This dissertation fits within the literature on subordinating speech and aims to demonstrate that how language subordinates is more complex than has been described by most philosophers. I argue that the harms that subordinating speech inflicts on its targets (chapter one), the type of authority that is exercised by subordinating speakers (chapters two and three), and the expansive variety of subordinating speech acts themselves (chapter three) are all under-developed subjects in need of further refinement—and, in some cases, large paradigm shifts. (...) I also examine cases that have yet to be adequately addressed by philosophers working on this topic, like the explosion of abusive speech online (chapter four) or the distinctive speech acts of protest groups (chapter five). I argue that by considering these alongside the ‘paradigm’ cases of subordinating speech that inform most models, we are better able to capture the lived realities of this phenomena, as described by members of groups targeted by such speech. I develop a novel account of speaker authority to explain the variety of pragmatic effects subordinating speech generates. Instead of seeing this authority as reducible to either a formal position or a merely local, linguistic phenomenon, I argue for a conception of speaker authority that is a richly contextual social fact, distributed unevenly among members of different social groups. I also develop an account of collective authority that explains how a group of speakers can join together to subordinate in a way that no individual speaker is capable of doing. This account, I argue, is better able to explain the social reality of subordinating speech than individualist models. Overall, I show how a more fine-grained account of subordinating speaker authority gives us a more accurate picture of the different subordinating speech acts available to different speakers, along with how these may harm their targets. (shrink)

Learning about feminism can be a revelation for many students. However, for others, it can be a confounding, troubling experience. These difficulties return as problems for the teacher: how to help...

The article draws on critiques in political theory and morality to argue that womanism, a worldview rooted in Black women's lives and history, provides an alternative conceptual framework to prevailing Eurocentric thinking, for promoting socially just institutions of higher education. Presupposing a positioned, encultured, and embodied account of identity, womanism’s social change perspective holds transformative promise. It foregrounds Black women’s penchant for reaching solutions that promote communal balance, affirm one’s humanity and attend to the spiritual dimension (Phillips, 2006 Phillips, L. (...) (Ed.). (2006). The womanist reader. Routledge.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Directed first towards scholars of color, fostering inclusivity, communalist values and acknowledged intersectionality offers an ethic of the embodied self. As a corollary, it argues for a universal that recommends at least two guiding principles for a pedagogical philosophy. It is, first oriented towards a love of self and second towards placing all disciplines within a cultural-historical context. In the first claim, there is potential for nothing less than suspending the symbolic and ontological violence to one’s sense of belonging in academia. In the second claim, such an understanding can position scholars of color to actively re-narrate their fields. As illustrations, we focus on three academic fields of education, theology in higher education, and criminal justice. (shrink)

We are teacher educators trying to recalibrate to the world of Trump. As we search to find our new bearings, we recognize that the markers of meaning that we relied on (such as civility and...

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, (...) without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis is an account of the emancipatory struggle that faces agents who seek to change the oppressive social structures associated with neo-liberalism. We begin by ‘digging amongst the bones’ of the calls for resistance that have been declared dead or assimilated/co-opted by neoliberal theorists. This leads us to unearth, then utilize, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and Shiv Visvanathan's ideas; which are examples of Roy Bhaskar’s transformative dialectic. We argue, using examples, that cognitive justice – (...) a concept common to each of our chosen theorists – is vital in enabling emancipatory social learning. By embracing cognitive justice, the agents gained confidence, which led to their increased ability to champion community and non-academic knowledge. It also uncovered structural tensions – attendant in neoliberalism – around privilege. By articulating these tensions, the participants were able to ‘come closer together’. Such processes, initiated by ensuring cognitive justice, are possible steps in achieving universal solidarity; which is likely to be a necessary step along the path of achieving emancipation. (shrink)

The ‘Marwa’ elementary school (pseudonym) – an Israeli public school on the border between Israel and the Palestinian Authority – is a unique educational institution in that, despite being not religious, it only accepts from Grade 1 through to Grade 6 girls. Several years ago, the principal decided to implement a Philosophy with Children (PwC) programme as an alternative pedagogy. This paper surveys how the educational faculty regarded the introduction of this curriculum and how it contributed towards the development of (...) philosophical discursive skills, a classroom atmosphere of friendship and caring, and critical and creative thinking competence amongst the students. (shrink)

In this article, the author once again reflected on her personal and existential experience of frequent visits to African countries as well as to Israel-Palestine. The article focuses on the issues of outsiders becoming effective allies to the cultures they are visiting, teaching and researching by listening to other understandings and interpretations of biblical texts, Jesus' parables specifically. It is an appropriate tribute to Yolanda Dreyer because of Prof. Dreyer's involvement and significant contributions in issues of social justice, both academically (...) and experientially. (shrink)

A patient's experience unfolds through a nurse's personal conversation with herself. Conveyed through three voices, the nurse's dialogue highlights her many internal struggles; those with her conscience on what she understands to be best practice, those important to her as a person, those of an ethical nature that profoundly affect one's search for meaning, and those in the personal–professional realm driven in part by institutional culture. These multivoiced knowledges are confronted in ways that foreground language and understanding as performative acts. (...) At the same time, another journey is co‐constructed with the reader, one that weaves in‐between the symbolic and the real, engaging the imaginary in (inter)play. The nurse's response to the inner conversation with her ‘self/selves’ problematizes practice, illuminates the patient's perspective while highlighting the nurse's sense of her marginal position. Insight into reified and hegemonic assumptions, strategies of how control is maintained through organizational surveillance, trust and moral agency help to foreground personal expectations as the nurse begins to grapple with her own feelings of betrayal. Tackling these insights offers opportunities to rethink oppressive practices in the provision of care. It also enables an alternative appreciation of the everyday dilemmas confronting nurses and offers new meaning to practice. (shrink)

This paper presents a segment of a broader research project titled “When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness,” which first developed out of my research work with White women in violence-against-women organizations. It documents an interview between a White woman and me, a Black South African philosopher. I lived and worked in Canada at the time but I traveled to the United States for conferences on a regular basis. I was presenting my work on Black consciousness, White consciousness, and Black existentialism—relying (...) on Derridean deconstruction and psychoanalysis—when I had the exchange with a White woman, a young faculty member in the philosophy department, which had jointly hosted the talk with the women and gender studies department. This paper offers a verbatim account of this dialogue wherein the history of philosophy is unraveled and where I draw on Jacques Derrida's “White Mythology” to demonstrate how White consciousness is engraved. It is out of this intertwined analysis that my work on White consciousness emerged in the 1990s—and with which I continue—as is evidenced throughout the paper. In unpacking this dialogue, I situate the complexities that arise from the pedagogical practices within philosophy when race takes center stage within a discipline that has written itself as though race does not exist. (shrink)

This paper is a tentative attempt to set out some of the basic points for articulating an alternative philosophical praxis derived from some Black women's lives and experiences. It begins with an explanation of delegitimating processes and the importance of not dividing theory from practice. The essay offers six practices that outline the unique critical attitude that constitutes philosophical practices rooted in Black women's lived experience and asks “How we sound” when doing academic philosophy.

This article explores the role of the Deaf child as peer educator. In schools where sign languages were banned, Deaf children became the educators of their Deaf peers in a number of contexts worldwide. This paper analyses how this peer education of sign language worked in context by drawing on two examples from boarding schools for the deaf in Nicaragua and Thailand. The argument is advanced that these practices constituted a child-led oppositional pedagogy. A connection is drawn to Freire’s (1972) (...) theory of critical pedagogy. Deaf children’s actions as peer educators are framed as an act of resistance towards the oppression of their language and culture. A contrast is drawn between oralist pedagogy that is historically associated with punitive practices and didactic methods and the experiential and dialogic interaction that characterised peer learning of sign languages. The argument is made that the peer teaching and learning processes enabled the self-actualisation of the Deaf children whereas the oralist methods were based on a deficit model that focused on modifying deaf children according to the norms of hearing society. The implications of this for current policy and practice are inferred to be about access to sign languages and the importance of Deaf communities in deaf children’s education. The argument is made that space needs to be created for deaf children to engage in peer learning. (shrink)

In this thesis I discuss personal identity as it relates to authoritative contexts. I show how these contexts confer meaning on personal and cultural narratives, which in turn confer meaning on facts and knowledge claims. I outline three conceptions of the self and sublime, and address the implications of these for education. In conclusion I isolate a common product of all three perspectives---unconditional love---and recommend a 'will to positive description' as a necessary and desirable pedagogical goal.

Amartya Sen argues that sectarian discord and violence are fueled by confusion about the nature of identity, including the pervasive tendency to see ourselves as members of singular social groups standing in opposition to other groups (e.g. Democrat vs. Republican, Muslim vs. Christian, etc.). Sen defends an alternative model of identity, according to which we all inevitably belong to a plurality of discrete identity groups (including ethnicities, classes, genders, races, religions, careers, hobbies, etc.) and are obligated to choose, in any (...) given context, which among our multiple affiliations to prioritize. While Sen’s model of discrete identity prioritization is a clear advance over single-factor accounts, it overlooks significant lessons about identity from over 150 years of scholarship by feminists of color. In ignoring the experiences of women of color, Sen’s model falsely assumes that identities are in-principle separable for the purposes of practical deliberation; and, in obligating individuals to make such identity-based “reasoned choices,” Sen’s model forces those with multiply marginalized identities to choose from a set of externally defined identity options, none of which sufficiently captures their experiences. (shrink)

Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into (...) our Spring 2021 course “The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender” with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classroom. (shrink)

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...) volume address four broad and interconnected themes: • What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? • Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? • What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? • What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? The Philosophy of Online Manipulation brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation. (shrink)

Claiming that individuals and communities get their choices, rhythms and practices biopolitically choreographed by temporal mechanisms that dictate which human experiences are included or excluded, Elizabeth Freeman states that those ‘whose activities do not show up on the official time line, whose own time lines do not synchronize with it, are variously and often simultaneously black, female, queer’. The narrative subject of Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other is black, female and queer in her design of a polyphonic text featuring twelve (...) black women moving through the world in different decades and occupying a temporal dimension that deviates from the linear and teleological modes. I draw on Edelman ; Freeman and Ahmed to analyse Evaristo's novel as a text informed by feminist queer temporality and thus explore these characters’ resistance to chrononormative assumptions like ‘the straight time of domesticated gender, capital accumulation, and national coherence’. In this light, I address her cast of ‘time abjects’ –lesbians, transgender women, feminist killjoys and menopausal females—as characterized ‘chronotopically’ as their racialized and gendered subjectivities coalesce temporally and spatially seeing their pasts and futures interact in a typically transpositional, queer and diasporic continuum. By invoking Freeman's notion of ‘erotohistoriography’ as a distinctive mode of queer time that not only recognizes non-linear chronopolitics, but decidedly prioritizes bodies and pleasures in self-representation, I contend that Evaristo depicts bodies as likewise performing this encounter between past and present in hybrid, carnal and trans-temporal terms. I conclude that in her joining temporality and corporeality, memory and desire, she suggests alternative ways of representing contemporary black British womanhood. (shrink)

In Feminist theory: from margin to center, feminist theorist bell hooks questioned the existing feminist discourses during her time by pointing out the lack of a solid definition of feminism and the predominance of white, privileged feminists in the movement. Although several other feminist theorists have made the same criticisms, what sets hooks apart is her invitation to a revolutionary feminist outlook, which uses a pluralistic lens to recognize the absence of oppressed groups and the interrogation of cultural representations. Even (...) before “intersectionality” became a buzzword in feminist circles, hooks has already been talking about the interlocking webs of oppression, a concept that most feminists associate with intersectionality. Despite her novel ideas though, most critics raise concerns about her inconsistencies, lack of methodology, and critical awareness. What I aim to do in this paper is to re-evaluate hooks and propose ways to address some of these supposed contradictions. To enrich hooks’ feminist theory, I propose three main points: the emphasis on the crossing of borders, feminist solidarity and global transgression. (shrink)

This paper examines the outcomes of Preserving the Past Together, a workshop series designed to build the capacity of local heritage managers to engage in collaborative and community-based approaches to archaeology and historic preservation. Over the past two decades practitioners of these approaches have demonstrated the interpretive, methodological, and ethical value of integrating Indigenous perspectives and methods into the process and practice of heritage management and archaeology. Despite these benefits, few professional resources exist to support the development of collaborative relationships (...) between local heritage managers and Tribal nations. Filling this need, Preserving the Past Together’s interactive workshops and keynote lectures involved participants in a discussion of the central themes in collaborative and Indigenous approaches to archaeology today, highlighting the local challenges and opportunities that exist for archaeologists, heritage managers, and Tribal nations to work together to care for the past. This paper presents an overview of the event series’ goals, the strategies it used to foster collaboration among the diverse stakeholders of the Salish Sea, and the next steps the project’s co-directors are taking to further support communication and collaboration between stewards and stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest. (shrink)

Recent new materialist and posthumanist research in curriculum and pedagogy studies is focusing more and more on the intertwinement between social justice, fairness, and accountability, and how to put these ideals to use to create inclusive, consciousness-raising canons, curricula, and pedagogies that take the dehumanized and the more-than-human into account. Especially pedagogical responsibility, often rephrased as ‘response-ability’ to accentuate the entanglements that this notion engenders versus forgotten or forcefully eradicated knowledges, and between teacher and student as intra-active learners, is highlighted (...) in this ethico-political turn. In this chapter, a critical pedagogical cartography of response-ability is sketched out to philosophically expand on—and also better anchor—the above turn. This critical cartography is put together at the backdrop of critical new materialist reflections with regards to the COVID-19 crisis; a crisis demanding a pedagogical but also ethico-political reorientation toward the hauntological powers of past-present-future injustices, the thick material present, and a more response-able engagement with the world. (shrink)

Almost 40 years ago, scholars identified a “chilly climate” for women in college classrooms. To examine whether contemporary college classrooms remain “chilly,” we conducted quantitative and qualitative observations in nine classrooms across multiple disciplines at one elite institution. Based on these 95 hours of observation, we discuss three gendered classroom participation patterns. First, on average, men students occupy classroom sonic space 1.6 times as often as women. Men also speak out without raising hands, interrupt, and engage in prolonged conversations during (...) class more than women students. Second, style and tone also differ. Men’s language is assertive, whereas women’s is hesitant and apologetic. Third, professors’ interventions and different structures of classrooms can alter existing gender status hierarchies. Extending Ridgeway’s gender system framework to college classrooms, we discuss how these gendered classroom participation patterns perpetuate gender status hierarchies. We thus argue that the chilly climate is an underexplored mechanism for the stalled gender revolution. (shrink)

Nic R. Jones ABSTRACT: The The lack of diversity in academic philosophy has been well documented. This paper examines the reasons for this issue, identifying two intertwining norms within philosophy which contribute to it: the assertion that the Adversary Method is the primary mode of argumentation and the excessive boundary policing surrounding what constitutes “real” ….

Abstract‘Representing Race and Gender’ was the first course in the undergraduate curriculum of the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney to foreground race. This paper provides a critical reflection of our embodied and affective experiences teaching this course as women of different racial and cultural backgrounds (Korean American and Anglo Australian). We draw on feminist pedagogies to illuminate the strategic ways we have performed our own intersectional identities in lecture and tutorial spaces. In particular we (...) focus on the different ways we have approached and taught material on whiteness and white privilege and how students of various backgrounds have responded to the same material when it is taught by a white or non-white lecturer. Through this discussion, we think through how ‘Representing Race and Gender’ functions as a space where pedagogical decisions and approaches are inextricably linked to our goal of developing students’ capacities for engaging with racial difference and racism in critically conscious ways that extend beyond the classroom. (shrink)

While there is a body of literature that considers the theory of critical pedagogy, there is significantly less literature that specifically addresses the ways in which professors attempt to apply this theory in practice. This paper presents the results from a study that was designed, in part, to address this gap. Seventeen self-identified critical pedagogues participated in this qualitative research study. Participants reported their use of the following classroom practices, including: dialogue; group work; co-construction of syllabus; and experiential activities. This (...) paper critically examines the social justice-oriented nature of these critical classroom practices. (shrink)

This essay examines the ways in which postcoloniality and autoethnography can be integrated to create a space of scholarly inquiry that disrupts the colonialist enterprise prevalent in the academy. By utilizing González's four ethics of postcolonial ethnography, this essay presents an ethics for postcolonial autoethnography as a mode to build a body of scholarly research that disrupts scientific imperialism.

This essay focuses on the repeated rhetorical moves through which the third wave autobiographical subject seeks to be real and to speak as part of a collective voice from the next feminist generation. Given that postmodernist, postructuralist, and multiculturalist critiques have shaped the form and the content of third wave expressions of the personal, the study is ultimately concerned with the possibilities and limitations of such theoretical analysis for a third wave of feminist praxis.

I love that you have rediscovered your love for toddlers! They are in my opinion the best age to work with! That’s really cool that you work part time up at [local ski resort]. I love to ski and us...

The existence of otherness as a social category is the result of a specific configuration of power relations. One way to maintain this configuration and exert control over subjectivities defined as "others" is to exclude them from participation in the production of knowledge, depriving them ofthe resources to understand themselves and the world and the words to describe their social experience. In this sense, the epistemic injustice, produced by exclusion from the system of knowledge production, constitutes a powerful instrument to (...) control power relations and to maintain the subordination of minorised subjectivities. At the same time, the production of analysis by oppressed subjectivities constitutes a form of resistance to the control of the knowledge production and to the control of subjectivities themselves; since this production has a liberating function from oppressive systems and is able to reveal the implicit power dynamics within the production of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter explores the personal and professional obstacles faced by Humanities and Social Science scholars contemplating pre-publication of their scholarly work in an on-line network. Borrowing a theoretical framework from the radical educational theorist Ivan Illich, it also develops the idea that pre-publication networks offer higher education a bottom-up, decentralized alternative to business-modeled e-learning. If learners would only embrace this more anarchical medium, appreciating writing for pre-publication as a process of open-ended discovery rather than product delivery, then the prospect of (...) deinstitutionalizing e-learning could become an exciting new reality. The chapter’s methodology is a combination of normative-theoretical analysis and small sample (n=2) case study based on the author’s personal and professional experiences. While the generalizability (or external validity) of the conclusions is limited, the author hopes to motivate further inquiry into the connection between on-line pre-publication and e-learning. (shrink)

Many college teachers believe that teaching can promote justice. Meanwhile, many in the broader American public disparage college classrooms as spaces of left-wing partisanship. This paper engages with that charge of partisanship. Section 1 introduces the charge. Then, in Sect. 2, I consider what teaching for justice should aim to do. I argue that selective institutions of higher education impose positional costs on members of a generation who do not attend them, and that those positional costs accrue not only in (...) terms of distributive equality but also in terms of civic equality. Teaching for justice, I argue, should be understood as an attempt to lessen those costs. But the civic equality costs that selective higher education imposes can be meaningfully lessened only by a radical version of teaching for justice: educational consciousness raising for institutional reform. This sets up a high hurdle for any defense against the partisanship charge, because the kind of teaching for justice we have most justice-related reason to engage in seems especially susceptible to that charge. Section 3 gives a public reasons case in favor of teaching for justice so understood. Because civic equality is a commitment we all ought to share as free and equal citizens, teaching for justice aimed at restoring civic equality enjoys a public reasons justification. Still, an all-things-considered assessment of our permissions or obligations to engage in this teaching project awaits a careful thinking through of the case against it. (shrink)

This paper reports on a study of teachers’ perceptions of teaching and learning in Scotland during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of engaged pedagogy and the ideas of bell hooks. It aimed to explore the different ways that teachers experienced teaching and learning during this time and the impact this may have had on teacher identity. Sixty teachers and head teachers were interviewed using MS Teams in the period April-June, 2020. For this paper, 18 transcripts were analyzed by members (...) of the research team. Four key themes emerged from the interview data: Working from home, parental engagement, teacher identity, and changes in pedagogy. Each of these themes were discussed in terms of concepts such as engaged pedagogy, agency, self-actualization, recognition and boundary transgression situated in the work of bell hooks. The idea of boundaries wove itself throughout our data as teachers expressed how the transgression of boundaries was occurring in multiple, and often contradictory, ways in pedagogical, professional, institutional and personal spaces and systems. We see in our data evidence of a shift in practice not just in the way teachers are ‘doing’ education but also, perhaps, in the way that teachers are ‘being’ as educators as they adapt to different ways of knowing. This study provides a unique exploration of a time and space in Scotland during 2020. However, the themes and understandings that emerged are of relevance to educators internationally. Schools across the world were impacted by various lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and teachers faced a common set of challenges that were resolved via re-negotiation and recognition of individual and collective agency to create new pedagogies. (shrink)

This intra-view explores a number of productive junctions between contemporary Deleuzoguattarian and new materialist praxes via a series of questions and provocations. Productive tensions are explored via questions of epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political intra-sections as well as notions of difference, transversal contamination, ecosophical practices, diffraction, and, lastly, schizoanalysis. Various irruptions around biophilosophy, transduction, becomology, cartography, power relations, hyperobjects as events, individuation, as well as dyschronia and disorientation, take the discussion further into the wild pedagogical spaces that both praxes have (...) in common. -/- . (shrink)

Who owns feminist theory? and just what is meant by the idea of ‘theory’? We explore these fundamental questions as part of interrogating some emergent orthodoxies about feminist theory, proposing that there is a ‘missing revolution’ in feminist thinking, for while ideas about feminist epistemology, methodology and ethics have been fundamentally reworked, those concerning feminist theory have not. Our purpose is to stimulate a debate about the form of feminist theory, rather than the more usual controversies about its content; and (...) thus our concern is with promoting the development of feminist metatheory. We argue that the now-dominant version of feminist theory is a parallel project to that of mainstream/malestream social theory, and that a feminist autocritique of this and related developments is needed, with the aim of achieving a transformation of the fundamental categories of feminist theory. (shrink)

Sexual violence of various forms, be it sexual harassment or sexual abuse, perpetrated by male professors against their female students has gained societal visibility through media broadcasts. This article tells the tale of the 2013 recruitment to the University of Iceland of a former political party leader, minister and ambassador. He was publicly called out in 2012 for his alleged sexual offences, perpetrated some years earlier. The story is told from two different viewpoints: from that of the media and from (...) the article author’s own standpoint as assistant professor in gender studies with co-responsibility for his de-recruitment. In the media story, opinion leaders from the political, judicial and media spheres take centre stage. The author thus utilizes the concepts patriarchal homosociality and influencers. Based on the findings from the media analyses, the author lays out her defence and justification, using embodiment as the core of her argument. She draws on black feminist knowledge validation processes, more specifically, the ethic of caring and personal accountability. Furthermore, she explores affective feminist pedagogy, i.e. connecting mind and body through self-actualization. By contrasting the two accounts, that of the media and her own feminist standpoint, the author sheds light on the role that influencers play in preserving patriarchal power and the status quo against ‘fire-raising feminists’ in academia and society at large. (shrink)

For the past half-century, critical pedagogy has represented perhaps the most influential response to traditional ‘banking’ models of education and the political obedience and social conformity they are purported to engender. Precisely because of its lasting impact, however, it has tended to overshadow other possible visions of the critical political potential of education. In this article, I trace the origins and development of a distinctive yet under-discussed concept in Michel Foucault’s late ethical work – psychagogy – to pursue an alternative (...) depiction of education as a critical political practice. Attending to the origins and meaning of psychagogy in Foucault’s work is valuable, I argue, for two reasons. On the one hand, the concept offers a vision of political education that avoids reproducing problematic juridical binaries – truth and ideology, rationality and irrationality, absolved and condemned – that Foucault believed inhered in Enlightenment-era conceptions of emancipation. On the other hand, it demonstrates how political problems of our present might be rendered workable not only through recourse to the authoritative discourses of experts or collective demands of revolutionaries, but also through exercises in subjectivity formation that are rather more quotidian, experiential, and conditional in nature. (shrink)

The article addresses the contributions psychoanalytic theory, particularly its concepts of transference and counter-transference, can make to our understanding of reflexivity in intercultural education (IE). After the introduction, the article is organized into three parts. The first part is a psychoanalytic discussion that focuses on the concepts of transference and counter-transference. The second part elaborates on the concepts of transference and counter-transference by presenting examples through existing studies in the fields of multicultural and IE and psychoanalysis to illuminate what it (...) would mean to psychoanalytically understand aspects of intercultural relations and reflexivity. In the third section, while contending that this article does not exclude other forms of reflexivity or delimit the danger of uncritically accepting the potentials for reflexivity, it offers the implications drawn from the discussions in the first and second sections by concluding that psychoanalysis is an area of inquiry that forces us to question how unconscious forces affect our interaction with students, the curriculum, and the meaning we give to teaching and learning experiences. The article concludes that reflexivity in IE can benefit from considering the effects of transference and counter-transference. (shrink)

Social sciences research is entrenched with particular values, beliefs, norms, and practices that students, faculty, and researchers reproduce over time. In this article, the author argues for extending what counts as research within the social sciences to be more inclusive of differing methodologies and writing genres. Using personal narrative, diaries, and poetry, the author demonstrates unconventional ways of thinking about, doing, and writing research. He situates his personal experiences as a Ghanaian/American student within relevant literature to illuminate the merging of (...) his home cultural values with those of the academic community and the contradictions and struggles associated with this process. Ultimately, the story portrays the journey of a graduate student as he challenges traditional research norms to open up spaces for underrepresented students to feel more at home within academe. (shrink)

This article explores issues associated with schooling and political justice. Such issues are understood in light of the contention surrounding howWestern schooling contexts might best represent marginalised groups—in ways that accord them a political voice. The significance of group identity politics is explored drawing on international debates associated with ethnically segregated schooling. A postcolonial theorising of group identity highlights the ways in which segregated schooling can both support and undermine politically just representation for marginalised students. This theorising draws attention to (...) the problematic notion of voice in linking representation to identity in reductionist ways. The arguments presented point to the significance of people and their politics, rather than their membership to a particular identity group, in pursuing equity for marginalised groups. The article argues the imperative of understanding group identity as an aspect of negotiated social practice that can be drawn on in strategic and critical ways to address matters of political injustice. (shrink)

This paper develops a framework for conceptualising social justice in education, drawing particularly on Martha Nussbaum's (2000) capabilities approach. The practical case for consideration is that of widening participation and pedagogical implications in higher (university) education in England. While the paper supports the value and usefulness of Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities for developing a more radical and challenging language and practice for higher education pedagogies, it also argues that her approach is limited. Other ways of conceptualising social justice are (...) also required in order to develop adjudicating theories which enable us to judge which practices take us closer to social justice. An argument is made for 'bivalent' theorising which integrates individual and institutional development and agents and social structures. (shrink)

In this article, we critique two theoretical positions that analyze the place of emotions in education: the psychological strand and the cultural feminist strand. First of all, it is shown how a social control of emotions in education is reflected in the combination of psychological and cultural feminist discourses that function to govern one’s self effectively and efficiently. These discourses perpetuate an assumed divide between the rational and the emotional, and reinforce the existing power hierarchies and the status quo of (...) stereotypes about the role of emotion in education. Then we use the Foucauldian notions of parrhesia and care of the self to suggest alternative ways of thinking about emotions in education. Instead of campaigning for one side or the other of the rational/emotional divide, we suggest that it may be more interesting and fruitful to examine the particular ways discourses of emotion in education construct their own brand of parrhesia. (shrink)

Makerspaces and hacklabs are believed to encourage a positive attitude towards gaining computer skills. Within these communities for peer production, citizens can apply cutting-edge technologies in DIY projects. In recent decades, mushrooming makerspaces and hacklabs were embraced by the tech industry and governments alike. Feminist makerspaces and hacklabs, however, as they are centred around a queer feminist agenda, have raised eyebrows. In order to foster diversity in tech development, they create safer spaces for self-expression. Here, feminist laymen*, makers, designers, artists (...) and tinkerers experiment with open-source hardware and software. Art and design projects emerging from feminist hacklabs focus on issues of representation and democratic participation in digital media, as well as on ways of reclaiming one’s own body. This article tries to unpack how, after an exhibition on sexual health norms, a feminist hacklab was attacked by local right-wing and conservative politicians. The attack resulted in the defunding of the feminist hacklab. But it also started a transformation process within the collective, as members became aware of critical interferences of diffracting marginalisations. The crisis triggered a discussion on how each member was threatened to very different degrees; for example, there was more at stake for members depending on their legal status in the country. The right-wing and conservative campaign against the feminist hacklab damaged the initiative, but at the same time it pushed the collective to generate increased vehemence and resilience. (shrink)

This thesis is an investigation of the relationship between education, freedom and the teaching self. Adopting the paradigm of qualitative research, it integrates an autobiographical perspective in which, drawing on the author's experience and perceptions of the shortcomings of traditional teaching attitudes and practices, the thesis aims to explore concepts and approaches which identify possible educational alternatives. The writings of educational philosopher, Maxine Greene, provide the theoretical framework for this study. Based on central themes identified in her work, a theoretical (...) analysis of the principal concepts of freedom, community, imagination, narrative and identity is provided. (shrink)

This paper develops a framework for conceptualising social justice in education, drawing particularly on Martha Nussbaum's (2000) capabilities approach. The practical case for consideration is that of widening participation and pedagogical implications in higher (university) education in England. While the paper supports the value and usefulness of Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities for developing a more radical and challenging language and practice for higher education pedagogies, it also argues that her approach is limited. Other ways of conceptualising social justice are (...) also required in order to develop adjudicating theories which enable us to judge which practices take us closer to social justice. An argument is made for ‘bivalent’ theorising which integrates individual and institutional development and agents and social structures. (shrink)