Abstract
In this concluding chapter, I argue that the best way to cultivate the voice of quiet and silent students is through critical intersectionality and every day utopianism in the classroom. A culturally relevant curriculum, critical autobiography, inclusion of feminist perspectives and visceral learning constitute the form of critical intersectionality I promote. This critical intersectional approach is simultaneously pedagogical and political. It cultivates voice in groups poorly served by educational institutions and opens utopian horizons of social and political transformation. This chapter thus bridges the theoretical with the practical and shows how to practice radical political theory pedagogy as the practice of equality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Amanda Carlin, “The Courtroom as White Space: Racial Performance as Noncredibility,” UCLA Law Review 450 (2016).
- 2.
By voice, I am referring to the capacity for critical self-reflection and articulation that grows out of self but also reaches out to others.
- 3.
I address the macro aspects of political struggle in my book Confrontational Citizenship, 2017.
- 4.
In the prison visit chapter, the voice of students was a central component. In the chapter on online learning, the voice of students was also a primary concern.
- 5.
For the narratives that frame students, see Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 61. Ange-Marie Hancock states that Latinas are taught “obedience to the church, submission to men and limited participation in public discourse”; Hancock, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (New York: Palgrave, 2011), p. 153.
- 6.
See Pizarro, Chicanas and Chicanos in School, 2005, p. 259.
- 7.
Carlin, 2016, p. 476.
- 8.
I acknowledge the wide range of diversity that the term “Latina” obscures. For the difficulties involved with Latino identity, see Cristina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 9.
See Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 2016. See Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also New Political Science: A Journal of Politics & Culture, Special Issue: Intersectionality for the Global Age (December 2015). See, finally, Amy Cabrera Rasmussen, “Toward an Intersectional Political Science Pedagogy,” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (2014): 102–116.
- 10.
See Gustavo E. Fischman and Peter McLaren, “Schooling for Democracy: Toward a Critical Utopianism,” Contemporary Sociology 29 (January 2000): 168–179. See also Darren Webb, “Where’s the Vision? The Concept of Utopia in Contemporary Educational Theory,” Oxford Review of Education 35 (December 2009): 743–760.
- 11.
See Michelle Fine and Lois Weiss, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-imagining Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003). See also Listening to Teach: Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Leonard J. Waks (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). See also James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
- 12.
A related concern is raised by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
- 13.
See Victor Rios, Punished, 2011. See also Marcos Pizarro, Chicanos and Chicanas in School, 2005.
- 14.
See Stephen Gilbert Brown, Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000).
- 15.
See Pizarro, 2009.
- 16.
See Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle Toward Liberation (San Francisco: Lanfield Press, 1972); and Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2012.
- 17.
See Mary M. Reda, Between Speaking and Silence: A Study of Quiet Students (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009). She maintains that “silence is not necessarily problematic” as it may provide opportunities for intense reflection, pp. 18–19. For a more critical perspective on silence, see Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-imagining Schools (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2003); Lois Weis and Michelle Fine, Eds., Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). For a defense of voice in the classroom as a path to empower students, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York, NY: Continuum Press, 2010). Finally, see Listening to Teach: Beyond Didactic Pedagogy, ed. Waks (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015).
- 18.
See Houston A. Baker, “Scene…not Heard,” in Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993). It is important to point out that silence can represent an opening for a lively discussion, where an instructor simply waits and lets the atmosphere of silence descend on a classroom until someone finally speaks. The willingness of instructors to embrace silence in the classroom as a learning tool can also signal to students that the instructor is patient and willing to invest time in the learning process. Silence can also be a valuable form of energy in the classroom that is mobilized to intensify the theatrical aspects of dialogic encounters.
- 19.
See http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html, accessed on August 12, 2017.
- 20.
American politics is largely a symbolic exercise. Politicians tell stories about contemporary problems and who is to blame. These blame narratives propel politicians to the top via code words (e.g. welfare queens; under-serving poor; immigrant invasion; etc.) that tap into popular anger and channel it toward the most vulnerable members of society. For these and related themes, see Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998). For the racist character of these narratives, see Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). For discourse analysis of narratives of blame pertaining to welfare, see Sanford F. Schram, Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
- 21.
See Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
- 22.
See Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, “Wrapping the Curriculum Around Their Lives: Using a Culturally Relevant Curriculum with African American Adult Women,” Adult Education Quarterly 58 (2007): 44–60. See also Carlos Alberto Torres, Ed., Education, Power, and Personal Biography: Dialogues with Critical Educators (New York: Routledge, 1998).
- 23.
See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007).
- 24.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd Edition (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2007), pp. 43–44.
- 25.
Romand Coles, Visionary Pragmatism, 2016, p. 20.
- 26.
See Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward, eds. Robbin D. Crabtree, David Alan Sapp, and Adela C. Licona (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). See also Jeanne Brady, Schooling Young Children: A Feminist Pedagogy for Liberatory Learning (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
- 27.
Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002).
- 28.
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York, NY: Washington Square Books, 2004).
- 29.
hooks, 2004, xv.
- 30.
See hooks, The Will to Change, 2004.
- 31.
See Susan D. Blum, I Love Learning; I Hate School: An Anthropology of College (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).
- 32.
See hooks, 2004, p. 153.
- 33.
See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). See also Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004).
- 34.
For the relationship between humor and critical reflection, see Simon Critchley, On Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 16–19.
- 35.
Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
- 36.
See bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989), p. 5.
- 37.
See Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). See also Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).
- 38.
According to the American Psychological Society, the divorce rate in the U.S. is 40–50%. See https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/, accessed on October 31, 2018. Every day, there are 20,000 phone calls place to domestic violence hotlines. Intimate partner violence constitutes 15% of all violent crime. See https://ncadv.org/statistics, accessed on May 15, 2019.
- 39.
James Wenzel, “Classroom Observation Report on Contemporary Political Theory,” November 20, 2017, unpublished.
- 40.
See Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2007.
- 41.
See Pizarro, 2005, p. 120.
- 42.
See Romand Coles, Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 223.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sokoloff, W.W. (2020). Conclusion: Silence, Voice and Political Resistance in the Classroom. In: Political Science Pedagogy. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23831-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23489-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23831-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)