation to the South. In the document, societal improvements are associated with development, technology, global trade and “quality of life”: Geography: showing how the level of development in different countries is related to quality of life. (DfES 2000, 8) Design and technology: where pupils explore the effects of technology on the development of societies and the pupils’ own lives. By doing this they can develop an understanding of social, environmental and sustainable development issues and explore ways in which the world can be improved. They can learn how the trading neighbourhood is the whole planet and that all communities, however remote, are potentially helped by global trade. (DfES 2000, 10) Design and technology: where pupils learn to design and make products and evaluate how a range of different products work. By doing this they can [ . . . ] learn how technology can be used to improve the world and contribute to the development of society. (DfES 2000, 6)

Sustainable development, defined as “the need to maintain and improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for future generations” (DfES, 2000, 8) is also emphasized and connected to social justice and the “improved welfare of all people”: Social justice: understanding the importance of social justice as an element in both sustainable development and the improved welfare of all people. (DfES 2000, 8)

On the other hand, global poverty is conceptualized as a “lack” of attributes that the North has the ability to dispense:

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Whilst there have been huge improvements that have changed the lives of millions of people, one in five of the world’s population still lives in extreme poverty. They lack access to basic healthcare, education and clean water, with little opportunity to improve their condition. Moreover, there is increasing acknowledgement of the far-reaching impact of levels of global poverty. Environmental damage, for example, which is exacerbated by poverty, does not stop at national boundaries. (DfES 2000, 2)

The overemphasis on the benefits of modernity in the document implies that global trade can benefit all communities (and not affect any of them negatively), that there have been changes in the lives of millions of people (only for better), and that environmental damage is exacerbated by poverty (and not by increased consumption). Poverty is seen as a deficit of modernity that needs to be dealt with because it brings consequences to everyone. However, the connection between the accumulation of wealth and the generation of poverty (e.g., colonial history, unfair trade rules, generation of debt) are foreclosed in the document. This “sanctioned ignorance” establishes a patronising attitude toward the South constructed around the notion of global active citizenship based on self-interested nationalist humanitarianism and exercised through what McEwan (2009) calls a “feel good industry” (182). The moral imperative for intervention at the heart of this project can be conceptualized as a “civilising mission” (Spivak 1990) of the West deriving from the representation of poverty as a deficit of modernity: a lack of resources, services and markets, and of education (as productive of the right subjectivity to participate in the global economy), rather than a lack of control over the production of resources (Spivak 1990; Biccum 2005). The responsibility for poverty is placed upon the poor themselves and the roles of colonialism and unequal power relations and exploitation in the creation of the wealth of the “First World” are conveniently forgotten. This civilizing mission of the West to address the poverty- deficit by educating the Other or by dispensing rights remains implicit in the discourse of global citizenship produced by an ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology. Thus, “improving the world,” becomes the burden of the fittest. This forgetting of North- South power relations and the conditions that have created the ethnocentric epistemology and position of privilege of Northern countries is very convenient in sustaining assumptions of cultural supremacy and unequal relations of power. Within an ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology based on the modernization

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approach to development, the origins of the wealth of First World countries are detached from exploitation and connected to the discourses of progress of the Enlightenment in terms of human rights, international development, global governance, “tolerance” to diversity, rationality and the notion of a global community, as illustrated in the passage: Citizenship: where pupils learn about human rights, the media, the diverse nature of society in the United Kingdom and globally, and the need for mutual respect and understanding. They learn about the role and work of national and international organisations, and the importance of resolving conflict fairly, and develop the skills to discuss and debate topical issues. They learn to consider others’ experiences. By doing this they can become informed citizens and understand the world as a global community. They can learn about global governance and address such issues as international development and why it matters. They can develop their interest in topical, global issues and can become willing to take action and actively participate to improve the world. (DfES 2000, 13)

Active citizenship, then, is turned into providing “help” in order to “solve their problems” and “change the world,” as exemplified in one of the case studies in the document: GCSE pupils at a girls’ school in Birmingham were set the task of producing flash cards to communicate safety issues around the use of electricity in developing countries. Pupils researched ways in which this information could be communicated, taking account of potential problems such as illiteracy. They also considered cultural issues such as the use of the colour red to communicate danger and whether this convention was understood everywhere. Through this project pupils learnt ways in which the quality of life can be improved and to consider the needs and wants of people from different cultures. (DfES 2000, 10)

Through a postcolonial lens, the assumption behind this initiative is that the “problem” of developing countries is only based on a “lack” of attributes that the North possesses (e.g., literacy, education, democracy, scientific knowledge, technology, a more civilized culture, history, universally “correct” values, etc.) and that the North is responsible for the South in the same way that it was believed that the white men had the burden of civilizing nonwhite peoples in colonial times. If, in the period of colonization, a local (European) set of assumptions of

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reality and of European supremacy was violently imposed on other people as universal (what Spivak calls an “epistemic violence”), it can be argued that this could be happening again in the discourses of the global dimension through the concept of “global citizenship.” Dobson (2005) argues that only certain countries have globalizing powers— others are globalized. In this sense, the North has a global reach while the South only exists locally. Globalization is, on this reading, an asymmetrical process in which not only benefits are divided up unequally, but also in which “the very possibility of ‘being global’ is unbalanced” (Dobson 2005, 262). Having the choice to traverse from the local to the global space is the determining factor for whether or not one can be a global citizen. If you are not ‘global’, “the walls built of immigration controls, of residence laws and of ‘clean streets’ and ‘zero tolerance’ grow taller” (Bauman 1998, 2 cited in Dobson 2005, 263). This is done with a view to contain the diffusion of ideas, goods, information and peoples in order to protect specific local spaces from unwanted “contamination” resulting in a one way transfusion rather than a diffusion of ideas and modes of being (Bauman 1998). As the capacity to act globally is limited, Dobson concludes, echoing Spivak, that “those who can and do act globally are in effect often projecting their local [assumptions and desires] as everyone else’s global” (Dobson 2005, 264). This can be applied to the case study of the school in Birmingham, especially if literacy is only conceptualized as alphabetic literacy: the capacity to read how Western knowledge is codified. The problem/lack/deficiency of alphabetic illiteracy becomes the problem of being “local” as opposed to “universal” or global.2 Becoming an informed, active, responsible global citizen is the first goal associated with the eight key concepts of the global dimension (DfES 2000, 8) and also surfaces in other parts of the document usually associated with the responsibility to help increase the quality of life (combat poverty) and “improve the world”: Key Stages 3 and 4: Pupils develop their understanding of their role as global citizens and extend their knowledge of the wider world. Their understanding of issues such as poverty, social justice and sustainable development increases and they realise the importance of taking action to improve the world for future generations. (DfES 2000, 10)

Cultural supremacy, as discussed by Homi Bhabha (1994), is based on the premise that one group or culture has achieved a better, more

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developed and universal way of seeing and being in the world. It prompts patronising and paternalistic attitudes toward the South and Southern peoples, as well as a foreclosure— or necessary and constitutive denial— of the colonial past and of causal responsibility or obligations toward the South. Without this understanding the argument for global citizenship through the development of the global dimension in the school curriculum is left to rest on “ethnocentric benevolence” performed through compassion and charity, and ideas of a “common humanity,” or “interdependence,” that do not necessarily address issues of power, inequalities, and injustice. Although compassion and charity are not explicitly mentioned in the document, interdependence is one of the 8 key concepts and the notion of a “common humanity” is presented as what lies at the core of diversity (also among the eight key concepts): Interdependence: understanding how people, places and environments are all inextricably interrelated and that events have repercussions on a global scale. (DfES 2000, 9) Diversity: understanding and respecting differences and relating these to our common humanity. (DfES 2000, 9) They can develop a sense of themselves as members of a world-wide community in which there exists a wide range of cultures and identities but a common humanity. (DfES 2000, 7)

According DGDSC, what binds us to people who are different from us is our interdependence and “common humanity.” If these concepts are combined to other ideas presented so far (i.e., of poverty as a lack of modernity and as the burden of the fittest), what emerges is a moral obligation to help/intervene based on a position of privilege. Dobson argues that acts grounded on this moral basis are easily withdrawn and end up reproducing unequal (paternalistic) power relations and increasing the vulnerability of the recipient (Dobson 2006). For him, justice is a better ground for thinking as it is political and prompts fairer and more equal relations. He proposes that the source of this obligation should be a recognition of complicity or “causal responsibility” in transnational harm (ibid.). Dobson (2006) states that the globalization of trade creates ties based on “chains of cause and effect that prompt obligations of justice, rather than sympathy, pity or beneficence” (178). He offers the ecological footprint as an illustration of how this operates “as a network of effects

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that prompts reflection on the nature of the impacts they comprise” (177). He also mentions unjust practices imposed by the North as a global institutional order that reproduce poverty and impoverish people (ibid.). However, analyses of the origins of poverty that take account of colonialism and unequal power relations are missing in DGDSC, which makes the position of “causal responsibility” or “responsibility towards the other, before will” (as opposed to responsibility for the Other) as Spivak (2004) conceptualizes it, impossible to envisage. The conceptualization of poverty as a lack and seamless narratives of progress, history and development are the norm in DGDSC, but in one instance different perspectives were acknowledged and the possibility for multiple causes of poverty (including links with slavery and colonialism) was made explicit: Pupils can explore some of the causes of world poverty, conflict, immigration, and refugee peoples. They can bring in a global perspective through the study of trade, slavery, empire, colonialism and the commonwealth; they can learn to appreciate the different perspectives on events when seen from different standpoints. (DfES 2000, 11)

This was the only guideline in the document where a contemplation of different perspectives on history/events was advised, suggesting the existence of multiple histories, discourses, and logics. It was the only explicit example of an approach found in this analysis that could potentially challenge assumptions of cultural supremacy. Less explicit and more ambivalent guidelines include the idea of evaluating images of the developing world critically and how representations of less developed countries can shape pupil’s own and other views (DfES 2000, 8). Depending on how criticality is conceived, these guidelines could challenge the dominant ethnocentric/hegemonic perspective presented in DGDSC. However, if the understanding of criticality is also based on the idea of knowledge production as transparent, neutral and apolitical, the same strategies could reinforce the ethnocentric hegemony that sustains assumptions of Western cultural supremacy. This idea is explored further in chapter twelve.

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Chapter Seven Analysis of Policy II: Focus on Neoliberalism

The international strategy paper “Putting the World into Worldclass Education: An international strategy for education, skills and children’s services” (PWWE) was launched by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) during the International Education Week in November 2004. It relates to “the international responsibilities of DfES” (DfES 2004, i) and sets visions, justifications, goals, and strategies for the inclusion of a strong international dimension in all sectors of education in the United Kingdom. Parts of this document were based on “Developing a Global Dimension in the School Curriculum” (DGDSC). I analyze the four goals of this document in relation to assumptions and representations of the global South.

PWWE: Document Description In his foreword to PWWE, Charles Clarke, the former Secretary of State for Education, states that the vision of DfES is that the people of the UK should have the knowledge skills and understanding they need to fulfil themselves, to live in and contribute effectively to a global society and to work in a competitive global economy. (DfES 2004, 1)

He further affirms that, to realize this vision, a world- class system of education needs to be developed and that the United Kingdom is planning the strategies to achieve this goal. He affirms that this development starts with “an understanding of the world in which we live” (ibid.). He refers to the values and cultures of different societies and the ways in which “we all, as global citizens, can influence and

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shape the changes in the global economy” (ibid.). He also asserts that a world- class system means being a global partner and knowing what constitutes “world- class standards.” In its executive summary, a highlighted passage presents DfES’ vision for putting the world into world- class education: We live in one world. What we do affects others— and what others do affects us— as never before. The world faces major challenges. The UK occupies a unique position in this world. Our vision is of the UK as a confident, outward-looking society and a leading edge economy playing its full part in the world. (DfES 2004, 3)

Three goals to support this vision are established: (1) equipping children, young people, and adults for life in a global society and work in a global economy; (2) engaging with international partners to achieve their goals and those of the United Kingdom; and (3) maximizing the contribution of the UK’s education, training, and university research sectors to overseas trade and investment (3).The vision and goals are explained and justified in detail in the document. For each goal, key priorities are identified and strategies proposed to achieve them. Their aim is to “integrate international considerations into mainstream policies and existing programmes of work” (20) with the intent that international issues “should not be an add- on or afterthought” (ibid.).

Content Analysis This analysis only focuses on the aspects of the document that are directly or indirectly related to representations of the global South. In relation to the first goal of equipping people for life in a global society, it concentrates on the use of the term “global,” and places emphasis on the introduction of the “global dimension” in education and the reference to intercultural skills and internationalization concerning the training of the workforce. In relation to the second goal of engaging with international partners, this analysis focuses on the idea of the United Kingdom “learning from the best” (i.e., the European Union or countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development[OECD]) and the role of the United Kingdom in providing expertise, resources and aid to developing countries. In relation to the third goal, it focuses on the commercialization of education: the goal of attracting more non-European

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students to the United Kingdom and of accessing new overseas markets (in the global South) through education export. The set of assumptions in this policy document is more explicit and much clearer than in the first document. Unlike the first document, where the greatest emphasis was on culture (i.e., liberal multiculturalism), this one emphasizes the economy: the basic premise is that of a unified global (neoliberal) capitalist economy which equates to a “global society.” The vision and goals are explicitly established in economic terms and this is also reflected in the conceptualization of the basis of the reality of a world community: To recognise that we are all members of a world community and that we all have responsibilities to each other is not romantic rhetoric, but modern economic and social reality. (DfES 2004, 5)

As only one perception of reality is legitimized and universalized as “knowledge,” and this perception relies on an economic social metaphor, the document’s epistemology can also be considered ethnocentric, hegemonic, and framed by neoliberalism. In this sense economic standards based on a linear perception of modernity (at a stage of late capitalism) become the parameters for advancement in a “world community,” as the quotation suggests. The interdependence between the First and Third Worlds is seen in terms of a responsibility to “help” other countries to “catch up with the West.” Responsibility in this sense can be unproblematically understood as the “burden of the fittest,” and traced back to the notion of the “white man’s burden” of civilizing the world during the period of colonialism. This assumption can be identified, in more subtle or explicit ways in each of the three goals.

First Goal In relation to the first goal, of equipping people for life in a global society and work in a global economy, the term “global” is associated with: (1) people travelling abroad; (2) people experiencing different cultures “in every High Street” at home; (3) the economy being global; (4) direct and indirect global competitive pressures on the employment sector; and (5) the percentage of jobs in the United Kingdom related to international trade (DfES 2004). The document states that the changes globalization has brought have been profound

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in a short period of time and that there is no prediction for this rate to slow down (ibid.). It further reinforces that this is modern day reality. It is our responsibility to prepare young people and older learners for life and work in the 21st century. (DfES 2004, 6)

The assumption seems to be that this is the most advanced or only possible perception of reality and the preparation is, therefore, based on perceived economic needs. As a result, four action points are prioritized: i. Instilling a strong global dimension into the learning experience of all children and young people. ii. Transforming people’s capacity to speak and learn other languages. iii. Equipping employers and employees with the skills needed for a global economy. iv. Moving towards the mutual recognition and improved transparency of qualifications. (DfES 2004, 6)

The first and third action points are more directly related to engagements or representations of the Third World and therefore, I will concentrate on those. The first action point promotes the inclusion of eight key concepts of global citizenship in “the learning experience of all children and young people” (DfES 2004, 10). These eight key concepts for global citizenship are: 1. Citizenship: Gaining the knowledge, skills and understanding of concepts and institutions necessary to become informed, active, responsible global citizens. 2. Social justice: Understanding the importance of social justice as an element in both sustainable development and the improved welfare for all people. 3. Sustainable development: Understanding the need to maintain and improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for future generations. 4. Diversity: Understanding and respecting differences, and relating those to our common humanity. 5. Values and perceptions: Developing a critical evaluation of images of other parts of the world and an appreciation of the effects these have on people’s attitudes and values.

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6. Interdependence: Understanding how people, places, economies and environments are all inextricably interrelated, and that events have repercussions on a global scale. 7. Conflict resolution: Understanding how conflicts are a barrier to development and why there is a need for their resolution and the promotion of harmony. 8. Human Rights: Knowing about human rights and, in particular, the UN Convention of the rights of the child. (DfES 2004, 6)

These concepts were adapted from the booklet “Developing a global Dimension in the Curriculum” (DfES 2000), which is analyzed in chapter seven. In the first document, the concepts were related to the “global dimension” of education. In this strategy paper, they are related to “global citizenship.” Three further changes were made to the descriptions: (1) the inclusion of the words “concepts and institutions” in the goal of citizenship; (2) the inclusion of the word “economy” in relation to the goal of interdependence; and (3) the inclusion of a particular reference to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in relation to the goal of human rights. These changes indicate that the original concepts in the booklet could have been written with a different agenda and a slightly different set of assumptions about development in mind. In this document the concepts can be interpreted in a very different way as they are put forward as part of a discourse based on an economic rationale. The addition of the word “economy” to the goal of interdependence provides the best illustration and can be related to the description of the term “global” in economic terms in the first part of the document. From a neoliberal perspective economic growth is the parameter for development and for the success of countries, purchase power and level of consumption become the parameters for the quality of life, welfare and the success of individuals. If interpreted using this framework, other statements in the goals can also be associated with economic issues. The achievement of quality of life and the necessity to maintain and improve it (within sustainable development) can be associated with purchase power and maintenance and increase in the levels of consumption, which, on the other hand, should not damage the planet for future generations, reinforcing the belief that science and technology will provide the solution to current and future environmental problems (concept 3). The importance of social justice for the improved welfare of all people (concept 2) can be associated with the resolution of conflicts that are a barrier to economic growth or development (concept 7). Becoming an informed, active and responsible global citizen

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(concept 1) can be associated with taking responsibility for making a difference to Southern people in “helping” them “develop” in order to avoid the repercussions of poverty on a global scale (concept 6). According to the document, these concepts should “permeate all areas of the National Curriculum” (DfES 2004, 7). The document states that, in order to achieve this goal, the government has developed an International School Award to promote partnerships between schools for the promotion of global citizenship.

Equipping the Workforce for a Global Economy Generic skills for a global economy are identified as: — The ability to work comfortably in multinational teams; — Knowledge of different business methods and ways of working; — Understanding and appreciating different cultures; — Feeling confident when working in and with other countries. (DfES 2004, 8)

The justification provided for the need for such skills is that the United Kingdom “benefits hugely from the free and increasing flow of trade in goods and services” (ibid.) as: The UK is the second largest supplier of foreign direct investment in the world, and receives more foreign direct investment than any other EU country. (ibid.)

Therefore there is a need to “raise [our] skill levels to compete with the best in the world” (ibid.), which means “matching the best of competitors and EU partners” (ibid.). From a perspective grounded on neoliberalism as global capitalism, multiculturalism is an economic necessity. In this sense, the document mentions a number of European and UK- US initiatives, such as Leonardo, Erasmus and the Euroguidance networks, but no reference is made to programmes or partnerships with countries in the global South. Given the strict immigration rules that only allow for highly skilled immigration to happen from the South in specific cases of shortage of European workers, the choice of not including the global South in the scope for training in the document is not surprising. However, another potential interpretation of this exclusion is that, in the Eurocentric/neoliberal imaginary, the “global”

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employment market does not include many “Third World” peoples as their national identities do not evoke “knowledge,” but “culture,” and therefore multiculturalism is mainly about peoples from First World countries, or that it may include highly skilled and generally Western-trained individuals as long as they assimilate a Western ethnocentric/hegemonic epistemology. Hence, learning about Third World cultures might not be considered so important for working in a “global” economy.

Second Goal In relation to the second goal of engaging with international partners to achieve their goals and those of the United Kingdom, the document states that it is both right and in our interest that we should seek to learn from others, share ideas and experience, and collaborate to raise the standards of children’s services and of education and skills worldwide. (DfES 2004, 11)

In pursuing this goal, four action points are identified: i. Benchmarking UK’s performance against world- class standards, drawing on best practice everywhere. ii. Developing the capacity to engage strategically with a range of partners across the world. iii. Working with European partners to realize the (European Council’s) Lisbon goal (for the European Union economy) of Europe becoming “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-base economy in the world.” iv. Sharing expertise and resources to contribute to the improvement of education and children’s services in the developing world, particularly in Africa. (DfES 2004, 11)

I will focus on the first, second and fourth action points that are directly related to engagements with or representations of the South.

Benchmarking against World-class Standards The first statement of the document defines that “world- class” refers to the “developed” world:

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We have historically played a full part in the work of the OECD and EU to benchmark performance across the developed world. We have used evidence of what works systematically to inform policy in relation to our children’s services, education and skills. (DfES 2004, 11)

Within an ethnocentric and globally hegemonic epistemology, knowledge is conceptualized as cumulative and strongly associated with economic growth (i.e., wealth comes from increased knowledge), what is considered “best practice” is defined according to these standards, hence, one can only learn from equally advanced/affluent countries, despite the claim of benchmarking against best practice “everywhere.” Although in the first goal, the “developed world” is identified as the benchmark for world- class education, in the second goal about developing strategies, this assumption is expanded to include “emerging and potentially powerful economies such as China and India” (DfES 2004, 13). Affluence and power are, again, a parameter of evaluation of useful knowledge. The document expresses a commitment to partnerships of mutual benefit and tangible outcomes that could raise “standards of lifelong learning and children’s services” (DfES 2004, 12). The definition of standards to be raised or whose knowledge should be imparted is unproblematic from the perspective presented in the document. One step identified toward this goal is the creation of the Global Gateway, an international website for “exchanging and sharing information on education and children’s services, and promoting educational partnerships and other links across the world” (DfES 2004, 12). Although the justification provided for the creation of such a website was that of “promoting international awareness and understanding, and developing an ability to learn from others” (DfES 2004, 12), there is a strong emphasis on selling U.K. education to other countries. The University of Nottingham is celebrated as an example of an institution with a “global perspective,” which is associated to the establishment of one offshore campus in Malaysia and another in China (DfES 2004, 13). Similarly, in the foreword to the document, Charles Clarke associates exporting education to being a “global partner”: Our education system has a tremendous reputation overseas. We have much to be proud of and much we can offer countries developing and reforming their own education systems. (DfES 2004, 1)

From an ethnocentric neoliberal perspective shared by First and Third World countries in the “worlding of the world” (Spivak 1990),

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the production of knowledge is directly and exclusively associated with the production of wealth. Therefore, if the United Kingdom is in a privileged position in the world economy, their educational system must be responsible for it. This idealization and romanticization of British education can also be interpreted as a legacy from colonial times that today represents an important cultural “brand” that is explored by universities and the British Council in marketing “Education UK”™ internationally. This is a good illustration of the role culture plays in economics. A degree obtained in a First World country is, in many contexts, (still) perceived to be worth more than a degree obtained in a country in the global South (regardless of quality). On the other hand, in associating valid knowledge with the creation of wealth, an ethnocentric perspective will not contemplate that good quality education can take place in poor, nonaffluent, or developing countries. One example of this assumption is the emphasis on quality assurance in relation to overseas university outlets expressed in the document. Therefore there is not much “valid knowledge for the creation of wealth” that can be gained from Third World countries as it is precisely the lack of such knowledge that prevents them from growing economically (and, by association, intellectually, culturally, and socially). On the other hand, the self-perception of First World countries as privileged creates a sense of responsibility for addressing this lack. In this sense, there is reference to developing “partnerships of national importance,” illustrated by the notion of supporting educational developments in the Middle East and in Africa (DfES 2004). This aspect is more thoroughly explored in relation to goal 4.

Contributing to the Improvement of Education and Children’s Services in the Developing World The first statement in relation to this goal is that the UK government is committed to making a major contribution to improving the life chances and circumstances of those living in developing countries— to giving others the opportunities that we in the UK regard as an entitlement. (DfES 2004, 14)

This perceived entitlement is what establishes their responsibility as a burden carried by the “strongest, fittest and most developed” to help the “weak, lacking, backward and less developed” other, as postcolonial theory suggests. A discourse of rights and the Millennium

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Development Goals is used to justify this burden defined as a responsibility for the other. The document emphasizes the role “the UK has played and will continue to play” (DfES 2004, 14) in supporting UN agencies and the World Bank working toward their goals. This is illustrated with the commitment of £1 million every year until 2008 toward basic education in developing countries. The document also makes reference to the vision set in the White Paper “Making Globalization a Force for Good” (DTI 2004) in relation to harnessing the power of globalization “to the benefit not only of the UK, but of every country, especially the developing world” (DfES 2004, 14). It is emphasized that, critical to this goal is the economic growth of Third World countries and that education is the factor that will make the greatest contribution toward the “self-sufficiency” of these countries (DfES 2004). From an ethnocentric neoliberal epistemology, the origin of poverty is a lack of valid knowledge or education (i.e., a universal capitalist epistemology) or entrepreneurship (hence the reference to “self-sufficiency”), factors which “developed” countries allegedly have in abundance. This is the part of the document where Orientalism (establishing Europe’s other as inferior) is more explicitly at work. In defining the origin of poverty in the Third World as a lack of education, knowledge, and/or capacity to operate autonomously, the First World defines the origin of its wealth as the accumulation of knowledge, the achievement of a universal knowledge/epistemology, as well as entrepreneurship, hard work and better organization (in contrast to incapacity to operate autonomously). If culture is defined as the production of meaning (or the generation of an epistemology), the relational construction of identities of “developed” and “developing” countries implies that the assumption of Northern cultural supremacy is explicitly at the root of North-South relationships in the epistemology presented in the document. This assumption can also be traced to the use of the concept of a “knowledge society” or “knowledge economy” throughout the document and is not exclusive to educational policies in the United Kingdom. The World Bank has also adopted the same discourse to justify their educational agenda (Hickling-Hudson 2002). The concept of a knowledge society emerges with the shift in power dynamics in relation to the postindustrial era of capitalism and the notion that “Knowledge inputs” became more valuable than physical inputs in the new economic context (Ilon 2000, 276). The great demand for highly skilled workers, able to meet the needs of a changing knowledge society, forces the expansion of education and

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the development of an educational discourse based on the assumptions of utility-maximizing natures of humans and markets. The discourse of “human capital theory,” also arising from an ethnocentric and hegemonic basis, identifies “knowledge” as the main driver for “development” (as economic growth). The objective of creating “knowledge societies” has been prioritized in World Bank educational policies for “developing” countries since 1999. In their World Development Report published in 1999, they state: Knowledge is like light. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of poverty— unnecessarily. (World Bank Group 1999a, 1)

The World Bank also asserts the notion of education as an investment and of humans as “capital” in their Education Sector Strategy published in the same year: It has long been self- evident that education, in addition to its immediate benefits, is also a form of investment, building people’s capacity to be more productive, earn more, and enjoy a higher quality of life. The rise of human capital theory since the 1960s, and its widespread acceptance now after thorough debate, has provided conceptual underpinnings and statistical evidence. (World Bank Group, 1999b, 1)

This discourse presupposes that the cause of poverty in developing countries is a “lack” or a “deficit”— a product of “cultural deprivation” or “social disadvantage”—which could be tackled with the provision of “good education” through “the improvement of traditional education systems inherited from colonialism” (Hickling-Hudson 2002, 568). These assumptions reinforce the meritocratic notion that “variations in educational investments (human capital) explain and justify variations in earnings” (Baptiste 2001, 188), and that “the root of problems of maldistribution of resources and statuses lies within the individual, not the social structure, and can best be remedied by prescribing more education as a cure for deficit” (Bock and Papagiannis 1983, 8–9). The relation of poverty to power relations (both internal and external to the countries in question), the material heritage of colonial exploitation, and the rules of postindustrial capitalism are foreclosed in and by human capital theory.

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In relation to resources, the strategy document claims that the United Kingdom provision of schools, books, and teachers to the Third World have helped progress to be made, but as there are still more than 100 million children still out of school worldwide, the priority now becomes the acceleration of the education of girls (DfES 2004). The document proposes to extend U.K. contributions by sharing expertise and resources from their education system and children’s services, which involves the development and offer of a menu of support including: — Further opportunities for policy and information exchange at ministerial and departmental level; — A panel of experts (policy and practitioners) that can be called upon to assist in development work; — UK resources that can be adapted to developing country needs. (DfES 2004, 15)

Moreover, strategies for partnerships to deliver support are also identified in relation to the EU, the Commonwealth and G8 partners, as well as the private sector, in order to secure business input to, and sponsorship for, educational development projects overseas. (DfES 2004, 15)

In this part of the document, Said’s phenomenon of “Orientalism” shapes identities and determines power relations and the allocation of funds in the form of aid for the improvement of education. However these allocations are conditioned both by an ethnocentric and hegemonic neoliberal agenda (with specific assumptions about the origins of poverty and what needs to be done) and by the self-interested provision of services and expertise flowing from the North to the South, which brings the investment in aid back to the donor country (see McEwan 2009). The roles of colonialism and neocolonial North-South relationships in the creation of the wealth of the First World and the generation of poverty in the Third World are completely foreclosed in the document.

Third Goal Maximizing the contribution of the education and training sector and university research to overseas trade and inward investment is the

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third goal presented in the document. The first goal of “equipping people for life in a global society and work in a global economy” (DfES 2004, 3) is linked to the third in the perception that “education and skills development plays a pivotal role in the global knowledge economy. It unlocks individual potential and gives the competitive edge in all sectors of a modern economy” (DfES 2004, 16).In this sense, the government emphasizes the role of U.K. education and training exports, estimated at £10.3 billion, as a significant industrial sector of the U.K. economy, which the document seeks to expand. In pursuing this goal, four action points are identified: i. Promoting further expansion in the number of international students at UK further and higher education institutions, including, increasingly, at quality assured overseas outlets. ii. Making the United Kingdom an international leader in the creative and supportive use of ICT for education. iii. Promoting the role of universities as international hubs for learning and research. iv. Encouraging UK education and training providers to work internationally in partnership with business. (DfES 2004, 16)

This is the goal that connects the international dimension of education more firmly to the economic growth of the United Kingdom. There is an explicit reference to the Third World only in the first action point.

Promoting Further Expansion in the Number of International Students in Further and Higher Education The documents starts this section by making reference to the £5 million marketing campaign “Education UK”™, which aimed at “making the UK a world- class leader in international education and life-long learning” (DfES 2004, 16). In this regard, two objectives were identified for the United Kingdom: (1) “to be the first choice for quality among international students at HE level, with an increase of 50,000 non-EU students by 2005” (DfES 2004, 16), and (2) “to be the world’s leading nation for international students to undertake FE, with an increase of 25,000 by 2005” (ibid.). The document mentions that both objectives were achieved ahead of time with 174,575 international students in U.K. higher education in 2002/03 and 61,380 in

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U.K. further education colleges. In addition, the document reports that another 200,000 international students followed U.K. higher education programmes in their home countries and an estimate 600,000 studied in U.K. private schools, colleges and English language institutions in 2003 alone (DfES, 2004). The document justifies the need to attract international students to the United Kingdom. It asserts that these students enrich the lives of the communities within which they live, but most importantly, that: On their return home many students maintain affection for and ties with the UK. This is hugely beneficial in terms of fostering mutual understanding and recognition between the UK and our international partners. (DfES 2004, 17)

This justification and strategy can be compared to British Education Policy in India during the period of British colonial imperialism. In 1835, Thomas Macaulay, articulated the goals of education in the sentence: We must [ . . . ] do our best [ . . . ] to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect. (Macaulay 1835, 729)

The British Education Policy in India aimed to transmit an epistemology that would produce colonial subjects who could work as translators and interpreters between the British and the rest of the population in order to assist them in the governance of India. It can be argued that “fostering mutual understanding and recognition” (DfES 2004, 17) between the British rulers and their colonized subjects in order to convince the natives of the benefits of colonial rule was also an important objective at the time. However, in neoliberal times, rather than celebrating and justifying British Imperialism in the form of colonialism, what is celebrated is globalization as a benevolent finacialization of the globe (Spivak 1999), driven and controlled (at least in this instance) by the old/new Empire. Another point emphasized in the document is that the international student market may become more competitive in the future and therefore strategies for maintaining the quality and good value of education are necessary. One approach identified is the provision of courses overseas, which would offers the “added benefit” of building local capacity within

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the countries concerned and creating the scope for long-term partnerships. Here again it is possible to construct a direct parallel between colonialism and globalization as the flow of expertise and returns is mainly unidirectional. In conclusion, this analysis started with an examination of the aim of equipping people for life in a global society and work in a global economy. It demonstrated that the term “global society” in the document can be interpreted as a reference to a society shaped by economic parameters defined from a ethnocentric and hegemonic neoliberal epistemology. This epistemology frames the way the eight concepts for global citizenship and the notion of multiculturalism are conveyed in this document. The analysis of the second goal of the document focused on the perceived role of the United Kingdom in providing resources and expertise to the “Third World” based on an Orientalist construction that foreclosed the relationship between exploitative capital accumulation and the generation of poverty. The analysis of the third goal of the document focused on the impact of Third World students in the economy of the United Kingdom, as well as the justifications and strategies for attracting more students and for opening outlets of universities overseas. These justifications and strategies were compared to educational justifications and strategies in the period of colonialism.

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Chapter Eight Analysis of Practice I: The Other Who Validates Our Superiority

This telling case study examines an award-winning school linking project between a school in England and one in Ghana. The data analyzed involved news articles published in the media and online, research notes on a public presentation, and a government report. I decided to focus my analysis on information available to the wider public and not on the perceptions of staff, teachers, and pupils, which would require interviews and could raise problematic methodological and ethical issues. Therefore, this analysis does not look into what is actually going on in the classrooms in this school, but into the representations that are available to the public and that often aim to encourage other schools to follow the U.K. school example. Before I proceed to describe the background of the link, it is necessary to contextualize school linking in the U.K. context.

A Brief Note on School Linking According to the U.K. One World Linking Association (UKOWLA), “linking” aims to “create a relationship between diverse cultures which is beneficial to both partners” (UKOWLA, 2006a, 1). UKOWLA states that the term (as it is known today) started to be used in the aftermath of World War II. The philosophy behind it was that there would be less likelihood for conflict if people got to know and understand one another better. Linking has been used by governments, organizations, and schools as a means of “building bridges of understanding and confidence between peoples of nations which had been at war and thus reduce the vista for new wars” (UKOWLA 2006a, 1).

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The Global Gateway, a major linking initiative in the United Kingdom, funded by the former DfES and managed by the British Council (cited in the document “Putting the World into World- class education,” (PWWE) analyzed in chapter seven), states that establishing and maintaining links with schools in other countries is a great way to introduce internationalism to students. A global perspective can help children appreciate diversity, understand the need for language learning, develop a sense of the wider world and be more aware of international interdependence. (DfES, 2002 cited in DfES 2004a, 6)

UKOWLA also celebrates the educational potential of linking to: • • • •

increase knowledge and understanding of global issues; broaden and deepen knowledge about other countries; develop friendships and feelings of solidarity with others; strengthen the local community and challenge narrow and distorted ideas about other races and cultures; • be great fun! (UKOWLA 2006a, 1)

Since the 1990s the U.K. government has made huge investments in linking programs both in terms of providing support and funding for reciprocal visits and in terms of creating awards to encourage schools to establish links abroad.

Description of Context School A is a secondary school and sixth form for boys and girls in Warwickshire. Their last school inspection report by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) in 2004, offers the following description of the school: [School A] is a mixed comprehensive school for students aged 11–18, situated in [U.K. town] in the north of Warwickshire. Students are drawn largely from the immediate residential area, and many come from socially and economically disadvantaged homes, although the proportion of students eligible for free school meals is below average. There are 1,308 students on roll, with 213 in the sixth form. [ . . . ]The majority of students are of white UK heritage, with very small numbers of students from other ethnic minority backgrounds. There are no students with English as an additional language. (OFSTED 2004, 1)

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The school has been linked to School B, a school in Ghana since 1999. The link started through Oxfam’s “On the Line” project to bring together schools on the Greenwich meridian line. In 2002, a five-year plan to bring long-term mutual benefits was written and reciprocal visits planned, and in 2005, 30 staff from the school visited Ghana (OFSTED 2004). The school OFSTED report (2004) praises the link in various statements. It emphasizes the impact of the link on the quality of learning of pupils: The impact of the school’s international work is excellent, enhancing the quality of learning across all subjects and contributing much to the students’ personal development and understanding of global issues. (OFSTED 2004, 5)

The contribution of the link to global awareness is recognized: The school’s international links provide an imaginative and valuable dimension to the students’ global awareness. (OFSTED 2004, 6)

Reference to Ghana is perceived as having a high impact on personal development and understanding of pupils in various subjects: The inspection team found much evidence of the very positive effect of this link on achievement in almost all subjects. Teachers frequently take opportunities to enhance learning by reference to Ghana. The impact on personal development and students’ understanding of the customs, values and beliefs of a contrasting culture is excellent. The school’s leadership in developing the link in Ghana is outstanding. (OFSTED 2004, 25)

The link is perceived as helping the school develop an international dimension through relevant and coherent tasks: The focus in all subjects, for example, on developing an international dimension specifically through the link with Ghana, has created learning tasks with relevance and coherence. (OFSTED 2004, 17)

The curricular projects resulting from the link are perceived as a strength of the school, permeating all subjects, making School B “real” for the students and contributing to pupils’ knowledge about “life in a Third World country” and their personal development:

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International education and the cross- curricular projects resulting from the Ghana link permeate the curriculum and are a strength of the school. (OFSTED 2004, 20) A strength of the school is the emphasis given to international education and in particular the very strong links with [School B] in Ghana. Work related to the link is found in the schemes of work of all subjects so that [School B] becomes very real to the students. The link and the activities associated with it make a considerable contribution not only to students’ knowledge of life in a Third World country but also to their personal development. (OFSTED 2004, 20)

The school’s international policy for linking features as an example of best practice on the Global Gateways website. It includes four fundamental beliefs: 1. We gain a greater understanding of ourselves when we can see through the eyes of another. 2. No culture has a monopoly of wisdom or expertise: we can all learn from each other. 3. Our world is both a huge village, whose diversity we have to celebrate, and a tiny planet, whose future we have to safeguard. 4. We are all brothers and sisters under the skin. (British Council 2006, 1)

This international policy also involves ten stated aims to put these values into practice: 1. We will forge links with a range of schools across the world. 2. We will develop joint curriculum projects with our linked schools, which meet the National Curriculum needs and help raise standards of teaching and learning for all partners. 3. We will give our students a wealth of opportunities to communicate with their peers in other countries, through post, telephone, e-mail, video- conferencing and exchange visits. 4. We will foster respect and appreciation for diversity in language, culture, faith and lifestyle, among our students, staff and community. 5. We will raise awareness of global issues of human rights, fair trade, and sustainable development, in our school and community. 6. We will offer all staff an international exchange visit as part of their continuous professional development. 7. We will promote internationalism to other schools, sharing our practice and encouraging them to make their own links.

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8. We will offer students opportunities for community service and charitable work, so that they can play their part in working for a fairer world. 9. We will equip students and staff to combat racist attitudes, stereotypes and myths wherever they encounter them. 10. Throughout the school community we will foster a sense of social justice and a belief that individual actions can change the world. (British Council 2006, 1)

The link coordinator lists a number of outcomes that emerged as a result of the partnership with School B: the creation of a Ghana club; curriculum projects across the school; increased investment in teacher development; the rewriting of the school’s stated values; and the sales of fair trade chocolate in the school (UKOWLA, 2006b). The school received an International School Award in 2004 from the DfES and the British Council for its curricular links with Ghana. It was also cited as an example of best practice in the curriculum guidance published by DfES: “Aiming High: Understanding the Educational Needs of Minority Ethnic Pupils in Mainly White Schools—A Guide to Good Practice” (DfES 2004b). In March 2006, DfES awarded the school a Lead Aspect Award (UKWOLA 2006b). This award was created to recognize and celebrate leading practice in schools. The U.K. school received the award for its “outstanding practice in the field of internationalism” (UKOWLA 2006b, 1). In October 2006 the school received the title “International School of the Year” and a cheque of £5,000 by the “Make the Link Awards” sponsored by the Times Education Supplement and HSBC (Times Educational Supplement 2005).

Analysis of Data Although there seem to be very valuable practical outcomes emerging from this learning experience for both schools, a critical examination of the underlying assumptions related to the aims and scope of this partnership may offer a different perspective on unintended implications of well-meaning intentions. A postcolonial reading of this initiative focuses on potential implications of unexamined assumptions, representations, and relationships established in this link for the reproduction of Western ethnocentrism and hegemony. In my first approach to the data, I was interested in the concept of “mutual learning” emphasized in the international policy of the school and the

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publicity of the link. I wanted to identify what contents and ideologies were being exchanged through this mutuality: what pupils/teachers in each school were learning from or teaching each other and whether there was any form of critical engagement with processes of knowledge production at each end. In the materials I analyzed, there were only very few explicit examples of what the students in School B were teaching the students in the United Kingdom, apart from “tip of the iceberg” culturally specific items, like drumming, work textiles, typical foods or dances, as illustrated by one of the teachers who learned drumming with a “tribesman” in Ghana: What young people crave is authenticity. When I got back to [U.K. school], all I had to do was get everyone in a circle, give them the drums, and load the DVD— it’s the African children who are doing the teaching. (Times Educational Supplement 2006, 1)

The “authentic culture” that teachers and pupils at School Alearned from School B was used , in the words of OSTED (2004), “to enhance and provide an imaginative dimension to the [U.K. school] curriculum,” reproducing the patterns found in the policy analysis of chapter six. On the other hand, the fundamental belief stated in the school’s international policy that “we gain a greater understanding of ourselves when we can see through the eyes of another” (British Council 2006, 1) seems to have been translated into practice as learning about one’s position of privilege, which prompted a responsibility to “share,” as illustrated in a statement published as part of a Times Educational Supplement article in March 2005 from a pupil commenting on what she had learned about herself and her relationship to others from the link: The [School B] pupils have something to teach us about the way we live. We have too much here, and we should be giving something back. Going to Ghana will be a wakeup call to what we should be doing. (Times Educational Supplement 2005, 2)

It seems that, central to what teachers and pupils in the school in England were learning from the partners in Ghana was an affirmation of their position of privilege through the reification of a classification of privilege/underprivilege based on an ahistorical single standard of political and economic development. This affirmation worked both as

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a confirmation of moral supremacy and a call for immediate action, rather than a critical examination of the construction of standards of economic and political development. Without such examination, the commitment to action was left to rely on an ethnocentric benevolence to help the underprivileged by sharing surplus resources. Through a similar logic, the documents present several illustrations of the difference the students in the United Kingdom are making to the Ghanaian community. Although it is not possible to assess what is happening in the curricular work at the school, the emphasis on “giving something back” and voluntary work to “make a difference,” evident on published materials, make items 8 and 10 of their stated aims in the international policy (related to charitable work and “changing the world”) appear to drive their agenda and interventions in the village. This drive to make a difference reflects a contemporary trend in philanthropic engagements in public culture, defined by Davis (2010) as “celebrity activism,” which, she suggests, started with the global relief movement in 1984–1985 triggered by initiatives like Band Aid and USA for Africa. Barnes (2008) describes the phenomenon as celebrity philanthropy: Celebrity philanthropy is premised on the idea that anybody with billions in royalty payments can do some good in the world by attaching his or her name and a big check to an underfunded issue. In return they are assured of receiving endless adulation. Thus, when Africa has nothing else to give, its gratitude will do nicely, thank you very much. (74)

Davis argues that the involvement of celebrities in philanthropic campaigns linked consumerism, desire, expression, and identity formation with the idea of effecting change in the world at a global scale, providing ordinary consumers with a sense of global purpose and agency based on a self-congratulatory theme. An excerpt of a Times Educational Supplement article, where the School A link coordinator reports on her first visit to Africa can be read along the same lines: In 2001, her own visit to [School B] with [another teacher] proved to be hugely influential—for them and the school. After a six-hour drive down the baked-red, single track road, the pair were greeted by the entire village. “I felt like Victoria Beckham,” says Sharon. “Every man, woman, child and chicken was running by the car shouting, ‘Akwaabamebroni’ (‘Welcome white woman’). It was the most

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humbling and incredible thing I had ever done in my entire life.” (Times Educational Supplement 2005, 2)

The affirmation of privilege and moral supremacy in “making a difference” in celebrity style was accompanied by representations that idealized yet debased the Ghanaian people and the Ghanaian culture while reaffirming their desire to learn from and catch up with the West. The same article describes a Ghanaian context of open-sided classrooms in which “goats could wander,” spotless pupils sitting at old-fashioned desks “eager to learn,” teachers “anxious to learn” new methods, Ghanaians convinced that England was Paradise, and African teachers visiting the U.K. “shocked” to see Tesco’s shelves stacked with a variety of foods (Times Educational Supplement 2005). This complementary discourse affirming the will to make a difference and the recipient’s pitiful request of support was also identified in other text samples. In a letter published in the Teachers Magazine (DfES) in January 2004, with the title “Actions That Can Change the World,” a School A teacher describes how pupils in the predominantly white context of the school were learning how their actions could change the world through building a study center in Ghana and raising funds to donate books: The project has enabled us to enhance our curriculum and address race issues, while our predominantly white pupils are learning how their actions can change the world. In the next few years, we hope jointly to create a study centre in [School B] to help their pupils achieve fluency in English and computer literacy. [The U.K. school] has raised £2,000 and is donating books to the centre. (Simons 2004)

Therefore, white School A pupils benefit from the partnership by building a sense of agency to “change the world” while the same sense of agency is denied to School B pupils who are perceived not to possess the right subjectivity to occupy an agentic position to intervene in the world. Their recipient subjectivity is constructed as a lack universal knowledge and skills (English and computer literacy) and the right technology (books) required for political and economic development. Thus, the mutual learning exchange between School A and School B is based on an arrangement where teachers and pupils at School A teach pupils at School B content of universal value, while learning content of cultural value that adds color and excitement to their curriculum. The cognitive agency of pupils from School B can only be recognized

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as such when exercised through engagements with Western knowledge and technologies that are surplus to School A pupils. This pattern of assumptions is not exclusive to School A, as shown in a news item published on the website of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly in Ghana, in August 2005, on the benefits of the link for Ghana. The article reports on the visit of a delegation of School A teachers for the inauguration of the study center in Ghana, highlighting the ritual held in honor of the delegation and their current and future contributions to the community: A 30-member delegation from [School A] in England has paid a one week visit to their counterparts in [School B in Ghana] to cement their co- operation [ . . . ]. The climax of the visit was a durbar held in honour of the delegation by the chief and people of [School B] Awanta Traditional Area that coincided with the commissioning of a 300 million- cedi resource centre built by the Kejebi District Assembly and equipped by [School A]. The items include seven computers with accessories, 200 cartons of books, a satellite phone with dish, printer, a 29-inch television and a video deck. Mr Andy Clark, the Head teacher of [School A], re-affirmed their conviction to assist their counterpart school to construct a vocational and technical institute at [School B] soon. (Kumasimetro 2005, 1)

The story of Ghanaian gratitude featured in a recounting of the link coordinator’s honoring ritual in the village, which was shared during a public presentation in a conference organized by the British Council in 2004 (from researcher’s notes): The link coordinator finishes her presentation with a photo of the most significant moment for her in relation to the link, which, she says, justified all the work she had put in it. The photo shows the white young female coordinator surrounded by village members who seem standing at a lower level around her. A black baby is being handed over to her. The coordinator explains that the significance of the photo is the baby was named after her as a sign of gratitude for all the difference she had made to the village. (personal notes, U.K.- Ghana 2004, 2)

Although the official presentations and stated principles of the school emphasize equality and that “no culture has a monopoly of wisdom or expertise: we can all learn from each other” (British Council 2006, 1), the texts analyzed suggest that these principles are translated into practice in a very simplistic way in an ethos of ahistorical,

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depoliticized, and uncritical ethnocentric benevolence. As there is no evidence in published materials that critical questions about the origins of poverty or unequal relationships are being addressed, my interpretation is that in this partnership School A sees itself in a position to offer global knowledge, technology, and opportunities to School B, while School B offers local culture in return. This arrangement seems to confirm the idea that people from Africa are good at drumming (something that people from England are keen to learn), while (white) people from England are good at (and the source of) intellectual and technological commodities which, unlike drumming, have universal value for progress and development. Within this logic, poverty is conceptualized as a lack that can be filled with opportunities for improvement through education and the adoption of Western technology (books, educational methods, satellite telephones, and computers in this case), opportunities that only School A can create. School A is placed in a “global” position to “teach,” enlighten, and develop School B’s community who seem to confirm their “local” deficit location in the projected idea of linear seamless development and, in return for aid, offer both cultural resources that School A can use to enhance and bring color to their curriculum, and the affirmation of School A’s superiority, underscored in rituals of gratitude. This creates a scenario where, the local culture is objectified in the eyes of a “global” observer, whose own culture is foreclosed allowing a supposedly “neutral” (white) gaze (Urry 2002; Foucault 1973) over its object of study. School B is turned into additional content in the school curriculum that serves to “enhance the quality of learning” (OFSTED 2004, 5), to “provide an imaginative dimension” (OFSTED 2004, 6) and to “improve achievement” (OFSTED 2004, 25), “becoming a strength” (OFSTED 2004, 20) to the school in government inspections. Within this framework, learning about the other culture tends to confirm racist assumptions of the superiority of the self as seen through the eyes of others, disguised in a politically correct discourse of mutual learning. This can be interpreted as a “humbling and incredible” experience because it works in favor of the resolution of ambivalence in the perception of the self, removing the threat of the possible equality of the Other (Bhabha 1994). Therefore, repeating what missionaries, teachers, nurses, and wives of colonial administrators have done in colonial times, teachers and pupils from School A travel to Ghana to “make a difference,” to give presents of universal

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value to the villagers and to receive in return lessons of drumming and dance, as well as a confirmation of their identity as developed, intellectual, technological, free, authoritative, independent, unique, benevolent, and autonomous individuals who can exert influence at home and abroad. Pupils and teachers in both schools may see themselves as “brothers and sisters under the same skin” (British Council 2006, 1), as it is assumed that what lies under this skin is a shared belief in universal standards for human development. In the social imaginary that constructs this unequal family, power differentials are justified on the grounds of epistemic and technological competence that validate moral supremacy of certain members of the family: brothers and sisters from the metropolitan North (which includes the north of the South) lead the way toward human, cognitive, social, and historical evolution while carrying the burden of protecting the rest of the family from the effects of their own innate incompetence to develop. They become triumphant global dispensers of knowledge, technology, health, rights, democracy and aid, placed in a position to “teach” the global community, while local recipients of ethnocentric benevolence become passive learners and providers of “culture” that adds color to the dispensers’ lives. From a postcolonial perspective, the construction and celebration of the dispenser subjectivity is only possible with the foreclosure of the “worlding of the world” (Spivak 1999; 2004)— ontological constructions that project a local (“Western”) epistemology as global and universal. A lack of reflexivity at both ends of the partnership— of interrogating socially and historically constructed perceptions, positions and relations of power— seems to have resulted in the reinforcement of unexamined assumptions and unequal power relations in the link itself. If ontological and epistemological assumptions, as well as power relations, are not analyzed against historical contexts, it is left to dispensers “in charge” to celebrate their triumphant benevolence and achievements, and to recipients to demonstrate gratitude and appreciation for the global value of the gifts dispensed. Therefore, one of the most important outcomes for School A’s pupils and teachers was self-validation, whereas for the pupils and teachers of School B, the outcomes were more ambivalent. Caught between deficit theorizations of their own culture and the offer of material benefits, it remained unclear whether they were consciously and strategically choosing to perform an expected role that confirmed assumptions of Western partners (and the continuation of the partnership), or if

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they were unconsciously trapped in internalized oppression (seeing themselves as lacking and inferior). A key question that emerges in this kind of analysis is: If both parties are happy with the unequal arrangements, relationships and worldviews presented, who can say that this is problematic or that it should be different? The argument for the problematization of this scenario is educational and can be based on the long-term potential implications for this specific construction of the learners’ identities and the partnership itself. These would likely include: • the reification of hierarchies of worth of knowledges and contributions between North and South; • the reinforcement of a contested teleological notion of development based on Western parameters; • an increase in self-worth and privilege for “Northern” partners; • the corroboration of unequal power relations; • obstructed and tokenistic dialogue; • a missionary feeling on the part of Northern partners reproducing colonial relations of power; • the reinforcement of ethnocentric assumptions of cultural and economic supremacy; and • cognitive and political alienation for learners at both ends as they are denied access to different perspectives.

The discursive practices analyzed in this case study are consistent with those examined in the policy analyses. In addition, the fact that School A has received wide publicity and three significant awards as recognition of best practice and leadership in this kind of partnership indicates that the approach of this school is not an isolated case in England as it serves to “inspire” other schools to do the same. In the U.K. context, North-South school partnerships— or “school links” as they are known in England, have received strong financial support from the Department for International Development (DFID) in recent years. Given the interactive nature of these links, they have the potential to provide an exciting and highly motivating opportunity to enable learners to engage ethically and productively with complex and interdependent processes that shape global/local contexts, identities and struggles for justice today and to build global solidarity. However, depending on the approach and methodology adopted, they can also reinforce stereotypes, promote a patronizing attitude toward the South and alienate students further in relation to global issues and perspectives. If these trends are to be avoided, a pedagogy that

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explicitly challenges ethnocentric and hegemonic assumptions needs to replace the uncritical and ahistorical “celebration of diversity” (and by default, of cultural and moral supremacy) that characterizes depoliticized North-South partnerships. This will be explored further in part 3 of this book.

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Chapter Nine Analysis of Practice II: The Other Who Should Be Grateful for Our Efforts

This telling case study examines a cluster school link project mainly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the U.K. government through a local educational nongovernmental organization (NGOA) connecting schools in a county in the East Midlands in England with schools in a village in India. The project ran from 2000 to 2005. I was involved with this project in a professional capacity through NGOA from July 2004 to September 2005. This case study focuses on events that happened from July to December 2004 in this North- South partnership. The data includes official project documents, interviews with teachers, meeting notes, and professional communications. The analysis of data presents a telling example of potential outcomes of school linking based on liberal multicultural discourses, which relates both to postcolonial critique and the analyses of policies in chapters seven and eight.1

Description of Context This school linking project took place within a wider city-to- city link coordinated by a local city council in the United Kingdom that started in April 2000. From 2001 to 2004, NGOA had facilitated the involvement of 10 local primary schools with financial support from the DFID and the British Council, which provided funding for an educational officer based at NGOA, relief teachers for the schools whose teachers were participating in the project, and reciprocal visits for the participating teachers in the schools involved. In 2004,

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after a visit to partner schools in India, teachers from five schools worked together to produce a resource storybook with a supporting “Indian artefacts” box that became available to other schools in their region. This initiative led NGOA to submit an application for funding extension to DFID with a view to disseminate the benefits of this school linking project to other schools through the production of a resource pack, training workshops, and a teachers’ conference to encourage school linking. The application, which was successful, included funding for a year for a post of an education coordinator at NGOA. As a justification for linking, NGOA’s funding extension proposal to DFID for 2004–2005 states that the development education potential in school linking is well known. It can provide the sort of insight into real lives in different places that gives global citizenship colour and meaning for a young child. (NGOA 2003, 1)

The aim of the project was described as addressing the need to raise interest in global citizenship through introducing school linking to a wider range of schools, in a way that simultaneously develops flexible support structures to nurture that interest in the future. This involves making particular use of the schools with established links as local examples of good practice and a source of guidance for others, and establishing global citizenship as a recognised and supported theme within the LEA PSHE & Citizenship team [local education authority’s team for physical, social and health education]. (NGOA 2003, 2)

The main activities included in the job description for the education coordinator based at NGOA included: • the promotion of the resource pack developed by the previous coordinator, [which had the specific aim to promote positive images of India and serve as a basis for north-south linking]; • to promote “ethnic” workshops and visits to places of worship organized by partner organisations; • to organise training and showcase sessions to other schools based on the example of the cluster; • to organise training sessions for the LEA PSHE & Citizenship team to gain support for the promotion of the resource pack as a means to introduce global citizenship in primary schools. (NGOA 2003, 3)

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The stated expected outcomes of the post were: • Global Citizenship endorsed by the Citizenship [local council] team, and becoming one of the services they offer to schools; • Schools have the skills and confidence to undertake links with India because of the range of experiences they can draw on from other schools, in addition to support from the LEA; • All schools that start a link do so in the context of using it as a framework and stimulus for a whole school approach to development education; • Local network of linked schools established; • 30 schools promoting positive images of India (global perspectives without a direct school link— but using the materials and connections developed by other linked schools). (NGOA 2003, 3)

However, a series of events that started in July 2004 caused a radical change of direction in the project. As part of the reciprocal visit’s scheme, after the U.K. teachers’ visit to India, the teachers from India visited the schools in the United Kingdom in July 2004 with the stated aim of planning the subsequent stages of the link with the teachers from the United Kingdom. My first task as an education coordinator was to attend the meeting as an observer— as my job did not involve participating in the educational exchanges. In this meeting I noticed that, despite the schools being linked for three years, there was a significant perception gap in relation to the aims and processes of the project. Communication was made very difficult as neither side spoke the language of the other and the interpreter (who was an Indian British Council employee based in Calcutta) was actually leading the negotiations without much consultation with the teachers from India. There was pressure from the U.K. side to get a list of themes agreed upon for exchange projects with an emphasis on pupil work that could be displayed in the walls of U.K. schools. On the Indian side, the focus was on negotiating financial support for the production of this work. Eventually, the list of themes was agreed on and a timetable for exchanges of materials was set. It was decided that the first batch of materials should come from India at the end of August 2004, so that they could be displayed in the schools in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the following academic year. The U.K. teachers stated that the wall displays would help parents and children in the United Kingdom to recognize the commitment of their schools toward multiculturalism and diversity from the very beginning of the academic year.

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In the beginning of September 2004, a teacher in the United Kingdom contacted me to say that they had not received any materials or news from India in August and asked me to contact the British Council in India to check when they would send the materials they had agreed to send. Meanwhile, I had started to visit the schools to collect the teachers’ views on what they had learned on their trip to India and the positive and negative outcomes of the linking project (I was granted consent to use this data in this research). This was supposed to serve as a basis for one of the training workshops I was organizing as part of my job (which was subsequently cancelled). At the beginning of October, the teachers invited me to a meeting where they wanted to discuss the lack of news from India. During this meeting, one of the teachers read an anonymous letter she had received from India. The letter questioned the aims of the link, the benefit for Indian schools, and the use of financial resources in the project. It suggested that some of the teachers in the project had used the British Council–endorsed visa obtained for the visit in July 2004 to stay and work in the United Kingdom, which explained why communication had ceased (I use my observation notes in this meeting as data). All the other teachers eventually received the same letter. This was a turning point in the project which justified a radical change of aims and strategies. However, this case study concentrates on data collected in the period from July to December 2004 and it does not include these changes.

Analysis of Data The aim of promoting a positive image of India was explicit in statements about aims and expected results in the project proposal, which stated: Based on work to date, a support package for schools wishing to promote positive images of India and explore the possibility of setting up N- S links has been put together. (NGOA 2003, 1) [outputs of this project include] 30 schools promoting positive images of India (global perspectives without a direct school link—but using the materials and connections developed by other linked schools). (NGOA 2003, 2)

There were comments from participant teachers, such as: It is nice to have things on display in the school. It demonstrates that we appreciate different cultures and that people from the

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school in India can produce good work too. (personal notes, NGOA 2004, 1)

A possible common assumption informing these statements is that the general perception of India by U.K. pupils is negative, based on deficit theorizing of Indian culture, and that the emphasis on a positive image of India would correct this problem. Therefore, the intention was to substitute a negative stereotype with a positive stereotype in order to promote “respect for difference.” However, when teachers have not reflected on the social-historical construction of their own and their students’ assumptions about other countries and how that is connected to broader historical and cultural processes and imaginaries, this strategy raises problematic issues. Excerpts from the responses of U.K. teachers’ to the interview question “what have you learned in your trip to India?” outline some of the assumptions about poverty and development in their own social imaginaries: Teacher A: They are poor, but they are happy. They can teach us how to live with less. And they have supermarkets like us too. Teacher B: Their educational system is in the stone-age. In our schools we put up paintings and other things. They don’t put them up in Indian schools because they haven’t got much money. Teacher C: They are not in the stone-age. They are just a hundred years behind us. (personal notes, NGOA 2004)

Teacher A appears to reverse the binary categories of developed/ underdevelopment and romanticize poverty while, at the same time, she attests to the significance and commonality of supermarkets. The second and third interview excerpts, although disagreeing as to the extent of the backwardness of India, still agree on an unexamined teleological notion of development based on Western categorizations. I was in a position to observe and note the first reactions of the same teachers to the content of the anonymous letter which presented the accusation that the Indian teachers had overstayed their visas and broken their promise to send pupils’ work to the United Kingdom: Teacher A: I cannot understand why they wanted to stay here! Teacher B: I am sure not all Indian people are deceitful [like them]. Teacher C: I can’t believe it! After all that we have done for them! (personal notes, NGOA 2004)

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Through a postcolonial lens, the aims of the partnership of promoting “a positive image of India” in this scenario was flawed from the outset. This aim relies on the assumptions that: (1) cultures are homogenous and can be described in objective ways; and that (2) the basis of racism is a misguided or wrong negative perception of the Other that can be “corrected” with a positive image in order to develop equality and respect in relationships. Postcolonial theory defends very different conceptualizations of culture and racism. Culture is conceptualized as always heterogeneous and dynamic. In the words of Bhabha (1994): “An uneven, incomplete production of meaning and value often composed of incommensurable demands and practices produced in the act of social survival” (Bhabha 1994, 172). From this definition, culture is not something static or essentialist—it is hybrid, dynamic, productive—not a noun, but a verb, a strategy of survival that is both transnational (carrying marks of diverse experiences and memories of dislocations) and translational (as it demands a re-signification of traditional cultural symbols that were associated with cultural references of a homogeneous and holistic culture). (Souza 2004,125–26)

In the same way, racism is conceptualized around a relational process of self and Other, in which there is a struggle for supremacy where the racist imposes his own image as a parameter for progression, development, or evolution of others while trying to resolve the ambivalence of the potential equality of the Other by “fixing” the Other into categories, or stereotypes. Bhabha defines stereotypes as “a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always “in place,” already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated” (Bhabha 1994, 66). He argues that [s]tereotyping is not the setting up of a false image which becomes the scapegoat of discriminatory practices. It is a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement, over- determination, guilt, agressivity, the masking and splitting of “official” and phantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse. (82)

Therefore racism is not based on a negative and false image or stereotype of the Other, but on an ambivalent process of construction

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of “self” in relation to the Other. Bhabha states that this ambivalence creates an articulation of multiple and contradictory beliefs that both idealize and demonize the other in order to justify the superiority of the self (see chapters 3 and 6). The implication is that both positive and negative stereotypes are imposed categories that both silence the Other by denying her possibility of signification, and that may serve the same discriminatory and ethnocentric purpose of negative stereotypes of validating cultural supremacy. Therefore, the intention of purposefully constructing positive stereotypes in order to counter a negative image of India only masks the agonistic process of construction of “superior” identities that necessarily relies on the inequality of the other for a sense of self- affirmation. By attempting to construct positive stereotypes, when the teachers’ own underlying assumptions of India were negative, a veneer of willingness to be politically correct and appreciate the other culture was placed over a sea of unexamined assumptions about development, poverty, cultural difference, and cultural supremacy. This had different implications in different contexts and dimensions of the partnership. In the final account in the scenario, where the teachers receive the anonymous letter from India, the sea of discriminatory assumptions cracked the veneer of political correctness and positive idealizations when the teachers in the United Kingdom became angry at the perceived betrayal of the Indian teachers in relation of to their self- constructed perceptions of self and Other, as illustrated in the interview excerpts. From this perspective, it was the ethnocentric benevolence (of constructing “positive images”), more than the difficulties with language, that prevented teachers in the United Kingdom from creating a space of mutuality and reciprocity (necessary for critical dialogue) with the Indian teachers. The arrangements for the reciprocal visits provide an example of a lack of mutuality in the partnership. Despite recommendations to maximize their contact with the Indian teachers and their communities by staying with Indian families (and offering a financial contribution for accommodation), the teachers from the United Kingdom had chosen to stay in a hotel during their visit to India. When it was the Indian teachers’ turn to visit the United Kingdom, the U.K. teachers (who had control over the funding for visits) decided that it would be better to rent a house for the whole group to stay in, a decision that was made without consultation with the Indian teachers. One

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U.K. teacher justifies this decision talking about her own perceptions of Indian women: These women would not have liked to stay in my house. There are two men in my house. We are liberal people, I could stay anywhere. But in their culture . . . [pause] I am sure they would not want to stay in a place with other men from another culture. (personal notes, NGOA 2004, 3)

This comment may imply that the teachers in the United Kingdom (self- defined as liberal, pluralist people) were engaged in the production of positive images (to repackage nonliberal, backward people in a more positive light) as an act of benevolence toward the Other that reaffirmed their moral superiority as liberal, pluralist people. This pattern of desire for self-affirmation is documented in other empirical work (see for example, Heron 2007; Zemach- Bersin 2007; Cook 2008). The Other is then expected to show appreciation for this display of kindness, as the same teacher comments at a later stage. She talks about her frustrations of having organized the visit and not seeing the results of it, referring to the materials the Indian teachers had failed to send to the United Kingdom the previous month : We organised everything for them. They don’t know how much we have worked for that. I spent three evenings cleaning the house they were staying in— and now this. (personal notes, NGOA 2004, 3)

Questions of inequality and privilege worked as the “elephant in the room” in the partnership. Although they underlined every aspect of the initiative, the teachers were unprepared to address them in systemic ways. Therefore, teachers tended to focus only on the “positive side”: I focus only on the positive side of things. I show my students that they are poor, but they are happy [ . . . ] they are developing. (personal notes, NGOA 2004, 1)

Or they focused on aspects that could be regarded as “the same”: A lot of schools there are like this because they are poor. But the children are doing art, like we do art, so they do the same as us sometimes. (NGOA 2004, 4)

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In an external evaluator’s report of the partnership, a passage illustrates the perceived difficulty of one of the teachers in dealing with something she associated with poverty: The school section [of a photo pack put together by the teacher] includes a picture of three young children who look, from the way they are dressed, extremely poor. They are sitting on a bench in front of a white wall and the paint is peeling off it. The children are looking directly at the camera. [ . . . ] SS [the teacher] seems [ . . . ] concerned with the painting peeling off the walls: “I don’t dwell on the shabbiness of it, I tell them that it’s the weather, the dampness that fetches the paint off the walls. That’s how I overcome that.” (NGOA 2004, 7)

In another passage of the report related to the same section of the photo pack, the teacher reports a task in which she makes the pupils “experiment” with the harsh conditions of Indian classrooms in order to give students a “culture shock”: In one of her photos children are sitting in two rows, one behind the other, on rice sacks. They sit very close to each other so that they can use the back of the person in front to lean when they work while the children right at the front use their satchels to lean on. SS says she gets all her pupils to sit like that, “so they can see what it’s like.” She says it gives her pupils “a real culture shock.” I ask what they think and she says: “Well, they are not very impressed of course!” (NGOA 2004, 7–8)

In this case, the lack of teaching skills and knowledge to debrief the two situations resulted in the ethnocentric reinforcement of negative assumptions about the target culture, contradicting the stated aims of the project. In one of the schools that I visited as part of this study, a new teacher noticed that there was a problem with the objective of promoting a positive image of India in her school: more than 80 percent of the pupils had family ties with India and they had problems with a group of pupils who were using a specific supremacist Indian identity to harass other white and nonwhite minorities. She suggested that this project could exacerbate the problems. In another school in the cluster with a majority of Asian students, this issue was not identified as a problem. However, in the majority-white schools, as the teachers tried to transmit their own “positive images of India” to the students without critically examining their own assumptions, the project could be reinforcing stereotypes (and racism), instead of challenging them as illustrated in the quotes from the report.

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Unequal relations of power had been established, fixed, and justified in this partnership around two notions: that of development defined in universal terms as modernization, and that of “celebrating diversity” in a setting where issues of power differentials were ignored and the culture of the other was exoticized and objectified. In the months following the anonymous letter, there was a period of denial of the accusations in the letter followed by a renewed excitement to show other teachers in the United Kingdom (through workshops and conferences) the positive side of the whole experience. This was an extremely delicate situation to handle in my job at NGOA. The organization had planned a mini- conference in November 2004 to showcase the links to other schools and, with the support of the organization, I decided to cancel the conference as I did not feel there was much to showcase. I then (naively) approached the teachers, offering to do some remedial work on critical global citizenship education with them (instead of the conference) in order to debrief some of the issues that arose in the partnership, but their response was very negative: We know what we are doing—we have done all the thinking behind it. We need practical help from you to get the Indian schools to respond. (personal notes, NGOA 2004, 3)

A similar comment was made to the external evaluator by two other teachers when the event was cancelled: PL and LS [the teachers] had done a lot of work for the event and they say they were told “they weren’t wanted.” (NGOA 2004, 6)

The U.K. teachers were unable or unwilling to identify their lack of knowledge of social-historical processes as a barrier to dialogue and understanding in the partnership. The emphasis on “positive images” in the project seemed to be driving the teachers’ motivation to gloss over problems and only remember “positive stories” of the partnership that could portray themselves and their schools in a “positive light.” It was extremely difficult, at this stage, to create a space for critical reflection where assumptions could be unpacked and problematic issues debriefed. As for the Indian teachers, at first glance, they seemed to have been silenced by both the U.K. teachers and the previous interpreters and leaders of the project who had worked as brokers in the negotiations with the U.K. schools—possibly for the three years of the partnership.

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However, if the information in the anonymous letter was true and they stayed in the United Kingdom, they did exercise their “freedom to contradict” (Spivak 1999, 38) by prioritizing their own agendas over the agendas of the U.K. schools and doing something completely unexpected that challenged the relations of power in the partnership. As the letter also indicates, this occurrence suggests that the teachers might have been aware of the situation all along and just waited for their chance to renegotiate things in their own terms. Therefore the (real or imaginary) illegal immigration under the linking circumstances can be interpreted as both an affirmation of Western cultural supremacy (if the teachers’ act was based on an idealized notion of living in the “First World”) and/or a sign of agentic resistance of unequal power relations (of the teachers defining how they would take advantage of the opportunities opened by the link on their own terms). In this latter sense, this partnership confirms Spivak’s (1999) suggestion that “multiculturalism performs a critique, however inchoate, of the limits of the rational structures of [Northern] civil society” (50). The demand for replacing stereotypes affected North- South relations in this case study in a profound way. Language was a barrier for both sides, but the ethnocentric focus on the construction of “positive images” prevented teachers in the United Kingdom from negotiating relations of power, the objectives of the project, or even “new stereotypes” with the teachers in India. If self-reflexive dialogue had been effective, it could have opened new channels for reflection and mutual examination of assumptions that could have changed the direction of the partnership in that context and created exciting more ethical and better informed opportunities for collaborative professional learning based on mutuality and reciprocity.

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Chapter Ten Analysis of Practice III: The Other Who Desperately Needs Our Leadership

This case study examines a four-day training course for the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign that was offered by a nongovernmental organization (NGOB) to “young activists” in the United Kingdom aged between 18 and 30 who “had an enthusiasm for issues related to overcoming poverty and suffering” (NGOB 2005, 1).The data includes ethnographic notes collected during the event, as well as communications with participants and organizers. This case study problematizes the relationship between an alleged active global citizenship (promoted through philanthropic activism/altruism) and an ethnocentric (capitalist) epistemology where civic participation, altruism and philanthropy can only be conceptualized as acts of self-interest.

Description of Context MPH was a high-profile campaign against poverty led by a wideranging charity coalition, which involved a host of celebrities, concerts, and demonstrations before the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005. The aim of the campaign was to lobby governments in relation to three strategies that, according to the campaign, could “make poverty history”: trade justice, debt relief and more and better aid. The course took place in Wales from March 29 to April 1 in 2005. The call for participation circulated on student networks and published on NGOB’s website started with the text: Are you amazing? Do you want to be part of making poverty history? If so, [NGOB] wants to hear from you! [NGOB] knows that the real

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way to make lasting change is through people taking action, through people making their voices heard, through people demanding change. We want you to help us to make poverty history. (NGOB 2005, 1)

The description of the MPH campaign included statistics about children dying as a result of poverty, the gap between rich and poor becoming wider, malnutrition, AIDS, conflict, and illiteracy as part of a shameful situation that “we” (in the North) “have the resources, knowledge and opportunity to end” (NGOB 2005, 2). It also included a statement about North-South relations that suggested that poverty was associated with injustice: It isn’t chance or bad luck that keeps people trapped in bitter, unrelenting Poverty. It’s man-made factors like a glaringly unjust global trade system, a debt burden so great that it suffocates any chance of recovery and insufficient and ineffective aid. (NGOB 2005, 1)

The MPH course description also included a quotation by celebrity singer Bono Vox reinforcing the legitimacy of the aims of the campaign and calling for public support: We are the first generation that can look extreme and stupid poverty in the eye, look across the water to Africa and elsewhere and say this and mean it: we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science— but do we have the will? Do we have the will to make poverty history? Some say we can’t afford to. I say we can’t afford not to. (Bono Vox, Brighton, September 29, 2004; cited in NGOB 2005, 1)

The stated objectives of the course according to the information pack sent to potential candidates were to “harness the goodwill of young people who want to take action to end poverty and suffering [and] to equip each participant with the knowledge and skills to take effective campaign action” (NGOB 2005, 2). As described in the information pack, participants were expected to commit to a year of campaigning and undertake five key tasks, involving a visit to the local politician on an NGOB campaign issue, the coordination of a themed event with local alliances, work with the media to raise awareness of MPH, the mobilization of 50 people to go to a demonstration in Edinburgh on July 2, 2005, and the recruitment of 200 people to “make poverty history” following the principles and directions of the campaign. The methodology used in this course was goal oriented with a focus on

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maximizing influence and persuasion and with a very strong “corporate” dimension, associated with the NGO merchandise and aggressive marketing strategies. The emphasis on “making it fun” was also a strong characteristic of the approach adopted.

Interpretation of Data From a postcolonial perspective the aims of MPH were both enabling and problematic. MPH’s emphasis on the role and complicity of the “global North” in the creation of inequalities in the “global South” in a public campaign of this type was unprecedented. The MPH objectives of trade justice and debt relief challenged the notion that Northern privilege is disconnected from the generation of poverty. The third goal (more and better aid) represented a recognition that very often “phantom aid” works as an instrument of soft power and containment of recipient countries (Escobar 1995; Alhasan 2009) tied to donor countries’ national economic interests. The slogan of the campaign “justice not charity” could have represented a major shift in thinking in relation to the humanitarian mainstream development drive, as it suggests that there is a causal relationship between poverty and injustice, that the global North benefits from this relationship and that, therefore, it is responsible for creating poverty, not just for alleviating it (Dobson 2005). However, this acknowledgment of complicity was de- emphasized in the methodological focus of the campaign. The use of images, figures, and slogans emphasized the need to be charitable, compassionate, and “active” locally (in order to change institutions), based on a moral obligation to a common humanity, rather than what Dobson (2006) calls “a political responsibility for the causes of poverty.” These contradictions are explored in depth in several works about the campaign (Stevenson 2005; Golding 2006; Glennie 2006; Böhm and Cairns 2005; Olaniyan 2006; Njoroge 2009). Nash (2008) provides an interesting analysis of why this was the case, which deserves detailed exploration. She states that MPH relied on a cultural politics enacted in the media to create a notion of individual global citizenship based on two ideas: leadership in global governance and a cosmopolitanizing state that was global in reach, but national in focus. In terms of global governance, MPH was antipoverty, rather than anticapitalist or antiglobalization as it “presupposed that structures of capitalist global governance made the goal of ending poverty possible for the

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first time” (169). Such structures would be made feasible through the cosmopolitanizing state which should stretch traditional modern state institutions in space, offering the potential for moving the concerns of global politics away from traditional struggles over sovereignty, readiness for war and wealthproducing territory towards issues of mutual concern: peace, the world economy, environmental sustainability, human rights. (169)

The campaign capitalized on this idea by constructing a message where national citizens (of countries in leadership positions in the world economy) would become global citizens by putting pressure in their elected (world) leaders (through the structures and democratic procedures of the state itself) to fulfil their obligations toward other countries (Nash 2008). This global citizenship was constructed around two complementary notions. One was a forward-looking globalism articulated around the idea of universal humanity and a heroic sentiment of “injustice overcome” as the basis for solidarity. The other was a “cosmopolitan nationalism,” which both celebrates world leadership without questioning its legitimacy (e.g., we are the greatest nation because we lead change in the world); and justifies tackling poverty on the grounds of an “enlightened self-interest,” as Nash illustrates with reference to Tony Blair: It is not that we give up our national interests to help non-national others; but we help people out of poverty and despair to prevent terrorism and mass migration that will harm our nation. (175)

Nash states that, although the campaign was successful as an experiment in the mobilization of public support, its concrete aims were largely not met and its call for solidarity collapsed into a narcissistic sentimentalism that failed to reach across differences. She argues that MPH was unsuccessful at achieving genuine cosmopolitan solidarity because it showed “a deficient understanding between the relations of rich and poor [by trying] to work through existing international institutions which are structured to benefit rich and powerful states” (177). In this sense, by keeping the focus away from individual and national complicity in harm (which would not have worked to mobilize public support in any case), MPH failed to engage the conflict

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between national interests of Northern countries and the interests of countries at the receiving end of trade injustice: What the mainstream media campaign did not do was to take on the job of persuading “us” that we should mandate national/world leaders to enact economic policies that would explicitly go against “our” national interests [ . . . ] Cancelling debt and increasing aid cost very little in proportion to national income in the North. Trade justice, on the other hand, would require the liberalizing of Northern economies and the protection of developing ones to enable them to grow, and this would undoubtedly increase prices and threaten jobs in the North. (178)

A postcolonial analysis would, in this case, on the one hand, highlight MPH’s paradox in prescribing more ethnocentric and hegemonic processes and structures (through heroic global citizenship and global governance performed by Northern actors) as a cure for problems caused by ethnocentric and hegemonic processes and structures (rampant capitalism controlled by Northern countries). On the other hand, a postcolonial lens would also identify a strategic pedagogical potential in MPH’s articulation of complicity that could have been used as an entry point for critical engagements that might have opened the public’s imaginary to different possibilities of solidarity— if not in the media, at least in classrooms. However, this postcolonial aspiration was not realized in the training course, whose focus was on building young people’s skills to persuade politicians to support the campaign, to influence the media, and to convince the public to buy and wear white wristbands, sign petitions, and participate in demonstrations. There was no space left for critical engagement with issues of an ethical or political nature. When prompted to comment on the absence of different voices in the course, one of the organizers responded: I am aware there are problematic ethical implications, but if you look at the people here, they are all privileged, middle class, willing to do something. As campaigners, we need their energy; we need their resources. (personal notes NGOB 2005, 1)

A relationship framed around exploitation was also projected onto the beneficiaries of the campaign through the methodology of the course. A ranking exercise on the first day showed that ethical issues or issues of legitimacy related to engagements with the South were not high on the agendas of organizers or participants. Participants were

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asked to rank a number of statements related to what would make a “good” campaign. Two of the statements related to recipients’ support (Africa, in this case), consultation and involvement, which offered a key opportunity for an ethical, political, and pedagogical engagement with the campaign beyond parroting of slogans. However, these two statements were at the bottom of the list for all of the groups. There was an absolute consensus around the three top priorities for a successful campaign among participants, which were: celebrity involvement, a clear message, and media support (personal notes NGOB 2005). Therefore, changing the world became easy: celebrities would speak for Africa through the media using a simple message that could evoke a carefully controlled outrage that would be quickly translated into good feelings and goodwill in the public. In this imaginary, African people only exist in the distance as “a safe and non-threatening victim, a worthy charity case” (110) ready to be rescued and recolonized by worthy celebrity-global- citizens who serve as role models for a new generation of philanthropic consumer- citizens/activists. In this sense, celebrity activism can be framed as celebrity colonialism (Clarke 2009) as celebrities become vehicles “for the promotion of Euro-American cultural and moral hegemony” (Clarke 2009, 6). Another example of an invaluable pedagogical opportunity missed occurred on the second day of the course, when some participants (who were more experienced campaigners) identified that there was indeed a lack of information and of different perspectives related to the issues of the campaign (i.e., poverty, debt, and trade justice) and that less experienced campaigners needed more preparation to respond to questions from the public. An extra “how to address questions” session was included in the program (personal notes NGOB 2005). During this session, organizers approached campaign issues in a simplistic and unproblematic way, reinforcing the idea that “making poverty history” could be easily achieved by the accomplishment of the campaign aims. Organizers dismissed challenging questions and different perspectives, modeling what the trainee campaigners should do in the streets. The message to participants in relation to engagement with the public was that they should not waste their time with people whom they could not influence (personal notes NGOB 2005). From a pedagogical perspective, the lack of awareness of issues of representation and legitimacy and the refusal to address complexity and different viewpoints have several ethical implications. Apart from creating a “civilizing mission,” foreclosing and reproducing unequal power relations, constructing the idea that activists are only part of

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the solution, and silencing and homogenizing the South, perhaps the most insidious pedagogical implication of the methodology adopted in the course was the creation of unrealistic expectations of poverty eradication. The idea that eradicating poverty is easy is both deceptive and dangerous, as Barnes (2008) illustrates: On a planet drowning in waste and pollution, for instance, will weaning Americans off their gaz guzzlers, fast food and the frenzied pursuit of fad/fashion/fetish in all things be easy? No. Will putting the voices, bodies and needs of their poorest citizens— rural women and children— at the top of the agenda of Africa’s governments be easy? No. Will reversing the tides of centuries of economic and social marginalization be easy? No. (75)

The failure of eradicating poverty in a few years’ time (after so many concerts, fundraising activities, wristbands sold, letters to politicians, demonstrations, etc.) may be perceived as a failure of the poor themselves (rather than the effective working of the systems that create poverty). In the long run, this works to sustain and reify the idea that poor countries and peoples have a cultural deficit that is either beyond repair or in need of more “fixing” through more tutelage and control. Moreover, the strategic alienation of course participants (i.e., the focus on single messages, voices and “simplicity” of poverty eradication in order to mobilize support) has serious implications in terms of the sustainability of young people’s participation and interest in politics and in building solidarity. This is exemplified in an e-mail I received from a course participant who vented her frustration at being deceived by the course and the campaign itself after being exposed to critical perspectives at the demonstration in Edinburgh in 2005: Dear Vanessa, Hope you are well. How was Edinburgh, did you make it up there? I was quite disappointed to be honest with the lack of passion in the crowds! So many people, so little atmosphere! And after reading some quite radical left wing articles about it I feel really foolish and naive for committing to MPH at all. Another northern/white/ middle- class initiative claiming to be about southern countries but not involving them. Allegedly the major southern NGOs were invited to take part and refused! and we Brits criticise Americans, pah, we are equally ignorant. and im not comfortable with the Richard Curtis/ Gordon Brown/Bill Gates link either! sigh. (e-mail exchange with anonymized participant, June 10, 2005)

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Assumptions about participants’ motivation were also a highly problematic area in the course. The opening questions of the call for participation, “Are you amazing?” indicates, from the outset, a selfregarding, self- congratulatory approach to activism. This is also illustrated in one of the exercises that was used to inspire participants to write down their action plans toward the end of the course. A speaker asked participants to close their eyes and guided them through the following visualization: Imagine a huge ball room. It is full of people in black tie. They are all celebrities. You also see a red carpet leading to a stage on the other side. You see Nelson Mandela on the stage. He is holding a prize. It is the activist of the year prize. He calls your name. You walk down that corridor. Everyone is looking at you. What are you wearing? How are you feeling? Think about how you got there: the number of people that have signed your petitions, the number of white bands around the wrists of your friends, the number of people you have taken to Edinburgh. You shake Mandela’s hands. How does that feel? He gives you the microphone. Everyone is quiet waiting for you to speak. They respect you. They know what you have done. Think about the difference you have made to this campaign! Who are you going to say thank you to? Think about all the people you have helped in Africa . . . Now open your eyes and write down what you are planning to do to achieve your goals. (personal notes NGOB 2005, 4)

Davis (2010) argues that, since the emergence of “celebrity activism” the shift of focus of media coverage from people in need toward “the more aesthetically pleasing celebrities banding to fight hunger” (95) has meant that sentiments of solidarity and compassion have also shifted toward the latter. Therefore, it is logical that in a capitalist “economy of image circulation” (Alhasan 2009), the appeal of celebrity egotism and philanthropic stardom can be used effectively as a driving force for action. In the training course, the pedagogical focus on staged glories was highly successful in overshadowing the MPH slogan of “justice, not charity” by constructing Africa as a helpless victim in need of salvation and reproducing “a global divide of benefactors and beneficiaries, alms givers and beggars, saviours and their helpless objects of heroism” (Alhasam 2009, 108). This strategy not only used Africa as a site and an opportunity for Western self- congratulatory spectacle and agency, but also forced both the imaginary audience and Africa itself to

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say “thank you” (Davis 2010). As celebrity Bob Geldoff reminds us: You can be absolutely sure, on the day that you die, somebody is alive in Africa because one day you bought a record or a book or watched a pop concert. And that, at once, is a compliment and a triumph, and on the other hand, it is the ultimate indictment of us all. (Geldoff 2005 cited in Davis 2010, 89)

When participants opened their eyes after the visualization, I asked people around me if anyone had felt the visualization was problematic. All but one participant said no. This dissenting participant (who later sent me the e-mail message presented before) even attempted to challenge the group: “So, we are all doing this for ourselves? For our CVs?” (personal notes, NGOB 2005, 4). Some people answered positively and looked at her perplexed, as they did not seem to understand her question, while others had lost interest in the conversation and had started to write down their action plans. Their response confirms what organizers thought were motivational drivers for participation: increased self-worth and increased respect/status in their own communities, both of which can be conceptualized as increased (symbolic, social, and cultural) capital. This self-interested conceptualization of activism informed by capitalist/corporate values could also be observed in the way the course was branded in the information pack: As well as an exciting opportunity to help achieve NGOB’s campaign aims, NGOB will offer you the following: • A residential training course to provide you with knowledge and skills for campaigning. • Advice for drawing up individual campaign plans from experienced campaigners. • Experience of campaigning for a development organization. • Support on your specific tasks. • Excellent points for your CV and recognition of your achievements. • A challenging and fun experience. (NGOB 2005, 3)

The emphasis on skills building, advice from experts, CV opportunity, fun, and recognition for achievements denote both a patronizing stance in relation to participants and a foreclosure of the role of

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consumerism and managerialism in the creation of the problems that MPH tried to address. By creating an agenda that merged agency, charity, pleasure, and entertainment, and presenting social change as an “easy” question of “will” (as consumer choice), the organizers were successful in framing the course as an attractive package for a consumer market craving expression and agency. The course promised participants the power and pleasure of leading global change, eliciting respect (in their communities) and gratitude (from recipients). In this sense, it fed a consumer desire to be part of “a community that was both philanthropic and corporate sanctioned” (Davis 2010). This desire was the basis of a convenient corporate partnership between the NGO and course participants, where the NGO harnessed free human labor for their field work (i.e., mobilization of the public to support MPH), while selling young people a legitimized sense of heroism through global citizenship enacted in their (controlled) participation in established (predefined) political processes that did not have the potential to really change the status quo due to a conflict of interests that was deliberately unacknowledged. This training course, through the pedagogical commitment of its hosting institution (NGOB), had the potential and legitimacy to support participants to engage critically with power relations, structural exploitation, representations of the South, imposed notions of development, and unjust distribution of resources. However, the organizers of the course decided to take a liberal stance adopting a humanitarian and corporate approach to change, reproducing the self-interested ethnocentric and hegemonic epistemologies at the heart of the problems they were trying to address. Africa was, once again, penetrated and silenced to service the needs of Western consumers, repeating historical patterns: For centuries Africa exported human beings in chains. When that monstrous trade finally drew to a close in the mid-nineteenth century, other trade goods had already developed routes along the same slippery pathways to American and European markets. Scholars of midcentury West Africa have shown that the same middleman, the same ships and the same trading networks were utilized to export “legitimate” commodities as the slaves who had pioneered these paths of misery over the previous centuries. (Barnes 2008, 71)

Perhaps the market is a little different today: the face of the middleman may be more aesthetically pleasing, the technology involved may be faster and more efficient, and the commodities more abstract (yet

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no less self-fulfilling), but, in the end, it is business as usual. The strategic potential of MPH to recognize complicity and create genuine relationships of solidarity collapsed under the colossal pressure to service the Northern consumer market: the narcissistic heroic and hedonistic Cartesian global- citizen-activist- consumer got it his way and secured his place once again in leading humanity. Therefore, Africa (along with the rest of us) is expected to say “thank you.”

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Part 3

Actioning Postcolonial Pedagogies

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Chapter Eleven Contextualizing Pedagogical Processes and Contexts

This chapter provides a conceptual framework for the pedagogical processes described in chapters eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. It also offers a contextualization of the ideological, practical, and financial configurations of the field of “development education” in England, where the international educational initiatives Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE) and Through Other Eyes (TOE) (described in chapters thirteen and fourteen) emerged.1 These two initiatives offer a situated example of high impact funded projects that translate insights from postcolonial theory into pedagogical practice. OSDE was inspired by the potential and limitations of the technology of Open Spaces in the context of the World Social Forum (see Andreotti and Dowling 2004), as well as by the collective process of a group of public sector teachers working to “reclaim their right to question” within a World Bank funded capacity building project in Brazil (see Andreotti 2005). TOE was a spin off from OSDE with a particular focus on the complexities of engagements with indigenous knowledge systems in “non-indigenous” educational contexts (see Andreotti and Souza 2008b). Both projects were partly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom and involved a large number of committed individuals who volunteered their time toward the completion of the projects.

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Conceptual Framework: Pedagogies of Dissensus, Discomfort, and Dissolution My experiences as a granddaughter, daughter, sister, friend, and mother in the specific contexts where I was born and where I have lived cannot not shape the focus and questions that I ask as an educator, as chapter fourteen attempts to illustrate. Having the effects of the struggles of colonial power marked on my skin was first a loss (of worth, mobility, balance, sense of self) and then an educational privilege (of insight into the problem, of learning through difficulty, and of “earning” my theory). Such privilege commands the responsibility of thinking my way through and out of the pain and anger (and desire for reversal and revenge) that come out of understanding the injustices of one’s own and Others’ historical condition. Pedagogically speaking, the bottom line is that pain and anger cannot be the foundation of a pedagogical or political project that aims to not reproduce the violences of colonialism: arrogance, coercion, manipulation, conceit, and subjugation should not be viable pedagogical options— even where a monolithic “oppressor” is concerned. Furthermore, pedagogies and educators are also conditioned by particular contexts with specific recurring demands and constraints. In my case, both personally and professionally and for as long as I remember, no matter how much I tried to run from it, it reappeared over and over again, so at one point I had to face it: my work was going to be with those oversocialized and heavily invested in ideas of consensus, progress, and universality. This has been hard and painful work as, for most part, it is not about “feel good” or “emancipatory” education. It involves working with benevolent, charitable people, with a very strong sense of self, of purpose, and of “positive” identities; it involves poking, prodding, disrupting certainties, provoking crises and realizations of complicities, and, worst of all, not providing any definitive answers for what people should think or do with their lives. But it also involves freeing the process of signification, activating new desires, and enabling the realization that people can construct different stories and relationships. Therefore, when I encountered postcolonial theory, I found a language to articulate the issues that had always driven and haunted my life. Spivak, in particular, helped me “language” the pedagogical questions at the heart of my work: How could a pedagogy address the arrogance of the “consciousness of superiority lodged in the self” (Spivak 2004, 534), including my own? How can one uncoercively

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enable a “re-arragement of desires” (Spivak 2004, 526) that may command an imperative for an ethical responsibility toward the Other of Western humanism, “before will” (Spivak 2004, 535)? How can a pedagogy of self-reflexivity, self-implication, dissensus, and discomfort support people to go beyond feelings of shame, guilt, or deceit? How is an education based on uncoercive rearrangement of desires focusing on the possibility of an ethical imperative toward the Other, “before will,” different from transmissive or “emancipatory” education? How can one ethically and professionally engage in a transformation of the ethnocentrism, depoliticization, ahistoricism, paternalism, and deficit theorization of difference that abound in educational approaches benevolently concerned with (helping, fixing, defending, educating, assimilating, or giving voice to) the Other? How can one theorize learners, teaching, and learning in ways that take account of power relations, of the complexity of the construction of the self and of alterity, and of the situatedness and the limits of one’s own constructions and theorizations? Spivak’s ideas of the possibility of education as “an un- coercive rearrangement of desires” oriented toward “an ethical responsibility towards the other, before will” intrigued and enabled me the most. Her two propositions suggest relationships between power, thought, knowledge, desire, will, agency, relationality, metaphysics, and language, both in their conscious and nonconscious expressions, that are hugely undertheorized in education. I am constantly wrestling with such relationships (aware of the Western bias in the very categories they are grounded in). My attempts to articulate configurations have always (and not surprisingly) proved lacking—but they have also proved provisionally very useful in the making and remaking of my educational practice. 2 Thus, I will attempt to articulate it once again here with a view to outline some of the ideas that informed the pedagogical processes in chapters thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. If mechanisms of modernity create “conditions of being” grounded on ideas of individuation and autonomy, with desires for control and transcendence determined by structures of thought (as a particular form of reason that represses affect), which is articulated in unambiguous language and exercised as objective, relatively unequivocal “knowledge” of an external reality (in a “dare to know” fashion), will (as a fund of energy) will be subjected to thought and committed accordingly. As a result, “knowing” (driven by the desire for control and collective transcendence) becomes a precondition for relationality (i.e., one can only relate to something one “knows”). But what

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if the desire to control and transcend is itself a result of a problem of relationality and of a deep fear of inadequacy, of indeterminacy, and of separatedness, as Jacqui Alexander (2005) argues? What if the Enlightenment was an attempt to move away from this fear that created an illusion of control that serves to intensify fear itself? And what if we could rearrange this configuration so that “thought” is not necessarily what allocates will or what determines relationality? What if we could create the conditions for a configuration where relationality could explicitly and purposefully bypass language and knowledge (and the need for consensus)? I suggest that this possibility could rest in a configuration that is not grounded on ideas of individuation and autonomy, but on ideas of interdependence consisting of two indivisible dimensions: a sense of self-worth located in one’s unique, nonpredetermined and always partial contribution to a collectivity, and a sense of self-insufficiency conceptualized not as inadequacy, but as dependency on the uniqueness and indispensability of the Other. Postcolonial theory only hints toward these possibilities, therefore, in order to explore them further I have had to turn to other (feminist, indigenous, radical constructivist) theoretical referents (as tools for thinking and “languaging”). For relationality based on more horizontal (rather than vertical) power relations and a sense of nondetermined collectivity (rather than determined individuation or collectivity) to emerge, self-worth and self-insufficiency need to be conceptualized as inseparable, as Lorde (1979) suggests in the following passage: Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark . . . . Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. (para 6–7)

Furthermore, this sense of worth/insufficiency cannot ultimately depend on external validation, but must be derived from metaphysical principles that locate the self/Other beyond the bounds of reasoning. It

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would be important, then, to make a distinction between two aspects of this unknown self: one aspect related to “who one is,” according to Irigaray (2008), or “one’s being,” according to Maturana and Rezepka (2000); and another related to socially constructed selves performing relatively prescribed identities in specific social contexts, the “what one is,” according to Irigaray (2008) or “what one does” according to Maturana and Rezepka (2000). For Maturana and Rezepka (2000), the “being” experiments with and learns from different “doings” that can prompt enabling or disabling outcomes that are judged collectively and contextually. Maturana and Poerksen (2004) suggest that, in education, while one’s “doing” should be engaged critically with, one’s “being” needs to experience a sense of unconditional value/acceptance as it holds an inherent desire to relate that is a condition for its constant process of “becoming” with others. Maturana and Verden-Zoller (1996) pose the questions: “Are [love and aggression] polar features of our biology or, of our cultural human existence? Are we genetically aggressive animals that love occasionally, or are we loving animals that cultivate aggression culturally?” (1). They propose that the desire for relationality is biological, and if “trapped” in environmental configurations that repress its expression, it becomes self-destructive: We human beings are love dependent animals. This is apparent in that we become ill when we are deprived of love at whatever age. No doubt we live a culture in which we are frequently in war and kill each other on different rational grounds that justify our mutual total denial as human beings. But doing that does not bring to us happiness, or spiritual comfort and harmony. . . . [We] maintain that we are loving animals that cultivate aggression in a cultural alienation that may eventually change our biology. (1)

In Māori cosmologies Irigaray’s “who” and Maturana’s “being” could be represented in the notion of “wairua” (Marsden 2003): as a nondeterminable metaphysical life force temporarily inhabiting one’s body and connected to (or part of) all other life forces. While every wairua brings a different gift, has a different call, and a different role to fulfill in an unnameable and undefinable whole, an unconditional relationship with one’s wairua does not necessarily require an unconditional relationship with one’s “what” or one’s “doing” (which could be associated with the concept of “māuri,” the vital force of matter itself). From this perspective, at a collective level, the question of transcendence (as a collective project/future) should be kept open or at least always be

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defined as a deferred, yet-to-come project. If determined a priori (e.g., in predefined ideas of progress, justice, or humanity), the worth of individual contributions would be predefined and measured accordingly. At an individual level, transcendence is expressed in one’s ability to experience the limitations of the “what” self (māuri) and to put it to the service of the “who” (wairua).In this sense, one’s relationship with another could bypass thought, knowledge, language, and will. A specific reading of Spivak’s propositions emerges in this particular configuration of the relationships between power, thought, knowledge, desire, will, agency, relationality, metaphysics, and language. The ethical imperative toward the Other is conceptualized as an ethical awareness of the insufficiency of the self, before the (previously defined) will to know, master, and control to secure self- sufficiency. However, this imperative is not only grounded in thought (i.e., awareness of insufficiency), but in the un-trapping of the desire for relationality (through a pedagogy that operates through “unconditional love” of the “who one is” rather than guilt and blame). Therefore, at a cognitive level, an uncoercive rearrangement of desires would involve equipping learners to explore the limits of reason and the workings of disciplinary structures in the construction of their “whats” and their possibilities for relationship. This education would aim at dissolving a monolithic autonomous and independent self (oversocialized in practices of modernity) into “whats” and “whos,” and from there, leave to learners themselves the question of what to do with their own existence in their own learning and search for their own unique (and insufficient) contribution. In this context, the role of the teacher is to support learners to develop a reflexive ethic that would seek not “to suggest what people ought to be, what they ought to do, what they ought to think or believe” (Foucault 1984, 40, quoted in Spivak 1995, 156), but to equip learners to analyze “how social mechanisms up to now have been able to work . . . and then, starting from there, [leave] to the people themselves, knowing all the above, the possibility of selfdetermination and the choice of their own existence” (ibid.). In this sense, the educational process explicitly moves away from the cultivation of specific “whats” and projects of transcendence as collective and predefined emancipation to focus on the possibilities for relationality inherent in learners’ “whos.” At a relational level, an education for an “un- coercive rearrangement of desires” needs to walk its talk in pedagogy by offering

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opportunities for learners to examine their “doings,” their “whats,” the stories they tell, and the forces they exercise in a nonjudgmental environment, where they can experience with a form of relationality that might not be available in other social environments that feed the fear of inadequacy. The “un-trapping” of the desire to relate may start with an acknowledgement of the difference within the self and with a glimpse of the possibility of letting go of the illusion of control through knowledge and affective repression. The letting go itself cannot be forced or manipulated, only hinted at, as it involves a learners’ taking up of a major responsibility (of nonindividuated freedom) that generally implies individual social and personal costs if one is embedded in environments where control is emphasized. Therefore, the ethical imperative of the teacher is tied to this conditionality: “One should open possibilities without attempting to coerce and one should not judge learners’ provisional choices of existence.” I found this to be the most difficult dimension of a learning process, but, if successful, it could translate into a reorientation of will toward learning to learn (from difference within and without): of caring to (equivocally) know from and with the Other (while being aware of the limits of knowledge production). Rather than mobilizing people toward a specific course of action in relation to the future, this kind of learning shifts the focus toward the making of the future in the present, through relationships marked by inherited structures of violence that need to be undone before any other possibility of the future can be contemplated or woven in the present. These ideas acquire particular shapes when translated in particular contexts. In the field of “development and global education” (described in the next section) they were used to support an agenda for education in the “global North” about the “global South” that attempted to move learners (and educational strategies): • from ethnocentrism to a conceptualization of knowledge as located in culture and social/historical contexts; • from depoliticization to analyses of power relations and self-reflexive positionings; • from ahistoricism to an awareness of the situatedness of selves, relationships and events; • from paternalism to openness in ethical solidarity; • from the deficit theorization of difference to an ethical relationship toward the Other based on the insufficiency of the self and the “untrapping” of the desire to relate beyond language/knowledge.

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Development Education in the United Kingdom: Ideological Context Bourn (2008b) asserts that “development education” is a term that has been used in the United Kingdom and Europe to “describe learning and understanding about the wider world” (1).The Development Education Association (DEA), founded in 1993, was the umbrella body representing the area in the United Kingdom and internationally until 2008. The DEA (2005) defines development education as life-long learning that • explores the links between people living in the “developed” countries of the North with those of the “developing” South, enabling people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world; • increases understanding of the economic, social, political and environmental forces which shape our lives; • develops the skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to take action to bring about change and take control of their own lives; • works toward achieving a more just and a more sustainable world in which power and resources are more equitably shared. (DEA 2005a, 1)

The organization justified the importance of development education on their website with the statement that we live in one world. Our food, clothes, jobs, entertainment, health, holidays, leisure and environment link us closely with the rest of the world. The growth of international trade, travel and communications means that our lives are increasingly influenced by events in many different parts of the world. If you are a teacher, youth worker, peer educator, lecturer, adult education tutor, community worker, or a student, development education can help you to explore global perspectives and influences as part of your teaching and learning throughout life. (DEA 2005a, 1)

DEA’s “Values and Vision” statement constructed development education as follows: Development Education’s (DE) concern is ultimately for the dignity and worth of every human being, recognising her or his role in society

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and the interrelationship with the global environment; DE recognises the need of the poor, oppressed and marginalised to be empowered and to choose their own path to development; DE seeks to celebrate what we have in common with our fellow human beings, in our rich diversity of cultures and traditions; DE wishes to enable people from the North and South to enter into a relationship based on solidarity, dialogue and partnership where each is willing to listen, to receive and give in an appropriate way. (DEA 2005b, 1)

However, the focus, agenda, and meaning of development education is reinterpreted in each context where it is practiced, according to the assumptions and political, organizational, social and economic constraints and possibilities of social contexts, organizations, and individuals. This can also be argued in relation to the changes in language over time and within different schools of thought. The DEA first promotional leaflet, for example, defined development education as a process which explores the relationship between North and South and more generally the links between our own lives and those of people throughout the world. It is also about recognising our global interdependence and that for any change to take place, a change of attitudes and values is required by the North. Development education concerns itself not with seeing southern peoples as powerless victims awaiting charitable support but as equal partners in the development process, from which we have much to learn. Development education is about finding new ways to live and exploring new options for the future. It is about developing the skills and knowledge by which people can take greater control over their lives and make informed choices. It is about participation, effective action and lasting change. (DEA 1993, 1)

On the other hand, other agencies and authors in the area adopt a less politicized agenda. The first United Nations (UN) definition of the term, quoted in Hicks and Townley (1988), is that development education is concerned with issues of human rights, dignity, self-reliance and social justice in both developed and developing countries. It is concerned with the causes of underdevelopment and the promotion of an understanding of what is involved in development, and of reasons for and ways of achieving a new international and economic social order. (9)

The term “development education” was first used by the UN in the 1960s with the purpose that it would increase the political support

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of the “North” to the “South” (Yamashita 1998). The European Consensus on Development, published in 2005, proposes shared values, goals, principles, and commitments for the development policies of the European Commission and EU member states. It outlines a hybrid discourse that proposes both a moral imperative and self-interested national motifs as the basis for a universal project of development: Never before have poverty eradication and sustainable development been more important. The context within which poverty eradication is pursued is an increasingly globalised and interdependent world; this situation has created new opportunities but also new challenges. Combating global poverty is not only a moral obligation; it will also help to build a more stable, peaceful, prosperous and equitable world, reflecting the interdependency of its richer and poorer countries. In such a world, we would not allow 1,200 children to die of poverty every hour, or stand by while 1 billion people are struggling to survive on less than one dollar a day and HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria claim the lives of more than 6 million people every year. (European Commission 2006, 1)

A subsequent document about the contribution of development education defines the practice of development education and awareness raising as: Development Education and Awareness Raising contribute to the eradication of poverty and to the promotion of sustainable development through public awareness raising and education approaches and activities that are based on values of human rights, social responsibility, gender equality, and a sense of belonging to one world; on ideas and understandings of the disparities in human living conditions and of efforts to overcome such disparities; and on participation in democratic actions that influence social, economic, political or environmental situations that affect poverty and sustainable development. (DEEP 2007, 3)

In this document, the aims of development education and awareness raising in the European context are framed around a consensual notion of world justice and sustainability. The aim of Development Education and Awareness Raising is to enable every person in Europe to have life-long access to opportunities to be aware of and to understand global development concerns and the local and personal relevance of those concerns, and to enact their rights and

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responsibilities as inhabitants of an interdependent and changing world by affecting change for a just and sustainable world. (DEEP 2007, 3).

Similarly, in “Development Education: Global perspectives in the curriculum” (Osler 1994), the first book specifically about development education written in the United Kingdom, there is again a strong emphasis on the connection of development education to unproblematized notions of national identities, representational democracy, human rights, and economic growth. In the opening chapter Starkey (1994) states that the aims of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for education correspond very closely to the aims drafted by development educators: Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship amongst all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (OHCHR 1996, article 26.2 cited in Starkey 1994, 12)

Starkey further states that a free society, respectful of human rights, is a requirement for economic development and ultimately for peace. Or to put it the other way round, repressive and undemocratic governments, whatever their rhetoric about progress, are unlikely to be able to create the conditions for sustained economic development. (ibid.)

In contrast with the DEA definition of 1993, Starkey makes the case that, with the exception of China and South Korea, undemocratic governments cannot bring about economic progress. He makes reference to the military governments of developing countries in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as examples of that (Starkey 1994), foreclosing the history of involvement of his “free societies” in the establishment of dictatorships across the world. The ideological differences between the DEA definition and the definitions provided by official agencies of global/international governance (such as the UN and the European Commission) and authors such as Starkey illustrate a major split in the discourses of DE. From one perspective DE is seen as connected to development understood as economic growth (through modernization or neoliberal processes), from the other, the emphasis is on human development and human

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autonomy to define development. It can be argued that each perspective sees education in a different light: one proposes the adoption of a universal/consensual ideological framework based on the acceptance of human rights and “free societies” as a model of organization for humanity; the other, responding to colonialism and Eurocentrism, focuses on education for self-determination, which implies an educational framework that emphasizes critical and independent thinking in ways that challenge the excesses of capitalism. The latter is illustrated in the framework proposed by the (former) Birmingham Development Education Centre (now TIDE—Teachers in Development Education): Development education is about developing the skills necessary for effective participation in the world: • skills of recognising one’s own values and the influences on these; • skills of empathy with people in different situations and with different cultures; • skills of acquiring information and of critical analysis of such information; • skills of recognising the validity of different points of view; • skills of forming one’s own conclusions; • skills of recognising the way one relates to the world; • skills of recognising possibilities for future action. (Sinclair 1994, 54)

Development Education in the United Kingdom: Practical and Financial Context Development education activities have been taking place for the last 40 years in the United Kingdom. Most of development education activities in the formal educational sector are led by small development education centers with charity status (small NGOs). By the end of 2008, there were about 50 development education centers (DECs) in England (numbers have fallen since the change of government in 2009). These centers develop educational projects and teaching resources and support teachers and schools in the introduction of the “Global Dimension” in the U.K. curriculum (which includes thematic areas related to diversity, human rights, global citizenship, peace, etc.). Their activities are mainly funded by aid agencies, the European Union, and the U.K. government through the DFID’s “Development Awareness Fund” (DAF), which funded projects committed to “raising awareness and understanding of development issues” (DFID 2006, 1).

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Development education is also carried out by major development education agencies (e.g., Oxfam and Cafod) and a number of research, campaigning, and Black Minority Ethnic (BME) organizations. Although the stated aim of development education, according to the DEA, is to give people opportunities to reexamine assumptions and combat prejudice, most activities in this field have focused on campaigning activities designed to mobilize support for development in terms of what can be done to solve problems in “developing” countries, which is the focus of funding agencies like DFID (chapters six, eight, nine, and ten illustrate this pattern). As a result, it can be difficult to incorporate pedagogical strategies that explicitly promote critical engagement with the ideology of development, with power relations or alternative perspectives. Thus, ethnocentric, ahistoricized, and depoliticized assumptions about poverty/wealth and paternalistic and pathologizing assumptions about the Other can go largely unchallenged. In the same way, government policies and strategies that claim to foster equal dialogue and mutual understanding between Northern and Southern peoples, in reinforcing certain assumptions about identities, heritages, cultures, intercultural relationships, underdevelopment and nationalism, can end up promoting exactly the opposite through ethnocentric, depoliticized, ahistorical, paternalistic, and deficit theorizing policies and practices. A good example of this trend can be found in the DFID-commissioned public attitude survey with schoolchildren (2,709 pupils from 11 to 16 years old) undertaken by Market and Opinion Research International (MORI) in order “to inform, and monitor the impact of, our [DFID’s] work on development awareness and education” (DFID 2006, 1). One of the aims of the research was to assess “awareness of interdependence and the impact that issues affecting developing countries can have on the UK” (MORI 2005, 1). However, the (only) question related specifically to North-South interdependence was: “In which of these ways, if any, do you think that high levels of poverty in developing countries can affect us in the United Kingdom? By ‘developing countries’ we mean countries that are poorer than our own” (MORI 2005, 12).The options students were offered to choose from were: • By helping developing countries involved in war/conflict; • By increasing number of people from developing countries who want to come to the UK; • By increasing risk of diseases spreading in the UK;

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• By encouraging people in the UK to send money/aid to overseas charities; • By affecting jobs in UK and the UK economy; • By damaging the earth’s environment; • By making foreign travel/foreign holidays more dangerous. (MORI 2005, 12)

The assumptions implicit in the question and options available for students strictly predetermine the range of possible ways in which poverty, development, relationships, and responses to problems faced by developing countries might be understood. The choice of options shows a simplistic and unexamined set of assumptions about poverty (i.e., that people from developing countries carry diseases, denigrate the environment, and steal our jobs) and, by default, about wealth and privilege (i.e., that people from developed countries are deservedly entitled to safe, healthy and peaceful environments, and safe holidays abroad). The questions suggest that the threat of the negative impact of Southern peoples on Northern countries is the justification for raising awareness of interdependence. This implies that North-South relationships can only be understood in terms of national self-interest or charity and therefore, fear of the Other or compassion are the main drivers for helping the South overcome “their” problems (of poverty/ lack/backwardness) that have nothing to do with “us” (global subjects, heading humanity), so that we are not interfered with. This contextualization provides the background for the projects described in chapters twelve and thirteen, which were partly funded through DAF. Like any field or discourse, development education and the funding scheme itself consisted of hybrid, ambivalent, and contested discursive practices, which provided a very productive site for postcolonial resignification. For example, DAF required all funded projects to demonstrate how educational activities would advance four specific objectives: 1. Knowledge and understanding of the major challenges and prospects for development, especially the poverty reduction agenda; but also of developing countries themselves. 2. Understanding of our global interdependence, and in particular that failure to reduce global poverty levels will have serious consequences for us all. 3. Understanding of and support for international efforts to reduce poverty and promote development. Recognition of progress made, and that further progress is both affordable and achievable.

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4. Understanding of the role that individuals can play; enabling them to make informed choices. (DFID 2006, 3)

At a first glance, these objectives may seem monolithic and based on an economic agenda. However, each of these statements can be interpreted in multiple ways. The project “Through Other Eyes” (TOE) (chapter thirteen), for example, offered the following strategies for addressing DAF’s objectives based on interpretations that would attempt to construct meaning away from neoliberal interpretations, for example: 1. TOE addresses aim 1] by focusing on the ethical dimension of development and addressing the poverty reduction agenda from Southern indigenous perspectives [which could offer a critique of economic development]. 2. TOE addresses aim 2] by conceptualizing global interdependence as a commitment and responsibility related to democracy and dialogue [rather than self-interested concern for Others]. 3. TOE addresses aim 3] by examining how approaches to development are already incorporating and recognizing the value of indigenous knowledges [with reference to the literature that recognizes the economic value of indigenous knowledges—which was also problematized in the project]. 4. TOE addresses aim 4] by developing the critical and analytical skills that are necessary for informed decision making [i.e., teaching teachers and students how to recognize ethnocentrism and paternalism and how to politicize and historicize their practices and interventions]. (Andreotti and Souza 2006, 5).

This type of translation and resignification makes use of the ambivalence inherent in language itself to open up sites of negotiation of meaning where dominant power relations, identities, and systems of knowledge and inequalities are cracked, “troubled” and disrupted. This work “from within” a dominant system or discourse, like a virus, is not without its risks: as a virus changes a system, a system also changes a virus. Therefore, in agonistic and antagonistic processes of negotiation, no one remains “pure” or uncontaminated by the Other or the working of knowledge/power. Thus, at the same time that postcolonial theory advocates “work from within,” discursive strands of postcolonial theory also insist on rigorous and continuous self- critique. Postcolonial theory’s hyper-self-reflexive stance stops any enthusiastic celebration of “postcolonial success” at its roots and works as a safeguard against the temptations of vanguardisms and

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triumphalisms that may drive us away from the “real” task of practitioners and scholars in the field: rather than carving our place in history as saviors of marginality or disruptors of dominant systems, postcolonial theory demands that we keep the focus on working ourselves out of our jobs by attempting to uncoercively rearrange desires with a view to end the possibility of subalternity, which, if successful, would mean the end of (the need for) postcolonial theory itself.

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Chapter Twelve Relativizing Western Knowledge Production in Spaces of Dissensus: The OSDE Methodology

Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE) is an educational initiative licensed under “creative commons”1 that offers guidelines and procedures for the creation of educational “spaces of dissensus” where Western hegemonic ethnocentrism is examined and relativized. It officially started (under this name/format) in 2005. It is hosted by the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham and Global Education Derby, and it is also affiliated with the Development Education Research Centre at the Institute of Education, University of London. The history of OSDE can be traced to an empathetic critique of the idea of “open spaces” in the World Social Forum (Andreotti and Dowling 2004) and to several earlier educational projects based in the United Kingdom, Latin America, and elsewhere focusing on the idea of “critical literacy” conceptualized in a discursive way. OSDE learning activities have been recommended in educational policy documents and translated into several languages, and website statistics show that from December 2005 to December 2010 around 150,000 visitors from five continents have been to the website, generating more than 1 million hits. OSDE was partly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) through the many projects that contributed to its development which were funded through the Development Awareness Fund (DAF). However, most of the work that made OSDE possible was voluntary. OSDE offers educators a set of principles and procedures for the creation of “safe spaces of enquiry” that should work as accessible entry points for learners into issues of social and global justice and collective responsibilities. The initiative provides a set of learning

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activities focusing on questions related to North- South power relations, Western supremacy, epistemic privilege and violence, ideas about the origins and justifications of unequal distributions resources and labor, ethnocentric benevolence/charity, and issues of language, difference, and participation. The design of the principles, procedures, and learning activities were based on a postcolonial framework particularly inspired by Spivak’s ideas of education as an uncoercive rearrangement of desires (Spivak 2004) and of unlearning one’s privilege (Spivak 1990) by “considering it as one’s loss” (Landry and MacLean 1996, 4). The facilitation of discussions was steered toward issues of power, representation, and the political, ambivalent, contextual, and provisional nature of the production of meaning. The stimuli for the learning activities were specifically selected with the purpose to create moments of cognitive dissonance and undecidability (Derrida 1999). The focus of the learning process was to learn to live and relate beyond consensus (i.e., in dissensus), in order to open the imagination to an Other’s “right to signify” (Bhabha 1994). The philosophical-political rationale of the OSDE initiative addresses the link between the cultural and material forces that shape subjectivities and worldviews. The initiative proposes that tracing the origins and implications of ways of seeing and being is fundamental in preparing individuals and communities to work responsibly toward (contested) ideals of justice, peace, and equality. Rather than an exercise of “unveiling false consciousness,” this involves addressing the politics of knowledge production through a discursive understanding of language where knowledge is understood as socially and historically constructed, contingent, partial, and provisional. The OSDE initiative suggests that engaging with complexity, uncertainty, ambivalence, multiplicity, and interdependence, and learning to question and engage with different epistemologies may help participants see themselves as integral to (rather than “heading”) the world (both as part of problems and of solutions) and this, perhaps, may prevent the reproduction of mechanisms that generate or maintain hegemonic ethnocentrism and relationships based on epistemic violences. Although OSDE proposes an ethical framework for engaging with difference within the safe space (i.e., a set of principles for engagement with knowledge production), it does not prescribe a moral framework for thinking and action outside the space (i.e., it does not tell participants what they should think or do in their lives). Within a safe

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space, participants are not encouraged to reach a consensus— in fact it is the difference of perspectives (i.e., the commitment to dissensus) that makes this kind of learning possible and prompts participants to challenge their own viewpoints. Spaces of “dissensus” create a sense of safety from coercion that enables participants to feel more comfortable with experimenting with different positionalities and with engaging critically with their own and other people’s perspectives. The openness of such spaces is based on a collective commitment to the exploration of different forms of knowing and relating. In this sense, rather than building a learning community based on an identity or an ideology (e.g., a moral high ground), what binds the learning community together in an OSDE space is an uncoercive process of self-transformation based on ethical relationality, of “learning to live together” (through engagement and relationship with difference) and of imagining beyond individual selves and individual cultures. Reflection (thinking about individual assumptions), self-reflexivity (thinking about the collective construction of such assumptions, as well as their implications), and an attitude of epistemic curiosity are the pillars of this learning process.

Educational Interface The educational interface of OSDE translates postcolonial concerns into pedagogical debates through the question: “What are the challenges for global citizenship education in an interdependent, diverse and unequal world?” (Andreotti et al. 2006, 3). In response to this question the initiative proposes a focus on the ideas of critical literacy and independent thinking that should support participants: • to engage with complex local/global processes and diverse perspectives; • to examine the origins and implications of their own and other peoples’ assumptions; • to negotiate change, to transform relationships, to think independently and to make responsible and conscious choices about their own lives and how they affect the lives of others; • to live with and learn from difference and conflict and to prevent conflict from escalating to aggression and violence; • to establish ethical, responsible and caring relationships within and beyond their identity groups. (Andreotti et al 2006, 3)

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The stated aims of OSDE (as articulated on the website) are: To offer a set of procedures and ground rules to structure safe spaces for dialogue and inquiry about global issues and perspectives focusing on interdependence. OSDE aims to promote the development of critical, political and transnational literacies, independent and informed thinking, and responsible and accountable reasoning and action. (OSDE 2005a, 1)

The importance of critical literacy and independent thinking are justified with the statement that “learning to live together in a global, interdependent, diverse and unequal society involves the development of skills to support learners to negotiate and cope with change, complexity, uncertainty and insecurity in different contexts” (OSDE 2005a, 1). Within the OSDE initiative, independent thinking is dissociated from the autonomous Cartesian thinker and associated with a self-reflexive stance: the ability to trace the collective origins and implications of one’s own thinking through the awareness that one’s subjectivity is constantly constructed within one’s social, cultural and historical contexts. In this sense, the OSDE pedagogical process serves as the basis for openness, newness, and change as it equips learners to perceive collective influences and take ownership of signification to rewrite their identities, cultures, and histories in ways that increase their confidence and self- esteem. At the same time, independent thinking can also work as a safeguard against fundamentalisms, dogmatisms, and peer pressure. Similarly, critical literacy is conceptualized in the initiative as a practice that leads to more responsible thought and action by supporting learners to analyze the relationships among language, power, social practices, identities, and inequalities; to imagine otherwise; to engage ethically with difference; and to understand the potential implications of their thoughts and actions. OSDE makes an important strategic distinction between traditional reading, critical literacy, and critical reading partly based on the work of Cervetti, Pardales, and Damico (2001). This distinction conceptualizes traditional reading as an exercise of “decoding meaning,” critical reading as an examination of texts focusing on intentions of authors and contexts of textual production, and critical literacy as an analysis of the connections between knowledge and power in the production of meaning. Table 12.1 illustrates the different implications of this distinction within OSDE.

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Table 12.1 Differences between traditional reading, critical reading, and critical literacy Traditional Reading Types of questions

Pedagogical focus

Critical Reading

What is the message? What was the Is it true? Is it context of fact or opinion? writing? To Are statements whom was the substantiated? text addressed? How did the author manipulate the text? “Decoding” the Critique of the content of the text: analysis text, establishing of authors’ truth value of the intentions, message reflection

Notion of language Fixed, transparent, describes reality: meaning is in the text Notion of reality

Exists, can be objectively represented in language

Notion of knowledge

Universal, cumulative

Fixed, translates or distorts reality: meaning is in the text Exists, is accessible, but is often translated into false representations False versus true consciousness

Critical Literacy What (grand narratives) inform the assumptions of the text? What are their implications in terms of power/ social relations? How could this be thought otherwise? Social critique: analysis of connections between knowledge and power, reflexivity Ambivalent, ideological, creates reality: meaning is in the interpretation Exists, but is objectively inaccessible through language

Partial, dynamic, contingent and provisional

OSDE Principles and Procedures for Adults OSDE proposes three principles and a set of procedures for the creation of Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry. These principles are articulated through different metaphors for different audiences (i.e., adults, adolescents, and children). The three principles for adults, for example, are expressed through the metaphors of baggage and lenses as illustrated in figures 12.1, 12.2, and 12.3.

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Figure 12.1 Legitimate knowledge constructed in context

Figure 12.2 Seeing differently

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Figure 12.3 Unpacking knowledge production

The first principle in an adult enquiry is that every knowledge brought to the “open space” is valid and legitimate knowledge constructed in a specific context: We look at the world through lenses constructed in a complex web in our contexts, influenced by several external forces (cultures, media, religions, education, upbringing), internal forces (personalities, traumas, conflicts) and encounters and relationships. The image these lenses project represent our knowledge of ourselves and of the world and, therefore, whether they are close or far from what is considered “normal,” they have a history and their validity needs to be acknowledged within the space. (4)

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The second principle is that all knowledge is partial and incomplete (i.e., provisional) precisely because knowledge is produced in a context: As our lenses are constructed in specific contexts, we lack the knowledge constructed in other contexts, and therefore we need to listen to different perspectives in order to see/imagine beyond the boundaries of our own lenses. (4)

The third principle is that all knowledge can be questioned, however, this kind of questioning does not aim toward consensus or dialectical resolution of contradictions— on the contrary, it aims to increase the capacity of participants to hold multiples views in tension (without resolution) and to engage with complexity, uncertainty, ambivalence, and multiplicity and to relate to each other beyond the need for cognitive resolutions. Critical engagement in the project is defined as the attempt to understand where perspectives are coming from and where they are leading to (origins and implications). Therefore, questioning is not an attempt to break the lenses (to destroy or de-legitimise perspectives), but to sharpen and broaden our vision. (4)

The OSDE procedures for adult enquiries were extensively piloted with university students and activist groups in Nottingham before they were made public on the OSDE website in 2005. The learning design of an “open space session” aims to create an environment where participants feel comfortable to develop analytical tools to examine discourses and power relations. Different from learning processes designed to legitimize individual knowledge, the OSDE learning process focuses on hyper-self-reflexivity. In this sense, one of the most important lessons learned in the piloting process was that forcing participants to take positions or to give personal testimonies was highly counterproductive as it reified performed subjectivities and locked participants in positions where they felt they needed to “defend” their perspectives when those perspectives were challenged. By inviting self-reflexivity as a private exercise and reflexive dialogue as a performative exercise (where participants were prompted to shift positions constantly), the personal safety of participants was secured and the exploratory ethos of the space was kept open.

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The procedures for an adult enquiry consist of four essential and two additional exercises and a negotiation between the facilitator and participants at the start of the process.2 The negotiation between the facilitator and the participants for the collaborative creation of the space involves a proposal of temporary adoption of the stated principles (described before) and the collective aim of experimenting with different/new ways of thinking and relating to one another within the allocated time of the learning activity. If participants refuse to agree temporarily on the principles, the principles are used as a stimulus for the enquiry, but the creation of the space is deferred. The six exercises are outlined in table 12.2.

OSDE Facilitation In an OSDE space facilitators are responsible for modeling relationships and reflexivity, opening, holding and closing the time/space, guiding participants through the enquiry and, during dialogue, exemplifying the application of deconstruction/critical literacy by asking questions related to power/knowledge (e.g., Where could this be coming from and leading to in terms of constructions of realities, hierarchies, and subjectivities?), exploring different angles and interpretations of an issue (e.g., How could this be thought of in different ways and in different contexts?), and, most importantly, explicitly moving the group away from consensus. The most difficult aspect of the process is to refrain from trying to privilege perspectives that are close to one’s stance or even to impose a “correct” perspective on participants. The guidelines for facilitation of dialogue emphasized the difficulty of moving from a traditional transmissive teaching relationship with learners (focusing on the construction of predetermined knowledge) to a relationship grounded on “collective enquiry” based on critical literacy (focusing of the development of self-reflexivity and analyses of power/knowledge) (see Andreotti and Warwick 2007). This involves specific shifts: • from external content to “internal” content of learners’ worldviews; • from rhetorical questions to critical literacy questions (i.e., where is this idea coming from? going to? who would disagree? how else could this be defined? who decides? in whose name? for whose benefit? how come?);

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Debriefing

Group Dialogue Questions (essential exercise) Responsible Choices

Reflexive questions (essential private exercise)

Informed thinking

Stimulus (essential exercise)

Problem-solving task that gives participants an opportunity to apply their learning to a real-life or simulated situation of decision making Participants are invited to reflect on their participation and learning. This is also a “closing” procedure for the open space.

Exposure to different and “logical” perspectives on a specific theme (e.g., culture, knowledge, social justice, development, etc.) prompting “cognitive dissonance.” Participants are encouraged to respond to the stimulus by exploring the origins and implications of each perspective. The main objective of this exercise is not to check what participants “think about” the theme, but to trace the discourses of the perspectives presented . Brainstorm on sources of information about the theme, mainstream and nonmainstream perspectives and public channels of communication Exposure to questions that refer to individual knowledge construction. These should not be discussed as a group activity until learners are familiar with the methodology or participants might feel they are too exposed or that they need to compete for legitimacy. Exposure to questions that refer to collective knowledge/power production.

Table 12.2 OSDE suggested procedures

What are dominant/mainstream views on this topic? How come? Who would disagree? Where can one find alternative views? What do you think about this issue? What informs your thinking? How does your thinking contest and/or reproduce ideas of the communities you belong to? What are the implications of your thinking to other communities? In what ways could you be complicit in unjust social practices? What is considered normal? Who decides? In whose name? For whose benefit? How come? Who contests that and why? What are the tensions in this debate? How could this be thought of differently? Would your thinking and decision be different in this scenario had you not gone through this learning activity? What have you learned about yourself, about others, about the topic, about knowledge and learning? Do you feel you and other participants could express themselves in an open and safe space? What could be done to improve learning and relationships within the space?

What are the assumptions, implications and limitations of the perspectives presented?

10 min Group work or feedback form

30 min Group work + 10 min Collective debrief 20 min Group work

3 min silent reflection

5 min Group work

10 min Group work

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• from conflict resolution (and being overwhelmed by difference, ambiguity and complexity) to “living with and learning from complexity and dissensus”; • from safety based on the authority of the teacher to safety based on respect for and engagement with difference.

In order to create an ethos of safe and open critical enquiry (where difference is both respected and engaged with) the facilitator is responsible for preserving four key components of the learning space, as stated in the briefing document: UNCERTAINTY (exploration of the not known): strategic suspension of belief in universalism, acknowledgement that language and culture are local and situated, not global and universal, and therefore always partial and provisional. SAFETY: horizontal relationships oriented towards collective complementarity, collaborative (as opposed to competitive) ethos. DIFFERENCE & OPENNESS: cognitive dissonance, productive conflict, prompting willingness to imagine different possibilities and to listen and learn with one another. OPEN-ENDEDNESS: no prescribed outcomes as the aim of the exercise is to learn to explore, reflect and belong through contestatory dialogue and not through consensus. (OSDE 2005b, 4)

These components imply that in order to engage in dialogue, OSDE facilitators and participants need to be willing to listen, to be aware of their own partiality, and ready to engage with difference attributing equal worth (within the space) to everyone’s positionings. This attribution of worth is placed on the process of signification itself (as a right) rather than, necessarily, on what is signified (which is perceived as partial, provisional, situated, and open to “critical engagement”). This implicit separation between the subject/process and output of meaning making is what creates the possibility for unconditional respect for one’s “being” without the necessity of cognitive consensus, consonance, or harmony, at the same time that it opens the possibility for mutual critical engagement with positionalities. In this sense, the space enables the emergence of a form of relationality conditioned, but not determined by epistemic curiosity where participants are encouraged to relate beyond what is possible in language (i.e., the common prerequisites of understanding through language) while still engaging in dialogue about provisional and partial knowledges. When successful, this creates an environment where people feel

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free to explore internal and external differences and contradictions and express themselves (in tentative ways) without the fear of being silenced or put down. This “liberation” from the coercive power of the expectation of consensus was often articulated in participants’ feedback about the process, illustrated below in responses of 12-yearold pupils in a school in Nottingham, to the question, “Was this experience different from what you experience everyday at school? If so, in what ways?”: Yes, because we are allowed to disagree. Yes, because we don’t have to find only one answer. Yes, because even the teacher doesn’t know all the answers! Yes, because I can think about my thoughts and say what I want to say. Yes. I learned that my perspective counts. Yes. We talk about different things and we think about reasons and consequences. Yes. We have to listen to what each other has to say. Yes, because we learn that everyone has different thoughts. I don’t know. It is confusing. I cannot figure out what the teacher wants me to say. (OSDE 2006)

Their responses may suggest that schools are/were generally failing to equip students to cope with complexity, to relate to difference, to see conflict as an opportunity for learning, to value their insights, and to see their own perspective as “situated” (partial, contingent, and provisional).

OSDE Principles and Procedures for Younger People The principles and procedures were rearticulated in the versions of the methodology targeting adolescents and children. In the version for secondary schools, the “safe space” is one where: (1) every knowledge deserves respect (as it comes from a context, which does not mean we have to agree with it); (2) every knowledge is partial (not even the teacher knows all the answers); (3) the purpose of the space is not to get everyone to agree, but to unpack and explore issues from different perspectives; and (4) people should feel safe to express themselves and to engage with each other. The procedures for the enquiry involve: (1) looking at perspectives; (2) clarifying one’s thoughts about them (through drawing or writing); (3) formulating questions starting

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with the phrase “I wonder”; (4) hearing the questions of others and voting on one to be discussed by the class; (5) discussing responses in a way that avoids consensus (using prompt “critical literacy” questions); and (6) checking what one has learned from the exercise (debriefing). Sample learning activities were made available online using PowerPoint presentations to present perspectives and structure the different stages of the enquiry. With secondary school pupils, one of the major concerns of teachers was the expression of racist remarks in the open space. In the piloting process in secondary schools in 2006 the development team noticed that common strategies for teachers facing the possibility of pupils’ expression of racism included the outright condemnation or silencing of racist remarks , and the effort to highlight “positive messages” about other cultures. These strategies worked to create a (justified) sense of censorship in the class and a veneer of politeness that generally was not sustained when learners were outside the classroom. Thus, young people did not have a place to unpack common assumptions about themselves and others that may have been common in their other social environments. Very often this does not contribute to the transformation of relationships and of racism itself. Our response was to design enquiry stimulus that could invite young people to deconstruct racist remarks in ways that made explicit the social-historical construction of the deficit theorization of difference and that emphasized both the process and implications of knowledge/ power production. In this sense, in order to protect the safety of the space, it was very important to create an environment where learners could perform analyses without the need to position themselves publicly as individuals. Therefore, the main pedagogical strategy was to promote a “language game” where it was “cool” to turn issues around and around in order to see how many different ways one could think of (and unpack the implications of) the same thing over and over again (with the aim of expanding learners’ frames of reference). The most popular and downloaded OSDE learning activity for secondary schools (which was also often used with adults) was an enquiry about North-South relationships. The stimulus starts with a staging of the distribution of people and wealth between the global North and South and within the North and the South. Using approximated World Bank statistics, the distribution is made more real with the use of biscuits. The facilitator divides the class according to the population of the North and the South (21 percent North, 79 percent South), distributes an amount of biscuits equivalent to the number of students according

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to the approximated statistics provided for the global North and South (84 percent of the world’s wealth stays in the North, 16 percent in the South) and redistributes it again within the North and South (North: 50 percent of the wealth given to 20 percent of the population; South: 80 percent of wealth given to 20 percent of population). The results can be measured in biscuits: while a few people in the North own 12 biscuits and many people in the North and South hold 1 or 2 biscuits, the vast majority in the South only has access to crumbs. The facilitator then invites participants to stage a prompted dialogue (supported by slides) between a stickperson from the North (with many biscuits) and another from the South (holding crumbs) around the question: What is the reason for this distribution? Participants are also prompted to think about “security measures” that could be in place during this conversation. The dialogue prompts are reproduced below: Northern voice 1: We are rich because we are superior. We have worked harder, we are more civilized, we are more educated, we know better. Southern voice 1: You are rich because you colonized us in the past. You invaded our land, stole our resources and enslaved and killed our people. And you continue to do that in a different way today. Northern voice 1: We colonized you, but we also taught you important things, like progress. We educated you. You are still poor because you do not work very hard and because your culture is backwards. Southern voice 1: This is outrageous! We work extremely hard, but you continue to steal from us. You don’t pay a fair wage for our work or a fair price for our products and you make us pay you a lot of money in debt interests too. Northern voice 1: We still give you a lot of money in AID. We are very charitable people. You are poor because your leaders are corrupt and you keep fighting one another. Southern voice 1: For every pound of charitable money you give us, you take away at least 10, not to mention what you have stolen in the past! We do have problems, but you sell the guns to the people who are fighting and you also participate in the corruption here. The fights and the corruption make you even richer and most of us poorer! Northern voice 1: This is nonsense. What you need is proper instruction and a proper attitude, like we have. If only you were educated like us . . . Southern voice 1: Look at the attitude of your people! They are only happy when they compete, or buy things or consume. They don’t respect one another, or the environment. They are very selfish.

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And look at what you are doing to the world! You consume most resources, you produce most waste, you are destroying everything. YOU need to stop thinking you are superior and LISTEN! Narrator: Meanwhile, in the South and in the North . . . Southern voice 2: Hey! What are you talking about? That northern person was right! We are behind and we need to catch up. If we listen to them, if we work harder and if we buy what they sell, one day we will be even better than they are! Southern voice 3: You are crazy! They will never allow us to catch up! It is their game— they make the rules. Why would they want to lose? We have to change the game, so that it becomes fair for all and for the environment. Southern voice 4: I don’t think we can change the game. There is no hope for negotiation. They don’t care about us. We should destroy this game and make them pay for what they have done! Northern voice 2: Hey! What are you talking about? The southern person was right. In order to be rich, we have kept them poor. We need to find a solution together to change this situation or we will all perish! Northern voice 3: You are crazy! We have the answers! We have nothing to learn from them! We need to teach them to be like us! Northern voice 4: We have tried to teach them. We have tried to help. It has not worked. They are hopeless. And we have our own problems here. We should leave them to sort out their own problems. (OSDE 2005b)

The design principles for the enquiry stimuli aimed to encourage conceptual analyses of complex issues involving perspectives beyond participants’ frames of reference (as opposed to “representing reality”). In the next stages of the enquiry, participants were prompted to reflect on their own responses to the stimulus and then formulate a question to be discussed by the class arising from their own responses. Therefore, very often the questions did not reflect the theme directly as participants would transpose concepts from the stimulus into their own contexts. For example, the North- South power relationship enacted in the conversation was often translated into analyses of normativity or power and representational inequalities within other specific context (i.e., the classroom, a neighborhood, gender, sexual orientation, peer pressure, etc.). OSDE was also piloted with early childhood and primary school children in New Zealand and the United Kingdom and sample activities were made available on the OSDE website. Instead of “open” spaces, these inquiries were called “rainbow” spaces and based on the

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following “agreements” within the space: (1) we are all different and unique; (2) we all have different thoughts; (3) the ways we think comes from what we have seen, heard, tasted, smelled, dreamed about, and also from other places. The rainbow space procedures for enquiry included: (1) listening to a story; (2) taking a picture of one’s thoughts; (3) making and exploring some questions; (4) talking about what one has learned with/from and about others. The “stories” focused on dilemmas related to knowledge production, power relations, and representations and often prompted children to make a decision in relation to the plot (i.e., what they would do in the skin of a character). As an illustration, the story “Two explorers” (written by myself with Andrew Robinson) is reproduced below: There were once two explorers: a blue monster and a yellow monster. At first, they travelled to many places together. But, in their trips, they could never agree on what to do. The yellow monster got excited exploring different places and bored if it had to stay in only one place. It wanted to explore far and beyond. The blue monster got excited exploring one thing at a time and for a long time and it got bored if it had to keep moving to different places all the time. It liked to explore everything in detail. Each one believed they could know better in their own way of knowing. So, they agreed to travel their separate ways and to come back together after one year to compare what they had learned. The blue monster found a place he wanted to explore, fenced it, named it “Blue monster’s Kingdom” and started to study everything around. It created numbers, names, measures, categories and labels for everything in its kingdom. And he wrote all the information he found in its book. It gave the book the title: Science.The yellow monster travelled to many different places. It felt many different winds in its face, tasted different flavors, shared stories and songs with many different creatures an fell in love with many different things.It recorded every one of its feelings, stories, songs, sights and tastes in its heart.One year passed and the two monsters came together again to compare their knowledge. The blue monster showed the yellow monster its kingdom and its book and said: “this is what I know and this is what is mine, I feel I know everything there is to know about my kingdom and I am sure other kingdoms will be similar to mine.” The yellow monster did not own anything from its trips (as things are difficult to carry if you are travelling a lot). So the yellow monster told the blue monster the stories it had learned and about the things it had felt, tasted, seen, heard and smelled. And concluded by saying: “there is still so much more to learn out there. I could not possibly know everything even in a thousand life times.” [At this point, children are asked to vote for the

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monster with most knowledge] The monsters discussed and discussed, but could not agree on who knew more or better.After endless days of conversation, they eventually agreed to disagree, at least for a while. (OSDE 2005a)

One of the versions available on the website presents the yellow and blue monster as a (human) brother and a sister. This enquiry was piloted in New Zealand with early childhood and primary school pupils in order to collect some sample questions that could be used in the published resource. An interesting aspect of this piloting process was that, regardless of the representation of the characters (monsters or people), there was a strong tendency among children who had not yet acquired alphabetic literacy to choose the traveler as the character with most knowledge. In the same way, the tendency among children who had acquired alphabetic literacy was to see the “book” as the main representation of knowledge. The association between knowledge and the written word was made explicit when these children were prompted with questions like: “Do 4 year-olds have knowledge?” or “Does a 65 year-old who does not know how to read or write have knowledge?” The primary children’s responses strongly indicated that one could not have knowledge if one could not read or write. In addition, the questions formulated by alphabetically literate primary school learners represented more the “traditional reading” questions (see Table 12.1), while early childhood learners were more inclined to engage with the ambivalence of meaning and to demonstrate more divergent thinking. We also observed that children in the primary schools we visited would be more inclined to be attentive to the body language of the teachers and provide “appropriate” responses, while in early childhood centers, the teacher did not seem to perform the same role of control and censorship. The selection of questions below (collected from early childhood and primary school children) show a sample of the responses to the third procedure for enquiry: • What is knowledge? • Can people who do not know how to read books also have a lot of knowledge? • Can we read other things like people and places? If so, how do we learn to do this? • Are there types of knowledge that can only be in books or in hearts? • Do men tend to know in a certain way and women in another way? If so, are they born like that or do they learn this from other people around them? (OSDE 2005a)

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Frequently Asked Questions OSDE was piloted in different contexts and countries for two years before its official website launch in 2005. The development team received several requests for workshops and presentations, especially from educators involved with development, global, and citizenship education, NGO workers involved with volunteer activities, and groups of activists and students from different countries. These early engagements with the methodology helped shape the final outputs and directions of the initiative. Once the website was published online requests for presentations increased significantly and so did the expressions of criticisms and questions formulated from different ideological positionings. Therefore, a list of “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) was compiled and responses were posted on the official website. The FAQs help map the ideological intersections that enabled (or not) the possibility for the use of the OSDE methodology in different contexts. In this sense, they provide an interesting barometer of educational discourses, especially discourses related to globalization and development, at the time OSDE was launched. A set of common questions is reproduced and commented on below with a view to provide a snapshot of the discursive negotiations that took place in that context. The question of agency was central in many OSDE criticisms. Whether or not the approach could lead to action was a preoccupation of several educators and NGO actors invested in educational approaches that aimed to change behavior or promote “active citizenship” in immediately measurable ways (i.e., through involvement in campaigns or projects). In general, an implicit distinction was made between action and reflection and the measure of value of the educational process was placed on the latter. Once OSDE was perceived as a process that could not steer participants toward a prescribed “action” outcome, the value of the methodology was questioned. The public response (PR) provided engaged both the hierarchical distinction between action and reflection and the coercive orientation of processes with prescribed outcomes. FAQ: Does this approach lead to action? PR: Potentially yes, but this operates at two levels. If action is defined as a change of assumptions/worldview that leads to a change in behaviour and relationships, the answer can be that this is the aim of the project: that people will change themselves through the interaction with others, that this change will happen at an epistemic level and that

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it will be transferred to other areas of their lives. If action is defined as “direct collective action,” then the answer is still “potentially yes, but this is not the aim of the project.” In order to enable people to think independently, our role in the project cannot be one of telling people what they should think or what they should do. This would be inconsistent with the theoretical principles of the project that establishes an ethical framework described by Foucault as seeking not to “suggest what people ought to be, what they ought to do, what they ought to think and believe,” but to enable the construction of an awareness about how social mechanisms have, up to now, been able to work and how, therefore, these systems have conditioned the way we think, evaluate, act and relate to others. And then, “starting from there, leave to the people themselves, knowing all the above, the possibility of self-determination and the choice of their own existence” (Foucault 1984, 40, quoted in Spivak 1995, 156). However, through the tasks and simulations (of decision making processes) we encourage participants to plan collective interventions responsibly and nothing prevents educators/facilitators from supporting the group in implementing their ideas if participants choose to do so. (OSDE 2005a)

Some educators, often involved with values or peace education, questioned the value of interrogating knowledge production and of independent thinking. The implicit fear seemed to be that by relativizing knowledge construction and by exposing and de-authorizing the coercive power of transmissive pedagogical processes, teachers would lose their authority and learners would feel free to choose “bad” values, that teachers would need to accept (if the logic of the initiative was followed as a universal value). The response of the project challenges a Cartesian view of individual subjectivities and proposes a more complex understanding of the learning process. FAQ: Wouldn’t it be quicker and more effective to teach pupils virtues and values explicitly? PR: We are not saying that virtues and values should not be taught at different moments in the educational process, however, the view that morality can be explicitly taught and be easily assimilated by students is highly problematic. First it can be interpreted as a transmissive or “banking” concept of education that assumes that through the authority invested in teachers by institutions they can “input” something directly into the minds of learners and that as long as learners “provide” the right answers in tests or interviews, they have changed their values and behavior. This in turn, is based on a conceptualization of learning where thought prescribes action. Social and educational

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theories have has challenged these assumptions by recognising that learners come to school already knowing a great deal about the world (due to their exposure to language/cultural significations) and that learning will be the result of a complex interaction between what the student is exposed to at school (formal input, but also several aspects of the environment) and the understanding of the world he/she has already constructed. Therefore, this learning cannot be defined solely as a result of the input of the teacher, but of complex interactions of the student with his/her knowledge and his/her environment. There are several implications arising from this change of perception (which is central to most of the theories used in the OSDE project), one of the most important implication is that, within a complex environment of peer pressure, information overload and different kinds of (local and global) input, empowering pupils to think (relatively) independently and make informed and responsible decisions becomes more meaningful and relevant than just getting students to repeat a rhetoric of good virtues. (OSDE 2005a)

The question of whether OSDE allowed racist remarks to pass unchallenged was often asked by secondary school teachers (specially in England) who were facing institutional pressures to prevent expressions of racism, sexism, and homophobia from being articulated in classroom environments. If such perspectives were constantly repressed in a given context, there was a risk that students would take advantage of the “openness” of the space to challenge the authority of the teacher by expressing their censored thoughts. We encountered this problem in a few of the secondary schools where OSDE was piloted. If the relationship between the teachers and the pupils was based on authoritarianism (sometimes justified in an attempt to protect vulnerable pupils) the creation of a “safe space” was practically impossible. FAQ: Does the methodology allow for racist, sexist or homophobic perspectives to pass unchallenged? PR: No. It is precisely the unpacking/challenging/dealing with these perspectives— and not simply silencing them— that is one of the central objectives of the project (the last of the five principles sets the mode for that). However, each educator/facilitator will need to determine the right moment to unpack those perspectives or whether, in certain contexts, they will need to silence them to protect other participants, in which case, we recommend educators to reflect on whether OSDE is an appropriate methodology for their contexts. If relationships are volatile (between teachers and students or amongst students), other

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strategies for relationship suturing (e.g., restorative justice strategies) may be needed before OSDE can be implemented successfully. (OSDE 2005a)

Consensual approaches to citizenship education grounded on hierarchical ideas of belonging that privilege the nation-state (i.e., belonging first to the local, then the regional, national, international, and so on) and global governance through benevolent global institutions and an unexamined and uncritical commitment to human rights abound in educational literature. Challenging the normative, ethnocentric, ahistorical, and paternalistic ethos of these approaches, without falling into an uncritical rejection of human rights is very difficult. Part of the difficulty lies in establishing a position of critical engagement (as opposed to critical disengagement and uncritical engagement) with issues where one can both support (in certain contexts) and be critical of something (in other contexts and at the same time). If the choices are only either uncritical engagement or critical disengagement, exploring the historical, political, and culturally located construction of human rights and its dependence on nation-states can be perceived as an attack on the universal legitimacy of human rights and nation-states. As OSDE is committed to both the “location of knowledge” (as a stance against cultural supremacy) and the educational exposure to different perspectives on any issue, the examination of the construction of the position of the “rights dispenser” in the global (geo)politics of knowledge production is key. The public response to the FAQ reflects these aims. FAQ: Isn’t a framework of human rights more useful in assisting pupils in relation to what should or not be tolerated (as has been suggested in some of the citizenship literature)? PR: First, presenting human rights as a “universally agreed” unproblematic set of values is misleading and potentially alienating. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created as a governance mechanism of the United Nations to prevent genocide (it was not meant to be used as a statement of educational values). According to the UN, it was conceived as a statement of objectives to be pursued by Governments, and therefore it is not part of binding international law. Nonetheless, it is still a potent instrument used to (selectively) apply moral and diplomatic pressure on states that violate the Declaration’s principles. Second, as an instrument, it has been used to protect civilians from State violence, but it has also been used by powerful countries as an alibi for other types of interventions (with ambiguous aims/

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interests). Therefore, we believe that, although people should support it in principle, they should also engage critically with it. Third, from a pedagogical perspective, apart from a simplistic and uncritical view of international politics, potential outcomes of implementing the UDHR as a framework of values could include the reinforcement of assumptions of Eurocentrism, of cultural and economic superiority and inferiority, and of a vanguardist, paternalistic or missionary attitude towards the global South. This does not mean that human rights should not be addressed (and supported!) as one of the global issues addressed in the project, but that approaching it uncritically as an uncontested, ahistorical, depoliticized and decontextualized universally agreed framework for values does have highly problematic potential educational implications. (OSDE 2005a)

Activist and educational groups concerned with mobilizing support for political and humanitarian interventions were (rightly) skeptical of the potential of the use of OSDE to rally people behind their cause. OSDE is a situated educational cause in itself that calls for reflexivity and more informed thinking in campaigns. In this sense, it does not translate easily into outrage or rallies, but it can be useful in their preparation or in dealing with tensions that often emerge in organizations when it is assumed that everyone agrees on a particular issue (see example of Fair Trade organization in Andreotti and Souza, 2008a). The response problematizes the aim of “creating outrage” and defends that the selection of appropriate approaches for a specific context is a responsibility of the educator him/herself. FAQ Do you think that after questioning and recognising complexity people will still feel outraged in the face of injustice? PR: We feel that after questioning and recognising complexity people will be better able to intervene responsibly in their context (within their capacities). We do not encourage “outrage.” As Moore (2005) suggests, outrage as a base for activism leads to disappointment, disillusionment, quick burn out, self-righteousness, fundamentalism, being willing to harm others for one’s righteous cause, and most importantly to being so caught up in your rage that you end up attacking the very people you are supposedly working with in the name of making the world a better place. Therefore, we believe that it is important to acknowledge that this is about “us all”—we are all part of the problem AND part of the solution— and that we need to try to change our contexts without reproducing the relations of domination (that created the problems in the first place). However, we recognise that, in certain contexts (e.g., where there is a high level of political apathy),

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strategies that promote outrage can be used to sensitize pupils and prompt quicker responses. But the strategy and outcomes should be approached critically and other strategies should be used to move the process along towards reflexivity, ethical relationships and responsible reasoning and action. (OSDE 2005a)

Absolute relativism was often perceived as a dangerous ideology and framed in opposition to benevolent and harmless universalism. This binary opposition also associated the uncritical rejection of modernity and of norms with absolute relativism while associating the uncritical embrace of modernist values of “order and progress” with universalism. The aim of OSDE was to go beyond this binary opposition by calling attention to the grounded/located, dynamic and interrelated nature of all knowledge claims. In this sense OSDE promoted a “contextual relativism” grounded on an understanding of signification that focuses on the ambivalence of the sign. Therefore, within an open space, participants are invited to engage with the existing rules of knowledge production in different contexts and to perceive these rules as heterogeneous and conflictual, provisional, and historically, culturally, socially, and politically situated. Absolute relativism also tends to conceptualize knowledge systems as culturally located, but different from “contextual relativism,” knowledge systems are perceived to be relatively fixed and separated from each other (more monolithic, static, and homogeneous). This conceptualization is often the basis of political projects that aim to valorize knowledges and voices that have been deemed inferior, but, from this position,one can only judge (or say anything about) the knowledge of one’s own community, foreclosing possibilities of cross- cultural intelligibility and interchanges. In this sense, OSDE adopts a provisional general epistemology that intentionally suggests the impossibility of general epistemologies (Santos 2007) with the pedagogical aim to open the possibility of such interchanges, to address epistemic violences and silences and to develop specific analytical tools. The public response to the FAQ points to this distinction. FAQ: Are you promoting absolute relativism as an ideology? PR: OSDE promotes a notion of critical literacy where all knowledge is legitimate (as it is constructed in our contexts and interpretations of the world), but it is also partial and provisional. In terms of relativism, the principles of the open space methodology suggest that knowledge is contingent and therefore “truth” and morality are contextually defined and therefore it is important to engage critically with

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the construction of knowledge taking context into account. In contrast, absolute relativism implies that the moral or ethical judgments or acts of one person or group cannot or should not be judged by another. OSDE aims to create spaces where it is safe to challenge knowledge production by employing a pedagogical principle of strategically separating one’s knowledge from one’s “being” in a “safe space.” In this sense, one is valid and legitimate as a person with whatever knowledge one brings to the space (legitimacy does not depend on consensus), but the partiality of this knowledge, as well as the limitations and implications of what one says or does is open to question. As this happens to everyone in the space (including the facilitator), the integrity of participants is maintained— there is no critical engagement with people, but with partial and provisional knowledges, and this is not done in order to reach a consensus or agree on a course of action, therefore, anyone can take from the exercise what one wishes to take. OSDE proposes critical engagement with fundamentalisms/dogmatisms and relativism itself (which also becomes a dogmatism if taken literally): no one needs to adopt unequivocally the idea that there is no absolute truth as an absolute truth. (OSDE 2005a)

Conclusion The OSDE initiative hoped to support the development of critical and transnational literacies, as well as knowledge about the politics of knowledge production. In ethical terms, within an open space, understanding one’s lenses better (where one is coming from, where that is leading to), as well as the lenses of others may help one perceive the limitations and contradictions in one’s own ways of seeing and open one’s lenses to an ethical dialogue with other lenses: to imagine other possible ways of seeing, being and living together— other possible worlds without the current divisions. OSDE generated a series of publications and was often cited in articles and educational policies as a resource to promote independent thinking and critical literacy (see for example, Leonard 2007; Cremin and Warwick 2008; Chen and Belgeonne 2008; Bourn and Neil 2008; Jordao 2007; 2009; Jordao and Fogaca 2007; Ferrareli 2009; Murphy 2009). In a government report on citizenship and diversity in England (Ajegbo, et al. 2007), OSDE is recommended as a strategy to address the need for pupils “to develop an understanding of how language constructs reality and the different perspectives they use to make sense of the world around them” (46). The report also emphasizes

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that “it is crucial for education for diversity that pupils are given the skills to challenge their own assumptions and those of others” (ibid.). This report can be interpreted as representing a relatively new educational trend that moves away from consensual pedagogies. As OSDE focused on knowledge production in “Western” contexts, a common critique was that although the stimuli intended to challenge Western knowledge construction, it did not focus specifically on problematic Western engagements with non-Western and indigenous knowledge systems, particularly systems based on nonanthropocentric ontologies. In order to address this limitation, a spin off project was developed to focus specifically on indigenous knowledges. This new initiative was called “Learning to read the world through other eyes” (TOE) and received funding from DFID from 2006 to 2008. TOE is presented in chapter thirteen.

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Chapter Thirteen Engaging with Other Knowledge Systems: The Through Other Eyes Initiative

Through Other Eyes (TOE) is a free online study programme primarily aimed at teacher education focusing on engagements with indigenous/ aboriginal perceptions of global issues. Like Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE), TOE is licensed under creative commons. The program is currently used in 33 higher education institutions around the world, as well as in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) oriented toward development education, study, and volunteering abroad. TOE was originally hosted by the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham and Global Education Derby (NGO) and was developed from 2006 to 2008. The project was partly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) through the Development Awareness Fund (DAF). The development of TOE involved a number of partnerships with academic and civil society institutions, including Manchester Metropolitan University, the Centre for Research in Development Education and Global Learning (Institute of Education, University of London), and Survival International. The baseline inquiry on indigenous knowledge systems was conducted with informants in five communities located in Brazil, Peru, Tanzania, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Australia. In the U.K. context, an important driver for this project was a Curriculum Review on Diversity and Citizenship published in England (Ajegbo, et al. 2006). This review emphasizes the importance of selfreflexivity and engagement with different worldviews in schools through an explicit statement about the social construction of reality: Pupils need to develop an understanding of how language constructs reality and the different perspectives they use to make sense of the

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world around them. It is crucial for education for diversity that pupils are given the skills to challenge their own assumptions and those of others. (Ibid. 46)

Therefore, the justification for this project was that, for educators to be able to equip learners to perform this task, this type of learning should also be prioritized in teacher education. For this reason, the TOE study program was designed to support educators to develop a set of tools to reflect on their own knowledge systems and to engage with other knowledge systems in different ways, in their own learning, and in their classrooms. These tools should enable educators: • to develop an understanding of how language and systems of belief, values and representation affect the way people interpret the world; • to identify how different groups understand issues related to development and their implications for the development agenda; • to critically examine these interpretations— both “Western” and “indigenous”— looking at origins and potential implications of assumptions; • to identify an ethics for improved dialogue, engagement and mutual learning. (Andreotti and Souza 2006)

TOE focuses on indigenous knowledge systems as epistemologies (or ways of knowing) that offer different ontological choices (or choices related to the ways we see reality and being) to those of Western humanism. The online study program is organized around four themes: education, development, equality, and poverty. Each theme is structured around a methodology that addresses four types of learning through six different tasks: (1) learning to unlearn; (2) learning to listen; (3) learning to learn (from below); and (4) learning to reach out (these are further explored in another section). The resources are freely available on the website and participants can choose to perform the task online or by using a printed booklet. If they respond to tasks online, they have access to the anonymous responses of other participants organized by countries of origin. Participants can also choose to send their responses to a lecturer by e-mail. TOE responds to concerns in current research in the area of intercultural, global, and development education that raise questions about the implications of soft educational approaches in these areas. Such approaches tend to conceptualize learners’ inability to relate to difference as an individual lack of knowledge and skills rather than

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a systemic, political, historical, and ideological process of knowledge production (Sefa and Calliste 2000). Thus, rather than addressing power relations and the deficit theorization of difference at a systemic social-political level through social analyses, these unexamined approaches often prescribe depoliticized and ahistorical strategies that fail to engage in examinations of power relations and to challenge ethnocentric and paternalistic assumptions of cultural superiority. Thus, they reproduce global subjectivities who are unaware of the power/knowledge nexus that frame cultural encounters. In terms of relationships between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples, the project draws from indigenous studies by highlighting the problem of “culturalism” defined by Mi’kmaq (First Nations) educator Marie Battiste (2000) as an intellectual posture inherited from colonialism that homogenizes Western and indigenous cultures and knowledges and defines Western cultures and knowledges as the global and universal norm from which indigenous cultures and knowledges deviate. Tongan Professor Konai Thaman (UNESCO Chair in Teacher Education and Culture), in her preface to the TOE resource, refers to culturalism through a Tongan proverb that makes reference to a metaphor of baskets. She conceptualizes baskets as the different ways social groups perceive and relate to the world and to other groups. She constructs a defense of the recognition of different baskets: In terms of North- South relationships it is common to witness the projection of one group’s basket of knowledge as a universal basket—one that is more valuable than all others and that should be imposed through strategies of human resource development, capacity building, enlightenment, cash employment, good governance, human rights, freedom, democracy and education. The expectation is that the recipient of these baskets of knowledge will change for the better. People who participate in these interventions rarely ask: How do people in this community, this place, conceptualise wisdom, learning and knowledge? Nor do they wonder if the values inherent in and propagated by their agendas are shared by the majority of people whose lives are meant to be improved as a result of their intervention. Few even realise the ideological and philosophical conflicts associated with differing perceptions of championed ideas, leaving many communities confused and, in some cases, angry. In the same way, in international forums I have often felt obliged to ensure that different baskets of knowledge, especially those of indigenous peoples, are included in discussions because of the continuing impact that

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these forums have on our future (educational) development. In the context of considering global education and instruments such as the Millenium Development Goals, Education For All or Education for Sustainable Development for example, some important questions are still rarely asked such as: What development? What education for all? What and whose sustainable development? Whose human rights? Good governance for whom? And, most importantly, what and whose values underpin the (education) conversations that we are involved in? (Thaman 2008, 5)

Enabling spaces for these questions to be asked and engaged with was TOE’s first objective. Thus, the theoretical framework of the project was (mainly) informed by Spivak’s work described in chapters three and eleven, particularly her call for an ethical imperative toward the Other (Spivak 1990, 2004) and her ideas of learning to unlearn, to learn from below, and learning to work without guarantees (Spivak 2004). TOE was concerned with the possibility of a pedagogy that could support learners oversocialized in ethnocentric and hegemonic ideologies of unexamined universalisms and consensus to engage ethically with other knowledge systems in ways that could uphold the complexity, nonhomogeneity and historical situatedness of knowledge production. This implied a pedagogical approach committed to going beyond culturalism, ethnocentrism, essentialism, reversed racism, and Orientalism. However, the negotiation of this pedagogy in the context of the project was a very difficult process akin to “walking in minefields” as it involved competing and incommensurable conceptualizations and demands from European educators and the indigenous peoples themselves. The challenges, difficulties and contradictions of this process are explored elsewhere (see Andreotti and Souza, 2008b). TOE’s methodological framework is mapped against a conceptual tool that makes a distinction between ego-, ethno-, human- and world- centric nested domains of engagement. Each domain focuses on a way of thinking that emphasizes certain perspectives and excludes others. The egocentric domain highlights one’s own framings, narratives and representations; the ethnocentric domain highlights the framings, narratives and representations of one’s social groups; the human- centric domain highlights the framings, narratives and representations of “other” social groups and the world- centric level highlights “other” possible framings, narratives and representations, including those that are nonhumanist and nonanthropocentric. Each learning unit, consisting of six components, was designed to develop the capacity of learners to locate their own perspectives in collective

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narratives, to analyze the heterogeneity of knowledge production, to perceive different logics as based on different ontologies (and not as a derivation or deviation of a universal ontology), to engage with critique and analyses of power relations, to articulate complexity and contingency, to (re)position themselves in relation to different views, and to develop self-reflexivity (as critical engagement with the foreclosures of one’s ontological and epistemological choices).

TOE’s Metaphors Indigenous cultures tend to rely on stories and metaphors to construct knowledge. Pueblo scholar Gregory Cajete (2000) makes a distinction between a rationalistic mind and a “metaphoric” mind that engages with the kind of metaphysical knowledge that stories and metaphors convey. He asserts that the metaphoric mind, unlike the rational mind, is used to “describe, imagine, and create from the animate world with which we constantly participate [and bring forth] the descriptive and creative ‘storying’ of the world by humans” (50). For Cajete, the metaphoric mind creates these stories from collective subconscious or semiconscious images. For Cree anthropologist Yvonne Dion-Buffalo (1990) metaphors work as “seeds of thought and arrows of change” and are used “to create moods, to form patterns, and to evoke various physical and mental changes” (120).In honoring the use of metaphors in pedagogical processes, TOE deployed a series of visual metaphors to invite teachers and learners to engage with its pedagogical concerns. These metaphors were inspired by the encounters with the informants in the indigenous communities and their “storied” ways of engaging with reality which prompted open, contextualized, and equivocal interpretations. In this sense, the metaphors are used as pedagogical tools that explicitly invite different forms of reading that go beyond their intentional use. TOE’s concerns related to theorizations of identity construction are addressed in the silhouette metaphor (see figure 13.1) which intends to challenge essentialism by emphasizing hybridity. TOE puts forward a notion that identities are constantly constructed and reconstructed in the different social groups that people belong to in people’s interactions with others. In other words, identities are “written” in specific social contexts, which means that what one “is” and “knows” is marked by where one comes from: we are conditioned by the collective configurations of power and ideologies in our contexts. However, we are not determined by these configurations

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Figure 13.1 Silhouette of identity construction

as we can also participate in this construction and reconstruction by rewriting things ourselves, so we can also “rebel” and choose to be something different or to create perceptions and relationships that are different from those of the different social groups we belong to. In addition, we also participate in the construction and reconstruction of the identities of others when we relate to and communicate with them. As it is often difficult to notice or examine the hands that are writing us, TOE was designed so that learners can develop tools to enable them to do examine these “hands” more easily. These tools should also enable learners: to “write” (their own perceptions and relationships) with more confidence; to expand their frames of reference (and therefore think more “independently”) and to examine the effects their writing has on other people and in the world, so that they can decide (for themselves) whether or not they should change their writing. Conceptualizations of alterity, or constructions of difference, were also a central concern of TOE. The metaphor of the relational hand attempts to provide an alternative to the colonial notion that difference is a deviation of a norm, which is defined in terms of individuation and self-sufficiency. This norm prescribes a notion of sameness where individuals who cannot meet the pre-established parameters of normality (based on a project of predefined collective transcendence) become dispensable in the collectivity. The metaphor of the hand

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Figure 13.2

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Relational hand

deploys a notion of difference based on the idea of different, interdependent individuals who, like fingers of a hand, are insufficient in themselves, but indispensible in their collectivities (as they offer unique contributions that cannot be predefined). This metaphor aims to open the possibility for learners to look at difference as a source of learning and not as a threat and to appreciate people for their unique contribution.

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The uncritical projection of one’s assumptions when trying to “help” others or to “walk in the shoes” of others were two key concerns in TOE. The metaphors of “trying to help” (figure 13.3), “coming to know” (figure 13.4), and “trying other shoes” (figure 13.5) highlight the problem of engaging with and representing other knowledge systems without locating one’s own assumptions. The metaphors “trying to help” and “coming to know” suggest an analysis of ethnocentric benevolence where the Other is reduced to either an object of consumption, of knowledge production, or of self- or ideological affirmation. The metaphor “trying other shoes”1 focuses on the problem of putting oneself in the shoes of others while keeping one’s shoes on. It attempts to illustrate the difficulties of engaging with other epistemologies on their own terms: on the one hand, we cannot really take our shoes off— as we cannot simply forget all of our own experience, language, and concepts and we lack other people’s experience, language, and concepts to see “exactly” what they see. On the other hand, it is really important that we understand that different people will have different shoes and will be coming from different experiences, languages, and concepts. Looking at different people’s shoes (even though we cannot walk in them) reminds us that cultures are context-bound as all shoes are “coming from” somewhere. By engaging with different shoes, despite the difficulties of putting them on, we might understand better where our own shoes might be coming from and where they might be leading to in order to check if we are happy with the ways and paths we are walking. Past and present inequalities in power relations, in the distribution of resources, and in the worth attributed to knowledges, cultures, and individuals are obviously a great concern when dealing with colonized peoples. The metaphor of “scales of worth” (figure 13.6) highlights epistemic violences at work in modern competitive societies. It also highlights the complex negotiation of power on the part of indigenous groups and raises questions about expectations of projected authenticity placed upon indigenous cultures. The metaphor of the eagle, the cougar, and the serpent (inspired by a Quechua trilogy) illustrates the partiality of knowledge production and the value of the contributions that other ways of knowing may offer. When observing a village, the eagle has a view from above. What it can see is limited to a partial “bigger picture” that offers relative contextualization (restricted by the horizon, the clouds, and the air quality), but cannot offer any degree of detail. The cougar who dwells in a nearby mountain has a lateral perspective: it can circle the

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Figure 13.3 Trying to help

village to see interactions and movement, but cannot see more than one side at a time. The serpent is the only character who can enter the village and observe the life of the village from the inside. It offers specific detail limited to seeing one thing at a time. TOE uses this

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Figure 13.4

Coming to know

metaphor to raise a key pedagogical question: If these perspectives are unique and complementary, what would be necessary to bring them into conversation with one another if each animal speaks a different language? TOE uses the metaphor of a river crossing to provide a framework for a process of enquiry that engages with “mainstream” and other perspectives (see figure 13.7). This framework consists of five stages. The first is “checking your baggage,” where teachers and learners are invited to become aware and socially, culturally, and historically locate their assumptions about a target issue. The second stage is “testing the mainstream” by critically analyzing the political production of knowledge of the loudest voices in a given social environment. The third stage is where participants are invited to “map the debate” by looking at divergent voices about the issue in different contexts. The fourth stage is “examining different

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Figure 13.5

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directions” where teachers and learners examine the implications of each mapped perspective in terms of power relations and decision making, environmental impact, economic consequences and social/ cultural interfaces. 2 In the fifth stage “checking your options” teachers and learners are encouraged to ask: so what? now what? and debrief their learning process with a focus on implications in their own social or professional contexts.

Conceptual Framework Spivak’s work (1990; 1999a;1999b; 2004) provided the insight for the structure of TOE’s conceptual framework of learning to unlearn, learning to listen, learning to learn and learning to reach out. Each type of learning is described below: Learning to unlearn is defined as learning to perceive that what we consider “good and ideal” is only one perspective and this perspective is related to where we come from socially, historically and culturally. It also involves perceiving that we carry a “cultural baggage” filled with

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Figure 13.6

Scales of worth

ideas and concepts produced in our contexts and that this affects who we are and what we see and that although we are different from others in our own contexts, we share much in common with them. Thus, learning to unlearn is about making the connections between social-

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Enquiry river

historical processes and encounters that have shaped our contexts and cultures and the construction of our knowledges and identities. It is also about becoming aware that all social groups contain internal differences and conflicts and that culture is a dynamic and conflictual production of meaning in a specific context. Learning to listen is defined as learning to recognise the effects and limits of our perspective, and to be receptive to new understandings of the world. It involves learning to perceive how our ability to engage with and relate to difference is affected by our cultural “baggage”— the ideas we learn from our social groups. Hence, learning to listen is about learning to keep our perceptions constantly under scrutiny (tracing the origins and implications of our assumptions) in order to open up to different possibilities of understanding and becoming aware that our interpretations of what we hear (or see) say more about ourselves than about what is actually being said or shown. This process also involves understanding how identities are constructed in the process of interaction between self and other. This interaction between self and other occurs not only in the communities in which we belong, but also between these communities and others. Learning to learn is defined as learning to receive new perspectives, to rearrange and expand our own and to deepen our understanding— going into the uncomfortable space of “what we do

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not know we do not know.” It involves creating different possibilities of understanding, trying to see through other eyes by transforming our own eyes and avoiding the tendency to want to turn the other into the self or the self into the other. Therefore, learning to learn is about learning to feel comfortable about crossing the boundaries of the comfort zone within ourselves and engaging with new concepts to rearrange our “cultural baggage”: our understandings, relationships and desires. Learning to reach out is defined as learning to apply this learning to our own contexts and in our relationships with others continuing to reflect and explore new ways of being, thinking, doing, knowing and relating. It involves understanding that one needs to be open to the unpredictable outcomes of mutual uncoercive learning and perceiving that in making contact with others, one exposes oneself and exposes others to difference and newness, and this often results in mutual teaching and learning (although this learning may be different for each party involved). Learning to reach out is about learning to engage, to learn and to teach with respect and accountability in the complex and uncomfortable intercultural space where identities, power and ideas are negotiated. This process requires the understanding that conflict is a productive component of learning and that the process itself is cyclical: once one has learned to reach out in one context, one is ready to start a new cycle of unlearning, listening, learning and reaching out again at another level. (Andreotti and Souza 2008b)

Pedagogical Framework The pedagogical framework of TOE consists of six components: (1) getting started (clarifying one’s perspective); (2) mainstream perspectives (perceiving the social, cultural, political, and historical location, complexity and heterogeneity of Western knowledge); (3) different logics (learning to trace different ontologies); (4) through other eyes (engaging with the critique of Western knowledge); (5) case study (engaging with the location, complexity and heterogeneity of other knowledge systems); and (6) reading the world again (assessing one’s own learning). The components are further explained below with reference to the ego-, ethno-, human- and world- centric dimensions mentioned before. 3 The “getting started” component was designed to prompt a brainstorm of individual perspectives and to invite learners to relate these perspectives to dissenting perspectives in their social groups. This component is associated with “learning to unlearn” and operates at

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the ego/ethnocentric domains of engagement. In the unit about education, the getting started component invites learners to think about whether education reflects or is reflected by society, to write their own definition of education in their learning journals and to consider different understandings of education in their own social groups. The “mainstream perspectives” component is an analysis and deconstruction of mainstream notions of the target concepts. It exposes learners to the heterogeneity within a dominant ethnocentric narrative and offers an outline of different strands in the debate about the topic. This component is also associated with “learning to unlearn.” In the TOE unit on education, learners are invited to examine the assumptions and implications of different “mainstream” perspectives on education and to reflect on key questions in the educational debate related to Otherness, such as who should be involved in the decisionmaking process about the type of education and/or schooling for a specific community; who should education or schooling be primarily accountable to; and the reason and implications of trying to impose a standardized curriculum and qualifications worldwide. The component “different logics” employs metaphors to enable comparisons between two different possible and logical ways of thinking about the target issue. It aims to illustrate how different ontological choices affect the understanding of the target concept. The “alternative” perspective in this component is the authors’ interpretation of common threads in the interviews with members of the indigenous groups who participated in the baseline research for the project (but it is not represented as a specific indigenous perspective). This component is associated with “learning to listen” and addresses the ethno-/human-/world- centric domains of engagement. In the TOE unit on education, participants are invited to analyze the possibilities and problems created by an understanding of education based on the metaphor of “bonsai for sale” (where individuals are pruned according to predetermined parameters) and education as allowing a forest to grow (where education is about nurturing and supporting the individual to develop its unique contribution to society). The component “through other eyes” offers excerpts from the interviews with members of indigenous groups related to the target topic that illustrate the depth and complexity of their thinking. Participants are invited to reflect and comment on different aspects of these perspectives. This component is associated with “learning to learn” and addresses the ethno-/human-/world- centric domains

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of engagement. An example of an excerpt from the unit on education is as follows: We have an African saying that it takes an entire village to educate a child and when this child receives Western oriented education, he or she meets contradictions between the school and community offers. He or she learns to navigate and negotiate through the school and community cultures all the time. At school, the message is alternative knowledge to school knowledge is ignorance. The child finally becomes a stranger to her or his own community. Our elders have come up with an acronym for this schooling education. It is PHD— permanent head damage. (Banda 2006 cited in TOE 2008)

The “case study” component was designed to prompt an examination of the perspectives “in practice” focusing on the complexity of issues related to colonizer- colonized relationships. This component is associated with “learning to reach out” and operates at the world-/ human-/ethno- centric domains of engagement. In the unit on education, participants are invited to analyze a case study with statements from 1888 to 2007 related to the education of indigenous children in New Zealand. The journal task prompts learners to transfer the analysis to their own contexts by creating a case study that has parallels with the case study presented. The “reading the world again” component invites learners to examine the definition of education they wrote in their journal entry in the “getting started” component and to comment on what (if anything) had changed and what they have learned from the exercises about themselves, indigenous knowledges, or learning and teaching. This component is also associated with “learning to reach out” and it brings the learner back to thinking about the egocentric domain of engagement, hopefully incorporating the lessons from the other domains.

Frequently Asked Questions TOE’s baseline research and design took over a year to complete. The resource was piloted intensively in England, Brazil, and New Zealand for eight months before it became available online. Right after its publication, several reviews from academics and postgraduate students were received, minor changes were made to the resource, and a “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) section was created on the website. These questions reflect how different audiences perceived

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and engaged with the resource from different ideological and political standpoints at the time. A few commented questions and public responses are reproduced in this section. One of the most common questions received from the beginning of the project interrogated the initiative’s choice of focus on indigenous knowledge systems in the context of a project for “student teachers in the UK.” At a strategic level, the choice of engagement with indigenous knowledges as a project focus was an attempt to circumvent a politically overloaded emphasis on ethnic diversity and cohesion which was part of the climate in the United Kingdom at the time the proposal was written. By focusing on a distant Other with less visibility in the home culture, we hoped learners would be less emotionally attached to the central issues discussed and become less resistant to developing their analyses of power relations and reflexivity (that could be later applied to their own contexts). To a great extent, this assumption was confirmed in the project. FAQ: Why is the focus on “indigenous knowledges”? PR: The focus of the project is on engagements with difference. Poststructuralist and postcolonial theories point to the tendency of universalist “modern” ways of “appropriating” what they see as different into their own universal frame that is based on a specific notion of time, history and progress. In this act of appropriation and framing the “other”, difference tends to be constructed as a deficit or something “exotic” to be preserved for “entertainment” or “study” purposes. TOE attempts to challenge this tendency by prompting a confrontation with “radical” difference: ways of seeing that conceptualize reality, identity/personhood, time, history, knowledge, development, wealth, education etc. based on very different premises from the ones that are the basis of modern thought (which are widely available to the majority of formally schooled people). Other perspectives could also have been used (e.g., of travelers, of specific social movements, of some diaspora or intentional communities, etc.). Another reason for choosing indigenous knowledge systems was to move the focus of the learning process away from the target audience’s immediate context in order to facilitate the development of critical literacy.

We were also often asked whether we had “empirical evidence” of ethnocentrism. This often came from a strong emergent discourse in education of “evidence based approaches” that determines the value of an educational strategy by two criteria: whether or not its development was based on positivistic scientific proofs of a phenomenon to

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be addressed, and whether or not positivistic scientific proof of the strategy’s effectiveness exists. The public response offers an alternative to this positivistic conceptualization of truth and evidence. FAQ: What is the empirical evidence that indicates a need for this resource? PR: This question depends on the conceptualisation of “empirical” and who decides what counts as “evidence.” TOE was based on scholarly work carried out by its authors in the field of postcolonial studies: in this field there is an extensive body of literature engaging with education, the media, literature, politics, etc. showing that particular forms of colonialism have attempted to universalise the project of modernity (based on enlightenment ideals) with a high degree of success . The results of this violent process of universalisation can be seen in the way our institutions are organized and in what is taught in formal education. From this conceptual analysis, the need for TOE is evident.

Fear of cultural essentialisms and identity politics emerged a number of times in the development of the project. The opposition of two perspectives tended to provoke readings based on hierarchical binaries, where learners refused to engage in the exercise because a “middle ground” was not provided where they could safely place themselves. From a pedagogical point of view this was very interesting as the exercise itself did not require participants to position themselves but to engage with both perspectives critically (we made this much clearer in the final version). However, this kind of critique was still common during the project review. FAQ: Are you trying to establish a clear binary between Western and indigenous views? Why didn’t you include a “middle ground” perspective in the “different logics” section? PR: Within a context that tends to see difference as deficit in relation to a “norm” that is projected as universal (e.g., the idea that everyone has the same needs and wants), TOE’s intention is simply to draw attention to the fact that different epistemological and ontological assumptions (about the nature of knowledge and reality) simply “exist” and make sense! A huge challenge in this project that we faced, as authors, was to try to do this without losing sight of diversity and complexity inherent and external to these different logics. In the section “different logics” we chose to represent a “business” (neoliberal) view of one end of the spectrum of perspectives that could be considered “Western”

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in contrast with a construction of a “different logic” based on the interviews we carried out with indigenous participants. However, the “other” view is NOT presented as “indigenous” in the resource (we are aware it is our interpretation and that there are many other indigenous views), nor is there any indication that these are the only two views that are possible. Participants are asked to engage in depth with two different views and explore the implications and limitations of both perspectives. TOE’s framework is based on the notion that any solution to a problem is context dependent and will create different problems as well, therefore we don’t propose a universal solution (i.e., the adoption of indigenous perspectives). What we do propose is that, by engaging with perspectives other than our own, we should become: (a) aware of other possibilities for thinking; (b) more equipped to make better informed choices; and (c) more open to establishing ethical relationships with those who disagree with us. The pedagogical justification for only including two perspectives in the “different logics” section is the explicit intent to cause discomfort, conflict, deep learning and the development of critical literacy. A middle ground perspective could work as an easy and comfortable excuse for participants not to have to think deeply about the differences.

Romanticization of indigenous views was also another imminent criticism the project faced from a Western perspective. We were aware that whenever indigenous views did not match expectations, a defensive response could be triggered and the accusation of romanticization could pop up. On the other hand, the indigenous people consulted in the development and production of the resource had a very different view on this: they thought the resource was far from being radical enough in supporting their claims to selfdetermination. Between the accusations of romanticization and domestication, there was no position we could safely place ourselves in that was beyond critique, so we just had to live with contingent pedagogical justifications. FAQ: Are you romanticising indigenous views? PR: From the perspective of the indigenous people who reviewed the resource, we are far from that! They emphasized that there was not enough critique of colonial or mainstream discourses to support the “whitestream” to understand the implications of their worldviews and violent practices. From our perspective, as authors of this resource, we intended to address the complexity and inherent diversity of worldviews enacted in different contexts. However, different parts of the resource do different things in the learning process, and each unit needs to be

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read as a whole: section one introduces the process of reflection; section two draws attention to the diversity within “our” context; section three compares one aspect of “ours” and a possible “theirs”; section 4 analyses what that could mean “for them” (but presents different understandings of the logic presented in section 3); section 5 focuses on the complexity of the clash of perspectives performed in a context (and here there are always more than one “indigenous” perspective represented); section 6 asks participants to reach their own conclusions. There is no set worldview that the project is trying to promote apart from the idea that we need to question our own convictions to engage in dialogue and to be open to the perspective of others. However, the resource and learning process can be understood in different ways, so the perspective that the resource romanticises indigenous knowledges could be valid (and partial) in the same way that, from another perspective (of an indigenous reviewer) the resource downplays the effects of the violence of nonindigenous people , from this perspective, the resource could be romanticizing nonindigenous knowledges. This illustrates precisely the point TOE is trying to make.

We were often questioned as to whether the resource provides a “balance” of perspectives. This questioned seemed to rely on an assumption that it was possible to create a neutral resource that could eliminate all biases and offer an apolitical learning space. However, in any field of work, educational resources reproduce or contest already existing discourses (i.e., education is never apolitical). In the case of TOE, we were trying to counter a dominant ethnocentric and paternalistic discourse that tends to deficit theorize difference. “Balance” in this sense is not the provision of the same number or weight of perspectives, but of access to perspectives and analytical tools that are ignored by the dominant discourse. FAQ: Is TOE neutral? Is TOE balanced? PR: The answer to this question depends on what is meant by “balance.” On the one hand, TOE is based on a post-structuralist framework that questions the idea of neutrality, so: no (no educational practice or theory is balanced). Every educational practice is rooted in theoretical/philosophical assumptions with frames of reference that are embedded within specific cultural logics (i.e., that are culturally specific). These references define what can be considered real or ideal; a problem or a solution. If an educational practice is presented as “neutral” it is either: not aware of its theoretical/philosophical roots (and hence uncritical and unaccountable); or projecting its theoretical/philosophical roots as universal (and unwarily “shutting down”

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other possibilities). TOE is a “situated” initiative: it makes explicit its theoretical/philosophical basis and sees this basis as embedded in a specific context (which makes it partial, contestable, and provisional). Theoretical (internal) consistency in pedagogical design was a major preoccupation in this project and a very difficult goal given the different stakeholders involved in this initiative. On the other hand, our understanding of “balance” relates to offering access (in a very limited way) to non-mainstream perspectives and tools of analyses in a context of a dominant discourse where these tools are rarely available. Therefore, in this sense, the answer is yes.

Dealing with institutional suffering in education is never an easy task, but it becomes even more difficult when a strong discourse about “active citizenship” sustains the assumption that good educational practice always makes learners feel good about themselves (i.e., promote self-affirmation). This tendency in development, global, and citizenship education manifested itself in the context of the project in the claim that, by placing emphases on colonial histories/violences and their effects on indigenous populations, TOE would be encouraging “guilt trips” that were not educationally productive. Our response was to explain how guilt could be seen as a natural first stage of a learning process focusing on sanctioned ignorances and historical violences, and how the next stages of the learning process could transform this guilt into something that could be interpreted as “more productive.” FAQ: Are you trying to encourage feelings of guilt? PR: No. We are trying to encourage better informed practices when living with difference, contingency, and complexity. Having said that, part of the process of engaging with our own social and historical contexts is to become aware and acknowledge our complicities and privileges (which, very often, have its origins in historical violences) and take responsibility for what we do after that. Guilt trips in that sense tend to be a reflection of a person’s desire for a way of exercising agency/power without the need to account for his/her own social and historical situatedness. In the pedagogical process, this could be a stage that people go through when they are “unlearning.” TOE was designed to support people to move beyond that into learning to listen, to learn and to reach out (i.e., to work without guarantees and to be able to deal with conflict and complexity). However, it is important to point out that, from the perspective of many indigenous people who reviewed the resource, TOE does not critique Western thought and the violences of colonialism enough, so we need to ask the question: if we

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really want to listen to “them”, are we prepared to be accused of historical harm? Or do we only want to listen if what is being said is not going to unsettle us? What are the implications of always “protecting” learners from discomfort and conflict (if these exist in the real world)? When are learners going to learn to negotiate conflict in dialogue with others? We believe educational processes should offer the space for those skills to be developed— that was one of the intentions of TOE.

Apart from making learners feel good about themselves, the discourse of “active citizenship” also associates good practice with the empowerment of learners to take (“measurable” and often predetermined) actions for the creation of a more just and sustainable world. Therefore, a very common question was how TOE could contribute (practical and measurable) solutions to the problems of humanity. Our response was a different approach to the analyses of the problems of humanity emphasizing that, if we are part of what creates the problems in the first place, the first thing that needs examining and expanding is our own capacity to provide solutions. FAQ: How does TOE help to address and resolve development and environmental issues? PR: By helping “raise the game” within development and global education. TOE intends to support a pedagogical process to move people away from simplistic, uncritical, and patronising practices in development and global education that tend to reproduce inequalities in power relations, dialogue, and the distribution of resources and labor. This shift in thinking is necessary if we want to create a context where our future is negotiated in dialogue with others and the cultural roots of historically created inequalities in power, representation and the distribution of resources and labor are addressed.

Conclusion TOE attempted to provide a pedagogical framework informed by postcolonial theory that supported the engagement with epistemological pluralism among nonindigenous learning communities in ways that challenged both absolute universalisms and absolute relativisms, placing emphasis on the inherent heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the construction of meaning and of culture itself (Bhabha 1994). The project illustrates the difficulties of maintaining theoretical consistency in pedagogical work “in practice”: the different contextual demands in the development process in-between indigenous and

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nonindigenous communities exemplifies the complexity of translating theoretical ideals into pedagogical language and frameworks. For the project team, TOE was a good example of how the application of theory and the theorization of practice can bring each other into crises. Like OSDE, TOE also generated a great deal of academic engagement and was mentioned in a number of international publications (see for example Taylor 2007; Warwick 2008; Bourn 2008a; Souza and Andreotti 2009; Marshall 2009; Bourn and Issler 2010; and Martin 2011). A pilot research project looking into participants’ online responses is being carried out at the University of Oulu and a preliminary analysis will be published in 2011. The project also generated further collaborations with indigenous scholars and research in the area of epistemological pluralism in indigenous cosmologies and education (see Andreotti, et al., 2011; in press).

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Chapter Fourteen Wrestling with Meaning and Life: Being a Mother of “Southern” Immigrant Children

This last chapter presents an auto- ethnographical case study of the paradoxical use of insights from postcolonial theory in my role as a immigrant mother of two, as the first and (so far) only woman to finish higher education in my family, and as a “Third world academic”(working in the “First”) negotiating educational systems while wrestling for ideological consistency. I use a few telling narratives of events related to my son and daughter’s experiences in school in England and in New Zealand. My intention is to invite engagement with the complexities of responding to postcolonial theory’s call to work within educational “machines” (Spivak 1993) in order to enable uncoercive rearrangement of desires (Spivak 2004) and to intervene at the level of the sign (Bhabha 1994) with a view to pluralize knowledges and possibilities for the future (Nandy 2000), while trying to be a mother of border- crossing children. In order to protect the identities of third parties, some places and events have been slightly modified. My children have been consulted in relation to having their identities and stories made public and only events that they were comfortable about disclosing have been used in this chapter.

2002— England My son Bruno was seven years and my daughter eighteen months old when we moved from Curitiba, in Brazil, to Nottingham in England. I remember being surprised at the time at the social- cultural distribution of housing that forced us to make a choice between “diverse” or “monocultural” neighborhoods. Our first choice (not being equipped

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to choose properly) was a neighborhood with a school with a good ranking in league tables (i.e., a white monocultural school). In the first three months I could see Bruno coming home from school disappointed and sometimes angry. He had very minimal English and used to tell me that he did not think the “experiment in England” would work out. As part of my background was in teaching English as a second or foreign language, I knew it would take some time for him to adjust, so I was not very concerned. This blissful ignorance continued until the day I received a letter from the school requesting an urgent teacher-parent meeting to discuss Bruno’s behavioral problems. Bruno had been an extremely articulate exemplary pupil in Brazil who would test boundaries in very “reasonable” ways, so I was not convinced my son would have “behavioral problems.” The next day, as I arrived in his classroom for the urgent meeting, his teacher was still talking happily with another English mother. As she saw me enter the room, her expression changed into something more austere (my first thought was that Bruno must have been in serious trouble— and so was I). She politely said goodbye to the other parent and walked toward me. She addressed me speaking extremely slowly as if I could not understand English and, despite my quick and articulate responses, she refused to change her speed of speech: “We have a problem, Mrs. Andreotti, Bruno is presenting totally unacceptable behavior in this school” (she threw me a stern look over her glasses which I understood as having to do with the kind of education he received at home). She continued: “All teachers already know him by name and this is not good at all. But, surprisingly, he seems to be very able academically.” At this point, my blood was already boiling and emotions were running wild—what did she mean by “surprisingly”? I found myself struggling for words and falling into her stereotype of the “ignorant immigrant who comes to make my life harder.” Finally, I regained the strength to reply: “What exactly is he doing?” She replied: “He gets agitated easily. He talks back to the teachers. He refuses to address adults properly. He is very rude, Mrs Andreotti” (again I saw that her look placed the weight of his impropriety and rudeness on the shoulders not only of my family, but of the whole country he came from). “I will talk to him. This will be sorted out,” I said, trying to keep my dignity. She concluded the meeting with: “I do hope so.” I walked home that day wanting to scream, but I knew I had to keep my calm in order to talk with Bruno and get his views on what was going on. Bruno was waiting at the door expecting to hear what

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his teacher had said. He seemed concerned, so I told him that I did not understand what the teacher meant by improper behavior and I asked him to explain what he thought was going on. He said he did not really know for sure, but every time he supposedly did something wrong, adults would shout at him and, while they were shouting, if he asked for information about what exactly he had done wrong, these adults would be even more upset. He explained that he did not think it was fair to punish a pupil for doing something wrong without an explanation of what it was that the pupil had done, so he would keep asking (in broken English or Portuguese) to get them to understand his point. My heart lit up for a second (I was proud of him!) and then sank again (how would he survive in that context?). He was speaking back, trying to negotiate, not accepting the labels and deficit theorizations being imposed on him, but he was not intelligible, he did not have the languages necessary to be effective in his negotiation. How could I give him the skills to survive in a racist system without breaking his spirit? So, I told him that his approach was commendable and just, but not effective, so he would need to change it. In order to change it, we would have to re-story it. Therefore, I offered him a story where he could see the school as a “language game” where the objective was to learn the rules and take part in the game in order to become a master player who can bend the rules and change the game to make it fairer. In this game, he would have to play a part, like an actor in a play: he did not need to be “himself” all the time, sometimes he would have to do what he had to do to pass to the other level of the game, where he could bend and change some of the rules. Bruno liked the idea of the game, so I continued: “The school game here is different from the school game in Brazil. Here the rule says that even if you do not understand the rules, as a junior player, if you break a rule you did not know, you have to apologize politely to your superiors.” He replied: “This would never happen in my old school in Brazil.” He was probably right about that; most teachers I worked with in Brazil would make sure the child understands what is wrong first and punish later. Next, I asked him to put on an actor’s hat and play the script with me: I was shouting at him for having broken a rule he did not know about and he needed to respond to that, as an actor in the game, apologizing politely and addressing me as Mrs. Taylor. He responded grinding his teeth, squinting his eye, raising his eyebrow and looking defiantly at me: “I am sorry Mrs. Taylor.” Suddenly I realized that I would need to teach my seven-year-old son the look, feel, sound, and tone of submission. My heart broke again—Why was

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I being forced to do it? What would be the costs for him if I did not do it? What if he assimilated it not as a strategy, but as a condition? I convinced myself that I had no choice: “Bruno, you cannot grind your teeth. As an actor, you will have to do the body language properly. Look down, tone down, speak clearly in a soft ‘repentant’ voice, sound genuinely apologetic.” He did it, but I felt I needed to do something to teach the school a lesson for making me do this to my son. So I arranged another meeting with the teacher the following week. I wanted her to realize her mistake in perceiving my family and Brazil as educationally backward. I wanted to let her know that instead of “problematic behavior,” she was dealing with a cultural clash, as in Brazil teachers knew that children needed to understand the rules before they were punished, Brazilian teachers also knew that multilingualism was not a problem, but an asset for the child and the school, and, above all, Brazilian teachers would definitely know that beginner speakers of the majority language would require a great deal of support and flexibility in their transition (I was indeed blind to my reactive essentialism at the time). So, I defiantly marched into the meeting room and naively (both in the theoretical and political sense of the word) said all of that to her face in “quick English.” Her first response was to become very angry and defensive: “I am a qualified teacher!” I replied: “I am a qualified teacher in Brazil too.” When she heard my reply she regained her posture and replied very calmly: “That is why you are here then— to learn from us how to keep order and discipline in your schools.” At that point, I realized I deserved that. As I was teaching my son language games, I was not mastering the rules myself. I could see the essentialization and holes in my argument, I knew that the strategy and pedagogy was not going to work, but I felt angry to the core and I wanted revenge and reversal of roles: I wanted her to feel what I was feeling. Of course, it backfired. It was good learning though—took me back to the drawing board, back to thinking, back to theory: first get rid of your anger and then you can create a relationship “otherwise.” As for Bruno, he was (and still is) very good at the game. He survived that teacher. The next one was the complete opposite. She had never seen such a bright “ethnic” child, so she made him her special project. She overpraised him for his intelligence and for the new philosophical insights from different (geographical and philosophical) places he could bring to discussions in class. She gave him lead roles in school plays and told me she would plan the lessons thinking of him

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as working with him had been the most rewarding experience of her career. Bruno boosted his self-esteem and academic competence, but also became overconfident and slightly conceited and self- centered. This teacher had a very participatory pedagogy where she would involve learners in the creation of a relevant curriculum. Needless to say that Bruno, very quickly, mastered the game of deliberative speech and freely exercised his “influence” on the teacher, the curriculum, and on other children. This became evident when the second teacher had to go into maternity leave and a substitute teacher was contracted for that period. This third teacher did not take a special notice of “special” Bruno and this probably prompted a very peculiar reaction. He came home very happy one day with a paper in his hand and told me that I would be very proud of him as he was applying at school everything that I had taught him. I asked him to explain and he said: Well, today I am going to change the rules of the school game. The school contracted a very inadequate teacher to substitute Ms. X. We tested her today: she refused to consult with the pupils about what she should be teaching this week (as the previous teacher did). We asked her to consider our plea to have a voice, otherwise we would not cooperate. She said that pupils were pupils and teachers were teachers and that she was going to make all decisions for us. She even said that what we thought was not important. So we decided to write a letter to the principal with everyone’s signatures in order to request her immediate dismissal, in the name of justice and good teaching.

I listened, in two minds: I was impressed by his wit, but appalled by his reasoning and use of power—what had I done wrong? I asked: “Who is ‘we’ Bruno?” He replied: “Well, I think I led a revolution. You should be proud of that!” It took me four hours of intense conversation with Bruno to convince him not to hand in the letter (as not handing it in was perceived as a betrayal of his cosignatory friends) and to get him to realize that the motivation to “lead a revolution” was less to do with justice than with a reckless exercise of power related to egotistical self-affirmation. I cannot remember how I translated this message into an eight-year-old’s language, but it worked (at least partially): he went back to his peers and convinced them that it would be fair to give the teacher a second chance before the letter was handed in. Luckily, the teacher was in a much better mood that next day and reestablished her connections with the children. From that episode, I took another lesson learned in the skin: as Foucault would affirm, knowledge/power is always dangerous, the concept of

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“voice” is problematic and hegemony and oppression also operate at the “grassroots” level.

2005— England Giovanna was five when she started at the local school. She had been to a nursery at the university and mingled with children of international academics and university students in a pedagogical space that was relatively socially internationally homogeneous: relations of power were not very visible among children from different countries, but similar, upwardly mobile, social backgrounds. This changed dramatically in her new school. As she watched me get dressed to take her to school one day, she remarked: “Why don’t you wear lipstick, mum? If you wore lipstick you would look more like a proper mum.” I asked: “What do you think proper mums look like?” She replied: “Not like you.” That disturbed me a bit, but not as much as what came next. As she looked in the mirror, she asked me: ‘Can I dye my hair blonde? And can daddy pick me up at school instead of you?’ With a sinking feeling, I tried to keep the conversation going. Vanessa: I think your hair is beautiful as it is. Giovanna: No, it is the color of the hair of the browny girls. I am lucky I am fair like dad, so if I have blonde hair I will be only beautiful. Vanessa: Are you saying that I am not beautiful because I have brown skin and brown hair? Giovanna: Of course not, you are my mum. You don’t count as ugly like the browny girls. I want to have blonde hair so that the other girls will not know I am not from here.

I took a deep breath. She was adopting a narrative that was unfair and detrimental to herself and to other children, so I decided to do something. As the school promoted itself as multiculturally competent, I (naively again) thought that the teachers would immediately recognize the problem and know what to do if I let them know Giovanna’s requests. As I told the teacher, the response was the usual: there is no problem here. The teacher took me to the playground and pointed to the children: “You see, in this school we have children from many ethnicities and they all play with each other in harmony.” When I looked at the groups of children, I realized where the problem came from: they were playing with each other in apparent harmony, but “each other” meant within each ethnic group, as opposed to with

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different ethnic groups. As there were no other “Brazilian” children like Giovanna in the school (the other groups were more phenotypically visible minorities), she was stuck in-between groups— not being dark or white enough to belong in any group. Therefore, her choice was to acquire the characteristic of the group of most status as she understood the unwritten and unarticulated hierarchies of the playground very quickly. I made my analysis known to the teacher, but, very uncomfortably, she replied that she was sure such hierarchies did not exist as she knew the children very well and they were always very kind to each other. I could understand where she was coming from— in her shoes, I would not open a messy can of worms if I did not know what to do next. So, I decided to push further. There was a school board election the following week and not enough parents volunteering, so I put my name down and won. I took the case to the board in the first meeting (I tried to protect the teacher by framing the issue as something that should be dealt with collectively). My idea was to work with the school in finding a solution to the problem. What I did not count on was that the school “multicultural” label granted the principal and her team the status of experts in this issue, so I was told they knew exactly what to do in that case (despite my experience as an in-service trainer for a regional council in that area). Their solution was to organize a beauty contest for the children where they had predefined the winners (to represent different skin colors) and promoted a fashion catwalk show with outlet clothes sold by another parent to show the children that “everyone could be beautiful” (like the fashion models— of different skin colors, of course).

2007— New Zealand In 2006 I realized that social environment in England was not very healthy for my children. On the one hand, Bruno, then 13, had had very difficult and physically violent experiences related to the negotiation of his perceived identity as a migrant nonwhite young person in his school. Despite having a few remarkable teachers who supported him, he reached a point where he felt the need to hide knives behind rocks in his way to school as he was afraid for his life. On the other hand, Giovanna, who has always had an inquisitive mind, was quickly absorbing problematic social values in primary school that led her to show signs of racism, classicism, and an early obsession with fashion

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and body image. So, the family moved to New Zealand at the end of 2006 and I started working at the University of Canterbury. In January 2007, I went to the nearest school to enroll Giovanna. As the school secretary checked her passport to verify whether or not she had a visa to be enrolled, she exclaimed as if she was pronouncing a jail sentence: “She is Brazilian— she will have to attend the ESL (English as a second language) class” (which involved a class withdrawal scheme). Knowing that Giovanna could be sensitive about being separated from others, I explained that, although she was indeed born in Brazil and that we spoke Portuguese at home, Giovanna had grown up in England and she spoke English better than she spoke Portuguese. The secretary simply repeated: “She is Brazilian— she will have to attend the ESL class.” I decided I would not fight on the first day— she could go to the ESL class. They would probably realize that she did not need it and send her back to the regular class with the other kids very soon. On the first day of class, Giovanna came home very happy. She told me that she had two things to report: one very good, the other she was not sure about. “Tell me the good one first,” I said, partly dreading what would come next. Giovanna : Today there were no classes, only games. A teacher came to pick me up from Mr. X class and took me to another class with all these kids from China and Korea and we played all day and it was fun. I hope we have more days like this. Vanessa: That sounds good (at least the problem was not the withdrawal)—what is the thing you were not sure about. Giovanna: At the end of the day, the teacher asked us all to sit on the floor in front of her. She told us that, as we are all now living in New Zealand, we are all “kiwis” or “New Zealanders”. Vanessa: Ok, so what do you think about that? Giovanna: Are they trying to arrest my mind? Vanessa: (not knowing what to respond): I don’t know, what do you think? What do you mean? Giovanna: I don’t know. Do they want me to become something that I am not? Vanessa: (still not knowing what to say and trying to think quickly, not believing what came out of her mouth next): Maybe not, it could be a good thing to be a kiwi . . . (then regretting what she had just said) perhaps you could define what it means in your own way?

Giovanna went off to play outside without replying.

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Three weeks later we received a letter from the school about an “international multicultural day”: children were supposed to dress in their home country’s costumes to march alongside each other, and bring food from their countries to share. Giovanna was not happy with the prospect as she was the only Brazilian in the school again and did not want her difference to be highlighted at that stage. I asked her what she wanted to do. She replied: “This is all about dressing up, isn’t it? So, I would like to wear the uniform of my English school.” This involved wearing a pair of glossy shoes that she loved and could not wear at the current school. I asked her what she wanted to do while wearing her English uniform: “Do you want to wear your English uniform in the English line, the Brazilian line or the ‘kiwi’ line?” She replied: “It does not really matter— it could be the Chinese line, as long as I am wearing my special shoes.” I told her to explain her case to the teacher. The next day, she came home very distressed. She explained that the teacher did not like her ideas and had told her that what really counted as one person’s identity was the place where they were born. Not only had he defined her identity, but also suggested what she could wear on the day: a football shirt or a samba dancer outfit. Giovanna did not want to wear a football shirt and she did not know what a samba dancer looked like, so I showed it to her on the Internet. Needless to say, she was very upset. On the day, our compromise was a yellow shirt and a green skirt (colors of the Brazilian flag) and the glossy shoes she loved. The children lined up behind their country flags. The school principal said a few words before they sang the New Zealand anthem (skipping the Ma¯ori version). Next, the children were made to repeat a pledge of allegiance in unison: “We are all New Zealanders. We come from different backgrounds. We are all proud of our pasts. We all respect diversity.” Last, the principal raised a flag pole with the United Nations’ flag and each country line joined the principal’s United Nations’ procession to the sound of a bagpipe. Most parents were happy to join along, including immigrant parents. Some parents were emotional. I was left feeling very uncomfortable, without words and without knowing what to make of the whole project. In my role as an academic working with multicultural education, what kind of work could I do to transform this scenario in ways that would benefit the immigrant children and their families? Should I just accept that, if the parents were happy, I should not intervene? Two years later, I had a chance to talk to the organizer of the event: a lovely senior teacher who showed me how she had dedicated her

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work and life to the “cause” of (adaptation of) immigrant children. In her benevolent ethnocentrism, she could not see why other people would interpret the rituals of the “international day” in different ways: each step had been carefully planned to make children and families feel welcome in New Zealand. I told her about Giovanna’s responses to the fixing of her identity and she was honestly sensitized by that. Some of the rituals were changed the following year to allow for more flexibility in the definition of the identities of the students. From this I learned that, in order to open an exchange with this teacher, I had to be open to her social and historical reasons for doing what she did. Knowing that my critique would be potentially offensive (and easily dismissed if perceived as such), I had prepared myself, putting my own certainties in brackets before coming to talk to her—what if relationships do not depend on cognition? What if these rituals actually operate at a psychic level making people connect with each other (while reinforcing hegemony at the same time)? It was difficult to “forget” the critique and experience of patronage for a while in order to listen and to connect— historical justice in this case had to be subordinate to relational justice— to an ethical imperative toward my Other. But as I write this, part of me also screams: Why do I have to be the one to be “understanding” every time? Why is this responsibility so unevenly distributed? Does this actually help to change things in the long run? The other part of me says that there is no other way if we do not want to repeat a pattern of epistemic violence.

2009—2010 New Zealand By the end of 2008, Giovanna, now eight, was completely embedded in the city’s middle class girly-girl culture. She was perceiving privilege as entitlement and used to “demand” new clothes and technology as a birthright. In the beginning of 2009, as I was co-teaching with a Ma¯ori colleague a course which involved Kaupapa Ma¯ori pedagogy, I became aware of a primary bilingual unit in a school very close to the university where I worked. This school was going through some difficulties in terms of low numbers of students interested in Ma¯orimedium tuition. I decided to “put my money where my mouth was” and support the maintenance of indigenous languages and pedagogies in the city. So I convinced Giovanna to move to the bilingual unit. The school was located in an area of low economic status with a relatively high density of Ma¯ori and Pasifika families, and surrounded by very

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wealthy neighborhoods. The school community had been promised new buildings two years before. Two of the old buildings had been condemned and demolished and from the previous year, most children were being taught in very old and badly insulated portables. The community had gone through a consultation process about the kind of school they wanted for their children and the plan showed a very culturally responsive design with eight classrooms facing a huge communal kitchen (as sharing food is very significant and symbolic for both Ma¯ori and Pasifika families). However, with a change of government in 2009, the new minister for education decided to change her plans and, four months after our family was traditionally welcomed at the school, we were informed that the school had been threatened with closure. As that had been the school where the current prime minister had attended as a child, there was immediate wide media coverage of the potential closure. As an academic and non-Ma¯ori mother in a Ma¯ori medium school I also engaged in the campaign against the closure. In the midst of understanding the complexities of the Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori, plus in-between politics involved, I had to find a focus of engagement that could possibly shift the outcomes for the children. I knew that public support could not be mobilized around a paternalistic deficit theorization of the school community by the Pakeha population in “let’s save the poor brown kids” style (and there was plenty of that on the table), at the same time, the families were finding it difficult to organize on their own and I knew it was not my place to lead their case. So I had a double strategy: to work in the background as a parent (supporting the children to organize initiatives that could bring the community together) and at the forefront as an academic (positioning myself as an over-educated mother who made an informed choice for the education of her child). I knew that, in order to counter the “save the brown children” tendency, I had to construct a narrative about difference that would increase its value. As I was involved in research about a recently published “new” New Zealand Curriculum at the time, which was based on neoliberal “knowledge society” discourses, I knew where to draw on in order to make my case (see Andreotti 2010a; 2010b). Postcolonial theory’s call to work “without guarantees” within the system, intervening at the level of the sign, were very pertinent in helping me wrestle with the contradictions of the process and of my own strategies. The first article I wrote was published in the national newspaper The Press on July 22, 2009:

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I am a mother of a child at the bilingual unit at Aorangi school. Our family, originally from Brazil, emigrated from England in 2006. At the beginning of 2009, we moved our 9 year old daughter from a local high decile school to Aorangi School. We were looking for bilingual education and a school culture less obsessed with testing and ranking and more focused on developing 21st century competencies. 21st competencies involve learning to operate in a complex, diverse and constantly changing world. We wanted our daughter’s education to expose her to multiple worldviews, languages and realities. Above all, we wanted our daughter to feel comfortable within herself, to explore her creative power, to be challenged to work across cultural and contextual boundaries, and to learn to see differences as a source of learning and creativity and not as a threat. We wanted her to learn: to think critically and independently, to learn in any context and with anyone and to make informed, accountable and ethical decisions for the common good of the communities around her and of the planet. Aorangi has started to give us that and more. Since starting at the bilingual unit at the school, our daughter has learned a way of being that emphasises community, spontaneity, solidarity, responsibility and cooperation. She is passionate about learning and has become more comfortable in her skin, more understanding, more appreciative, more cooperative, more responsible, more inquisitive and much more curious about the world beyond our doorstep. Her teachers have an outstanding knowledge of the children and their communities and a very close relationship with them. According to educational literature (and to common sense) this connection is vital to make education relevant to 21st century learners. At Aorangi school the magic word for education is relationship: learning is understood as a social and transformative endeavour, knowledge is constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in community and teaching is about responding to the needs of each and every child, their families, communities and the wider society. This is 21st century education, not literacy and numeracy drills towards ranking children against each other— or education with a single focus on individual consumer choices. Part of the reason why we moved to New Zealand was the belief that this was de facto a bicultural and bilingual country. If we had looked at it for purely economical reasons, the rationale would be that if our children were exposed to at least two ways of “knowing” the world, they would have enormous advantages in a knowledge economy driven by change, innovation and creativity. We, like many other migrant families we met, were really surprised to see Ma¯ori language and culture often offered in tokenistic ways, as low status choices or just as “fill the gaps” activities for “brown” kids in schools. We soon realised that the struggle in education to give effect to the principles

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of protection, partnership and participation in the Treaty of Waitangi was just in the beginning. Aorangi school is also an icon in this struggle: 41% of the children come from Ma¯ori families, another 25% are migrants, including 14% children from families with refugee status. These children need and deserve the best the New Zealand education system can offer and given its history, Aorangi School can respond appropriately to their needs. If this school is closed and these children are placed in larger schools without the knowledge and strategies Aorangi teachers have developed over the years, they may slip through the cracks of the system. In that case, they may join many other “diverse” children in New Zealand’s long tail of underachievement maintained by practices of exclusion which result in a vicious circle of school disaffection for minority kids, their families and their communities. The Ministry of Education is making significant investments in the education of teachers for the implementation of the revised curriculum which champions “education in the 21st century.” Meanwhile, Aorangi school, which is a nest of innovation in “education in the 21st century,” is now facing the possibility of closure. This, to me, looks like a huge waste of tangible and intangible resources. Until New Zealand realizes that its wealth, its differential in a 21st century globalised world also lies in its unique bicultural/bilingual possibilities, as well as the gifts brought from other places by other immigrants, we will continue to trash the treasures lying right under our noses. Vanessa Andreotti

The article was also submitted as part of a (tokenistic) consultation process the ministry had started with the community. The situation was complex and there were several explanations for why the government wanted to close the school ranging from the value of the land where the school was situated (and a project to displaced the families to areas of lesser value) to speculations about a possible lack of diplomacy of the principal in dealing with the ministry in previous years. The result of the consultation that was released in September was that the school would indeed be closed, despite the plea of the parents and the wider community. The explanation provided by the government was that the school had declining numbers of students, other schools in the region could assimilate the students, and that new buildings were too expensive in the economic recession. The discourse of the school leadership was that the school was being closed because the community was poor and could be trampled on and therefore a strong salvationist discourse emerged, where the bilingual unit became the

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focus of attention: a Pakeha principal fighting for the only opportunity for poor Ma¯ori children to receive adequate education. The principal promised the families the school would not close as she would fight in court with the government and she had been assured by her lawyers that she would easily win. From there, things only deteriorated. The community was made to believe that there was only one option for their children and any internal dissent was treated by the leadership as a threat to the cause itself. A week before the final court decision on December 17, 2009, the “save the school campaign” launched its ultimate plea for the wider community (without consulting parents): a campaign where the wider community was asked to “sponsor a child” from this poor school to give them a bit of relief and joy in a private camp that their parents would never be able to afford to send them to. In the poster, delivered to mail boxes around the city there were pictures of brown needy children (including my daughter!). The court decision upheld the government resolution and, one week before Christmas and the summer holidays, the bilingual families had to make arrangements to move to two nearby schools (primary and intermediate). The government made some provision for support for the transition, but the community knew it was not going to be easy. As the decision was made, some families in the new schools withdrew their children (i.e., “white flight”). Some families stayed but expressed opposition to the creation of a bilingual unit for the Ma¯ori children (partially afraid of strong Ma¯ori involvement in school politics), other families showed solidarity with the newcomers. After the classes started, during the first meeting of the families with the leadership of the two schools, the possibility of two and possibly three bilingual units was still on the table. They were proceeding with the protocol to consult the wider community, so I decided to become active again. I wrote a second letter to the national newspaper with an appeal to the wider community. This letter was published on February 17, 2010: Last week, the families of bilingual children at Burnside and Cobham Intermediate met to begin discussions about the provision of bilingual education based on Kaupapa Māori in primary, intermediate and secondary schools in North West Christchurch. Representatives from Burnside High school were also present. It was heart warming to see that, out of a very unfortunate situation (i.e., the closure of Aorangi school, where my daughter used to go to), three bilingual units may come to life. As a larger community we are stronger and wiser, as we are weaving the present with the lessons learned in the past to embrace

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the future. It is inspiring to see Māori and non-Māori families and staff working together to expand bilingual provision in Christchurch. I think this work is extremely important— not because bilingual education is good only for “Māori children”— but because it has the potential to bring benefits for every single child and family in Christchurch, New Zealand and beyond. Let me explain. In July last year I wrote about how, as a Brazilian mother and educator working internationally, I had observed the transition process of my daughter Giovanna from mainstream to Kaupapa Māori bilingual education. I reported that, within a period of three weeks, I saw Giovanna become much more comfortable in her skin, more sociable, understanding, appreciative, spontaneous, cooperative, responsible, inquisitive and curious about the world beyond our doorstep. Right after the publication of the article, someone asked Giovanna for her own perspective on the differences between mainstream and bilingual education. She said: “In my first school teachers wanted us all to think in the same way and be the same person. In the bilingual unit, everyone is different, I can think in many ways and be myself.” What Giovanna is talking about echoes the argument of international agencies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and many educationalists writing about changes that need to happen in schools in order to make learning relevant to “21st century learners” and societies. Their argument is that Giovanna is going to live in an even more complex, changing, uncertain and diverse globalised world and she will need different skills to face this new reality. John Burnham, for example, says that schools that are still teaching a 19th century curriculum (focusing on standardization), in 20th century buildings (with desks facing a whiteboard) to 21st century students (who are used to google) are poorly equipped to meet Giovanna’s needs and the needs of our contemporary societies and economies. Jane Gilbert, a chief researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, affirms that globalization and technology have shifted the meaning and nature of work, knowledge and learning. The implication is that we, as parents, teachers and educational leaders, will need to rethink our roles and visions for the schooling process: the idea of school that worked for my parents and for me will not work for Giovanna or my grandchildren. Thus the new vision and roles need to take account of new competencies and dispositions that will be central to the success of our children in very different learning and working environments from those we have been used to. Andreas Schleicher, head of the indicators and analysis division of the OECD states that the people who will have a competitive advantage in knowledge economies and societies will be the scientists, engineers,

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doctors, social workers, teachers, businesspeople, etc. who are great collaborators, orchestrators, synthesizers, explainers, versatilists (not specialist or generalists), personalisers and localisers (who can map the global in the local and vice versa). In a similar way, Guy Claxton identified a set of dispositions that schools need to foster in learners (and teachers as learners) in preparing them to be “powerful learners” in 21st century societies. These are: curiosity, courage, exploration, experimentation, imagination, reason, discipline, sociability and critical reflection. In order to revision schooling, as Gilbert suggests, build the competencies proposed by Schleicher or cultivate the dispositions identified by Claxton it is paramount that learners are exposed to and have experiences in “reading” and negotiating between different realities, cultures, languages and epistemologies (i.e., different ways of constructing knowledge). I only observed Giovanna quickly develop these new competencies and dispositions in a school context, once she was forced to negotiate knowledge in a bi-lingual, bi- cultural and bi- epistemic context. This negotiation required an understanding and experience of how language constructs different realities, possibilities and ways of knowing and being in the world. And this is where New Zealand is in a unique position in the “global village” to deliver this kind of education. With a treaty that affirms New Zealand’s biculturalism and a well developed and internationally recognized indigenous knowledge base, New Zealand has an enormous cultural capital of value to all, not just to its indigenous population. Education in the 21st century highlights the value of difference, pluralism, innovation, collective ownership and partnership, which are also central to Kaupapa Māori and Kaupapa-a-iwi. In global societies, monoculturalism and monolingualism are considered impairments to intellectual development. Therefore, having more languages, cultures and epistemologies taken seriously in the school curriculum should not be seen as a benevolent act of “inclusion” of diverse children, but as a strategic and intelligent move for the benefit of society and of the economy. A school approach that wants learners to be “the same” does not have the potential to deliver this— this is actually where this invaluable and unique cultural capital can go to waste. This waste is generally expressed in two ways. The first is student disengagement and disaffection, which lengthens New Zealand’s very embarrassing “long tail” of underachievement, where Māori and Pasifika communities are over-represented. The second is the monoculturalism and deprivation of opportunities for Māori and non-Māori learners to operate in the interface of different realities and cultures in the mainstream

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curriculum. This interface is what enables the development of the competencies and dispositions identified by Schleicher and Claxton. The New Zealand curriculum published in 2007 created the opportunity for a major shift in education in this direction. Its emphasis on diversity, equity, community participation, collective ownership, partnerships, inquiry, innovation, future focus, integrity, sustainability, etc, expressed some of the most forward looking and advanced ideas in education internationally. This new curriculum could empower teachers and communities and enable a space where the bi- cultural and multi- cultural capital of New Zealand could be seen as a major asset and put to use to the service of the Nation. However, this could be seriously undermined by the new top down National Standards and systems of teacher accountability that will follow, which will restrain professional autonomy and creativity, as has been shown in other countries. A focus on rushed standardization of outcomes seems to be a huge step back when the international agencies, researchers and educational literature are pointing towards community ownership of the curriculum and personalized and individualized learning as major tenets of 21st century education. In addition, the narrow understanding of literacy proposed does not take account of multiple literacies and the shifting modalities of reading and writing in “knowledge societies” that are already integral to the profile of 21st century learners. In this case, the resulting over- emphasis and over-rating of alphabetic literacy can lead to (more) boredom and (more) disaffection with schools, specially amongst diverse communities, despite their proficiency in other literacies. A better informed and more strategic future oriented view of schooling should lead to more relevant and engaged learning. My family’s experience with bilingual education in New Zealand attests to the fact that the cultural capital is already “stored” to supply “21st century” school outcomes. This cultural capital needs the social backing and investment for it to be made available and put to use in order to deliver the goods: more engagement, less disaffection, more relevance, less problems with behavior, more time for— and better— learning , more effective community involvement, higher achievement rates, new competencies and dispositions, better chances of success for learners in knowledge societies and a specific differential for New Zealand in the knowledge economy that could be exported around the world. Can we afford not to do it? In Māori language there is a proverb that says “kāingatahika mate, kāingaruakaora” (two houses are better than one). Parents and staff at Burnside Primary, Cobham Intermediate and (hopefully) Burnside High School will need to address the question of affordability when discussing the implementation of bilingual units in their communities.

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The meeting last week signaled a very good start. Families who came from Aorangi, like mine, reported very positive experiences of transition and many thanked the two principals for their tireless efforts and support during the holiday period. On behalf of my family, I would like to reinforce this gesture and say thank you to the teachers and families at Burnside and Cobham for the warm welcome and support to the new families. The journey we are starting together might sow the seeds of something potentially very significant for Aotearoa/New Zealand.

This letter provoked widespread controversy as it received both broad support and condemnation. One of the most overtly angry commentators wrote: Vanessa Andreotti’s article on multiculturalism (Perspective, Feb 17) should worry us all. It would be bad enough if her views are those of a small minority who are using their privileged and influential positions to push a personal political agenda to students.

As my son Bruno (then 15) read the articles and the responses, his perceptions also shifted. He came home one day very disturbed by the fact that three times, on the same day, he had seen staff and other students at his secondary school condemning immigrant students for speaking their mother language on school grounds. He had got involved in an argument with a colleague when he tried to defend an international student who had been told by a Kiwi student to speak only in English in the school fields: “Before I knew it, I had told this guy that what he was doing was racist. Then I looked around and there was a crowd around us. I had used a forbidden word and I had to explain myself. I did not find the words. I just knew it was racist.” I asked Bruno if he wanted to write a letter to the principal, explaining what had happened and he hesitated: “The teachers are also doing it and if that is their policy, the principal may not be very impressed and I will just call unwanted attention to myself.” I told him that writing could help him articulate his argument and calm him down (and that, if he wanted, I could support the process as well). He wrote a letter and sent it to a teacher who he thought would be supportive: I have recently observed a number of events in the school where speakers of other languages have been told to speak only in English. The assumption seems to be that immigrants should be grateful to

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be here. In order to show that, they must adopt exclusively the dominant language of the country and conform to the dominant culture. As a bilingual immigrant student who has lived in multiple countries, I understand the importance of learning local languages. However, I also understand the importance of keeping and making use of other languages as resources to support learning. Students should be allowed to discuss relevant content in class in their own language if they feel this is helpful for their understanding of a subject. Students should be trusted to take responsibility for their learning and to make this call. If immigrant students are asked not to speak their language in the classroom (by teachers or other students), the message is that immigrants should leave their culture and language outside the classroom door: they are not allowed to be themselves. This prompts different reactions: anger, resentment or a deep feeling that you do not belong, that you cannot speak or that you are not welcome. A feeling of injustice has led many groups to fight for the right of speaking their languages around the world. However, more often, immigrant students start thinking that their families’ culture is inferior and therefore they start seeing themselves as worthless. They may stop speaking the language altogether in order to try to fit in. It is extremely difficult to keep a home language living in another country. I speak from experience. I speak Portuguese at home, but I find it increasingly difficult to express myself in Portuguese, when it is much quicker and easier in English. This really shows when I communicate with my extended family who don’t speak English. Besides, there are 230 million speakers of Portuguese in the world and losing my first language means missing opportunities for travel, studies and work around the globe. With globalisation and employment opportunities worldwide, speaking multiple languages and being able to relate to and work with different cultures should be a huge advantage and not a problem to be fixed. The idea that we should all speak the same, think the same and be the same won’t prepare us for this future. Perhaps if people changed the way they see immigration, they would see that the different languages and world views that immigrants bring are not problems, but collective assets. The multicultural character of our school is a good example of that. We should use this asset in all its potential, rather than repress it or just display it on a stage.

The letter was eventually sent to the principal by the teacher and Bruno was called to his office to be told that the matter had been raised in a staff meeting and, although the issue was complex, the school was happy that he had made his voice heard.

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We moved to Finland in 2010 and I continue to learn and to be undone by my children. Bruno, who wrote a petition to dismiss a teacher and a manifesto for diversity, is now testing the boundaries of Internet networking sites as regards to the effects of hate speech— he claims that language only constructs the realities we allow them to construct and therefore, we should move beyond seeing language as the basis of reality by taking ownership of language itself. Giovanna, whose independent thinking and need to “belong” brought me to intellectual crisis several times, chose to learn Finnish through school immersion (to learn the local language was of major importance for her), she selected a Christian school (despite not being Christian) in order to be with Brazilian friends. They teach me that the world is always more complex than I can imagine, that things do change and that young people need some space to learn—provided there is a lot of adult support to talk through the implications of their options and mistakes. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed very often by the complexity of the interface of my world and their worlds, but it is precisely these moments that make me marvel at the privilege of having a partial glimpse of their lives and of having them in my life.

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(In)Conclusion

In order to outline the limits and the relevance of postcolonial theory in the field of education, I will make use of a last metaphor. I invite readers to imagine themselves walking along the banks of a river with a very strong current. Suddenly you see that there are a number of very young children drowning in the river— many are already dead, others are struggling to swim. Looking up the river, you can see several boats throwing the children into the water and the boats seem to multiply by the minute. How are you going to decide what to do about the situation? I suggest that there are at least four urgent interrelated jobs to be contemplated in this scenario, but they all depend on the context, skills, and call of the person deciding to intervene. There is obviously the need for people to jump into the river and save as many children as they can (which requires very good swimming skills and an understanding of life-saving strategies). There is the job of stopping the boats from throwing the children in the water (which requires the use of persuasion, force, or law enforcement to convince boat captains to stop). There is the job of collecting, mourning, and remembering the ones who died so that their deaths are not forgotten (which requires emotional strength, persistence, and memory). And finally, there is the job of travelling further up the river, into the villages, lifeworlds and worldviews of the people who own the boats to find out what is behind the decision to throw the children in the water (which requires an approach that addresses the discursive/ideological origins of the problem). Part 1 and part 2 of this book illustrate how postcolonial theory operates more directly with the latter kind of intervention (at the level of meaning and ontological choices that justify cultural supremacy and exploitation) and also exemplify how it can support the remembrance of the dead children by highlighting some of the social and cultural effects of epistemic violence. The knowledge produced in this

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work can be— and has been used to train better equipped swimmers (e.g., development workers, managers, educators, etc), and boat stoppers (activists, policy makers, researchers) to be more vigilant in relation to their approaches. This vigilance may help swimmers realize that some rescuing techniques can be harmful for the children they are trying to save. It may also help prevent the construction of normative projects and policy solutions designed to stop specific boat fleets from unintentionally fuelling other fleets even more aggressive than the first. All types of work are insufficient in themselves, requiring more than one theory/set of skills to be effective. However, they can complement each other if people can work together. Parts 1 and 2 of this book highlighted that, in the “up river” work in education, postcolonial theory enables a critique of the representations of “a global North” as developed, democratic, objective, transparent, scientific, technological, ahead in history, educated, cultured, tolerant and evolved, in relation to “a global South” with opposing characteristics. Postcolonial theory makes it possible to identify and unpack the resulting assumptions of cultural supremacy and “civilizing mission” of this global North trying to help, civilize, or educate the global South, projecting assumptions of development, progress and human evolution as unmarked and universal. Postcolonial theory troubles notions of “making a difference out there” and of “becoming global” by unpacking historically constructed inequalities in power, mobility, and resources in North-South relationships. In terms of approaches to multiculturalism, it problematizes homogenizations, oversimplified categorizations of oppressor/oppressed (and their inversions), romanticizations of the South, “identity politics,” and essentialisms and anti-essentialisms that trivialize unequal power relations. In terms of knowledge production, it interrogates both uncritical initiatives to produce knowledge about the Other and the risk and limitations of attempts to emancipate the Other, or to speak for the Other or from a “Southern” perspective. Postcolonial theory encourages a position of vigilance, hyper-self-reflexivity and critical dialogue with a view to enable negotiations of more equal relationships, more responsible practices and an ethical responsibility toward the Other, “before will,” and beyond the confines of common languages, or universal communicative reason. Nevertheless, despite postcolonial theory’s call for an ethical relationship with difference, it can reproduce assumptions of epistemic superiority if treated as just a form of rational self- critique and self-validation, and therefore, like any other theory, it should be treated with critical caution and care.

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Part 3 of the book focused on the potential contributions of postcolonial theory to educational practices. An example from practice itself may be useful to illustrate this potential. One of the most common “feel good” teaching practices that I have found (as a practitioner) in my field of study and work is an activity where a teacher gets learners (or teachers as learners in the context of professional development) to identify what is wrong with the world, what they imagine an ideal world would look like and what people should do to make things right (strategies may include learners listing their ideas on a paper, cutting pictures from magazines and newspapers, or presenting it in drama or another artistic form). In most cases participants come up with ideas related to violence, destruction and (less often) discrimination as examples of “wrongness,” peace, harmony and “sun and trees” for “rightness” and education (as knowledge transmission) as a means or methodology to get from wrong to right. Invariably, the assumption seems to be that “wrongness” is a result of ignorance, not of knowledge, and that once people have the right piece of information (or “good” values) delivered to their heads, their patterns of behavior and relationships will magically change. In the context of teacher pre-service education or professional development, I have seen this exercise being used to introduce curriculum guidelines or policies that justify or mandate the inclusion of themes like global citizenship, conflict resolution, human rights, peace, or environmental education as part of the curriculum. Similar to the exercise described before, the assumption on the part of policy makers and teacher educators seems to be that by delivering the right mandate or information, teachers and student teachers will immediately change their practices to include the new themes in the curriculum. I have seen many teacher educators frustrated when this does not happen like that, but assumptions about learning, knowledge, and teaching— and the effectiveness of the methodology used in this exercise— are seldom questioned. What postcolonial theory suggests is that the righting of wrongs in the world through education requires us to think about the connections between “rights” and “wrongs” in a very different way. Perhaps a starting point is a shift in the understanding of knowledge from “knowledge versus ignorance” toward “every knowledge is also an ignorance” (of other knowledges). Postcolonial and other theories affirm that “wrongs” are caused by knowledge too. The “every knowledge is an ignorance” approach requires an understanding of how knowledges are produced, how they relate to power and how they may shape subjectivities and relationships in conscious and nonconscious

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ways. This shift in conceptualization on its own would change the exercise considerably. For example: after identifying “wrongs,” participants could be invited to perform an analysis of what (socially, culturally, and historically situated) systems of knowledge/power production produce such wrongs; after identifying “rights” they would be invited to analyze what kinds of systems of knowledge production produce the possibilities for the “rights” they are able to imagine, and what kind of ignorance could block their imagination to other possible “rights” or make their own systems complicit in the production of the wrongs they intend to right. This, in turn, would shift the question of methodology of righting wrongs significantly too: if education is the means to right wrongs, what kind of education could take account of the complexity, multiplicity, complicity, and inequality inherent in the politics of knowledge production? What kind of education could support us to undo (at a deep psychic level, beyond surface cognition) the legacy of knowledges that make us blindly complicit in perpetuating wrongs? What kind of education could enable the emergence of ethical relationships between those who have historically marginalized and those who have historically been marginalized, beyond guilt, anger, salvationism, triumphalism, paternalism, and self-interest? What kind of education could equip us to work in solidarity with one another in the construction of an always “yet-to- come” collective future in ways that do not require enforced consensus? What kind of education could help us find comfort and hope in precisely “not having absolute answers” and being frequently challenged in our encounters with difference? Postcolonial theory suggests some questions and issues for consideration in this sense, but not a final answer as this kind of education is also (always) in the realm of the “yet-to- come.” In multiple roles, postcolonial theory has helped me both articulate and constantly rethink three important dimensions of my work: a focus of educational critique, a philosophy for my teaching, and a personal imperative for relationships. As a result, as an educational researcher, one aspect of my work has highlighted the need to identify and address certain dimensions of education that create problematic relationships with difference. The focus of this critique (significantly enabled by postcolonial theory) lies on ethnocentrism, depoliticization, ahistoricism, deficit theorization, and paternalism in educational approaches, particularly approaches focusing on “diversity.” Another aspect of my work focuses on the impossible task of imagining and reimagining, making and remaking a teaching practice of

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ethical globalism/internationalism toward ethical solidarity with the Other (Andreotti 2010a), where learners are supported: • to engage with complex local or global processes and diverse perspectives: to face humanity (warts and all) and not feel overwhelmed; • to examine the origins and implications of their own and other people’s assumptions; • to negotiate change, to transform relationships, to dream different dreams, to confront fears and to make ethical choices about their own lives and how they affect the lives of others by analyzing and using power and privilege in ethical and accountable ways; • to live with and learn from difference and conflict and to know how to prevent conflict from escalating into aggression and violence; • to cherish life’s unsolved questions and to sit comfortably in the discomfort and uncertainty that it creates; • to establish ethical relationships of solidarity across linguistic, regional, ideological and representational boundaries (i.e., to be open to the Other) and to negotiate principles and values “in context”; and • to enjoy their open and uncertain individual and collective learning journeys.

In my personal life the imperative to relate beyond consensus makes the professional and the personal dimensions of my existence indistinguishable for most of the time. It also constantly pushes me into a very vulnerable position in the face of colleagues and students who feel attacked by postcolonial (or Other) ideas and respond violently. This vulnerability can be difficult and painful at the beginning of a learning cycle as it has to withstand a great deal of projected aggression (and building walls or thick skins are out of question if the imperative is to relate), but in the end, it has always proved to be a source of strength, resilience, and deep learning and transformation. Far from promoting “paralysis of analysis” postcolonial theory has helped me understand a few extremely important things that change the questions I am able to ask and the decisions I am inclined to make in my work in education and in my different roles as a “relation” of everyone who crosses my path. I hope it inspires those who read this book, as it has inspired me, to keep open the imagination to what is possible in life, relationships, and education.

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Notes

Introduction 1. This photograph was taken by Nella De La Fuente, an English language teacher from Peru. She kindly sent me the picture with the following text: “There are only a dozen or so ‘official’ kinds of corn, but in the highlands, around the tiny villages in the mountains, people plant them all together, and they ‘crosspolinize,’ so there are more and more varieties (and colors) every year. I learned from the man who put up the exhibition where I took the picture (during a fair) that there are now hundreds of different kinds and colors of corn (the ones in the picture are some of the ones that grow in his patch), and counting . . . ” I am very grateful to Nella for granting me the permission to use the photo in the cover of the book.

Chapter 1 1. See Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” Critical Inquiry 17.2 (1991): 336–57; and a summary of temporal and critical uses of ‘post-‘ in McEwan, Cheryl. 2009. Postcolonialism and Development. London and New York: Routledge. 2 . Mignolo’s (and the Latin American Modernity/Coloniality group’s) work is explored further in chapter four.

Chapter 6 1. This metaphor is inspired by a graphic developed by the Lower Kuskokwim School District in Alaska: http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/IKS/iceberg.html (accessed July 30, 2011). 2 . For a discussion of literacy see Cannella, Gaile and Viruru, Radhika. 2004. Childhood and (Post-) Colonization: Power, Education and Contemporary Practice. New York: Routledge.

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Chapter 9 1.

As I was professionally involved with this case study, I had to address various ethical issues to carry out research about it. The organization granted me authorization to use project-related documents as long as the names of participants, schools, and the organization itself were anonymized. I also sought authorization from the teachers to use the notes I had taken as part of my work in meetings and visits to schools. A draft of the analysis was sent to a trustee and an employer from the organization for review, but the teachers were not involved in the review process as this could potentially jeopardize the relationship with the organization.

Chapter 11 1. The projects Through Other Eyes (www.throughothereyes.org.uk) and Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry(www.osdemethodology.org.uk) were coordinated by myself and Prof. LynnMario de souza (University of Sao Paulo). Both projects received partial funding from the Department for International Development through the Development Awareness Fund. 2 . For similar discussions in areas based on different theoretical frameworks, see: Biesta, Gert. 2010. ‘This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours’: Deconstructive Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(7):710-727; Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. Abindgon and New York: Routledge; Todd, Sharon. 2009. Toward an Imperfect Education: Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism. London: Paradigm; and Sleeter, Christine and Stephen May (Eds.). Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 12 1. Creative commons is an initiative that offers free licenses for creative work where copywright is kept while others are free to distribute or copy the work provided credits are given to the authors of the work. For more information see: http://creativecommons.org/ (accessed July 30, 2011). 2 . See sample learning activity at http://www.osdemethodology.org.uk/keydocs/ pdresourcepack.pdf (accessed July 30, 2011).

Chapter 13 1. This metaphor was inspired by Lisa Taylor’s work. See Taylor, Lisa. K. 2007. “Developing critical affective imagination: Building feminist anti- colonial embodied reading practices through reader response,” Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 1(2):58–73 and Taylor, Lisa. K. (2007). “Reading desire: From empathy to estrangement, from enlightenment to implication.” Intercultural Education, 18, 4, pp. 297–316.

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2 . Dimensions adapted from the TIDE development compass rose – see http:// www.tidec.org/GL%20toolkit/compass%20rose/compass%20rose%20text. pdf (accessed July 30, 2011). 3. See sample learning activity at http://www.throughothereyes.org.uk/education. pdf (accessed July 30, 2011).

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Index

Active citizen, 96, 98, 101, 112, 114, 115, 208, 217, 238 Agentic resistance of unequal power relations, 159 Ahistoricism, 5, 38, 49, 77, 79, 92–93, 177, 181, 264 Aid, as soft power, 163 justice not charity, 163 Alexander, Jacqui, 104, 178 Ambivalence, 4–5, 23, 18, 26–29, 30, 31–34, 59, 61, 110, 144, 154–155, 189, 192, 198, 207, 213 Anthropocentrism, 2, 60, 61, 94, 215, 220 Barrier, to dialogue and understanding, 158 Benevolence, 42, 47, 53 ethnocentric, 95, 106, 145, 155, 192, 224 Bhabha, 25–35 authenticity, 29, 32 Bhabha’s critics, 34–35 construction of superiority, 27–28, 62 diversity versus difference, 32–34 hybridity, 29–31 rearticulation or seizure of the sign, 26, 29, 31–32 relational construction of identities, 26–29, 30

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stereotyping, 26, 27 third space of enunciation, 31–32 Binary thinking, 21–22 Cartesian thought, 75 subject, 2, 3, 4, 44, 60, 87, 94 Celebration of diversity, 96, 108 Celebrity activism, 96, 162 Charity, 8, 58 Civilizing mission, 28, 38, 62, 63, 96 Colonial discourse analysis, 85–86 Common history, 101 universal-linear, 104 Common humanity, 100, 101, 107 Complicity, 19, 93 Conflict, 100, 230, 237, 265 Corn cobs metaphor, 4–7 Critical literacy, 193–194 Critical race theory, 77–82 color-blindedness, 77, 79–80 equality, contestation of, 79 experimental knowledge, 77, 80–81 interest convergence, 77–78 white privilege, 78–79 whiteness as property, 78–79 Critical thinking, 100 Culture, 29, 61 authenticity, 108 homogenisation, 108 rejuvenation, 68 repression, 68

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Index

Culture—Continued revitalization, 68 versus knowledge, 103 Decoloniality, 62–68 border thinking, 66–67; see also Bhabha, third space; Indigenous theories, word warriors colonial difference, 64–65 coloniality of power, 63–69 geopolitics of knowledge, 66–67 global designs, 65–66 modernity, 62–66 time, 65–66 Deficit thinking/theorizing, 5, 68, 79 Department for education and skills (DfES), 89, 97 Department for International Development (DFID), 125, 146, 149, 191, 217 Depoliticisation, 5, 79 Development, 38–39, 63, 92, 101 Development education, 175 Development education association (DEA), 89, 97 Dialogue, 1, 6–7, 146, 155, 194–195, 217–218, 273, 279, 281 Difference, 178, 222 Discourse, 20, 21, 61, 87 Dissensus, 3, 7, 89 Enlightenment, 1, 25, 20, 48, 60 Epistemic hybridism, 70, 73 Epistemic privilege, 8, 58 Epistemic racism, 75, 77, 81 Epistemic transformation, 50 Epistemic violence, 3, 4, 6, 26, 38–39, 115–116, 192, 224, 250, 261 Epistemological blindness, 2, 3, 6 Epistemological pluralism, 69, 71–72, 75

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Essentialism, 5, 42, 60, 92, 220, 234 Ethical imperative toward the Other, 3, 6, 45, 58–59, 177, 180–181, 220, 250 Ethical solidarities, 2, 3, 6, 93 Ethnocentrism, 2, 5, 19, 27, 51, 52, 70, 71 Eurocentrism, 62–65, 70 beyond, 66–67 Foucault, Michel, 19, 20, 42 Gandhi, Leela, 2, 14, 17–18, 21, 61, 85–86, 88 Global citizenship, 92, 94–95, 112, 114, 116, 122–123, 133, 150–151, 158, 161–165, 170, 193, 263 Global community, 98, 107 Global dimension (of education), 97–99 Global education, 181, 220, 238 Global issues, 98, 100, 138, 194 indigenous/aboriginal perceptions of, 217 Globalization, 17, 37–38, 50, 92, 94–95, 98, 116–117, 121, 128, 132 Hegemony, 3, 4, 5, 62, 91, 92 alternative to, 72 Human rights, 39–40, 45, 49, 58, 70, 77 Hybridity, 29–31, 61, 69 Identity, 99, 100, 107, 221 Indigenous theories, 68–77 indigenous philosophies of language, 72–73 intergenerational trauma, 73 medicine wheel, 73–75 metaphors, 73–76 pluri epistemic orientation, 71, 72

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Index soul wound, 70, 73–74 word warriors, 70, 71 Institutional suffering, 1, 4–5, 69 Interdependence, 75, 93–95, 97, 100, 117, 121, 123, 136, 178, 183, 187–189, 192 Internalized oppression, 5, 74, 80 International school days, 100, 108 Liberal pluralism, 32–34, 91, 101 Multiculturalism, 32–34, 80–81, 92, 108 Mutuality, reciprocity, 7, 159 Nation State, 23, 60, 70 Neoliberalism, 92, 94, 121, 129 Neutrality, 86–87 Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE), 191 Orientalism, 19–22, 103 Paralysis of analysis, 3, 77, 265 Postcolonial theory, 13–23 discursive orientation, 14, 17, 18, 87 historical materialist orientation, 14, 17 Marxist critique, 16–17, 18, chapter 4 Post-traditions, 14–18, 25, 65, 86–87 Poverty, 91, 96, 98, 112–113, 118, 128, 144, 153, 162, 188 Power relations unequal, 5, 22, 58, 70, 92 concealment, 93 Power/knowledge, 18, 19, 22, 58 Putting the World into World Class Education (PWWCE), 119–133

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287

Racism, 70, 80, 94, 96, 107, 109–110, 154, 203, 210 Research, 85–91 Said, Edward, 19–22 critics, 22–23 Sanctioned ignorance, 3, 38, 39, 40, 49, 114, 237 School linking, 91, 100 Scientific objectivity, 73, 86, 87 counterpoint, 90 Self-affirmation, 155–156, 237, 245 Self-reflexivity, 17, 19, 23, 47, 52, 82, 88, 177, 193, 198, 199, 221, 262 Solidarity, 3, 6, 8 ethical solidarity, 94, 181, 265 global solidarity, 146 international solidarity, 14 reflexive solidarity, 95 Spivak, 37–54 deconstruction, 45–47 global elite, 39–40 learning to learn from below, 48–50 native elites, 44 sanctioned ignorances, 38–39, 40 saviours of marginality, 41–43, 51 self-implication, 47, 51 subaltern, 37–38 subaltern voice and representation, 40–42 uncoersive rearrangement of desires, 45, 177, 180, 192, 241 unlearning privilege, 48–49 worldling the world, 38–39, 92 Strategic essentialism, 61–62, 69 Subaltern, 31, 35, 37–45, 50, 51–53 subalternity, 35, 37, 47

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288

Index

Telling case studies, 90–91 Through Other eyes (TOE), 217–265 Transformation, 19, 31, 32, 38, 43, 58, 177, 203, 265, 279 self-transformation, 193 Triumphalism, 8, 39, 49, 95, 190, 264

9780230111615_20_ind.indd 288

Universalism, 1–2, 20, 62, 64, 87, 93 Western/Enlightenment humanism, 1–5, 60, 91 White man’s burden, 28, 45, 121

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