Jane Anna Gordon

Beyond Anti-Elitism: Black Studies and the Pedagogical Imperative

Elitism is frequently invoked among the pantheon of ‘‘isms’’ actively to be disavowed. Indeed the charge of elitism often takes the form of reiteration, of identifying yet another manifestation of adherence to traditional standards steeped in discrimination by sex, race, and class, this time in their institutional guises in the merit credited to those whose privileged identities facilitate their entry into prestigious schools and employment. To be an anti-elitist is not to practice such acts of deferral, not to assume the greater value or quality of who and what are widely considered to possess it. The anti-elitist questions whether it is the identity of the candidates and the access that such people have to exclusive prerequisite training that are the basis for their inclusion in elite institutions rather than their merit when compared with all who might be considered if given the same opportunities. To be anti-elitist is then part of a larger project of challenging current forms of hegemony, of actively manifesting an ability to exercise judgment independent of a pervasive false consciousness that encourages a reflexive sense that prestige and quality are synonymous. The essay that follows takes up and critically examines this widespread way of discussing elitism and anti-elitism. I suggest, critically engaging the work of Frank Furedi, that there is nothing intrinsically progressive in anti-elitism, that standing alone, it may, in fact, be incoherent. If we are to dislodge inadequate forms of hegemony, we must do so not by attacking the aspirations to have institutions that embody the best of what is available in their respective areas, but by offering better exemplifications of realizing and rewarding such models of The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 32:129–144, 2010 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714411003799033

Hannah Arendt's Political Theology of Democratic Life

Abstract In this essay, I explore Hannah Arendts suggestion that we conceptualize human power and freedom polytheistically if our aim is to understand the challenges and requirements of democratic self-governance. Although it is not clear that politics must always be understood through theological grammars, if it is to be, polytheism affirms that there may be multiple sources of value and of right, offering both a metaphysical counterpart to value pluralism and a vision of how to create political practices and institutions that mirror and honor both the equality and distinction of human beings.

Creolizing educational practices

Many of the undergraduate students I have taught have expressed surprise that there are not more courses focused on questions of education offered in departments devoted to the study of politics. After all, schools are typically turned to as the primary institutions through which future generations are cultivated, which raises questions about what should be reproduced. At the same time, and for the same reason, there are no social or political movements seeking transformation (whether progressive or traditionalist) that don’t contain a philosophy of education and corresponding educational program. If one wants to build a particular sort of future, one needs to cultivate people who think, value, and feel in one way, as opposed to many others. This is especially evident to students of political theory. After all, regardless of the time or place in which they write, most canonical political theorists address how one builds particular polities through the careful constituting of citizens. Early on, I was struck by the dual character of schools as places that can damage and waste the human potential of some on one hand and that can and should be put in the service of liberation on the other. This point was driven home through two examples from which I benefitted directly. The high school that I attended offered one Advanced Placement course: “AP U.S. History.” Although I never took that course and so do not know for sure, school legend had it that the formidable White U.S. southern teacher who offered it was highly conservative, priding himself on how the curriculum for the class had remained unchanged, impermeable to the movements in social and cultural history then raging. In the absence of any other way to fulfill the national U.S. history requirement, a group of parents of primarily Black students at the school mobilized to demand the creation of an African American history class. I am unfamiliar with the details of their efforts and the negotiations in which they culminated. I am certain that to teach the class, they hired Charles R. Branham, who had earned a PhD from the University of Chicago and taught as a professor at the local, historically Black college, Chicago State University, as well as Roosevelt University and the University of Illinois, where he won the Silver Circle Excellence in Teaching Award. I took the class. For many of my peers and me, the class was nothing short of transformative. Because Mr. Branham was accustomed to teaching more none defined

When Monsters No Longer Speak

The authors summarize their theory of disaster as a sign continuum through which monsters—mythic agents of divine warning—raise questions of the meaning of political speech in the wake of colonialism. Unlike prior ages, where monsters had the social function of specialized speech, their warnings are ignored in the age of modern colonialism. Thus, instead of focusing on whether subalterns can speak, the authors ask, Can they be heard? This question is examined through explorations of the challenges racism poses for distinctions between moral and political speech.

Introduction Engaging justice, engaging freedom

This introduction outlines the core debates in the 8-piece symposium dedicated to critically engaging Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice. Among these is whether the establishment communities that ar...This introduction outlines the core debates in the 8-piece symposium dedicated to critically engaging Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice. Among these is whether the establishment communities that are Sen’s primary interlocutors could ever be allies in the projects of freedom and social transformation that he so powerfully elucidated and the relationship of general theories of justice to the choice of some empirical examples over those that emerge from the places in the global South where conditions of self-determination for citizens are most lacking. While asking whether we need a political ideal beyond justice, the richness of the articles and Sen’s very substantive reply are testament to his profound contribution both to scholarship and as a model alternative to the often unjust and ungenerous character of the contemporary academy.

The empire of necessity: slavery, freedom, and deception in the New World

Chapter 13, Autobiography and New Communication Tools, by Philippe Lejeune, translated by Katherine Durnin, investigates how new digital communication tools have changed autobiography and how we think about our identity. The author starts by demonstrating that printing was the technological development that enabled the development of autobiography. He then describes two key features of the new digital communication tools: fusion that refers to the combination of writing with sound and image, and speed that changes how we perceive time and space. The author also explores the impact of the new digital communication tools on personal diaries, correspondence, and autobiography. In Chapter 14, The Blog as an Experimental Setting: An Interview with Lauren Berlant, the editors interview social theorist Lauren Berlant. The interview focuses on Berlant’s research blog, Supervalent Thought. It includes questions on her motivation to start the blog, readers’ comments, the relationship between blogs and autobiography, and what “counts” as identity activity.

Of Force, Power, and Will: Rousseau and Fanon on Democratic Legitimacy

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chain. He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they. How did this change take place? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I believe I can answer this question” (Rousseau 1987:141). So opens Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s On the Social Contract and his meditations on the ways in which restraints on liberty can, under particular arrangements, enhance the freedom of individuals. The discussion, a portrait of the fragile possibility of “legitimate and sure rule of administration in the civil order,” turns on two points: that the “right of the strongest” can be meant only ironically and that the possibility of communities in which disagreements are resolved politically requires a set of conditions that are difficult to create or sustain, but that turn indispensably on an orientation toward differences that, while not aiming to subsume them, assumes that they may be meaningfully negotiated rather than treated as sedimented lines of battle and impossibility.

Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools by Amy J. Binder

cultural impact of the physical convergences of these two peoples extends far beyond the population of mixed race individuals produced from those interactions, while at the same time demonstrating the multiple frames through which this study might be conducted. Of particular interest is Robert Warrior’s ‘‘Lone Wolf and Du Bois for a New Century: Intersections of Native American and African American Literatures’’ in which Warrior writes about the trial of Lone Wolf vs. Hitchcock, contextualizing his examination of that trial with contemporaneous moments in African– American history. What Warrior offers in this essay that is especially useful, is a way of undertaking comparative studies of African–American and Native-American literary, cultural, and historical experiences. In making these connections, it is not enough—Warrior asserts—to rest on superficial comparisons, but they must be firmly rooted in more substantial ground, which can only be found in thorough knowledge of both African–American and Native-American experiences with all that such a knowledge entails. In acknowledging this need, Warrior also touches on one of the weaknesses of the text, a weakness readily acknowledged by the editors of the edition. Much of the scholarship that is produced about these convergences comes from those trained singularly in African–American or Indigenous studies, and often times the scholarship is conducted primarily by African–Americanists. In order to fully tease out the nuances of these relationships and negotiations, scholars of both African–American and Native-American studies must be committed to unpacking these intersections. Crossing Waters, along other similar texts, is both informed by while simultaneously engaged in the process of reshaping Black Critical Studies in the ways that it shifts the paradigm of Black Studies away from narratives about and reflections on European contact. The text evidences the multiple spheres of influence exercised by African and African–American peoples even in spaces where they were presumed powerless and marginal. This work is necessary because it implicitly broadens discussions about the Black Experience in America, helping to generate, as a result, a more holistic understanding of the nature of that experience.