Abstract
In the introduction I state the purpose of this work, which is to begin to answer the questions of how American-style schooling is normalized in the islands of Micronesia, a process I argue is the product not of some distant past, but rather of the present; and what the effects of that normalization are in terms of the construction of schooling subjects (such as the student, the teacher, and the child/parent/family) in addition to larger issues of schooling as inherently benevolent, decolonizing, and intrinsic to narratives of national and economic development. Here I begin by reading the literature on schooling in Micronesia and the greater Pacific, a discourse that both constructs as well as purports to discover schooling as an acontextualized and ontological force. I then examine issues of postcoloniality and decolonization in terms of the dominant perception (in Pacific Islands Studies) that notions of “power” follow a conventional sovereignty model, thereby reifying limiting binaries of positionality. I conclude by exploring my own locus of enunciation rather than my positionality, in order to open up the conversation for alternative considerations of who (and where) I am to speak of this topic as well as the potentialities for a different kind of analysis of power.
“I should have preferred to be enveloped by speech, and carried away well beyond all possible beginnings, rather than have to begin it myself.”
Michel Foucault 1984
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Kupferman, D.W. (2013). Introduction: Where Do We Go from Here?. In: Disassembling and Decolonizing School in the Pacific. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4673-2_1
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