before our current readings, talk of resistance against a dominant power (especially as discussed by cultural marxists like Paul Willis) left me cold. so what if the lads (in Willis') study resisted school and the idea that it could empower them by expressing working class pride and ambitions that didn't value school? what does that do for them? what do these resistances (or, according to Gramsci) cracks in hegemony really do? but the Foucaultian idea that power never achieves what it might set out to do, that it is not simply resisted, it is diverted, is more hopeful for me. the example of prisoners (again, in our reader) is a good one. discursive formations create prisoners as lazy, deviant, bad, criminals. but prisoners take on that identity, find each other in prison, and learn from each other to be better criminals. not the intention of the state, which power serves. so counter discourse are par for the course.
thoughts?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Funny that you should mention these things...I was thinking when the authors speak of prisoners learning to become better criminals by being grouped together in one space and labeled as lazy, deviant, etc...how this can be applied to education and the labels that are discursively applied to describe various groups of students...
ReplyDeletefor instance, Special Education...Limited English Proficiency...Gifted and Talented...Disciplinary Problem...Attention Deficit Disorder...
how are these labels self-perpetuating in the same way that prisoner/criminal labels are self-perpetuating?
Suddenly the term Limited English Proficiency or English Language Learner is especially bothersome. First and foremost because we are all language learners all the time. We never stop learning language, whether that is a first language or not (I learn new words and structures in English every day)...at the end of the day, how helpful are these labels? It seems that they are helpful most NOT to the student, but to the state who can then track the students it labels toward becoming better servants of the state. (i.e. if a student becomes "English Proficient" whatever that means, then he or she is a better servant of the state).
Hmmm....