Monographs on teacher.. 9808 v5 - Umeå universitet

LISBETH LUNDAHLTOM POPKEWITZIntroductionSince 1993, a Swedish governmental grant made possible a collaborativearrangement between Umeå University and The University of Wisconsin-Madison.The arrangement was to provide scholarly exchangesbetween the two faculty and graduate students. One aspect of theexchange was to have faculty visit the campus of the other institutionand give seminars related to their ongoing students. Almost thirty facultyfrom the two universities have given such seminars at the otherinstitutions campus and spent at least a week to work with faculty andgraduate students. The exchange has also involved joint symposia at theAmerican Educational Research Association´s annual meetings andparticipation in the Thematic Network on Teacher Education in Europe(TNTEE).In 1996-97, the collaborative agreement extended its intellectualinterchange to a seminar for graduate students of the two institutions.Two seminars were organized to bring together graduate students fromeach of the institutions. One was held in Umeå in December, 1996 andthe second one in Madison during April, 1997. The two of us wereresponsible for coordinating the meetings.The purpose of the two seminars was simple. It was to put studentsin a responsible intellectual position in which they would have toarticulate the ideas of their research, to make the theoretical positionsavailable and understandable, and to maintain a high level of conceptualand methodological discussion. Our purpose was also to engage in across national conversation to examine our collective norms of educatingand reading to consider similarities and differences.The graduate students prepared papers that represented their ongoingresearch projects. The papers would be written in a manner that wouldallow serious discussion of the ideas and approaches taken in their dissertationprogram. But the seminar papers were to reflect a differentkind of writing than that of writing a paper for a class. Students weretold that the intent was to prepare a paper that would be eventually7

publishable. The writing needed to be analytically clear but at the sametime, theoretically informed. Further, the paper was to be viewed as oneintellectual signative, identifying the problematic from which the studentunderstood the problems of the world of scholarship. In back of allof this, we wanted to make the stakes of the seminar as similar to the stakesthat are confronted when writing and engaging in intellectual life.The seminar was to provide a forum in which the graduate studentsresearch could be engaged in a small, intellectual circle of peers wherethere was the possibility of an intense discussion about ideas. For thefirst seminar in Umeå, five papers were prepared from each of the twoinstitutions that related to the graduate students dissertations. The paperswere written in English and distributed prior to the seminar.The seminar was scheduled for two and half days, with a relativelysimple organization. Rather than start with a paper presentation, twostudents were asked to prepare comments and questions about the paper.These comments began the discussion, followed by the paper writersresponse, and then a general discussion of the problem, methods, resultsand, in some instances, the problematic. The second seminar in Madisonhad the same format. In most instances, the students revised theirfirst papers in ways that were substantive and furthered the dialogueinitiated in the first,Umeå seminar.We saw the seminar, from its preparation to the current publicationof the papers, as a potentially important part of intellectual educationof students interested in the scholarship of education and social science.It is rare that graduate students have the resources available to them toparticipate in a small research seminar such as the one that was held.Further, it is even rarer that such a seminar can be cross-national incharacter. We can immediately compare this seminar to the professionalmeeting that most of us go to in order to talk about our research. TheAmerican Educational Research Association´s annual meeting or theEuropean Educational Research Association meetings come to mind.Typically, papers are presented, sometimes with a reactor to frame thepositive and negative of the paper, but with little serious discussionbecause of the time schedule. One advantage of such meeting for facultyis its invisible colleges, informal meetings with colleagues from otherinstitutions to talk about ongoing work and to (re)establish contacts.8

For most graduate students, they do not have the contacts for suchinvisible colleges and the intellectual and communal discussions that itentails. This seminar provided the time and the organization to enablethe students to have a sustained and disciplined discussion about theirresearch as well the paradigmatic assumptions that were made. Theconversations began prior to the meetings as the two groups of studentspaired off to meet and discuss the ideas and organization of the seminarwith fellow students from another national context.The substantive discussion of the papers at the two symposia produceda reflective process at multiple levels. At a first level was a thinkingabout the different intellectual approaches of the two graduate studentgroups. The Madison group was very much into post-modern socialand historical theories and wrote their papers in ways that reflected thisintellectual tradition.From this first seminar, The University of Wisconsin-Madisonstudents were part of a weekly seminar called the Wednesday Group. Inaddition to their course work (individual units of study within the Ph.D.program), the students meet each week to read across the disciplinesthat range from political theory, to history and literary theory. It is fromthese readings and conversations that the dissertation topics andmethodologies of the enclosed studies emerged. This emphasis on theoryand history is atypical of graduate students within the US but in thiscontext provided a way in which the two groups could talk in substantiveways as Swedish literature draw on multiple disciplines as well. Wesay this because this particular seminar is not typical of graduate studentsboth in its intellectual closeness and theoretical readings.This intellectual organization of studies posed a particular gloss tothe conduct of the seminar. The empirical problem of the Madisonpapers tended to be to relate historical text with theoretical questions,particularly that of the relation of power and knowledge that is drawnfrom Michel Foucault and feminist theories. The Umeå papers, in contrast,tended to move from the empirical problems under investigationand also involved multiple intellectual traditions. The focus of the initialset of papers from Umeå tended to be more concerned with themoving from the ground up, that is from identifying the ways of handlingand interpreting data than from a discussion of the theoretical9

students seemed to find this less important as they worked together.If we examine the initial discussion, the framing of the seminar inEnglish posed a momentary problem for both groups. For the nativespeakers, it meant that the normal speed of talk and conceptual andlinguistic nuances related to national cultures had to be consciouslythought about until a flow of communication could be established. Forthe Umeå students, it meant speaking in theoretical languages andcomplexities that were not a first language. At points, frustration wasexpressed. This frustration was that when the words came out in English,its seemed so simplistic and condensed the thoughts in a way thatthe Swedish students did not always feel comfortable with. This frustration,by the end of the first seminar, seemed less of a problem as theflow of ideas and discussion were intense.The differences, we need to stress, were seen by the students as not asgreat as they initially thought. But it required the students to understandthe differences in ways in which students cross-examine, ask questions,and engage in criticism. Above all the cultural and theoreticaldifferences and the resulting discussions were seen as highly stimulatingand creative in the subsequent research work of the students.The intellectual dialogue was also helped by the social conversationsthat occurred in Umeå and Madison. In both seminars, students arrivedearlier than the actual day of the seminar and spent time for sightseeingand meetings in social contexts. While visits to bars and the listeningto music tend not to count in the reconstructed logic of science,the social was a part of the intellectual.Then there was the seemingly mundane that was not mundane. Intalking about publishing, for example, we discussed what makes a bookworthwhile to published. How does one go about talking to publishersor sending articles to journals? How do you succeed working towardsdeadlines when there are so many other things to do? These questionswere not only procedural but also about how ideas come to circulatewithin intellectual communities and the seminar provided a concretesite to consider these broader issues of career.11

DAWNENE D HAMMERBERGDisrupted Assumptions:Social and Historical Constructions of Literacy,Illiteracy, and E-literacyThis paper is meant to disrupt presumptive truths of the present byunsettling controlling factors of the past which have been understoodas essential to the unfolding of history. As an example, various forms of”technology” have been seen as fundamental to history’s ”development.”However, this paper seeks to disrupt understandings of history whichchronologically narrate time as a natural progression through technologicaldevelopments. In addition, the actions and movements of particularpeople in particular historical moments have also been seen as the basesfor historical change. Yet, this paper disrupts the notion of history as asuccession of events enacted by human beings who are independentagents outside of time and temporal rationalities. More specifically, thispaper is meant to disrupt present notions of literacy, illiteracy, andelectronic literacy (e-literacy) through a history that tells of theassumptions that have separated and elevated writing and print fromother forms of communication.In many ways, the realm of conceivability for disrupting assumptionsof the present comes from a particular reading of the past. Foucault’sgenealogy is a method of reading history which problematizes theassumptions and generalities that appear as natural or self-evident inthe discourses of the day. While this paper does not attempt to write agenealogy of ”literacy,” it does take as its starting point the facets of agenealogical history which are disruptive to assumptions of the present1 . Genealogy, as a history of the present, has very real implicationswhen the grounds upon which present-day assumptions are built canbe investigated and appraised for their inclusionary and exclusionaryprescriptions, their real and imagined promises, their limited and limitingprospects 2 .Through historical examples, this paper problematizes some presentassumptions about ”literacy.” These assumptions are grouped together13

which come with an underlying assumption of cultural and societal”democratization.”However, this understanding of ”literacy” as necessary and powerfulhas its history, and the ”power” associated with literacy is not anautomatic given. For example, in primary oral cultures, which Ong(1982) defines as ”cultures with no knowledge at all of writing” (p. 1),”literacy” has no power, since there is no knowledge whatsoever of ”it,”or of what it can do. Instead, value and power are attached in thesecultures to accustomed oral traditions, just as value and power areattached in the dominant cultures of our time to accustomed literatetraditions. Cultural production and knowledge circulation can happenboth with and without writing, and in fact, ”literacy” can only be culturallyproductive when the culture places a value on the written word and itsuses. It may be difficult to understand, from a literate standpoint in thepresent, how the ”invention” of the alphabet had little to no consequenceto the cultures of the time. And yet, as Whitaker (1996) points out:It is an obvious but sometimes neglected point that, in the eighthcentury, when the alphabet was invented and used for the first time towrite Greek, it had neither a long tradition of written literature nor anyof the associations of a dominant culture attaching to it - as it almostalways did when it was used in later periods of history to write otherlanguages. To put it crudely: the first Greek who learned the alphabethad nothing to read. On the contrary, in archaic Greece the culture towhich all the power and prestige belonged, was the oral one; throughoutmost of this period there was no tradition other than the oral to whichpoets could turn for inspiration and material, nor any audience otherthan listeners to whom they could address themselves. (p. 216)Literacy, in other words, has not always been a necessary form ofcommunication, and in fact, has been seen as a hindrance to trulycommunicative communication. Plato’s Socrates, for example, criticizedwriting because it interfered with established habits of communication,destroying memory rather than enhancing it, and fragmenting socialrelationships (see Langham, 1994) 4 . Struggles against the technologiesof reading and writing manifested themselves at various points in history,as tensions between ”literate” ways of being and ”oral” ways ofbeing, as if the two can be separated, divided countries and groups of15

people. For example, Myers (1996) explains that Medieval France”became split between Southern France (le Pays du Droit Écruit), whichacknowledged the written laws of Roman law, and Northern France (lePays du Droit Coutumier), which acknowledged oral societies and localuses” (p. 30). In addition, Myers goes on to say that similar tensionsexisted during the Norman invasion (1066-1307) when the ”Normanswanted to eliminate the use of local, oral authentication of ownershipof property in the England of the Middle Ages because those methodsallowed the local, native Anglo-Saxons of England to control their ownproperty through personal relations (oaths of witness) and other methodsof local authentication” (p. 30; see also Street, 1984; Clanchy, 1979).Even later, writing was often viewed as secondary to oralcommunications. For example, during the late 1200s in Europe, writingwas not considered ”trustworthy” when compared to face-to-face oralcommunications in courts and in daily business interactions 5 . Even aslate as the Reformation (1600s), in Europe and in the colonies of NorthAmerica, oral connections linked people and businesses moreso than”literacy” (see Myers, 1996; Street, 1984; Clanchy, 1979).These tensions, however, did not occur because of some ”natural”divide between ”literacy” and ”orality.” In fact, how ”literacy” was usedand valued depended upon the already established rules of oral traditions.In other words, understandings of appropriate oral communicationmethods and topics were already invested with enough relevance thatthese practices were able to shape understandings of the ”appropriate”methods and topics for reading and writing. For example, when writtenrecords slowly became more customary during the late 1700s in theUnited States, it was due to ”an increasing amount of travel [which]helped to shift social practices from face-to-face interactions withacquaintances to interactions with strangers” (Myers, 1996, p. 32), butthese written interactions were based on the preservation of oralagreements. Tensions between accepted communications techniquesoccur when the rules governing how one ”should” communicate in onelocal space come in conflict with how one ”should” communicate inanother local space. As writing and print gained leverage in the 1700s,the tensions between various communication techniques were lessapparent as print penetrated people’s lives indirectly through an under-16

standing that oral sermons and speeches were written down, and througha general acceptance that writing and print were effective ways to conductbusiness (see Myers, 1996, p. 33, 39). In other words, the circumstancesof cultures which accept ”literate” techniques are such that various socialneeds are obviously fulfilled through writing and print, not that thetechnologies of writing and print enter the culture on vacant grounds 6 .Particular acts of reading and writing, therefore, become viewed as”necessary” in particular social circumstances and discourses of what isworthwhile.The necessity of writing and print for the development of such fieldsas science and history may seem monumental because in many wayswritten records enable a form of thought that allows for a different typeof knowledge formation and organization (see, for example, MacNevin,1993; Ong, 1982; Clanchy, 1979; Graff, 1979; Diringer, 1948).However, it is not the written records ”themselves,” nor literacy ”itself,”that enable an altered form of thinking. The fact that reading and writinglend themselves well to scientific inquiry or particular tellings of historyhas less to do with ”literacy” than to the social and historical milieuwhich allows certain forms of thought to flourish over others. Sincedefinitions of ”literacy” are determined by cultural understandings ofwhat is worthwhile, the matters that are recorded in writing, as well asthe conventional understandings of how written records are to beperceived and read and used and by whom, are also determined bycultural understandings of what is worthwhile. Therefore, it is not”literacy” that is necessary for science or modernity or emancipation.Instead, social and historical circumstances enable shifts in particularversions of knowledge creation and production; social and historicalconditions promote (or repress) changes in patterns and organizationsof thought.For example, a version of general understanding that enables modernscience involves the distinction between the ”given” world and the”inferences” or ”hypotheses” that are conceived by human beings. Inpart, this division has its roots in the Reformation, when a differentway to think about religious texts emerged (see Olson, 1991). Beforethe Reformation, there was no distinction between what was said in thetext and what was interpreted by the reader. A text’s interpreted meaning17

was seen as exactly the same thing as what the text really said, as in theactual intent of God being taken from scriptural readings. Although Stock(1983) has shown that the ”heretics” of the Middle Ages based their theologyon a different type of interpretation, Olson (1991) also points out that:...while heretics recognized the interpretations of the Church asinterpretations - as man-made - they did not recognize their owninterpretations as interpretations. They, like the medieval church, tooktheir interpretations to be the ones intended by God, and hence, theydied, apparently happily, at the stake for them. (p. 153-154)Since ”interpretation” was not viewed as the issue at hand, religiousstruggles were based on what God actually meant, as understood intraditional dogma, as trusted in a larger understanding of text than thegiven/interpreted dichotomy can allow. Even when the Scripture accordingto Aquinas had several layers of meaning in the late 1200s, all meaningswere thought to reside in the given text (see Olson, 1991, p. 154).Convictions and beliefs that may not have been explicitly stated in the textwere nevertheless seen as part of the text and its meaning. It was allintertwined. However, in the first half of the sixteenth century during theReformation, an interpretive break was being made. Olson (1991) writes:The interpretive principle of the Reformation, as expressed forexample in Luther’s attitude to the Scripture, was that Scripture is”autonomous,” it does not need interpretation, it needs reading; it meanswhat it says. All the rest is made up, a product of fancy or tradition. Itwas this distinction between the given and the interpreted that launchedthe Reformation and, a century later, opened ”the book of nature” tomodern scientists.... (p. 154)Olson goes on to explain that the metaphor of nature as ”God’s book”that was customary in the Middle Ages took on a literal meaning in the1600s when modern scientists such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, and FrancisBacon made the distinctions between what was ”given” in the text ofnature (observed facts) and what was theoretically interpreted or inferred.Therefore, according to Olson, ”it may be argued that modern sciencewas the product of applying the distinctions evolved for understandingthe book of Scripture, namely that between the given and the interpreted,to the book of nature” (pp. 154-155). However, the point here is thatthe distinctions between observed facts and imagined hypotheses are18

The rationalizations for assumptions such as the ones grouped in thisfield are based entirely upon the dominant status of cultures which viewthemselves as superior due to the fact that they are ”scientific” or ”modern”or ”democratic.” However, an analysis of the historical and intimaterelationships between ”orality” and ”literacy” helps to explain thathumankind’s ”development” from ”oral cultures” to ”literate cultures”is not a progression toward a better way to transmit language, nor a”natural” outgrowth of oral ways of being, but instead an unfolding ofvarious rule-governed conventions for the circulation of language. Oralcommunications never went away or came back; instead, the ways peoplehave been able to communicate orally (and about what, and throughwhat medium), just like the ways people have been able to communicateliterately (and about what and through what medium), have shiftedover time with the discursive practices which name the ”appropriate”means and modes of thought circulation. Once again, genealogy viewsthe history of the ”literate subject” not only in relation to the technologiesof writing and print, but also in relation to social practices outside ofthe realm of the printed word. Shifts in the definitions of ”literacy,” inother words, are viewed for their complicity with social and historicalbeliefs and conventions, not as changes that were ”meant” to happen,nor as changes that will eventually culminate in a final and best way of”being literate.””Orality” is a relatively recent term devised and used by anthropologists,sociologists, and psychologists over the past thirty years as aparallel to ”literacy” (see Ong, 1982, p. 5; Thomas, 1992, p. 6). It ismeant for purposes of analysis and comparison in light of theoverwhelming influence of writing and print 9 . ”Oral” means ”utteredby the mouth” or ”spoken” 10 , and ”orality” is a way of describing, inThomas’ (1992) terms, ”the habit of relying entirely on oral communicationrather than written” (p. 6). The term has been useful and positivein the work of Ong and others who mean to dispel the misconceptionthat strictly oral cultures are severely limited in cultural growth andrefinement. It is also meant as a way to describe ”thought and its verbalexpression in oral culture” as compared to ”thought and expression inliterature, philosophy and science, and even in oral discourse amongliterates, [which] are not directly native to human existence as such but20

have come into being because of the resources which the technology ofwriting makes available to human consciousness” (Ong, 1982, p. 1).Yet the term ”orality” can also serve to separate two forms of culturalproduction which are deeply interwoven.When it is presumed that there has been a natural and progressivedevelopment in communication techniques from the oral to the writtento the printed to the electronic, the ”differences” between ”orality” and”literacy” that appear in the ”electronic age” manifest themselves in termsdefined on ”literate” grounds which are already presumed to be superior.On this terrain, where writing and print are viewed as necessary forfields of thought such as science, philosophy, and history 11 , where”literacy” is equated with ”civilization” and ”progress,” it is easy to(mis)understand writing, print, and electronic communications as thetools which have brought about levels of knowledge that are ”higher” or”better” than the wisdom (often viewed as folky 12 ) available in primaryoral cultures 13 . However, it should be remembered that the separationof ”literacy” from ”orality” only occurs on a terrain where ”literacy” isalready overwhelmingly dominant. On this terrain, ”literacy” can beoutlined on the rooftops and garden penthouses of a civilized skyline,or electrified in the gated communities of technological advancements,or perpetuated in the ivory towers of scholarship and intellectual racism 14 ,while the contours of ”primary orality” can barely be glimpsed from a”literate” perspective and most often must be imagined, which makesthem look identical to the contours of ”illiteracy” 15 .Pattanayak (1991) depicts the contours represented in particular discoursessurrounding ”literacy” and its ”opposite” by writing: ”Illiteracyis grouped with poverty, malnutrition, lack of education, and healthcare, while literacy is often equated with growth of productivity, childcare, and the advance of civilization” (p. 105). However, this conceptionof literacy/illiteracy is not without its history, and is completely tiedwith relations of power. If we were to imagine the terrains of ”primaryorality,” we would have to imagine a land where ”illiteracy” is not aproblem, not an issue by any means. ”Orality,” when it is truly ”primary,”has no visions of ”literacy” or ”illiteracy,” since the centuries of intellectual”growth” associated with the techniques of writing are not at allsignificant to cultures with no knowledge whatsoever of writing. ”The21

introduction of writing,” writes Hoyles (1977), ”made illiteratesinevitable” (p. 23). However, in our imaginations, we have to wonderhow ”inevitable” the ”illiterates” could have possibly been in cultureswho had been operating for centuries without writing. These cultureslived in what we would term ”illiterate” environments, but they didn’tknow these were faulty and inferior environments, because they weren’t.There was nothing to be inferior to.When writing was ”invented” around 3100 B. C., probably by theSumerians, with the development of systems for writing occurring sometimebetween 3100-1599 B.C. (MacNevin, 1993; Schmandt-Besserat,1988; Graff, 1987; Diringer, 1948), it was tied directly to spoken ideas,but was not meant to represent all spoken ideas. Writing began withpictures and direct representation, often iconographic, and then movedto more mnemonic mechanisms which carried the meanings of wholeideas behind the symbol. The representation of ideas then shifted intorepresentations of syllables among the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians,Persians, Aztecs, Mayans, Chinese, Hittites, Egyptians, as well the Indiansystems of writing which greatly influenced South East Asian forms(MacNevin, 1993; Kaestle, 1988; Harris, 1986; Rahi, 1977; Carpenter,1973; Gelb, 1952; Diringer, 1948). Yet early in this history of literacy 16 ,knowledge of hieroglyphics or iconographs was something available onlyto scribal priests and the elite few with whom they shared this tool(MacNevin, 1993, pp. 12-15). As an example, the word ”hieroglyphics”refers in Greek to ”sacred or priestly carvings”, and it was believed thatthe only way to read the symbols was to have access to the mysticalknowledge of the priests. In spite of this seemingly limited access, it shouldnot be interpreted as a scribal scheme, as Lucas (1972) points out:The monopolistic character of early schooling was not the consciousresult of a scribal conspiracy to enlist education for the preservation ofclass privilege. Rather, it was a natural outgrowth of many forces shapingSumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian life. Because these cultureswere extremely conservative, absolutist, and sanctioned by a highlyauthoritarian ideology, schools also assumed such characteristics. (p. 45)The fact that written knowledge was the property of a few andconveyed to others through oral communications is not indicative ofthe ”power” of writing in its technological ”growth,” but instead,22

indicative of the accepted power structures and the dominant modes ofcommunication in place at the time.The representation of sound/syllables ultimately led to the ”invention”of alphabetic systems to represent more discrete sounds. The Greek alphabet,”invented” sometime around 650-550 B.C. (MacNevin, 1993;Kaestle, 1988; Graff, 1987; Havelock, 1971), added vowels to 17 andborrowed 19 letters from the (often forgotten) Phoenician alphabet,which was probably the first ”consonantal” alphabet (Rahi, 1977, p. 14& 16). However, as great as the Greek alphabet may have been as the”foundation” to all European alphabets in use today (Diringer, 1948),its ”development” and spread had little to do with technological determinismor a ”natural” development in communication technologies,since ”[t]he script and the very principles of the alphabet were adoptedfrom the Phonecians of the Levantine coast, with whom Greeks werenow increasingly in contact” (Thomas, 1992, p. 53). In fact, the alphabetwas not viewed as an essential tool for the general Greek publicright away, as its uses were for commercial services in line with thePhonecians (Thomas, 1992, p. 56), or for poetic purposes (Thomas,1992, p. 57), or ”restricted to a small elite and limited to a few functions,chiefly religion” (Kaestle, 1988, p. 98). Yet even during this time ofGreek alphabetic expansion, Thomas (1992) points out that ”most Greekliterature was meant to be heard or even sung - thus transmitted orally- and there was a strong current of distaste for the written word evenamong the highly literate: written documents were not consideredadequate proof by themselves in legal contexts till the second half of thefourth century BC” (p. 3).When the first schools in Greece were being formed between 500and 400 B.C., students learned to ”read” (or recite) by heart (Thomas,1992, p. 92) because the ability to memorize and orally recite oral poetryand great philosophical works was of greatest value at the time. As thetools of reading and writing became more wide-spread with the adventof Greek city-states, members of the society were taught to be literatefor specific political and civic functions such as ”moral conduct, respectfor social order, and participant citizenship” (Graff, 1987, p. 28).Meanwhile, the Greek alphabet was being transferred to the Romansthrough an Etruscan influence (Diringer, 1948, p. 535), and the Latin23

potent: to be ”illiterate” is not to be nonhuman, nonintelligent oruncivilized 18 . If, throughout time, illiteracy has been variously equatedwith a savagery or a deficiency or a disease which stands in the way ofprogress, it has not been because these are ”natural” characteristics ofwhat it means to be ”illiterate.” Rather, the ever-shifting notions of”literacy” or ”illiteracy” are created and defined through mechanisms ofpower that do not exist outside of social and historical relations.Technological advancements are never merely introduced into a culture,whether or not that culture is primarily ”oral” or already highly ”literate.”Instead, there are specific cultural contexts which always shapehow the technologies of ”literacy” are perceived and how (if at all) theywill fit into the established customs related to the production andcirculation of thought. Just as the ”electronic age” (as we know it) dependsupon writing and print, the historically contingent technologies of the”literate” are dependent upon tremendously complex interrelationsinvolving oral communications.Seemingly ”progressive” shifts in the technologies of ”literacy” appearat moments when whole new technologies are ”invented,” like systemsof writing, or the alphabet, or the printing press, or e-mail. Some of theways in which people have been able to organize thought and knowledgemay not have been thinkable without writing or print or electronicnote passing, and yet, the ways in which people have organized thoughtand knowledge have varied greatly over time even when the sametechnology (writing) was being used. For example, during a time whencultural dialects were seen as a threat to national cohesion (the end ofthe eighteenth century in the United States), instruction in ”literacy”involved having students place their toes on straight lines (where thesaying, ”toe the line,” came from) while they stuck out and wiggledtheir tongues (see Myers, 1996, pp. 64-65) 19 . This type of ”literacy” wasvalued because it included the appropriate pronunciation of writtenwords and phrases, whereas the kind of ”literacy” valued in another era(say right now) means that students work together in small groups tocompose daily news stories, during a time when businesses areencouraging ”cooperative teaming.” In addition, the type of ”literate”knowledge involved in the development of electronic technologies wasvalued for its possibilities of better communication during the first World25

War. These variations in the values and uses of ”literacy” are notdependent upon what literacy ”is,” but instead on the demands of socialand historical circumstances. Changes in the meanings and uses of”literacy” shift according to transformations in the discursive practiceswhich delineate how knowledge is ”best” circulated, valorized, attributed,and appropriated 20 .Therefore, communication techniques do not merely develop in aprogressive succession from worse to better, but instead, the ways inwhich human beings communicate vary over time due to struggles overpurpose/pedagogies/procedures. This is not a matter of right and wrong,but a matter of history and power. While it is beyond the scope of thispaper to debate whether or not ”advancements” in communicationtechniques could have happened (or been ”discovered”) without readingand writing, it is clear that ”literacy,” by itself, did not progressively”develop” on its own in a technologically determined dance. This isbecause ”literacy” can not exist ”by itself” outside of cultural and historicalrelations of power. The ”necessity” of reading and writing fortechnological ”progress” is only as ”necessary” as cultural and historicalcircumstances will allow.Assumption Number Three: Literacyand Educational Understandings of Text, Author, ReaderThe definition of ”text” entails the printed word. ”Texts” aresomething from which to extract the author’s meaning, and while areader’s interpretation is certainly an interest of education, there is adivision between what is actually said, or ”given,” in the text, andthe possible interpretations a reader can make of it. Educationally,therefore, we have the responsibility to teach children how to getmeaning from a text by reading, and how to put meaning into atext by writing. There are particular educational devices andmaterials regarding the instruction of reading and writing that areessential for teachers to teach and students to learn. Electronictechnologies would not have come about without literacy; however,many forms of electronic technologies have nothing to do with26

literacy per se. In fact, ”e-literacies” which deal with non-print(television, mass media, hypermedia, virtual reality) may be posinga serious threat to the future of literate cultures and literacy itself.”Text” is one of those concepts that didn’t exist before writing and print.However, like any concept, its definition is subject to change over timeand within particular contexts of thinkability. For example, in certaincontexts ”text” has been expanded to include more than the printedword. When ”literates” began to analyze ”oral” cultures, both past andpresent, a re-defined ”text” which has nothing to do with the printedword became usable and thinkable as a way to validate oral culturaltraditions and productions. While ”oral text” may seem (to some) likean oxymoron, to others, it has stood as a useful way to compare andanalyze language structures and patterns of thought circulation. In addition,and quite recently, the meaning of ”text” is beginning to undergoa wider change in educational fields, as demonstrated by the newlyreleased Standards for the English Language Arts (NCTE & IRA, 1996).In it, text ”refer[s] not only to printed texts, but also to spoken language,graphics, and technological communications”; language ”encompassesvisual communication in addition to spoken and written forms ofexpression”; and reading ”refers to listening and viewing in addition toprint-oriented reading.” However, U.S. National Standards or not, thisnew meaning of ”text” is not commonplace in U.S. classrooms.Educationally, ”text” still refers to, for the most part, that which isprinted: text where the author is still in control of meaning, text that isnecessarily linear in its flow from beginning to end, text where the reader’srole is to decipher (and possibly use) the meaning. Assessment of astudent’s reading ability revolves around the general comprehension ofthe author’s meaning, or the particular knowledge of word recognitionand decoding skills used to ”get” meaning from the text.Meanwhile, wider meanings of ”text” which have been talked aboutby thinkers such as Bakhtin 21 , Barthes 22 , Derrida 23 , and Foucault 24 , andwhich are gaining momentum in scholarly circles and technologicalcircuits, have not yet made it to public school classrooms either. Theremay be a reason why: the prospects might look just plain silly in theclassrooms we know and aloofly like. This is, after all, the here-and-27

now, completely equipped with the inertias of the that-which-isthinkable-just-now.It doesn’t fit into the standard curriculum to requirethat students analyze their own interpretations in terms of a network ofcontingencies, as the theorists mentioned above might advise. Theteacher-as-lecturer-using-the-English-of-yesteryear doesn’t lend herselfwell to a consideration of the plurality of texts formed at the intersectionof several consciousnesses. The materials available - the things that wecall ”texts” - do not come embedded in auditory and visual communicationexperiences, at least not in class sizes of thirty.The common understandings of text, author, and reader are based inpart on the structures of language in print. There is a given (or fixed)meaning to be discovered in the text, someplace between the beginningand the end; there is the need for the antecedents of conclusions to lineup in a coherent order determined by the established customs of”appropriate” reasoning. What is said and the way it is said still need toconform to the conventions of language in print, which is to say languagecontained within a definitive piece, the word on the page, the author incharge. When the author is in charge, the author’s meaning is central tointerpretation. A reader’s interpretation is in jeopardy of being ”wrong”when it departs the ”grounded” text because many of the words on thepage still have particular references which do not permit completely freeinterpretation. It is a chicken that crossed the road, for example, not a cowor a goat. Text is understood as a fairly autonomous entity in this viewbecause it holds a distinct meaning (the author’s) for the reader to ”get.”Yet ”text” has not always been so independent, as evidenced in ancientGreek documents which left a lot unsaid, relying instead on the rememberedand presupposed knowledge of the reader (Thomas, 1992, p. 76). And”text” may not always be thought of in its linear, self-contained, and printedsense, with the types of ”texts” available through electronic communications,such as hypertext or virtual reality 25 . The point is that fluctuations in thecommonly understood definitions of text, author, or reader are related tofluctuations in discursive practices, transformations which are linked tolarger shifts in understandings that extend beyond any new definitions of”text” or any new definitions of what literacy ”is.” Myers (1996) asks:Why does a society decide to change its mind about its literacypractices? Societies do not develop something called intelligence or28

English teaching and then invent new standards of literacy from thepossibilities of that intelligence or English teaching. Instead, a standardof literacy - or what we call a skill - is the result of an interaction amongsuch variables as urbanization (Lerner 1958), the political interactionsof Protestantism and capitalism (Tyack 1974), the religious beliefs ofCalvinism (Lockridge 1974), secularism (Clanchy 1979), technologylike the printing press (Eisenstein 1979), mass media (Schramm andRuggels 1967), fertility rates (Vinovskis 1981), and a failing and/orgrowing economy (Reich 1992). (Myers, 1996, p. 5)However, all of these ”variables” that help to define a standard ofliteracy can also be described as manifestations of the discursive practicesof the time. If a society thinks it has ”decide[d] to change its mindabout its literacy practices,” it is not without relations of power alreadyestablished in discursive practices which constitute taken-for-granteddiscourses of truth 26 . Any changes in the definition of ”literacy” andany corresponding institutional changes in pedagogy do not occur assimply as a ”change in the mind” might imply.The components that help to define a standard of ”literacy” need tobe invested with relevance before whole systems of thought can be shifted,while the notion of ”relevance” is tied not to fertility rates, nor to thepolitical interactions between Protestantism and capitalism, but rather,and more consistently, to the discursive practices of the time. This isnot to say that factors such as fertility rates, politics, religious beliefs, orthe printing press have nothing to do with changes in the definition of”literacy,” but rather, it is to say that factors which are seen as importantin the transformation of ”literacy” are only valued as consequentialthrough discursive practices that validate particular perspectives anddisregard others.If the commonly understood meaning of ”text” expands to includesuch ideas as ”intertextuality,” ”multivocality,” or the ”de-centering” ofa singular author (see, for example, Landow, 1992, pp. 10-13), thisshift will not occur without transformations in the discursive practicesthat set forth appropriate modes of thought circulation, valorization,attribution, and appropriation. If the definition of ”literacy” is currentlyin a state of transition to include the negotiation of multiple perspectivesand the interpretation of various texts, the factors of importance may29

e a growth in informational services coupled with wider internationalrelations 27 . The discursive practices surrounding the tools of ”literacy”(electronic or otherwise) establish understandings of what text ”is,” whichtexts are more valuable, who has the authority to decide, and what we’resupposed to do with the text in order to be called ”literate,” if we’recalled ”literate” at all. In other words, what it could mean to be ”literate”within the framework of a broadened definition of ”text” will bedependent upon the ”accepted” and valued productions of a culture,what those productions require of the ”literate,” and whether thoseproductions incorporate the wide-spread use of the materials whichenlarge the meaning of text.In the ”electronic age,” with telephones, televisions, movies, filmstrips,hypermedia, and virtual reality (for example), we are living in anage of ”secondary orality” which depends upon writing and print for itsexistence (see Ong, 1982, p. 3). This can mean anything from the factthat oral television scripts are written down to the fact that writing wasnecessary for the invention of the telephone, on which we communicateorally. The use of many of these electronic communication devices (television,telephone, radio) is indeed wide-spread. However, the”secondary” portion of televisions and telephones and hypermedia andvirtual reality can also mean that the acts of using these technologieshave little to do with ”literacy” as we understand it today, if we understandit to mean reading or writing a printed text. If writing and print arenot always immediately apparent in the stylistic communication ofthoughts through sound, the common understandings of the day maynot be apt to place these actions within the realm of ”literate”communication. When non-print electronic technologies are viewed asnon-literate, they are put in a position outside of ”true” educationalvalue. They are seen as demonstrational extras, appreciated for theirentertainment value, but it’s time to get back to work, boys and girls.Because the factors which change definitions and tools of ”literacy”do not exist outside of temporarily static definitions of what counts asimportant, what counts as truth, what counts as valuable knowledge,we are not in the position to know whether or not communicatingthrough electronic (including non-print) means will be a focus of”literacy” education. We are not in the position to know where things30

may go or what will be the end, since we are not in the position to maketruth and knowledge ”up.” However, through the active disruption ofcommon assumptions surrounding ”literacy,” we could potentially bein a position to see that there are alternate possibilities.Alternate PossibilitiesIf you are reading this with the technologies of a late twentieth centuryWestern ”literate” 28 , your perceptions of this paper are driven in part byan attempt to tweeze out some kind of knowledge from a text you maynever have seen before; you are silently analyzing its parts, its selfcontainedstructure, its syntax, its semantics, as your unvoiced innervoicegoes about decoding its meaning; you have objectified it in such away that the intelligent productions transpiring in your mind areoccurring on a completely individualized level; you may even have somewell-tuned academic skills for recording or storing any information thatyour thoughts have brought about.Yet, this has not always been the way that people have ”read” a text.What it means to read, and to read well, as history has shown, iscompletely dependent on a culture and a time, if it’s even an issue ofimportance at all. People and cultures, in other words, do not devise ameaning for ”literacy” and then simply ”do” it. The discursive practicesof the time determine what one is to ”do” when one is ”being literate,”and this in turn determines the range of possible interpretations andperceptions of whatever is being ”read.”This having been said, the discursive practices of our time may bechanging in such a way that we can imagine a form of ”literacy” whichincludes more than accepting the ”text” as a fixed or given word, morethan accepting writing and print as the superior mode of knowledgecirculation, more than accepting the authority of the author. For example,with electronic communications, we can begin to imagine howperceptions of ”text” and ”authorship” and ”readership” may be different.When we are able to think of ”text” differently, of ”readership” and”authorship” differently, then the possibilities for the types of knowledgeswhich are valued begin to look different too. Landow (1993) exploresthis line of thinking in relation to an altered understanding of ”text”:31

One tends to think of text from within the position of the lexia underconsideration. Accustomed to reading pages of print on paper, one tendsto conceive of text from the vantage point of the reader experiencingthat page or passage, and that portion of text assumes a centrality.Hypertext, however, makes such assumptions of centrality fundamentallyproblematic. . . . Hypertext similarly emphasizes that the marginal hasas much to offer as does the central, in part because hypertext does notonly redefine the central by refusing to grant centrality to anything, toany lexia, for more than the time a gaze rests upon it. In hypertext,centrality, like beauty and relevance, resides in the mind of the beholder.(pp. 69-70)In addition, the roles of ”author” and ”reader” in many forms ofelectronic communications are fundamentally reconfigured. Withhypertextual configurations, ”authorial” control is shifted a degree ortwo to the reader, who gets ”to choose his or her way through themetatext, to annotate text written by others, and to create links betweendocuments written by others” (Landow, 1993, p. 71). In on-line multimediaexperiences, readers are not confined to a limited realm of informationsuch as found in books or on hypertextual CD-ROMS, butinstead, the reader can move in an array of visual images and sound,text and non-text, choosing between generalities and specifics presentedby numerous authors and artists. As another example, the conversationswhich take place through written on-line conferencing, such as experiencedthrough Multiple-User Dimensions (MUDs) or MOOs (MUD ObjectOriented), occur in real time and on the highly present terrain of thecomputer screen, a place that seems ”real” as the conversation is occurring.The lines between author and reader are transparent here since one cantake on both identities as the conversation, or ”text,” transpires accordingto group interaction, not a singular authority. In addition, digitaltechnologies allow for audiences of one, where the ”reader” can order upextremely personalized information (see, for example, Negroponte, 1995);and virtual reality programs make the distinction between author and readerinvisible as the ”reader” (who may not have a written text anywherenearby) ”writes” the actions and progressions of the experienced ”text.”When the minds of the literates are informed by discursive practicesthat allow for reconfigured versions of text, author, and reader, there are32

a variety of possible ways to perceive the act of ”being literate.” A relatedset of assumptions emerges. For example, to negotiate within this understandingof text could require a kind of confidence and a sense of self,coupled with an ability to take risks (see Myers, 1996, chapter 8). Sincethe uses of ”literacy” in the electronic circulation and production ofknowledge are perceived (at this point in time) to be self-monitoredand self-determined, it is possible that the ”literate subject” may beassumed to be an autonomous agent of knowledge production. This”literate subject” would be one who lives in the intertextuality of languageand interpretation, one who is confronted by various paths or ”choices”in the production of knowledge (see, for example, Landow, 1992; Bolter,1991).In line with the assumption that ”literacy” is a form of ”power,” this”e-literate” subject might be imagined to have a type of individual”power” in choosing ”self-determined” paths of learning and textualexploration 33 . When the educational possibilities of a ”literacy” definedin electronic circumstances include the construction of a subject who isassumed to be ”autonomous” with electronic media, the ”e-literate”subject may also take the form of an ”individual” who is not only ”selfdetermined,”but also ”self-aware” of his or her own role in the creationof meaning. This subject could possibly be skillful at interrogatingreceived representations, able to read symptomatically 34 in an increasinglyglobal field, and capable of analyzing positions and interpretationsthrough the critique of accepted histories.Lest this seems too speculative in the inertias and constraints of thepresent time, these possibilities for ”e-literacies” are not too far off fromwhat the Standards for the English Language Arts (1996) are proposing.Although the use of electronic communications is not necessary for thisversion of ”literacy,” which Myers (1996) calls ”translation literacy,” itstill involves the ”[i]nterpretation of many texts, producing multipletranslations of many different kinds of texts in many sign systems” (p.57). In numerous classrooms all over the United States 35 , teachers arealready preparing students to find their ways on their own, to be risktakersand metacognitive thinkers, to question themselves at every point,by asking students to keep (for example) journals of the problems andhighlights they encounter while reading, or by encouraging students to33

guess and struggle and try various reading strategies when coming acrossunknown words, or by having students negotiate mathematics textsthrough trial and error. The perceived power of a self-sufficient thinkerand the perceived necessity for comfort in ambiguity and uncertainty asa way of learning to take risks are already an everyday part of manystudents’ schooling. Perhaps we are not thinking about it in terms of ”eliteracy,”which just goes to show that the technology is not determiningwhat we do with it, but if and when ”e-literacies” are perceived to benecessary in common educational understanding, then the ”e-literate”subject will already be waiting. This is because ways of thinking aboutand defining the ”literate subject” (”e” or otherwise) do not ”enter”society on vacant grounds.Where previously unthinkable, it is now possible (because of the historicalcontexts of thinkability, not because of some progressive history)to consider and play with the idea that spoken and visual expressionscan be within the realm of ”text.” Moreover, it is possible to think of”text” as a conglomeration of ideas, a conglomeration of beginningsand middles and ends, which are interwoven in a web of historicallyconstructed thought. It is possible to think of numerous entrances toand exits from this text, where connections to a myriad of possibledirections open up assorted lines of argumentation and investigativestudy. It is possible to think of ”readings” as filtered through numerousand disparate historically contextualized moments of interpretation,where no reader is a deserted recluse on an isolated author’s island.Indeed, the words and/or ideas may unfold on the page or the screen orthe Virtual Boy strapped to your head in a pattern that resembles resolution,but it is now possible to understand their meaning as dependentupon various, perhaps unforeseen, social and historical contexts.Irresolute. There is no beginning, middle, and end to a ”text” that isreconfigured to include a plurality that goes beyond the writer’s ”exact”meaning, as the illusions of narrative structure, grammar, and logic arereplaced by the infinity of language and its infinite connotations.Less reverence for print; no beginning, no middle, no end; lessauthority for the author; no natural evolutions. Yet let’s not forget thatliteracies will always be embedded in discursive practices and presumedassumptions. These alternate possibilities are only as alternative as34

imagination will allow. ”Possibilities” do not reveal themselves indereistic 32 vacuums someplace outside of time. It must be rememberedthat the ”literate subject” is always a social and historical constructiondefined by social and historical conventions. This is because whateverwe ”do” (or don’t do or can’t do or won’t do) is based upon the discursivepractices embedded in our everyday understandings of the world inwhich we live: our understandings of the ordinary operations of thatworld, our perceptions of the chances and opportunities we see forchanging that world, the daily possibilities of what we think we aresupposed to do in that world, how we see that very world itself. Anytheories or hopes for possibilities (in education, in life) are interwovenwith the ”reality” of local and social experiences, which in turn areinterwoven with larger historical movements in the history of thoughtitself: what is thinkable in a given time and place, and for what historicallycontingent purposes.It is important to remember that the possibilities of significance forthe future have not yet been outlined. But there may be allusive forms:the possibilities involved in multi-level interpretation, or the possibilitiesinvolved in displacing the center by clicking on the margins, or thepossibilities of creating new centralities through explorations inintertextuality, or the possibilities of interrogating representations fromthe standpoint of unheard voices. Each historical context yields roomfor only certain possibilities to flourish and expand, as each representationof ”literate behavior” survives for particular social and historicalreasons. Infused with power, possible meanings of ”literacy” take shape,and these meanings have a life and a future, a basis for furtherinterpretations and additional possibilities, only when the accepted rulesof understanding, once again tied to the moment, are fulfilled. Limitedand limiting, the accepted rules of understanding are the assumptionsof the time, which regulate the possibilities of significance. These arethe assumptions to be disrupted.35

Notes1. As a method of reading history, genealogies situate the discursive practices which areendemic to historically standard assumptions, analyzing how those assumptions regulateactions and options. Foucault (1977a) defines discursive practices in this way:Discursive practices are characterized by the delimitation of a field of objects, the definitionof a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms forthe elaboration of concepts and theories. Thus, each discursive practice implies a play ofprescriptions that designate its exclusions and choices. (p. 199)For example, and in relation to historical meanings of ”literacy,” the technical processesrequired to be viewed as ”literate” are analyzed in terms of how they are defined andinstitutionalized in ordinary discourses regarding the perceived norms and appropriateways to ”be literate.” For my purposes, genealogy serves to demonstrate that the exclusionsand choices made over time regarding the meanings of ”literacy” are not a part of ”progress,”but rather, historically situated indications of power at work. This in turnproblematizes the educational discourses surrounding ”literacy” that we take as given,thereby exposing the power and limitations embedded in the discourses of our day.Foucault (1977a) distinguishes ”discourses” from ”discursive practices” by writing:Discursive practices are not purely and simply ways of producing discourse. They areembodied in technical processes, in institutions, in patterns for general behavior, in formsfor transmission and diffusion, and in pedagogical forms which, at once, impose andmaintain them. (p. 200)With this in mind, I am tying historically specific ways of ”being literate” to theinstitutionalized patterns for general behavior, as knowledge about ”literacy” is transmittedthrough the pedagogy which informs the technical processes of what it means to ”beliterate”, or the technical aspects of what one is supposed to ”do” when one is ”beingliterate.” The variations throughout time in what it means to ”be literate” are dependentupon particular discursive practices that define the norms of ”legitimate” literate behavior.While these norms and legitimate ways of being are understood to change over time,Foucault (1977a) also writes that discursive practices ”possess specific modes of transformation”(p. 200). He goes on to say:These transformations cannot be reduced to precise and individual discoveries; and yetwe cannot characterize them as a general change of mentality, collective attitudes, or astate of mind. The transformation of a discursive practice is linked to a whole range ofusually complex modifications that can occur outside of its domain (in the forms ofproduction, in social relationships, in political institutions), inside it (in its techniquesfor determining its object, in the adjustment and refinement of its concepts, in itsaccumulation of facts), or to the side of it (in other discursive practices). (p. 200)Modifications and variations in discursive practices are dependent upon, among otherthings, shifts in the way that knowledge is circulated or produced, changes in the techniqueswhich allocate more or less value to certain forms of knowledge, alterations in the view ofwho or what may act as an authority or agent of knowledge, and transformations in thepurposes or uses of knowledge.36

2. Foucault’s notion of genealogy is a method of reading history. It is nothing more nornothing less. It is different from a progressivist reading of history in that it neverassumes that history has continually brought forth greater social stability, moreproductive development, or superior means of economic growth. It resists the notionthat technological developments are, in and of themselves, the driving forces behindreconstituted human thought. It is also different from ”critical” readings of history,which problematize modernist notions of progress by viewing history from a ”personal”or ”emancipatory” perspective, without necessarily tying the ”personal” and the”emancipatory” to historical moments of thinkability. In the ”critical” view, it is as ifthe individual is the instrument of social change, able to overcome the constraints ofhistory, the restraints of a dominant culture, by employing a technique defined bythat very culture, by being ”literate,” for example.Genealogies, on the other hand, inform us that there is more to history than arecord of the milestones of productive development, and more also to history than aseries of incidents performed by human beings who float unconstrained through historicalmoments. Genealogies, as explained by Foucault (1988a) are ”a form of historywhich can account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains ofobjects etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendentalin relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout thecourse of history” (p. 117). Genealogy, then, is a method to critique the ”nature” ofwhat we have become with the hope of exposing that which appears ”natural” and”self-evident” as social and historical constructs.Dean (1994), borrowing from Foucault and Nietzsche, sketches out these threeforms of intellectual approaches to history which I have briefly touched upon here.He calls the first a ”progressivist theory” which ”proposes a model of social progressthrough the teleology of reason, technology, production, and so on” (p. 3). This theory”might be called ’high modernism’, and is exemplified by the narratives of theEnlightenment” (p. 3). The second form is a ”critical theory” which ”offers a critiqueof modernist narratives in terms of the one-sided, pathological, advance of technocraticor instrumental reason they celebrate, in order to offer an alternative, higher versionof rationality” (p. 3). This critical reading of history ”promise[s] emancipation andsecular salvation” (p. 3). In this paper, I am associating Dean’s third type of intellectualpractice with Foucault’s notion of genealogy, in that this practice is a ”problematizing”one. Dean writes that ”[t]his form of practice has the effect of the disturbance ofnarratives of both progress and reconciliation, finding questions where others hadlocated answers” (p. 4). In addition to associating this approach with Foucault’s (1977b)”effective history”, Dean also points out that ”if the widely used term ’postmodernism’is defined as the restive problematisation of the given, I would be happy toregard this type of history as an exercise of postmodernity” (p. 4). I would be happy tofollow.3. For anyone interested in the work done by UNESCO over the past ten to fifteen yearsin the fields of literacy education, culture, and communications, I have assembled anannotated bibliography that I would be happy to share. Feel free to drop me an e-lineany time: ddhammer@students.wisc.edu4. ”In the Phaedrus,” writes Langham, ”Plato has Socrates deliver what may be the earliest37

protest in Western history against the dehumanizing effects of ’modern’ technology.” InSocrates’ story of writing’s initiation in Egypt, King Thamus illustrates this complaint,as quoted by Langham:The fact is that this invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those whohave learned it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely onwhat is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their ownunaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves.So it’s not a recipe for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered.See http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1994/jul/moo.html5. Myers (1996) points out that during the late thirteenth century, ”written documentsbecame a support for oral exchanges, not an independent, silent witness” (p. 28).Priority was given to actual witnesses, actual testimonies, actual spoken words. Seealso Graff, 1987, p. 66; Clanchy, 1988, p. 137.6. The grounds upon which a type of literacy was able to flourish during the late 1700sand early 1800s in the United States are described by Myers (1996) as follows:Signature and recording literacy became necessary in the United States when moreand more people moved and when they then needed new ways of making informationportable, visible, and storable. During oral face-to-face literacy in the U.S., one livedand traded with people one knew in small, stable, familiar villages. But by the late1700s, more and more people were moving as the Louisiana Purchase opened up thesouthern-central part of the country in 1803, the Erie Canal opened up upper NewYork in 1825, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad opened up the Midwest in 1830, andthe railroad systems opened up the rest. (pp. 42-43)7. Foucault (1990) distinguishes between various understandings of ”power” by writing:[T]he word power is apt to lead to a number of misunderstandings - misunderstandingswith respect to its nature, its form, and its unity. By power, I do notmean ”Power” as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservienceof the citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugationwhich, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in minda general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whoseeffects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body. The analysis,made in terms of power, must not assume that the sovereignty of the state, the form ofthe law, or the over-all unity of a domination are given at the outset; rather these areonly the terminal forms power takes. (p. 92)In relation to my argument, I am viewing any seemingly fixed meaning of ”literacy”as an end result, a temporal terminal resting point, of relationships of power in action.8. Foucault (1982) writes:The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual orcollective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others. Which is to say, of course,that something called Power, with or without a capital letter, which is assumed to existuniversally in a concentrated or diffused form, does not exist. Power exists only whenit is put into action, even if, of course, it is integrated into a disparate field of possibilitiesbrought to bear upon permanent structures. (p. 219)9. The term ”orality,” as Thomas (1992) suggests, ”was coined deliberately on the analogyof ’literacy’ in order to denote this quality [of relying entirely on oral communication]38

in a positive sense: avoiding the implications of failure in ’illiteracy’” (p. 6).10. This definition of ”oral” is from Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. It is also importantto note that another meaning of ”oral” stated here is: ”of, relating to, or characterized bypersonality traits of passive dependency and aggressiveness.” This meaning of ”oral”serves to demonstrate how ”oral” ways of being are understood and underestimated incomparison to ”literate” ways of being. But once again, and genealogically speaking, thisunderstanding is a temporal resting point of relations of power in action which haveinvested ”literacy” with meanings of growth and production and ”orality” with meaningsof ”passive dependence.”11. Ong (1982) writes:Literacy...is absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also ofhistory, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art, and indeedfor the explanation of language (including oral speech) itself. There is hardly an oralculture or a predominantly oral culture left in the world today that is not somehowaware of the vast complex of powers forever inaccessible without literacy. This awarenessis agony for persons rooted in primary orality, who want literacy passionately but whoalso know very well that moving into the exciting world of literacy means leaving behindmuch that is exciting and deeply loved in the earlier oral world. We have to die tocontinue living. (p. 15)However, I would like to make the genealogical point that ”the vast complex ofpowers forever inaccessible without literacy” have little to do with the ”nature” of literacyitself but more to do with the science and governing mechanisms that are invested in ameaning of ”literacy” now taken for granted. While it may be currently ”true” that to”move on” requires the ability to read and write, it has not always been this way and itmay not always be.12. Thomas (1992) writes that:[O]rality is often idealized, invested with the romantic and nostalgic ideas connectedwith folklore, folk culture, and folk tradition, or the ’noble savage’. ’Oral culture’ isoften used interchangeably with folklore, folklore is seen as ’oral tradition’, and withlittle critical examination, but much idealism, orality and ’oral societies’ take on theromantic and exaggerated attributes of folk culture. In other words they become morethan merely descriptive tools and start to imply a whole mentality or world view whichis partly born of a reaction to the modern world. Oral culture is innocent, pure, andnatural, uncorrupted by the written word, or perhaps, depending on one’s standpoint,the pure manifestation of a people’s character. (pp. 6-7)13. Ong (1982) defines a ”primary oral culture” as ”cultures with no knowledge at all ofwriting” (p. 1). He also points out that ”[t]oday primary oral culture in the strict sensehardly exists, since every culture knows of writing and has some experience of its effects.Still, to varying degrees many cultures and subcultures, even in a high-technologyambiance, preserve much of the mind-set of primary orality” (p. 11).14. See Bourdieu (1993), pp. 177-180, for his explanation of ”the racism of intelligence”which ”is what causes the dominant class to feel justified in being dominant: they feelthemselves to be essentially superior” (p. 177).15. Roburn (1994) writes:There is a tendency to describe oral cultures as ’pre-literate’ and to treat the orality/39

literacy intersection as a unidirectional progression towards literate society. This outlookdevalues orality, but also limits literacy; rather than many literacies, with a variety ofpurposes and areas of knowledge, there is only one literacy, or one path for the evolutionof knowledge. Scholars are finding that there is a plurality of literacies. (paragraph 7)http://cug.concordia.ca/~mtribe/mtribe94/native_knowledge.html16. With regard to a history of literacy, it should be pointed out that the topic of literacy wasnot of great concern to historians until as recently as about thirty to forty years ago (Kaestle,1988; Graff, 1979). Before that time, historians were more concerned with celebrated menwho were already literate (Kaestle, 1988, p. 95). The reasons for even placing literacy’s”progress” in time are because of the prominence the subject has gained today.17. However, Thomas (1992) questions the notion of ”added vowels” by writing that:the conceptual significance of the addition of vowels has probably been exaggerated.The Phonecian alphabet also has letters corresponding to sounds.... The phonetic principleis hardly a Greek discovery. ... In any case, when the Greeks adapted certain signs asvowel-letters, it is very likely that they thought they were hearing a vowel soundapproximating to their vowels. It is notorious how sounds characteristic of one languagemay be heard very differently by speakers of another, and perhaps what the Greeks heardas vowels were the Phonecians’ guttural stops. (p. 55)18. See, for example, Pattanayak, 1991. Yet, in a very real way, ”illiteracy” actually can be(and has been) equated with ”nonhuman” or ”uncivilized” through the discourse whichdefines it. As an example, in the beginning of Of Grammatology, Derrida (1976) usesRousseau who writes: ”The depicting of objects is appropriate to a savage people; signsof words and of propositions, to a barbaric people; and the alphabet to civilized people,”as well as Hegel who writes: ”Alphabetic script is in itself and for itself the most intelligent.”In part, Derrida is ”focus[ing] attention on the ethnocentrism which, everywhereand always, had controlled the concept of writing” (p. 3).19. In the United States during the late 1800s and into the turn of the century, Myers(1996) writes that:[D]iverse districts, which were often organized around specific ethnic communities,mandated that their own values be taught, thereby increasing the ethnic tensions amongdifferent groups and providing a continuing rationale for the drive to have schools socializestudents into a ”unified” national culture with a unified national language. This emphasison national unification helped shape recitation literacy as a uniform way to report toothers what one knows and to create the myth of the U.S. ”melting pot.” (p. 66)20. Foucault (1977d) has called for a historical analysis of discourse, writing that ”[p]erhapsthe time has come to study not only the expressive value and formal transformations ofdiscourse, but its mode of existence: the modifications and variations, within any culture,of modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation” (p. 137). This isrelated to a historical analysis of the construction of the literate subject because the ”literatesubject” exists within particular cultures through the exercise of discursive practices whichdelineate how knowledge is circulated, valorized, attributed, and appropriated.21. Bakhtin (1984) writes about a text which is dialogic and multivocal in that it ”isconstructed not as the whole of a single consciousness, absorbing other consciousness asobjects into itself, but as a whole formed by the interaction of several consciousnesses,none of which entirely becomes an object for the other” (p. 18).40

22. Barthes (1974) writes:This new operation is interpretation (in the Nietzschean sense of the word.) To interpreta text is not to give it a (more or less justified, more or less free) meaning, but on thecontrary to appreciate what plural constitutes it. Let us first posit the image of a triumphantplural, unimpoverished by any constraint of representation (of imitation). In this idealtext, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpassthe rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning;it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritativelydeclared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, theyare indeterminable (meaning here is never subject to a principle of determination, unlessby throwing dice); the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, buttheir number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language. The interpretationdemanded by a specific text, in its plurality, is in no way liberal: it is not a question ofconceding some meanings, of magnanimously acknowledging that each one has its shareof truth; it is a question, against all in-difference, of asserting the very existence of plurality,which is not that of the true, the probable, or even the possible. (pp. 5-6)23. Landow (1992) uses Derrida as a way to demonstrate the convergence between criticaltheory and hypertextual technology, with particular emphasis on a reconfigured notionof ”text.” Landow writes:Hypertext blurs the end boundaries of the metatext, and conventional notions ofcompletion and a finished product do not apply to hypertext, whose essential noveltymakes difficult defining and describing it in older terms, since they derive from anothereducational and informational technology and have hidden assumptions inappropriateto hypertext. Particularly inapplicable are the related notions of completion and a finishedproduct. As Derrida recognizes, a form of textuality that goes beyond print ”forcesus to extend...the dominant notion of a ’text,’” so that it ”is henceforth no longer afinished corpus of writing, some content enclosed in a book or its margins but a differentialnetwork, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to otherdifferential traces.” (Landow, p. 59, ellipses in text, using Derrida, 1979, pp. 83-84)24. Foucault (1972) writes:The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the lastfull stop, beyond its internal configurations and its autonomous form, it is caught upin a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a nodewithin a network. And this network of references is not the same in the case of amathematical treatise, a textual commentary, a historical account, and an episode in anovel cycle; the unity of the book, even in the sense of a group of relations, cannot beregarded as identical in each case. The book is not simply that object that one holds inone’s hands; and it cannot remain within the little parallelepiped that contains it: its unityis variable and relative. As soon as one questions that unity, it loses its self-evidence; itindicates itself, constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse. (p. 23)In addition, Foucault (1970) also indicates that he would like his own ”work to beread as an open site. Many questions are laid out on it that have not yet found answers;and many of the gaps refer either to earlier works or to others that have not yet beencompleted, or even begun” (p. xii). It is now possible to think of text as an open siteeven after the author’s disappearance.41

25. In the realm of a re-defined ”text,” the reader’s interpretation is not only about what theauthor means, not only about the chicken who crossed the road, but also about the roads thereader crosses (and why the reader crosses them). When there are several authors and numeroustextual directions, when the reader is in charge of the directions of inquiry, the roads mayintersect in numerous places and a singular author’s linear plan no longer exists. There is nolonger a singular meaning to ”get.”And yet, even in an intertextual multivocal text, there will probably still remain a meaningto get, at least for a while; it may just not be author-determined. Eco (1992) points out:To say that interpretation (as the basic feature of semiosis) is potentially unlimited does notmean that interpretation has no object and that it ’riverruns’ merely for its own sake. To saythat a text has potentially no end does not mean that every act of interpretation can have ahappy end. (pp. 23-24)In other words, interpretation has a ”public criteria” (p. 25) and a textual basis, no matter howmany roads are crossed. (This too, by the way, has its history.)26. Foucault (1980b) writes:[I]n any society, there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterise andconstitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established,consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation andfunctioning of a discourse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certaineconomy of discourses of truth.... (p. 93)This quote points out once again that power cannot circulate or function without adiscourse, so it is not as if a society can ”decide” to change its mind outside of historicallyappropriate ways to think about problems.27. See, for example, Willinsky (1990); Myers (1996), pp. 56-57 and 106-188, as well as therecently released (1996) Standards for the English Language Arts put out by the NationalCouncil of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.28. I use the term ”technologies of the literate” as a way to describe the historically situated”legitimate” ways of using the materials available at the time to produce a behavior that iscalled ”literate.” These ways of ”being literate” are set in accordance with the discursive practicesof the time which position the norms and appropriate ways to ”be literate.” For furtherexplanation of this term as it is related to discursive practices, see Hammerberg (in progress)Technologies of the Literate: Historical Constructions of Literacy, Illiteracy, and E-literacy,Chapter Two. (ddhammer@students.wisc.edu)29. ”Inertias and constraints of the present time” is borrowed from Foucault (1988b), when hewrites:The Greek wise man, the Jewish prophet, the Roman legislator are still models that hauntthose who, today, practice the profession of speaking and writing. I dream of the intellectualwho destroys evidence and generalities, the one who, in the inertias and constraints of thepresent time, locates and marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of force, who isincessantly on the move, doesn’t know exactly where he is heading nor what he will thinktomorrow for he is too attentive to the present. (p. 124)”The weak points, the openings, the lines of force” are all the topics of this paper, as thespaces, which are opened up through genealogy when history is disrupted, provide a virtualarea in which educators are able to imagine and, yes, even practice.30. And even the understanding of text as ”giving” information and the reader as ”taking” it42

away (as opposed to ”adding” to it, ”modifying” it, ”memorizing” it, etc.) is indicative of aparticular kind of ”literacy.” Fluctuations in the definitions of ”literacy” are related tofluctuations in the ways that language is circulated, valued, authorized, and used.31. Part of this perceived need is my recognition that outlining possibilities of significance is adeparture from a historical reading of ”literacy.” However, since possibilities of significanceare represented in discursive practices of what is historically and culturally thinkable, thepossibilities I am outlining here, to my thinking, are a part of the history of the present ifonly because they are thinkable in the present.32. According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, ”dereism” as anoun means ”away from reality: thinking directed away from and not following ordinaryrules of logic.” This word is appropriate in this context because I am attempting to showthat theories are never formed or followed outside of socially/historically situated rules oflogic (reality). While it is possible to break away from (or at least critique) traditional rulesof reasoning and traditional hypotheses, all theoretical stances at this point in time need tobe grounded in some form of accepted argumentation if they are to be taken seriously. Inthis way, ”dereistic” theories can exist only in a Never-land: never imagined, never thought,never accepted. Some may call postmodern theory dereistic in that it aims to problematizetraditional thought, but I wish to point out its association with thinkable reality even as itproblematizes ordinary rules of logic.33. However, if it is possible for the ”e-literate” subject to be constructed as an ”individual”capable of making ”choices,” it must always be understood that this ”individual” and these”choices” are also defined and regulated through relations of power and by the socialconventions of the time.34. ”Symptomatic reading” is a way of approaching a text for the purpose of finding insightsand oversights, and seeing those insights and oversights as a symptom of the problem ofsubjectivity, text structure, historical representations, etc. Questions to consider during asymptomatic reading include: What are the intended and unintended messages? Whogains and loses from certain ways of presenting ideas? As an example, Toni Morrison’s(1992) Playing in the Dark is a book that does a symptomatic reading of American literatureby looking at the time period and ideologies which shaped how authors handled thelanguage, which in turn shaped the ways readers handled ideologies. While she does nottry to pick apart certain author’s attitudes about race, she does look at how the ”Africanistpresence and personae have been constructed - invented - in the United States, and of theliterary uses this fabricated presence has served,” (p. 90).35. Myers (1996) explains a typical reading situation involving risk-taking:Translation/critical literacy...requires an active, meaning-making self. Knowledge in thisnew literacy is embodied in the actions and lives of students. Let’s start with the risk-takingof the first grader who, reading aloud from a text in which Johnny was sent to a home fororphans, first pronounces the word ”or-puns” and, later, after reading that Johnny had noparents, pronounces the word ”orfuns.” Literacy in the case of this first grader who shiftsfrom ”or-puns” to ”orfuns” is a form of courage, of risking mistakes, of a willingness to riska guess, to propose a hypothesis or guesstimate, and to try another hypothesis or guesstimateif necessary. One of the purposes of English and English language arts in the new translation/critical literacy is to teach students to develop confident selves with the courage to engagewith difficulty. (p. 144)43

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SIGURD JOHANSSONChasm Between CodesThe first part of this paper consists of the theoretical framework with itsrelated concepts used in an analysis of a project related to the transfer ofknow-how in technical training from Sweden to Egypt. Within the socialsciences this framework can be placed into the field of socialreconstructivistic theories and is recognised under the name of the Codetheory.In the paper is a definition presented of the central conceptswhen, as in this study, they have been utilised in the analysis of therelations within the contexts of the organisation of work, as well as thetraining processes where training for the analysed work has been understudy.The second part consists of the results from those analysis. Twoexamples relate to the organisation of the work, one from the PorjusArea of Operation in Luleå River, Sweden, and the second from theAswan Two Plant in the Nile. Another two examples are the resultsfrom the analysis when the concepts have been utilised in the technicaltraining processes at two non-formal training centres. One of them isfrom Jokkmokk Training Centre and the other is from Aswan TrainingCentre. The results from those analysis shed light upon the differentprinciple-directing prerequisites, or the chasm between the codes, sincethey conceptualise the differences in the guiding principles among thetwo major categories within the project under study.Case under Study:In order to quickly bring the reader into the context without too muchdetails is the project described below in form of a metaphor. ATC is anabbreviation for Aswan Training Centre and JTC for Jokkmokk TrainingCentre.The case under study can be seen as a theatre scene where the hydropower plants in the upper part of the Luleå river and the River Nileformed the background. Although the equipment in the plants partlywere made by different manufacturers, they were almost identical in49

their construction principles, design and technology level. In both ofthe rivers all the plants were owned and run by the Swedish and Egyptianstates respectively and both of the states had set up organisations withthe main task to produce as much energy as possible. To fulfil thosetasks were specialised staff employed to work with the operation andmaintenance of the technical equipment within the plants.Beside those tasks, dealing with the production, had both of the organisationsin Sweden and Egypt inside themselves, in order to supplythemselves with competent staff, set up specific organisations for thetechnical training. The tasks of the those latter organisations also hadthe equal aim in both of the organisations to train the existing and futurestaff in the specific competencies related to the operation andmaintenance of the plants. In Sweden the training was organised as aschool formed, non formal, technical training centre (JTC) while it inEgypt was organised as lecturing combined with on-the -job training.When the curtains of the scene were withdrawn, the Egyptians weregoing to change, with support from the consultants, teachers at JTC,their form of the training by implementing their own training centre,ATC, and thereby to become more like how the organisation and theprocess of the training was made in Sweden.On the scene there were the participants of the project. One group wasconstituted by the staff at ATC, at the stage to be implemented. Theyconsisted of Engineers and Technicians with long experiences from work inthe power plants in the River Nile. The other group was the consultants,staff from JTC with experiences both from work in the power plants in theLuleå River and from teacher work at their centre. Those two groups werethe main actors. From time to time there were also guest actors performingon the scene, I judge myself as a such. The time of the study was from thelast part of 1992 until the end of 1996.The stage was built by the Egyptian company, properties were boughtby a loan from the World Bank and finally the fees and travels for theconsultants and guest actors were financed by resources from the SwedishAid Authority. The Producer of the play was formally the Terms of Referencesand Scope of Services in the contract made between SwedPower, a Swedishconsultant company, and the Egypt Electricity Authority. But lurking belowthe surface were other and stronger forces more directing the play in reality.50

Code theory:The British sociologist Basil Bernstein has, during nearly four decadescontinuously refined his theory which set out to describe what issuesthere are which make it possible for the society to reproduce itself. (Bernstein1971, 1973, 1977, 1990 and 1996)The basic stand for this theory is firstly, that due to the division oflabour the society consists of different classes and second, that the societyreproduces itself as a such. Furthermore that there are inequalitiesbetween those classes, and in order to sustain the inequalities and keepthe order there are forces in form of power and control in action. In histheory those concepts are central but Bernstein means that in the realitythey are interrelated to such a degree that they can only be distinguishedin a theoretical analysis. In order to make this distinction betweenpower and control are the concept of Classification and Framing used.But, and this is in my opinion the ingenious part, they are then broughttogether again under the concept of Code. However, the consequenceis that the three concepts are so interrelated with each other that inorder to define one of them, the others has to be used.Classification:If we agree that the society consists of different categories of people, theconcept of classification is used to describe how strict those categoriesare kept apart. The concept classification refer to power and that thispower is used in order to continuously reproduce the borders betweenthe different categories. But in order to exercise power, there has to besome underlying principles on which this power can rely. So, as a result,classification is the strengths of the principles maintaining the boundarylines between the different categories. If there are strong boundariesthe classification is said to be strong and if the boundaries are blurredand the categories more integrated the classification is said to be weak.Framing:The concept of framing refer to control in the same way as classificationrefer to power. Bernstein means that power alone can not explain thereproduction of the society. There is also a factor of control maintainingthe boundary lines created by the power. Framing means the internal,51

or external control, by which the different categories control boththemselves and others. In similar manners as with classification theframing is considered to be strong if there is a strict control and limitedpossibilities to cross the boundary lines. With weak framing meansthat there is little control of the boundary lines.Code:Code, finally is the concept which is developed and used to bringclassification and framing together. Bernstein define the concept ofcode like this:A code is a regulative principle, tacitly acquired, which selects andintegrates:a) relevant meanings meaningsb) forms of their realisation realisationsc) evoking contexts contextsFrom this definition also comes that there are illegitimate meanings,inappropriate forms of realisation as well as inappropriate contexts. (Bernstein1990 p. 14)By the use of those concepts in an analysis and their relations toeach other will varying code modalities develop. There are a number ofvariations possible due to reasons that both classification and framingcan be weak or strong and thus depending on their composition createdifferent modes or variations of the code.Utilisation of the Code-Theory Concepts in the Present Study:My own way to utilise the concepts in the theory is shortly describedbelow. But it must be emphasised that it is entirely my ownmethodology. Furthermore it gives the impression that it can be madein a quite linear way but in reality the steps were highly integrated andthe possible linearity has gradually appeared when analysing my ownwork.The first step in an analysis, aided by the concepts in the code theory,is to describe the relations between two categories with help of thecode concept. If the two categories are kept well apart it is a collectioncode, and if they are assumed to be integrated it is an integrated code.52

The code modality, formed by the composition between the degree ofthe strengths of the classification, regulating the relation between thetwo categories, and the degree of the framing factors, controlling thisrelation can then be analysed by finding the principles on which thiscode modality rely and by what means it is controlled. Of course it canbe claimed that the analysis by this way will be circular and at risk to beself-fulfilling. But it can also be claimed that by this way will a higherdegree of understanding be reached as in a hermeneutic circle.Codes within the WorkOrganisations and in the Training Process:The most essential findings are presented below in an abbreviated form.In this paper are not any descriptions presented or methodological issuesor questions related to the analysis treated. Shortly it can be mentionedthat the results gradually emerged. First they emerged in a more rawform during the participatory time of the study and then to be morerefined during the process of the analysis.The findings revealed that there was an integrated code modalityregulating both the organisation of work in Porjus and the process oftraining at JTC. In Aswan Two plant and ATC was the same mattersregulated by a collection code.During the analysis was also found that any exclusive principle notexisted only in one of the places. The differences in the code modalitycan more be explained by the composition of a number of principleseach recognised in all the places under study but judged to be of differentimportance in the respective places.It seems that when thedifferences of the importance of each single principle were added toeach other the code modality gradually shifted.Porjus Area of Operation:In Porjus Area of Operation principle stated that staff without tasksdue to organisational changes had to leave the organisation. The trustin the company’s social responsibility was not so high. The degree ofclassification between the different categories working in the plantswas weak. Another principle stated that the smooth and continuosproduction and the well-being of the equipment was the most important53

and seemed as a pride. Due to those principles an organisation haddeveloped where the boundaries between the different groups at thework and their different tasks were blurred and integrated with eachother. In the plants there were no remarkable boundary between mentaland manual work, although some specialised members had a higherstatus then others. The level of the formal education was not important,what counted was a high reliability and the ability to perform theirtasks. The changes within the staff between different places of workand with different tasks were not unusual.The work was only to a small amount controlled by access to physicalmaterials since all employees had almost uncontrolled access to toolsand storage’s. The work was controlled with respect to time since amarket economy approach was applied.Aswan Two Hydro Power Plant:In Aswan Two plant the number of staff was considerable larger thenin Porjus. There was a very strong principle regulating both the entryand final position in the hierarchy according to formal education.The principle stating that mental and manual related work should bekept apart was also very strong. That principle also embraced thatmore pure technical work and non technical work was performed bydifferent categories in the work force. Another principle prescribedthat the responsibility for specific equipment was a task in itself. Thisprinciple resulted in the physical division of the work force into differentplaces. The principle of seniority regulated both the promotionpossibility and the salary. The career almost always followed theway from work with operation and then transfer to maintenance work.The work was controlled by a strict system of written permissions toget access to tools, spare parts and consumable material. Due to theprinciple of responsibility came the work force to have their places ofwork in the plants according to which specific equipment they wereresponsible for. The time within work was less controlled. The principlefound in Porjus about the unnecessary number of employees were alsofound in Aswan but it was not considered to be so important. The trustin the company’s social responsibility was very high.54

Jokkmokk Training CentreA modality of invisible pedagogy characterised the methodology withinthe process of training within JTC. At the centre all the teachers, onequal terms, were involved both in the theoretical and practical orientedparts of the training. The level of their formal education was notimportant, what counted was the amount of their practical experiencesfrom work and their ability to perform their tasks. With respect to theparticipant of the courses at the centre, there were not any demands forpre knowledge or differences made between the trainees depending ontheir level from formal education. The content of the courses wasconstructed across different engineering areas according to the principlethat the trainees should better understand the whole system and theinterrelations between adjacent equipment within the plants. Connectedto this was the principle that the training should be practical useful inthe context of work. The methodology was also influenced by the marketeconomy approach of the school. In order to satisfy the trainees(customers) the teachers had to negotiate with them, both with respectto variations in the contents and the applied methodology in the courses.All of the staff at the centre had free access to the computers, printersand copy machines and all other equipment. The trainees had almostthe same access. The guiding principle was that all types of materialused in the training should be as close to the user as possible. The teacherstaff at the centre shared their place of work when not occupied withthe courses.Aswan Training Centre:Although all the efforts to influence the opposite the training processwithin ATC, became a visible pedagogy. The argument for thisconclusion is that one category among the staff performed the theoreticaland another category the practical oriented training, sustained by anintricate bonus system. During the training could not the categorieswith different formal education be mixed, neither was the teachers withinthe centre with lower formal education allowed to perform training fortrainees with higher formal education. Furthermore the teachers withhigher formal education were not allowed to perform training in practicaloriented parts. Yet another principle regulated that the different enginee-55

ing area of knowledge should be kept apart. By this reason a number ofboundaries were constructed between the different areas of engineering,thus creating a number of different categories on the same hierarchiclevel. The members of those categories were not allowed to pass theengineering knowledge area in their work as teachers. The teacher staffat the centre was also divided into different physical places dependingon their position within the hierarchic ladder and their area of engineeringwithin work.The process of the training was under the principles that all traineeswithin a course should do the same thing, with the same pace, at thesame time and under strict control from the teacher. The control overphysical material was such that every machine with it’s accessories, handtools, instrument, or other physical material at the centre was under theresponsibility to explicit assigned individuals. In order to get anyequipment or consumable from the storage was a written permissionneeded. The same was needed if the teachers needed material to beprinted or copied. The trainees were not allowed to handle anyequipment without the permission of the teachers.Chasm Between the Codes:The result from the analysis claim that the staff at ATC was regulatedby a strong collection code with strong classification and with the mainframing factor constituted by the efforts to control that the physicalresources were most securely kept, but with respect to their effort tocontrol the time, can the framing be considered to be weak. The processof training came to be characterised as a visible pedagogy. Theconsultants, on the other hand, were regulated by an integrated codewith weak classification and with the main framing factor constitutedby the efforts to control how the time could be most economical efficientspent. But with respect to the control of the physical resources theframing can be considered to be weak. With respect to the trainingprocess their efforts were striving toward an invisible pedagogy.In their common work during the implementation of the in-servicecourses at the centre the code modalities of the two main categoriescame into conflict with each other. Most evident became the effects ofthe different framing factors in the two groups’ views of each other,56

where the staff at ATC claimed that the consultants planned everythingand became annoyed if the planning had to be changed, and theconsultants became frustrated by the seemingly disrespect for the time.By saying this, it is not claimed that staff at ATC not controlled thetime at all or that the consultants not controlled the physical resourcesbut the amount of trouble and efforts the two categories made to controlthose matters differed considerably.Absence of Conflicts:Although the two groups were governed by such different code modalitiesvery few conflicts developed between them during the project. Onepossible explanation could be the effect from the same principle directingthe relationship between a salesman and the customer, namely theprinciple stating that the salesman is supposed to keep the customersatisfied. This principle partly governed the behaviour of the consultantssince they viewed the project as a trade where they were the salesmenand the staff at ATC were the customers. Partly it can be explained bythe contractual formulations since the consultants could always withdrawfrom a conflict by saying that their advises differed to taken decisionsregarding the matter at stake, but the decision was not theirs accordingto the contract. The staff at ATC was, in their turn, directed by theprinciple governing the relation between a donor and a receiver of agift, namely that a receiver is not supposed to criticise the gift but onthe contrary should try to please the donor. They could, in their turn,also withdraw from a conflict by the claim that the decision wasn’t theirsto decide but has to be brought to a higher hierarchic level. It mightwell be argued that by this way the two categories were trying to keepeach other satisfied but, without consciousness, governed by differentprinciples.There were however not a total consensus about everything, but themain impression was that both of the groups avoided conflicts betweeneach other as much as possible.There is also the question why those principles, with so largedifferences in their values, didn’t become evident early during the project.It looks somehow strange but it seemed to be the case that the twocategories wasn’t conscious about what issues the other category put57

their efforts to control, whereas what the other part didn’t put such aneffort to control became evident quite early. One plausible explanationis due to the invisibility. You can not realise that there is a directingprinciple except as an interpretation from an action or by a narrative. Inthe discussions at the project mostly specific practical problems werediscussed and alternative way to solve them treated. The underlyingprinciples were hidden in the arguments, invisible and unknown ofteneven to the messenger. To this argument can be added that since thesame principles at least to some degree regulated both of the groupscould a principle always be acknowledged in a discussion and thus wasn’tdiscussed in depths. Probably, partly because of the language problems,partly to avoid conflicts.Comparisons and GeneralisationThe aim of the study was never to make a comparative study but todescribe, analyse and plausible explain the outcome of the project. ButI have found that the continuos comparisons has been a help whenlooking for the underlying principles and the way they were controlled.It was during the continuos reflections in the comparisons aboutsimilarities and differences and how they could be understood that thefindings came to be refined. It might also be claimed that as soon assomething is described and analysed there is always some kind ofcomparisons involved.It must also be mentioned that the code modality varied with eachindividual and thereby it’s hard to make any generalisation within orbetween the groups. Since the very definition of a code says that thecode vary according to the situation and what is assumed to bemeaningful, the results presented here will at the same time be limitedto the situation as it occurred during the project. By those reasons thepossibility to generalise are quite limited. The differences in the directingprinciples were however there but only when looking at it as a whole.The analyses, although the description has been under face validity,must be understood to be my own interpretation from my experiencesas a participatory researcher.58

ReferensesBernstein, B. 1971 Class, Codes and Control. Volume 1. Theoretical Studies towards aSociology of Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Bernstein, B 1973 Class, Codes and Control. Volume 2. Applied Studies towards aSociology of Language. Routledge & Kegan Paul.Bernstein, B. 1977 Class, Codes and Control. Volume 3. Towards a Theory of EducationalTransmissions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (First Edition 1975)Bernstein, B. 1990 The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. Volume IV. Class, codes andcontrol. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04568-1Bernstein, B. 1996 Pedagogy Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, Researc, Critique.London: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 0-7484-0372-859

K E N T L Ö F G R E NTeacher Education, StatisticalMethodologies and theConstruction of KnowledgeThe study of statistics is an indispensable part of many educationalprogrammes, including teacher education. 1 My standpoint is that thestudy of statistics in teacher education is focused on hypothesis control,tests and classical statistics. 2In this article I discuss alternative ways of using statistical methodsin educational research, including the methodology of the Frenchsociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and other researchers 3 working in the sametradition of data analysis. I will also give a personal account of myencounter with Bourdieu’s statistical methodology. 4This article does discuss methods, but statistics is more than widelyapplicable mathematical methodologies. Identical statistical algorithmscan be used in various ways, depending on the research setting inquestion. As a counter-example to Bourdieu’s use of a specific statisticaltechnique (correspondence analysis), I will present a study (Räty, et al.,1996) which employs a classical statistics approach to the use of thesame statistical technique.Classical statisticsScientists often summarise their findings from both qualitative and quantitativeresearch in the form of cross-tables. There are several methodologicalapproaches to the statistical study of cross-tables containing categoricaldata. Many are deductive in their design, i.e. prior assumptions are madeabout the distribution of data. 5 I argue that the use of statistical analyses totest hypotheses — e.g. schemes to test or to check ideas or statistical modelsagainst data sets 6 — is far-reaching, in social science.There are clear advantages in “testing techniques”, using a priorigroups, e.g. the division of variables into groups of describing variablesand variables to be described, and advanced modelling, e.g. Jöreskog’sLISREL-based educational achievement studies.61

However, there are statistical computing environments, apart from thoseof quasi-experimentation, log-linear modelling, simple and multiple regressionanalyses etc., that accept the existence of graphic and exploratorymethods, e.g. iterative, exploratory and multi-dimensional approaches usingprincipal component analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, cluster analysisand correspondence analysis. These methodologies and approaches transformthe original data into cross-tables and the interactions in the tablesare summarised, sometimes in graphic displays, without any a priori, abstractidea about the inter-dependence between rows and columns. 7In the teaching of statistics in undergraduate and graduate programmes,there is clearly a need to discuss classical methods, e.g. methods totest significance, but there is also a need to discuss alternative ways offinding patterns in data.Statistical analysis in the tradition of BourdieuMy first encounter with correspondence analysis was through readingBourdieu’s Distinction (1984 [1979]). Encouraged by my graduate studyadvisor Prof. Martin Johansson, I started to look into the possibilities ofusing the method in my own research.Initially, I tried to find out exactly how the correspondence analysismethod should be used to search for and find patterns in data. With myearlier experience of the use of the multivariate descriptive statistics ofcategorical data, I thought I stood a fair chance of discovering quicklywhat the methodological “formula” was for knowing how to analyseand re-analyse cross-table data correctly.This learning process however went slowly as I was making erroneousassumptions. I was searching for the golden rules regardingcorrespondence analysis and the key question of how to identify thecategories to be included, or excluded, in the analyses and re-analysesof cross-tabulated sociological data. Later, as I learnt more aboutcorrespondence analysis, I saw that there are no such rules to be found— only mixed groups of different research traditions with partly incommensurableideas and recommendations.Correspondence analysis per se does not imply, either implicitly orexplicitly, a certain methodology, and the analysis method can be usedinductively as well as deductively. 862

What is correspondence analysis?I will show how this technique can be used as a tool in obtaining agraphical representation of the dependence between the columns of across-table. 9 The example data, which are not in themselves the focus ofinterest in this article, and the figures by correspondence analyses (Figures1 and 3) are based on the cross-tabulation of the responses to a surveyamong female undergraduate students at Umeå University, Sweden. 10Correspondence analysis assigns co-ordinates to each column so thattheir inter-relationship can be shown in graphical displays. These figuresresemble scatter-plots, and it is possible to interpret distances betweenthe columns’ positions in the figures.In terms of the method used here, the results from the survey weresummarised in frequency counts and a multiway table with eight variableswas created (Table 1). The variables were: Favourite pastime, Subjectgrouping, Age, Civil status, Odd job — how many hours per week doesthe student work on the side, e.g. to help finance her/his studies, Memberof sports/exercise club, Member of an organisation — other than sportsclub — and Number of hours spent doing sport/exercise per week(defined as activities where one has to change clothes and/or take ashower afterwards). The purpose was to analyse what the students didduring their leisure time in terms of physical exercise and sport, and tocoordinate their habits with other data.My view tends be that the world is a ”relational” and ”constructed”place. In other words, as a social theorist, I see the individual as a receptorand generator of social meaning. The human body, for instance, issomehow shaped, controlled and constrained by society 11 and is centralto human life — not just in terms of biology. Furthermore, thesignificance of the body is determined in part by social structures whichexist beyond the reach of individuals.I argue that any discussion of academic life from a student perspective,must acknowledge the importance of subject groups. The academicdisciplines are not only a major organising basis for higher educationbut also provide a powerful social framework which affects the lives ofboth students and staff (Becher, 1994, 151, and Kuh, 1995).However, even if the differences between disciplines are importantenough to warrant general recognition, it is hard to know prior to an63

Table 1. The first ten and last three rows of a 47 x 230 indicator matrix showing demographic and lifestyle data for 230 female students attendingUmeå University, Sweden. Coding: 0 = The individual does not belong to this category; 1 = The individual belongs to this category.IndividualAge Civil status Subject group Odd jobs Favorite pastime Time spent doingexercise,a)sports-1929-2425-2930-3435-3940+Living aloneAlone, with child(ren)MarriedMarried, with child(ren)CohabiteeCohabitee, with child(ren)Teacher Education (TE)Natural Science (NA)Humanities (HU)Phys.Education/Kinesiology (PK)1-8 hours/week9-16 hours/week17+ hours/weekPlay an instrumentReading literatureTo do sportsTo go to café, pub, restaurantBeing out in natureDealing with animalsHandicraft, art-workTo be with friendsTo be with partner, family0 (nil) hours/week0,01-3,59 hours/week4,00-7,59 hours/week8,00+ hours/weekOrg.memberA student-nation (Stud.org)"SNF" (Swedish National Trust)Amnesty InternationalUnionPolitical partyA student organisation (other than Stud.-nation)Religious organisation, churchGreenpeace"Humlan" (Cultural organisation)"IKSU" (Intramural sports)Sport org.memberHorseback ridingMartial artsGolf clubFootballFloorball640 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 00 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 00 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 00 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 00 0 5 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 00 0 6 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 0 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 00 0 8 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 00 0 9 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 00 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0..2 2 8 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 02 2 9 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 02 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0a) The 230 female students who participated in the survey were divided into four subject groups, based on the their major fieldof study and the courses they attended.Humanities (HU)Teacher Education (TE)Engelska B (English course)Lärarutbildning. 1-7 (Program for elementary school teacher, grade 1-7) Nordiska språk B (Course in the Swedish language)Lärarutbildning. 4-9 (Program for elementary school teacher, grade 4-9) Historia B (History course)Historia A/B (History course)Etnologi B (Ethnology course)Natural Science (NA)Biokemi B (Biochemistry course)Organisk kemi B (Organic Chemistry course)Biologi B (Biology course)Info.behandl. B (Computer Science course)Physical Education/Kinesiology (PK)Idr.ped. B-nivå (Program for sports pedagogics)Idr.lärar. B-nivå (Program for physical education teacher)

investigation just how important such a factor as subject group will be,and to what extent this variable would constitute a ”descriptive variable”.In order to investigate the relationships between study, leisure andsports habits, without making too many assumptions about the interrelationshipbetween variables, I explore the data using a multiple (Ktable)correspondence analysis.In terms of the results, Figure 1 provides a wealth of information. Itis a conversion and re-presentation of the information from Table 1.Age 40+Sports club:Golf clubOdd job:1-8 h/wCohabitee,no childSports activities:0,00 h/wOrg.member:Political partyMarried,no childSports club:Martial artsFavorite pastime:readingSubject group: NAOdd job:9-16 h/wCohabitee, withchild(ren)Favorite pastime:handicraft, art-workFavorite pastime:being with family, partnerSubject group: PKSports activities:4,00-7,59 h/wAge 25-29Favorite pastime:play an instrument/to singOrg.member:SNF (Swe.National Trust)Age 35-39Org.member:A student clubOrg.member:"Humlan"(Cultural org.)Sports club:FootballSingle,no childSubject group: TEOrg.member:UnionFavorite pastime:being with friendsSports activities:0,01-3,59 h/wFavorite pastime:sports activitiesSports club:FloorballFavorite pastime:being out in natureFavorite pastime:dealing with animalsOrg.member:GreenpeaceOrg.member:Amnesty Int.Odd job:17+ h/wOrg.member:Religious, church org.Age 20-24Sports club:"IKSU" (Intramural)Married withchild(ren)Age 30-34 Sports activities:8,00+ h/wSingle, withSports club: child(ren)Horseback ridningSubject group: HUFavorite pastime:going to café, pub, restaurantAge -19Org.member:"Nation"Figure 1. Graphical representation of 47 categories. Female students (Umeå University,Sweden), n=230. The result of a correspondence analysis of Table 1, a 47 x 230 cross-table.65

As a rule, categories that are adjacent to each other often co-occurfor the same individual, i.e. if many individuals in the sample haveindicated that they belong, as an example, to the category ”Age: 35-39”and the category “I am a member of the cultural organisation Humlan”,then these two categories will be relatively close to each other inthe figure. 12The position of each category, or column, in the figures is based onthe column profile across the 230 rows of Table 1. The concept of aprofile is fundamental to correspondence analysis, and implies, in general,that columns with similar profiles, i.e. appearances across the rows,are grouped together in correspondence analysis figures.How does Bourdieu use correspondence analysis?To conclude my attempt to illustrate how Bourdieu uses correspondenceanalysis, I will move on from the initial analysis by removing some ofthe categories from the original cross-table and re-analysing the data.This process of exclusion is partly based on a study of the geometricalcontribution, or more precisely the lack thereof, to Figure 1 for each ofthe categories. The 12 categories thus removed from the original table,are excluded before the re-run of the analysis (and, as a consequence,they are no longer found in Figure 3) because they are deemed by theresearcher — based on the output of the correspondence analysisalgorithms — to be of less importance. The choice of which categoriesare removed is based on how much each category, each point in thefigure, contributes to the latent structures in the figure. 13 The categoriesare not excluded because they do not fulfil statistical requirements neededto perform the analysis. Hence, categories that are theoretically interestingbut do not achieve a specific quality level do not have to be omittedfrom the analysis simply because of poor data quality.From a sociological point of view, the categories might also of coursebe aggregated to form new categories if the researcher finds it necessary(but this is not done in this example). For instance the example data for“Married, without children” and “Cohabitee, without children” (SeeFigure 2) can be aggregated to form the category: “Married/Cohabitee,without children”.66

Data are arranged in a cross-tabulationThe correspondence analysis algorithms create a multi-dimensional spread ofcategories but the dimensionality is reduced, often into a two-dimensional figure.In this operation (The projection of the categories onto a flat plane) somecategories will "travel far", compared to others, when the multidimensionalityis reduced.In addition to the figure, the algorithms also produce numerical output and it ispossible for the researcher to see how "far" each category "travels" when thedimensionality is reduced, i.e. how well the figure adequately represents thetrue location of a category.Using this numerical output together with careful sociological considerationsthe figure is scrutinized.The figure is deemed adequateFindings are used for the generationof ideas, hypotheses and futureresearchThe figure is deemed inadequateData are re-analysedResearch assumptions, the collection of dataFigure 2. The order flow in the process of creating knowledge through a repeated use ofcorrespondence analysis and the concept of contribution and adequate representation, inthe tradition of Bourdieu.Categories can also be removed for other, more pragmatic, reasons:in some of Bourdieu’s figures in Distinction (1984 [1979], 340), thecategories for office workers are excluded in an analysis of petit bourgeoistaste, because they are, as Bourdieu puts it, ...too widely dispersed... [inthe figure]. 14Bourdieu also uses the technique of “supplementary categories”. Theuse of such categories, from a mathematical and statistical point of view,is the application by the researcher of an additional formula to thecorrespondence analysis algorithms, allowing categories to take spatialpositions in the figures without influencing the positions of the othercategories. See for instance Bourdieu’s The State Nobility — Elite Schoolsin the Field of Power (1996 [1989], 143), where two sets of data forschools are used simultaneously in correspondence analyses. The firstset of data is used to form a variable and the second set as a supplementaryvariable. On page 155 in the same book (Bourdieu, 1996 [1989]) thereis a further description of the circumstances under which variables (e.g.sex) are used as supplementary points in the correspondence analysisfigures.The repeated analysis of Table 1, as described above (Figure 2), maycontinue with a third analysis, a fourth, a fifth and so on, should I67

choose to work in the style and tradition of Bourdieu. It is important toacknowledge that in the literature there is no fixed number of repetitionsrecommended for this knowledge-creating process. The overall purposeis to identify structures in the data and to create interpretative figures.Married,no childAge 40+Cohabitee,no childSports activities:0,00 h/wSports club:Golf clubOdd job:1-8 h/wOrg.member:Political partySubject group: NAOdd job:9-16 h/wSports activities:4,00-7,59 h/wSports activities:8,00+ h/wSubject group: PKAge 25-29Sports club:Horseback ridningSubject group: HUAge 35-39Favorite pastime:play an instrument/to singOrg.member:"Humlan"(Cultural org.)Org.member:A student clubSports club:FloorballSports activities:0,01-3,59 h/wSingle,no childOrg.member:UnionFavorite pastime:being with friendsOrg.member:Amnesty Int.Age 20-24Sports club:"IKSU" (Intramural)Favorite pastime:going to café, pub, restaurantOrg.member:"Nation"Age -19Single, withchild(ren)Sports club:FootballSubject group: TEFavorite pastime:sports activitiesMarried, withchild(ren)Figure 3. Graphical representation of 35 categories. Female students (Umeå University,Sweden), n=230. The result of a re-analysis (correspondence analysis) of Table 1 with 12categories excluded, making it a 35 x 230 cross-table. See text for explanation.It is time to start interpreting some of the results. To the north-west 15in Figure 3, relative to the origin of coordinates (the origin is found inthe middle of the figure, where the horizontal and vertical axes cross),we find categories such as: “Age 40+” and “Married/Cohabitee withoutchildren”. In the same direction, relative to the origin of coordinates,68

we find “Sports activities: 0,00 hour per week” as well as “Member of agolf club”. This indicates, among other things, that membership of golfclubs is more frequent among older female students, than among youngerfemale students. It is interesting to note that these students relativelyoften indicate that they are members of golf clubs, at the same time astheir answer to the survey question how many hours per week do youexercise/sport is zero (i.e. the categories “Member of a golf club” and“Sports activities: 0,00 hour per week” are close to each other in thefigure). The survey question defined exercise/sport as any activityrequiring a change of clothes and/or taking a shower afterwards. Perhapsthese individuals do not consider their golfing activities as a physicalactivity in this particular sense.To the east of the origin of coordinates we find young students whoenjoy sports activities and participating in activities arranged by studentclubs. 16 These students seem to be great consumers of sports andphysical activities. There is virtually no distinction between studentsfrom Natural Sciences (NA), Physical Education/Kinesiology (PK) andHumanities (HU) in this respect.In the southern part of the figure, we find students from the subjectgroup of Teacher Education (TE). In close proximity we find the category“favourite pastime: sports activities”. At first this is a perplexing result.Should not this latter category be closer to (and therefore more stronglyassociated with) the previously discussed student group — found eastof the origin of coordinates — who are such great consumers of sport?One possible explanation is that although they (the “great sportsconsumers”) prioritise physical exercise, they do not consider it theirfavourite pastime. Sport is important, but socialising is even moreimportant for them (going to cafés, being with friends etc).The results indicate that students who play golf (the north-west cornerof Figure 3), although living with partners, often have no children. Ifthese couples had children, would the childcare responsibilities preventthem from continuing to pursue their interest in golf? To penetratefurther this and many other questions raised by the correspondenceanalysis of the cross-tabulated data in Table 1, the analyses here can becomplemented with interview data, e.g. collected in a second phase ofan investigation.69

The concluding figure (Figure 3) does not provide us with the final results— we want to know more about the female students with regard to theirleisure habits, to understand more about the reasons behind the students’choice to consume sport or to enjoy other leisure activities — but I arguethat the use of correspondence analysis makes it possible to show patternsin Table 1 that, albeit only roughly, portrays these multi-dimensional andcomplex relationships in an adequate and very graphic way.Introducing correspondence analysis techniques inmethodology coursesAfter this expose of correspondence analysis, let us move back to thefundamental questions raised in this article. When I discuss teachereducation and the relevance of statistics, I find it difficult to talk aboutcurricula in singulars. I talk instead about science and knowledge-creatingprocesses in general, and about making teachers teachers rather thanscientists.Apart from reflecting on a technical level (which tends to focus onwhat functions in science and academia) I argue that students shouldalso be guided to develop a understanding of concepts such asconstructivism, multi-culturalism etc. and to reflect on a critical level;and they should be given many opportunities to reflect on statisticalconcepts, where questions of fairness, honesty, ethics and democraticvalues are addressed. 17 It is the ability to scrutinize and debate suchconcepts, that should be seen at the end of study programmes. 18Will it be enough to introduce correspondence analysis and similartechniques in statistics courses as alternative ways of using statisticaland mathematical analyses of cross-tabulated data? Probably not. It isnot the statistical-mathematical method in itself that determines thecontent and manifestations of different research discourses, as I willshow in the last part of this article.A single statistical technique — a multitude of epistemologiesAn alternative correspondence analysis methodology is presented in Rätyet al. (1996), where the correspondence analysis technique is used toinvestigate and explore views of children’s schooling in Finland and toinvestigate the attitudes of parents towards ongoing educational reforms70

and market-oriented school policies. 19 It is a main aim of the study toinvestigate the relationships between the parents’ views and attitudes,e.g. regarding individuality, and how these views reflect and constructthe relationship between the parents and the schools. One aim is torelate attitudes and degrees of satisfaction to the social backgrounds ofthe parents. 20Through a nation-wide sample of 563 parents, the study collecteddata on attitudes towards a number of statements (drawn by the researchersfrom current discourses in journals and the Finnish media) andsatisfaction with the school system. Likert scales (responses on a 1-5scale) were used and statistical analyses were made, to explore therelationships in the data. (The Likert scale data was categorised as follows:1, 2 and 3 became one category, and 4 and 5 became another. 21 ) Thestudy used correspondence analysis to search for patterns in the crosstabulateddata.The results show that there are differences between working-classparents and upper-level-employee parents, in terms of views andopinions.The correspondence analysis gave further evidence to the effect that theattitudes investigated form... distinct patterns..., whose endorsement isconnected to the parents’ social position. The attitude patterns seem tocoincide with fundamental educational ideologies, such as conservatismand liberalism..., individuality and collectivity..., and related ideasabout the individual and society and about freedom and constraint...Clearly, these ideologies create an influential framework through whichthe ongoing reforms are approached and represented from socialpsychologicalpoints of view... (Räty, et al., 1996, 214.)My comment to the results is that a single correspondence analysis(executed once) 22 of a cross-table containing, for example, notions andsocio-economic data will always yield results such as ...the vertical axisseems to pull apart white-collar workers from blue-collar workers..., or ...tothe north in the figure, we find attitudes representing the status group ofblue-collar workers...71

Classical statistics, correspondenceanalysis and Bourdieu’s approachThe technique used is similar in Bourdieu’s and Räty et al.’s analyses.From a methodological standpoint, both also aim to identify patternsand structures in data, but the former uses the method to explore relationsbetween a great number of categories in a repeated fashion.Bourdieu also tries to avoid creating new knowledge built on the useof a priori assumptions, e.g. in terms of the distribution of socioeconomicbackground data. He does summarise socio-economic backgrounddata in variables, but he does not hesitate if deemed necessaryto exclude categories from these background variables in the statisticalanalyses. The background variables are not seen as independent variables23in a search for direct relationships.Some conclusionsI have shown that similar techniques can be used in different waysdepending on who is using them. I have also argued that students needto develop an articulated intellectual interest in questions about statisticsand the construction of knowledge about social phenomena (e.g.the inclusion and exclusion of categories), rather than a one-sided focuson questions about the use of techniques, the data requirements of thesetechniques, levels of significance etc. I emphasise this because thescientific methodology of statistics has a wide application and greatlyinfluences our thinking about social phenomena. Modern statistics, withits many intellectual roots, influences our understanding of social factsand normal schemes of distributions and engenders concepts andclassifications (Hacking, 1991, 181).I cannot say that the correspondence analysis technique is our saviour,but I argue that Bourdieu’s statistical epistemology is an unutilizedcomplement to classical statistics in methodology courses. 24In teacher education, we might have a responsibility to be morereceptive to alternative ways of using statistical analyses of cross-tabulateddata and there are a number of reasons for taking a closer look atBourdieu’s investigations. Quantitative methods are often criticised fortheir use of pre-constructed questions and fixed response alternatives(Rosén & Wernersson, 1996, 11) and while Bourdieu’s statistical72

epistemology is no different in this case, it does not imply the use ofpre-constructed variables, that form a priori constructed status groups.The aim is rather to use correspondence analysis to transform surveydata into theoretical relations....if I make extensive use of correspondence analysis, in preference tomultivariate regression for instance, it is because correspondenceanalysis is a relational technique of data analysis whose philosophycorresponds exactly to what, in my view, the reality of the social worldis. It is a technique which “thinks” in terms of relation, as I try to doprecisely with the notion of field. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, 96.)In other words, the statistical method is used as a thinking tool (to usea term from Wittgenstein) for experimentation, in a sense, instead of asa way to construct and to verify the existence of solid relations.Finally, my focus on the lack of a Bourdieuean perspective was topropose that the discourses in teacher education are not neutral. Therule of methodologies in methodology courses should not be regardedas natural but need to be investigated at all times as to what is beingneglected.Acknowledgements and a technical noteI thank my colleagues at the Department of Education, Umeå University,Sweden, for support, especially Erik, Christina and Tommy whoprovided helpful suggestions at the draft stage of this article. I wish tothank Torborg and Anneli for translations of French statistical texts andhelp in making my illustrations presentable. Thanks also to BirgittaTörnkvist, Department of Statistics, Umeå University, for commentson my drawing of Figure 2. My special thanks go to Lisbeth Lundahl(Umeå) and Thomas Popkewitz (Madison), and the on-going graduatestudent/teacher exchange programme between Umeå University, Departmentof Education, and University of Wisconsin-Madison, Schoolof Education (I also received support in my work from the Bank ofSweden’s Tercentenary Foundation).Details about the arithmetical calculations for correspondence analysisare to be found in the standard reference literature. 25 All the correspondenceanalyses in this article were performed using the program73

SimCA2 written by Greenacre. 26 Figures 1 and 3 show the results in theform of so-called symmetric figures. The amount of total inertia(explained variance) represented in these figures is 12 and 15%. 27ReferencesBecher, T. (1994). The Significance of Disciplinary Differences. Studies in HigherEducation, 19, 151-161.Benzécri, J.-P., et al. (1973). L´Analyse des Données. Tome 1-3. Paris: Dunod.Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]). Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Englishtranslation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Bourdieu, P. (1988 [1984]). Homo Academicus, English translation. Cambridge: PolityPress.Bourdieu, P. (1996 [1989]). The State Nobility — Élite Schools in the Field of Power,English translation. Cambridge: Polity Press.Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L.J.D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge:Polity Press.Broady, D. (1988). Jean-Paul Benzécri och korrespondensanalysen [Jean-Paul Benzécri andcorrespondence analysis. In Swedish]. Forskning och utveckling för högskolan, 4,Stockholm: UHÄ.Broady, D. (1990). Sociologi och epistemologi. Om Pierre Bourdieus författarskap och denhistoriska epistemologin [Sociology and Epistemology. On Pierre Bourdieu’s Workand the Historical Epistemology. Academic dissertation, in Swedish with asummary in English]. The Department of Educational Research, StockholmInstitute of Education, Stockholm: HLS Förlag.Broady, D., & Heyman, I. (1997). Omvårdnadsforskning. Ett vetenskapligt fält ivardande? [Caring and Nursing Research. An Emerging Scientific Field? InSwedish with a summary in English]. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 4, 193-209.Broady, D., & Palme, M. (1992). Högskolan som fält och studenternas livsbanor [Highereducation as a field and the social trajectories of students. In Swedish]. Rapporterfrån forskningsgruppen för utbildnings- och kultursociologi, 1, Stockholm:Stockholm Institute of Education, the Department of Educational Research.Böckenholt, U., & Böckenholt, I. (1990). Canonical Analysis of Contingency Tableswith Linear Constraints. Psychometrika, 55, 633-639.Böckenholt, U., & Takane, Y. (1994). Linear Constraints in Correspondence Analysis, in:Correspondence Analysis in the Social Sciences, eds. Michael Greenacre and JörgBlasius. London: Academic Press, 112-127.Gifi, A. (1990). Non-linear Multivariate Analysis. Chichester, UK: Wiley.Graue, M.E. (Forthcoming). Through a Very Small Window. How Standardized TestsShape Early Childhood Research. Prepared for B. Spodek, et al. (Eds.), Yearbookof Early Childhood Education.Greenacre, M.J. (1984). Theory and Application of Correspondence Analysis. London:Academic Press.Greenacre, M.J. (1986). SimCA — A Program to Perform Simple CorrespondenceAnalysis. Psychometrika, 51, 172-173.Greenacre, M.J. (1988). Correspondence Analysis on a Personal Computer. Chemometricsand Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 2, 233-234.Greenacre, M.J. (1993). Correspondence Analysis in Practice. London: Academic Press.74

Greenacre, M.J., & Blasius, J. (eds.) (1994). Correspondence Analysis in the Social Sciences.London: Academic Press.Hacking, I. (1991). How Should We do the History of Statistics?, in: The Foucault Effect.Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon & Peter Miller.London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 181-198.Heyman, I. (1996). Gånge hatt till... Omvårdnadsforskningens framväxt i Sverige —Sjuksköterskors avhandlingar 1974-1991 [The Emergence of Nursing Research inSweden. Doctoral Theses Written by Nurses 1974-1991. Academic dissertation,in Swedish with a summary in English]. The Department of EducationalResearch, Stockholm Institute of Education. Stockholm: Daidalos.Kennedy, J.J., & Tam, H.P. (1994). Log-Linear Models, in: The InternationalEncyclopaedia of Education, eds. Torsten Husén and T. Neville Postlethwaite.Oxford: Elsevier Science, 3499-3508.Kuh, G.D. (1995). Cultivating ‘High-Stakes´ Student Culture Research. Research in HigherEducation, 36, 5, 563-576.Lautrey, J., & Cibois, P. (1991). Application of Correspondence Analysis to a LongitudinalStudy of Cognitive Development, in: Problems and Methods in LongitudinalResearch, eds. D. Magnusson, L.R. Bergman, G. Rudinger, & B. Törestad.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 190-211.Lebart, L., Morineau, A., & Warwick, K.M. (1984). Multivariate Descriptive StatisticalAnalysis. Chichester, UK: Wiley.Rosén, M. & Wernersson, I. (1996). Kunskapsmönster och kön. Om nödvändigheten avkvantitativ feministisk forskning i pedagogik [Patterns of knowledge and gender.The need for feminist quantitative research in educational science. In Swedish].Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 1, 8-24.Räty, H., Snellman, L., Mantysaari-Hetekorpi, H., & Vornanen, A. (1996). Parents’Views on the Comprehensive School and its Development: A Finnish Study.Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 4, 3, 203-215.Schiltz, M.-A. (1990). A French Re-analysis of a British Survey. Comparative Study ofStatistical Methods Applied to Social Science Data. CAMS (Centre d’Analyse et deMathématique Sociales), report P.055, Paris.Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: SAGE.Sikula, J. (Ed.) (1996). Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. Second edition.London: Prentice Hall International.Takane, Y., Bozdogan, H., & Shibayama, T. (1987). Ideal Point Discriminant Analysis.Psychometrika, 52, 371-392.Törnkvist, B., & Lundquist, B. (1997). Hur kan man undervisa i statistik [How is itpossible to teach statistics. In Swedish]. Utbildning i förändring, Universitetspedagogiskkonferens i Umeå 20-21 februari, konferensrapport, Umeå Universitet,Enheten för personalutveckling, 92-102.Notes1Although it plays no great part in their main study programme for the majority ofstudents, they are quite often required to study statistics for an examination (Törnkvist& Lundquist, 1997, 92).2I argue that the focus is on methods of sampling, the computation of mean values andcorrelations, the normal (“bell shaped”) curve etc. (See also Graue, forthcoming). In75

statistics textbooks used in programmes for teacher education (and also in graduateprogrammes at schools of education and pedagogy), the debate seems to centre, in myview, on such questions as what to do when the example data set from a study violatessample size or other requirements needed to perform classical statistics, rather than ondiscussions about graphical and exploratory alternatives, which exploit the flexibility ofinteractive computing and graphic displays.3Among the scholars with an exploratory and iterative approach to the use of statisticalanalysis in educational research one can list Donald Broady and Michael Palme (Broady,1988 & 1990, 501, 505-506, and Broady & Palme, 1992) and Ingrid Heyman (1996;Broady & Heyman, 1997).4I will introduce correspondence analysis (a statistical technique used by Bourdieu) to thereader who is not familiar with this method (this brief and non-mathematical introductionwill simultaneously demonstrate the graphical aspects of correspondence analysis, andindicate how the results of such investigations can be presented) and discuss Bourdieu’sstatistical epistemology. Bourdieu uses correspondence analysis in several of his books,e.g. Distinction (1984 [1979]) and Homo Academicus (1988 [1984]). Bourdieu picturesand interprets a “social space”, by using correspondence analysis, in Distinction (1984[1979]). In Homo Academicus (1988 [1984]) the “social space” of French professors isdescribed in cross-tables with categories that describe “marital status”, “membership infaculty”, “occupation of parents” etc., and by subsequent analyses using correspondenceanalysis.5Here I refer to statistical methods based on the idea that the interplay in a table can bedescribed by linear relationships, so-called linear models (Kennedy & Tam, 1994),discriminant analysis, that classifies data according to selected criteria (Takane, Bozdogan& Shibayama, 1987), statistical methods based on Pearson’s familiar chi-square value(chi-square is based on the idea, or the statistical model, that the differences betweenexpected and empirical values in a cross-table can be used as an overall measure of variationin the data) and similar techniques.6I refer to investigations and studies that try to fit data to a model, and that often bearsuch titles as ...testing a statistical model of socialisation among..., or a mathematical modelfor integration in... etc.7One such approach is the data analysis approach which emerged in the 1960s and -70sin France. The theories and practices of this data analysis tradition, often referred to asanalyse des données in French, as interesting complements to those of classical statistics(Schiltz, 1990), have in my opinion by and large been met with polite ignorance bysocial science communities outside France. The classical statistical tools, such as factoranalysis and log-linear analysis, are by far the most popular statistical techniques atuniversities and colleges and in undergraduate and graduate studies today, includingeducational research and teacher training.8At this point it is a good thing to make clear that the statistical algorithms that performthe analyses do not interpret the figures. That is left to the user. It is not too much to saythat the name correspondence analysis can be seen as being somewhat misleading, as thefigures describe rather than analyse the data.9Correspondence analysis can be used to investigate the inter-relationship between therows, the columns or both the rows and columns simultaneously of a cross-table. Origi-76

nal data can be on a categorical or ordinal level and the matrices do not have to besymmetric, as in some classical analyses. The technique is multidimensional, in the sensethat it operates on tables with one variable, two variables or K-variables (K ≥ 3). In thisarticle, the focus is on the analysis of columns and K-tables.10The survey is a part of an on-going research project, run by myself, Christer Jonsson andheaded by Prof. Martin Johansson, at the Department of Education, Umeå University,Sweden. Eventually, I will report parts of the investigation as my thesis.11An opposite view would be to consider it possible to investigate the body purely as abiological phenomenon. For a discussion on the construction of bodies, see Shilling,1993.12It is not the main purpose of this article to discuss in detail how figures in correspondenceanalyses can be interpreted. For further reference see the literature, e.g. Greenacre &Blasius (eds.), 1994, 45-52.13The use of cut-off limits, for categories that do not contribute well enough to a figure, isbriefly discussed in Bourdieu, 1984 [1979], 266, figure 13. An account of the conceptof contribution is given in Broady 1990, 495, and Greenacre & Blasius (eds.) 1994, 35,51, 66, 69 & 263.14In Distinction, (1984 [1979], e.g. 127-130), Bourdieu interprets a “social space” (whichis his synthesis of a “space of social positions” and a “space of lifestyles”), by usingcorrespondence analysis. This analysis of the data is based on a multi-response table(similar to Table 1 above) where the rows and columns represent professional positionsand categories of lifestyles (See also Greenacre & Blasius, eds., 1994, 133-134).15When a figure is interpreted, the middle point, the origin of coordinates, is often used asa point of reference, e.g. in terms of the angular direction of categories relative the origin.See Lautrey & Cibois, 1991, 190-211.16In Swedish academia, a “Nation”, a category found to the south-east in the figure, nearthe origin of coordinates, is a type of student club that arranges social meetings, parties,trips etc.17See also Sikula, 1996, 473, and Törnkvist & Lundquist, 1997.18I argue that it takes some time to develop these abilities (they will not necessarily manifestthemselves at the end of methodology courses).19An increased market orientation in education has been discernible since the 1980-90s,according to the authors. Individual choice, reform, giftedness and the opening of moreand more private schools are some of the concepts and agendas contributing to thistrend.20Socio-economic status was categorised using the Finnish statistical office’s censuscategories: entrepreneurs, upper-level employees, lower-level employees and workers.The number of school-age children the parents had and the gender of these childrenwere also used as variables in the statistical analyses.21This transformation is made with no further explanation. I am not arguing against this— the authors are admitting to no more than the commonplace pragmatism of all research—, but as a reader I would like to know more about the reasons behinds thiscategorisation. Why are not 1 and 2 fused into one category, 3 another (which could, insome cases, be excluded, based on the distribution of data) and 4 and 5 a third?22The style and content of Räty, et al. (1996) suggests, at least to me, that the authors77

work in a tradition and in an environment — a certain paradigm, to paraphrase Kuhn—, where the heritage from classical statistic methodology is strong. The disposition ofthe study, with its subject headings: Background, Method, Result and Discussion, is in thestyle and format of traditional, “quality control”, hypothesis testing analyses. Räty, et al.(1996) might have tried different ways of categorising and analysing attitudes andsatisfaction variables (in analysing and re-analysing the data — similar to Bourdieu’smethodology, as described in my Figure 2 above), but no evidence of that is given in thestudy.23That would result in a figure by correspondence analysis with variables to be described(attitudes and satisfaction variables) and descriptive variables (e.g. socio-economic data),similar to Räty et al.’s results (1996).24An implementation of Bourdieu’s statistical epistemology does not imply that classicalstatistics should be abandoned. Some statistical articles and books on correspondenceanalysis (See for instance Böckenholt & Böckenholt, 1990, and Böckenholt & Takane,1994) discuss the possibility of combining correspondence analysis with other, classical,statistical method (significance testings, so-called statistical constraints etc.) in the searchfor structural relationships and in the analysis of the strength and nature of theserelationships. Further, to be able to find pleasure in using quantitative analysis, a certainamount of respect, intuition and an ability to interpret is needed. The difference isminor in this respect between the use of classical statistics or Bourdieu’s statisticalepistemology (or between quantitative or qualitative methods for that matter. See Rosén& Wernersson, 1996, 12.).25Benzécri et al., 1973 — a “classic” reference for readers who have a good command ofFrench —, Greenacre, 1984 & 1993, Lebart, Morineau, & Warwick, 1984, Gifi, 1990and Greenacre & Blasius, (eds.), 1994 are some of the more frequently cited statisticalbooks which focus more or less on correspondence analysis and its applications for thesocial sciences.26Michael Greenacre, “SimCA2”: Michael Greenacre, Departament d’Economia i Empresa,Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain. Theprogram is discussed by Greenacre in two articles: Greenacre, 1986 & 1988.27This amount is a measure of how well a two-dimensional figure of a simple or a multiplecorrespondence analysis depicts the true, multidimensional spread of all its categories,from a geometrical point of view. For reference to explained variance, or inertia as it isreferred to in the literature on correspondence analysis, see Greenacre & Blasius (eds.)1994, 12-14. Symmetric and asymmetric figures are discussed on pages 10, 18-21 and259 in the same book.78

EVA ÅSTRÖMComputers as Panopticon -The Face of The Market in anEducational SettingComputers in distance education - electronic Panopticons - might be regardedas expressions of market ideology within the educational system, transformedinto educational practice. And this market ideology is manifested inmore than one way. It does not only show itself in the form of computersserving as devices of control and fosterers of flexibility. The ideology of marketsand modern capitalism can also be traced in the role that distance educationplays today, as a ”test bed” offering possibilities to test and apply telecommunicationtechnology within (especially) higher education. The informationtechnology has created the boundlessness necessary to pave the way for forcesof the market place and competition inside the system.When it comes to theintroduction of information technology and distance education ineducational settings, there is also a close connection between this discourseand economical/political strong interests. But this connection is most oftenobscured, the power interests behind it and supporting it are kept hidden.Instead the discourse in question - information technology, open learning -is presented as ”natural” and ”inevitable” in our contemporary and futuresociety.”Structure” and ”Dialogue” in Distance EducationIn the early 70s a theory was developed by M. Moore on distanceeducation in which ”distance” was defined as a function of two variables,namely ”dialogue” and ”structure”. The definitions of the two conceptsthat were compiled by Rumble are cited in Moore (1990): 1 ”Dialoguedescribes the extent to which, in any educational programme, learner andeducator are able to respond to each other. This is determined by the contentof subject-matter which is studied, by the educational philosophy of theeducator, by the personalities of educator and learner, and by environmentalfactors, the most important of which is the medium of communication.””Structure is a measure of an education programme’s responsiveness to learners’81

individual needs. It expresses the extent to which educational objectives, teachingstrategies, and evaluation methods are prepared for, or can be adapted to, theobjectives, strategies, and evaluation methods of the learner.” (p. 10)Based on these definitions, the most ”distant” education is the onewithout both dialogue and structure, that is, it is completely self-directed.The least distant education consists of much dialogue and littleprefabricated structure. The distance–the function of ”structure” and”dialogue”–is called ”transactional distance”. The form of educationthat we normally refer to as ”distance education” becomes characterizedby more structure, less dialogue and thereby more transactional distancethan other educational forms.In the above article, Moore also refers to the research conducted bySaba, which, according to Moore, has ”...confronted the problems presentedto distance education theory by interactive telecommunications andexpanded the concept of transactional distance by using systems dynamics.” 2Saba talks about ”integrated telecommunications systems” and statesthat by maximizing dialogue via integrated systems the transactionaldistance is minimized. The relation between the degrees of structureand dialogue is considered dynamic: when dialogue increases, structuredecreases and when structure decreases, dialogue in turn increases tostabilize the system. Moreover, ”integrated systems provide a flexible meansfor decreasing structure through increased dialogue.” 3While Saba speaks of integrated telecommunications systems as a meansof increasing dialogue in distance education, Wagner (1994), Lauzon (1992)and Jonassen et al. (1995) discuss the ”common perception” that the potentialof the new technology–specifically computer conferencing systemsand electronic mail, according to the latter authors–lies in its ability toimprove interaction and dialogue in (distance) education. It is presumedthat the new technology will cause dialogue contributions to increase indistance education, which, according to the above theory, in turn causesthe degree of structure to decrease. In other words, flexibility and individualadaptability increases, and the end result is that transactional distance ineducation decreases. The distance decreases between teacher and learnerand in the distance education, while proximity increases.The fact that this is a beneficial development is both explicitly and tacitlyexpressed by the authors in their respective articles.82

But, is ”increased proximity” in distance education really (only)beneficial? May (1993) states, for example, that increased interaction isnot necessarily a positive educational goal. In her article she refers toCook, 4 who calls attention to such questions as, which interactiveelements in education constitute ”contact” and what is in fact ”control”or is at least apprehended as control by the student. She also refers toHughes and Kennedy, 5 who suggest that a strong relationship betweenthe teacher and the student might constitute a circle of dependency.Moore (1990) draws the conclusion that when there is little dialogueand structure it is difficult for the instructor to control the learner, andthat with more structure and, above all, more dialogue the conditionsthat contribute to institutional control increase. Other authors placeeven more stress on specifically dialogue as an instrument of control indistance education settings. In this context, Juler (1990) points to thefact that both oral and written dialogue (discourse) are often teacherdominated, which seriously limits the degree and nature of the interactionthat can take place in a distance course. He refers to ”the apparentconflict between interaction and independence.” 6Dialogue–or interaction–can therefore be regarded as both anexpression and a means of control in a distance education setting. Incomputer-mediated communication, dialogue as a potential for controlis related to the visibility of text-based communication and thesurveillance that is facilitated by this visibility on both an individualand a group level.The Control SocietyIn his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault discusses thereplacement of the sovereign society by a new disciplinary society. Thissociety is characterized by discipline as the prevailing principle of controland education, and the disciplinary exercise of power for maintainingrelations of power and dominance.Foucault dates the emergence of the disciplinary society back to theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries of Europe, to the genesis of industrialismand a sharp population increase for that time–the growing,costlier and more complex production apparatus needed to become moreefficient and ever-growing numbers of landless and propertyless citizens83

needed to be controlled and governed. Signs of the disciplinary exerciseof power could first be recognized in the French secondary grammarschools and elementary schools. Discipline as a mechanism of powerthen spread over to hospitals, to the military organization, to the rest ofthe school system, and to the manufactories.This course has been maintained up to our times. The disciplinary societyhas continued to spread and develop and the attending disciplinarypower is exercised on most levels and within most areas of society.Discipline, according to Foucault, is a political technology that canbe described with the help of Panopticon as a metaphor: Bentham’sPanopticon refers to a circular building surrounding an open area witha high tower placed in the center of the area. This tower has large windowsfacing the inner side of the building. The circular building is dividedinto traversing cells. Each cell has two windows, one facing the insideand the windows of the tower, and the other window facing the outside,letting in the light that penetrates the cell from one side to the other.From the top of the tower it is possible to supervise all the cellssimultaneously and each of them individually without being visible.The only thing that can be seen from the cells is a tower with large,blind, and anonymous windows at the top. The main effect of thePanopticon is created through this construction: The inhabitant of thecell is visible all the time, but he or she has no way of knowing if anysurveillance is actually taking place. The surveillance thus becomes permanentin its effect, and power becomes so complete that it does nothave to be exercised.In theory, the Panopticon is a schedule showing the mechanism ofpower in its ideal form. It describes how power is made perpetuallypresent in the consciousness of people and how it governs and thereforedisciplines without having to use very strong means, threats, orpunishments. Power does not become a burden placed upon thepowerless; instead it becomes a subtle, anonymous, and ever-presenteye, staring at the individual, studying him, analyzing and judging him.Perhaps. This is the point. Exposed to the panoptical way of exercisingpower, the individual can never be sure if he or she is being watched ornot. The only sure thing is that surveillance–total and permanent–ispossible all the time. There is no place to hide.84

The practical/physical processes upon which disciplinary power(illustrated in the form of Panopticon) primarily rests are hierarchizedsurveillance and normalizing sanctions, the methods of which arecombined in the examination process. Hierarchized surveillance is anarrangement that works like a network of relationships where everyoneinvolved is constantly visible. Everyone can be seen and can see everyoneelse at all times. The normalizing sanctions are the system’s punishmentmechanism. Its function is to correct all deviations from (the established)order, all negligence and all rule violations. Normalization isbegotten by way of comparison, differentiation, hierarchization,standardization and exclusion. The examination process is central tothe disciplinary processes. Continuous examination shapes the individualas the effect of and the subject for knowledge. During this process thepower structure both collects (individualized) knowledge andimplements (legitimizing) knowledge.According to Deleuze (1992), Foucault’s disciplinary society ischaracterized by confinement–it is a closed system. It is a society whereconcentration, organization of time and distribution of space are usedto gather productive strength within this time-space dimension, theeffect of which will be greater than the sum of its components. Thedisciplinary society individualizes, and individual deviations anddysfunctions that become visible in this way are defined and correctedaccording to the standards of normality. The predominant goal insociety’s education is unanimity and homogenous groups that functionas components of a well-functioning societal machine. The factory–theoperation of which depends on machines that require energy–is themode of production of the disciplinary society and most aspects of sociallife can be described symbolically by the metaphors that spring fromthis type of production mode.Foucault himself was aware of the precarious nature of this model.He described the disciplinary society as the successor to the sovereignsociety. Deleuze maintains that, at least during the entire post-war period,development has caused the disciplinary society to change and toin turn be replaced by a new type of society today. Deleuze speaks of thecontrol society, 7 a new regime within which liberating and oppressiveforces meet in a new way, under new conditions.85

In the control society, efficiency is no longer necessarily associated withhuge like-minded masses, but rather more so with the flexible and smoothadaptation of the individual parts to changing conditions. The factoryhas lost its validity as a metaphor, now it is the ”company” and the”market” that decides and governs what ideas about society and lifedominate. Deleuze designates the computer as the machine that bestcharacterizes the new control society. He identifies continuous controland continuing education as typical of its school and education systems.It is a limitless and ever-changing society, with a power mechanism thatfunctions freely–independently of time and space. Its goal is to createcontinuous and everlasting adaptation and change with respect to shiftingand perpetually changing conditions. The purpose of individualizationis no longer to find the most effective place for the individual amongthe greater masses, but rather primarily to create independence,competitiveness and mutual competition by developing a broad rangeof personal capabilities and qualifications.The three types of society mentioned so far in the paper, differdistinctly from each other with reference to their ways of relating andhandling individual and collective freedom of thought and action. Theforms of governing and control are fundamentally different in thesouvereign society, the disciplinary society and the control societyrespectively. Also the ”content” of government - which thoughts andwhat behaviour to control - are different. However, the fundamentalpurpose of governing remains the same in all three of them. Foucaultdefines ”government” as an art ”for acting on the actions of individuals,taken either singly or collectively, so as to shape, guide, correct and modifythe ways in which they conduct themselves.” 8 The joint purpose of steeringand control for every and each of the three societies thus becomes to actupon and influence the thoughts and actions of its citizens, in thedirection and by the means provided and considered appropriate ineither society.Therefore it involves no contradiction to find the panoptic principleat work both in the disciplinary society and in the control society. ThePanopticon has survived the society’s transformation, it has developedand adapted to the needs of the new times. Possibly the most obviouschange is the one that is taking place with regard to the normalization86

principle of the disciplinary society. Normality as a concept and a qualitybecomes less important in a world with weak norms. In the controlsociety, little emphasis is placed on established or enduring norms. Thecontrol that is carried out within the panoptic structure of this societyaims to counteract the emergence of these types of closed thought andbehavior patterns. They inhibit dynamics, obstruct flexibility andcompliance, and in this way halt development.With less emphasis put on the establishing and submission to norms,the forms of supervision need to develop too. They have to be smoother,more flexible and more all-seeing than ever. New techniques for examinationdevelop - the use of for example auditing and accounting forexamination and as methods for steering at a distance becomes morewide-spread. And the products of examination, the knowledge conveyedand knowledge constructed in this process, becomes more detailed andat the same time more general.With norms, supervision and examination - steering and control -more invisible than ever, the Panopticon of the control society of todayis hidden under a cover of ”freedom”. But according to Foucault, freedomis just another formula of rule. It is not only a hindrance togovernment, but also a resource for it. ”Freedom, in a liberal sense, shouldthus not be equated with anarchy, but with a kind of well-regulated and’responsibilized’ liberty.” 9 In today’s Panopticon the governing of individualsaims at no particular external direction, but to the creation of thefree subject, volontarily and freely conducting himself or herself inaccordance with society’s priorities. It is also a question of creating awillingness to change - the individual’s willingness to change in any givenway. Freedom and flexibility are apprehended as both goals and meansin this contemporary discourse of conduct, at the same time as they areeffects of the governing process itself.The Computer As PanopticonDeleuze suggests that different types of machines can be matched todifferent types of societies, since the machines, in his view, reflect howthe social forms that design and use them appear. Accordingly, he designatesthe computer as the machine of our times (of the control society).The plausibility of Deleuze’s view on the computer is further reinforced87

y Poster’s (1990) description of electronic (computer-based)communication: ”Writing is framed by space/time coordinates of booksand sheets of paper. Both are available to logics of representation. Electroniclanguage, on the contrary, does not lend itself to being so framed. It iseverywhere and nowhere, always and never. It is truly material/immaterial.” 10This free-flowing and omnipresent communication fits well into thelimitless, ever-changing and individualizing control society that Deleuzedescribes above.What, then, is the role of communication? According to Foucaultcommunication is fundamentally about exercising power. ”Our societyis not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, oneinvests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, therecontinues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits ofcommunication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization ofknowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power...” 11 Earlier inthe text there is also discussion about how (computer-based)communication can more concretely be used/function as governing andcontrol instruments in educational settings.The picture that has been painted in the text this far thus describesthe computer as a central panoptic structure in our times.Zuboff (1988) elaborates on this idea further: ”Information systemsthat translate, record, and display human behavior can provide the computerage version of universal transparency with a degree of illumination thatwould have exceeded even Bentham’s most outlandish fantasies. Such systemscan become information panopticons that, freed from constraints of spaceand time, do not depend upon the physical arrangement of buildings or thelaborious record keeping of industrial administration. They do not evenrequire the mutual presence of objects of observation. They do not even requirethe presence of an observer. Information systems can automatically andcontinuously record almost anything their designer want to capture, regardlessof the specific intentions brought to the design process or the motives thatguide data interpretation and utilization. The counterpart of the centraltower is a video screen.” 12Panopticon is a construction that above all aims to make the powerlessvisible and power invisible. Through this construction power is madeever-present in the consciousness of all, thereby rendering the actual88

exercise of power unnecessary. These effects are also produced by theelectronic interaction of computers. In computer-based communication,both the individual and those processes that take place between individualsbecome visible. Edenius (1996), for example, talks about how in anelectronic mail system one can get a quick glimpse at large quantities ofinformation; 13 while Jonassen et al. (1995) discuss how the electronicmedium promotes the visibility of the normally concealed processesand strategies that are used in the interaction/construction of knowledgein which the group is engaged.The practical processes that the panoptic principle rests upon is, ashas been stated before, (hierarchized) surveillance, examination andnormalization. All these processes are easily detected in a computerisedstudy/teaching situation.The surveillance function is built into the computer as a medium. Forexample, in the text-based electronic conferencing system, everythingthat is said is made visible to all and is furthermore saved for posterity.The written comments or contributions that are generated, are storedon everybody’s computer. This automatic registration makes it possibleto measure all activity. Such methods of detailed book-keeping are typicalfeatures of the panoptical scheme. Both actual communication andsilence are recorded. Everyone can read what everyone else has written;everyone can find out who has read the contributions of others, withouthaving written anything themselves; and everyone can see who has beencompletely inactive. All communicative actions or nonactions becomevisible and all the students eventually become aware of this. Activity orpassivity, it makes no difference, the panoptic principle works in eithercase. And it does not work only for the students. The teacher’s behaviouris also made visible and the interaction processes between teacher andstudent are registered and stored. In the computerised (virtual) classroomall participants are trapped in a web of looks, mutual supervision andpotential accountability.Hierarchized surveillance is attended by the normalization of theindividuals’ behavior. In the collective electronic communications systemthe students educate one another. According to Jonassen et al.(1995), the visibility of otherwise invisible processes contributes to theformation of a ”collaborative mental model”; and MacConnell (1994)89

discusses the sense of collective ownership over the conference thatdevelops in a well-functioning computer conference. Tagg (1994) arguesfor a goal-oriented leadership in computer conferences and proposesthat the students themselves should assume that leadership.The fact that the computer itself becomes the very goal of computerusage–technology for technology’s sake–is not a new phenomenon. Today,the fact that the computer and computer literacy are favorablephenomena in society and education is taken for granted almosteverywhere. Articles by both Goodson & Mangan (1996) and Beynon& Mackay (1989) describe and discuss how the computer automaticallyand indiscriminately is credited with possessing (practically unlimited)promise in educational settings. This anticipated value calls for studentengagement in the electronic device offered. It also implies a call foreach group member to go further into the fold and to further subordinatehimself to governance and supervision.In the examination process, the methods of the hierarchizedsurveillance–authoritative direction/instruction– are ultimatelycombined with the methods of the normalizing sanctions–assessment/judgment. It is in this process that truth and knowledge are produced.”We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannotexercise power except through the production of truth”. 14 The examination–thecreation of discursive truth–thus becomes central to thepanoptic exercise of power.In Deleuze’s control society–or in the postmodern society, the fundamentalnature of which conforms to that of the control society and inmany respects can be recognized in our daily lives–the content of theexamination is nevertheless unclear. It is not even clear whether it hasany content at all. The control in and of itself often becomes the sole, orat least the dominant objective of both surveillance and assessment.The significance of governing in a decided direction is subordinate tothe significance of control and its attendant governing potential. Thispotential of governing lies in its impact on society’s citizens, by the waythat it ”...concerns them at the very heart of themselves by making itsraionality the condition of their active freedom”. 15This control is made possible and the governing potential emergesthrough the establishment of an analytical space in which the individual90

ecomes susceptible to being governed and controlled. According toFoucault (1987), in the disciplinary society the analytical space is a closedenvironment without connections to other places, that is enclosed withinitself. In the space, each individual is put in a specific place, the locationof which is functional in relation to others and with regard to a task thatis to be performed. The analytical spaces cut out individual segments andestablish operative relations, they designate places and state values. In theanalytical space everyone is also controlled with regard to time. The scheduleof the disciplinary society is built primarily on three principles: theintroduction of time rhythms, required tasks and recurrent lapses. Thisversion of the analytical space correlates with the factory and an industrialmode of production as prevailing societal metaphors.In the control society, on the other hand, closed systems are no longersuitable and accordingly neither are the analytical spaces that structureand hold and lock in place. Computers do not function this way either.It functions independently of spatial and temporal boundaries; it permitscommunication/interaction to take place whenever and wherever.Computers are utilised to increase the degree of dialogue andcommunication in an education, and by that to decrease the transactionaldistance between teacher and student, or between students. The virtualproximity that is created in this way is a precondition of the institutionalcontrol that takes place in a computerised educational setting. Asinstruments of control, computers establish a virtual analytical spacewithin which it is attention that is controlled and not so much the bodyand the deeds. Attention is directed at the medium and access is created–for practically any message at all.In this way, in a virtual analytical space, both surveillance andnormalization are aimed at the student’s (active) participation in theelectronic communication process; in this way, the very technologyand use thereof are defined in the examination process as the discursivetruth of the day.Post-Fordism, Open Learning and ComputersA large portion of the scientific literature describes the kind of societythat we live in today in the West, or that we seem to be heading towards.Deleuze speaks of the control society. Others call it the postmodern society91

or the information society, while Edwards (1991), Farnes (1993), Razzol(1993), Raggatt (1993) and Rumble (1995a and 1995b), for example,assume the prevailing production system as the point of departure intheir analyses and accordingly dub the new society post-Fordist. 16In his article, Edwards (1991) refers to Robin Murray 17 and hisdescription of Fordism and post-Fordism respectively. According toMurray, Fordism was the prevailing principle of production and distributionin the West from the late nineteenth century until sometimeinto the 50s and 60s. Similar to Deleuze above, he paints a picture oflarge bureaucratic organizations where power is centralized and whichare characterized by authoritative relations–the factory and the welfarestate–that mass produce goods and services for the public. The consumerdoes not have freedom of choice or influence over the productionprocess or its products, with the exception of a small rich minority.There is no freedom within the workforce either. Production is controlledfrom the top and, literally or figuratively speaking, modeled after Taylor’sassembly line principle.Murray, however, states that today Fordism has more or less wornout its function. The principles that drive the economy today can insteadbe attributed to the development of technology and specifically to thedevelopment that has taken place within the information technologyfield, and to the post-Fordist production system which becomes possible,and is created and established thanks to this development. Technologicalprogress has led to an increase in both the amount of information andthe speed with which the information can be gathered and disseminated.Thus, production (of both goods and services) becomes able to react tomarket demands in a different way than before. One outcome of this isa small-scale, specialized production process with a short life span whichrelies on designs, is based on market research and is dependent on marketingfor its survival. 18The greater flexibility and susceptibility to change within productionand the economy in turn leads to the establishment of new organizationalforms. The large factory where all production is realized is replaced toan increasingly greater extent by companies to which entrepreneurs orother contract-bound ”sub-companies” are tied, which provide manyof the services and products that are needed in the company’s primary92

production. Authoritative bureaucracies are replaced by flat organizations,specialization by flexibility, and the ideal worker today shouldeither possess specialized, up-to-date knowledge or come equipped withthe most general qualifications possible.Farnes (1993) suggests that the historical stages of development thatproduction has undergone correspond to various stages of developmentwithin education. 19 According to this reasoning, apprenticeships isassociated with the preindustrial society; mass education on the primaryand lower secondary school level takes place in the early industrial society;in the Fordist society, upper secondary education became theobjective of a mass education, and higher education, continuingeducation and various other forms of education and instruction areemphasized during the development of the post-Fordist society. Thegoal today is that every individual develop and maintain an extensive,broad and flexible range of professional qualifications, and it is the labormarket and the demands of that market that best determine theknowledge and skills that those qualifications should comprise.The vision of the flexible and well-educated worker as an actor in thelabor markets of the present and future, and of a school and educationsystem that is shaped in accordance with this vision, is a recognizabletheme in several contexts and articles besides those previously mentioned.Edwards (1991) refers to the British situation, for example thedemands for a flexible workforce and desires to create a closer relationbetween education and economic demands, while Apple (1987) talksabout a link between curricula and production needs–which today arecloser than ever (in the U.S.)–and warns that concepts such as effectiveness,production, job skills, and work discipline will come to dominate the waywe think about school. An article by Goodson & Mangan (199?) describeshow the predominating discourse in education today focuses on theeconomic significance of education for the individual and society.A similar line of reasoning has been followed in Sweden. In the late1980s and early 1990s several commissions were appointed to focus onthe significance of education with respect to Sweden’s competitivenessas a driving force for the country’s (economic) development. 20 Thepicture that these commissions paint of the state of Sweden’s nationaleconomy and of the present and future needs of the Swedish labor market93

are strikingly unambiguous. The commission reports speak, in generalterms, of how the internationalization and integration of the economiesof nations lead to increased competitive pressures in most sectors ofsociety. They speak of knowledge developing at a faster pace, theincreased knowledge-content of many professions and jobs, and theincreased complexity of this knowledge-content. At least one commonconclusion was reached, namely that the Swedish workforce needs todevelop with respect to qualifications. The idea is that in order to raisethe level of Swedish competitiveness, create flexibility and efficiency,and to increase the individual’s potential to survive in a changing labormarket, a strong emphasis must be placed on the primary and secondaryeducation, as well as the in-service training and continuing educationof primarily the adult and professionally active segments of society.At a time when the predominant discourse on education involves anemphasis on higher education, continuing education the demands ofthe labor market, flexibility and diverse forms of education, distanceeducation has become more popular than ever. According to Farnes(1993), Thorpe (1995) and a number of reports by Swedishcommissions, 21 with the help of distance education it should be possibleto increase the number of students in the existing educational systemwithout having to spend (much) more money, to make educationspatially and temporally accessible to a greater portion of (the adult andprofessionally active) population, and to create a flexible form ofeducation and flexible educational options.But then this would not be just any distance education. Edwards(1991) describes ”open learning” ”...as the post-Fordist approach to theeducation and training....” 22 Farnes (1993) is on the same track. Hestates that within the area of distance education, the post-Fordisteducational ideal is shaped in the form of a computer-based open anddistance education. In this description, the concepts of ”open” and”computer-based” are central in that they illustrate two lively discussionsthat are currently taking place in distance education. These encompassissues of open learning versus distance learning, as well as the role ofelectronic media in distance teaching.Distance education is often described as ”...an industrialized form ofeducation and teaching” 23 –characterized by industrial production,94

ationalization, mass production, mechanization, planning andcentralization. [This discussion is referred to in, among others, Farnes(1993), Rumble (1995a), Raggatt (1993) and Thorpe (1995).] Todaythe concept of open learning is sometimes used in the context of (distance)education as a counterbalance or alternative, but often just to indicate aform of education that is more flexible than usual.However, the question of exactly what type of education this conceptembraces is not particularly clear. Paine (1990), for example, states thatthe definition of open learning varies between two extremes. On theone hand, open learning is perceived as an educational form where thegeographical distance between teacher and student is bridged. On theother, open learning is so broadly defined that it becomes a genericconcept that includes any education that is even slightly related to studentcentering. Some authors more or less place distance learning in thesame category as open learning, while others, e.g. Kember & Murphy(1990), make a clear distinction between the two forms of education bypointing out that there are distance courses that are not particularlyopen and many open learning courses that do not take place at a distance.The most common perception nevertheless seems to be that open learningshould be regarded as a generic concept for a number of educational forms,the primary characteristic of which is a striving for openness. ”Openness”can be regarded in several different ways: from the point of view of thestudent’s access to studies, his freedom of choice with regard to the contentof the studies, or openness based on the ability to adapt the instructionalform to different needs and goals. According to Lewis (1990) it was morecommon in the past than it is now to express degrees of openness in termsof educational accessibility. Today openness is more often about creatingindependence in learning, and freedom of choice–about openness withrespect to instructional content and form. Today the concept of openlearning is also commonly associated with corporate or continuingeducation. According to Edwards (1991), this relation is an indication ofhow control over upper secondary and higher education is turned over toemployers and how education is an agent of the new vocationalism.The same kind of changes have taken place in Sweden too. Firstly,the aim and purpose of distance education have been changed: Whendistance education was introduced into higher education in the95

eginning of the 70s, it was primarily concieved as a means to contributeto social and geographical equality and this was expected to be done bythe increased physical accessibility created by new distance-bridgingeducational methods. In practice, distance education was during its firstten or fifteen years as part of the university system regarded as similarto, or even the same as, decentralized education. Today this view ondistance education is regarded as old-fashioned and inadequate. At thesame pace as ideas of life-long learning and education as a driving forcefor Sweden’s economic development have gained common and publicacceptance, the role of distance education has been revised. Focus is nolonger on equality, but on economy. Distance education is valued moreas a means to fulfill the diversified needs of the labour market, than asan instrument in the struggle for equlity between regions and socialgroups. Accessibility means less today, while flexibility, efficiency andthe potential to create individualized studies means more.At the same time as this change has taken place, the label put on thisparticular form of education is being discussed. ”Distance education” ispresently felt as a perhaps too limited concept to cover the whole arrayof different forms of courses and studies that is developed in its name.Instead ”open learning” is brought forward as one possible alternativealso in the Swedish setting, or maybe ”open flexible learning” 24 .The other component in Farnes’ description of post-Fordist distanceeducation was the concept of ”computer-based”.Today it can almost be considered a truism that distance education–or open learning–should be implemented with the help of electronicmedia, and then preferably with computers.This perspective is not onlyrendered by Farnes, but even Duning 25 states that distance education isstarting to become synonymous with telecommunicationsdelivery.Farnes also cites Rumble who states that ”there is a real possibilitythat we are on the threshold of the third generation distance educationsystems which combine access to mass-produced information with realinteractive communication.” 26 This is a distance education which, Farnesbelieves, will entail a great deal of responsibility being placed on boththe teacher and the individual student.During the last 5-10 years there has been an increased emphasis onelectronic media in Swedish distance education too. During its first two96

decades, distance education was in general performed practically withoutany help at all from technical or electronic equipment. The courseswere based mainly on books, written instructions and a travelling /visitingteacher or recurrent gatherings at the university. The most advancedtechnical aid used were telephones. But the new focus and new demandsbrought forward by the present educational discourse require newpedagogical methods in distance education. Computers and otherelectronic distance-bridging media are presented as indispensable in thedevelopment of modern flexible and individualized distance educationcourses.Concluding discussion - talking politics and moneyVia a discussion about the computer as a panoptic structure and ananalysis of the economic and educational context within which thispanoptic potential is exploited, the discussion ends in a computerisededucational situation where education is defined in terms of openlearning, the distance education of our (and future?) days, characterisedby prestige words such as openness, flexibility and efficiency.The characteristics of the ”openness” in open learning has changedduring the last decades. This change is described earlier in the text; achange from emphasis on openness in terms of accessibility, to a kind ofopenness that today to a greater extent is defined as learner independenceand flexibility - freedom for the learner to choose content and decidewhen, where and how to carry out his or her studies. Today openness indistance education/open learning is primarily a matter of freedom ofchoice regarding the methodology of education and executed by the useof computer technology.This change has ideological implications. For example Paine (1990)argues, apropos the question of which the real qualities of open learningare, that the increasing customer centeredness of the educational institutionshas been won at the expense of equality of opportunity - that”the ability to be flexible and demand-led has been based upon the economicreality of the market place”. 27 Richardson (1990) refers to Rumble whoquestions if it is adequate to refer to an education as ”open” if it isavailable only to limited groups of people and if the content has beenselected by somebody else - an employer - than by the prospective97

learners. Open learning is often described as a progressive educationand ascribed a potential to improve both life- and vocational chancesfor most people, but referring to Richardson, Rumble says that openlearning, as it is presently apprehended, does not contribute to freedomor social progress. Today it indoctrinates and encourages conformism,more than it fosters independence and stimulates a critical discussion.It is to this context that the dialogue, the electronic communicationand the panoptic principle belong. In a time when demands for flexibilityand customer- and market adjustment make structural (firm and fixed)control improductive and even counterproductive, the electronicdialogue offers teachers and producers of education possibilities of amore adequate form of control. To tie education to closed rooms, fixedhours, pre-selected literature and thereby creating possibilities of directobservation, control and examination is no longer considered appropriate- in a flexible and variable educational situation the control has to bemore adaptable and smooth. This is a situation that fits the computer asPanopticon. Using the computer as a medium, all educational acts, bothactive and passive ones, are perpetually monitored and registered. Andthis registration is not only executed by the teacher; when it comes tocomputer conferencing systems, all participants’ actions are visible toall other participants in a study group. There is no place to hide. Theteacher is visible and controlled to the same extent as the learners are.This supervision also takes place in a defined social and educationalcontext that is characterized by special norms of acceptable thinkingand behaviour. The observance of these norms is prompted by a neverendingexamination process combined with mechanisms of punishmentand correction. In the study situation itself, the mere use of informationtechnology is often considered to be a prominent norm of goodbehaviour. The electronic media should be made use of - this is correctaction.The more general picture of normality put forward in and by acomputer-based open learning-setting, is about control as a principle. Ina computerised educational situation the learners are made accustomedto continuous control and to a form of control that is executed withoutany steering in a particular or visible direction taking place. It is a controlwithout norms - no definition of normality is specified and this is actually98

the catch. The result is a learner that is used to and comfortable withbeing controlled, not steered in a particular direction, but used to andready to be steered in any direction. After this educational experiencethe participants is supposed to be prepared for and competent to handlea broad spectrum of vocational tasks and situations. The purpose is tocreate flexible thinking and flexible acting, i. e. the kind of floatingcompetence that the Market - concretised in the form of the modernlabour market - is supposed to demand. In an article, Goodson & Mangan(199?) analyse computer technology as educational device and theyreach the conclusion that ”The installation of computers in a classroom isnot a neutral technological act. It is an act which partakes of the symbolic tobecome an act of ideological penetration and conversion.” 28 In their opinion,the computer represents a vision of schooling and education whereeducational and cultural policies coincide with the goals of the industrialdevelopment.Computers in distance education - electronic Panopticons - mightconsequently be regarded as expressions of a market ideology withinthe educational system, transformed into educational practice. And thismarket ideology is manifested in more than one way. It does not onlyshow itself in the form of computers serving as devices of control andfosterers of flexibility. The ideology of markets and modern capitalismcan also be traced in the role that distance education plays today, as a”test bed” offering possibilities to test and apply telecommunicationtechnology within (especially) higher education. The informationtechnology has created the boundlessness necessary to pave the way forforces of the market place and competition inside the system. Thorpe(1995) concludes that distance education today is more or lesssynonymous with transference via telecommunication and accordingto her ”The expansion of Open and Distance Learning over the last decaderepresents not so much the triumph of ideologies of open access, more theimpact of market forces and government policies, heightened by recessionaryconditions.” 29 She calls distance education the ”Trojan horse” of highereducation, by the way that it has opened one of the last bastions of notentirely capitalistic relations to the forces of market economy. Informationtechnology and distance education creates conditions suited tocompetition at the same time as both technology and this special99

pedagogic solution are made necessary to every producer of educationthat aspires to participate in the competition. The means of the marketcreates a further need for the means of the market, in an endless andautonomous process.Market ideology is one prominent feature of liberalism. In an interpretationof Foucault, Barry, Osborne and Rose concludes that liberalism,as ”an ethos of government” 30 is not about the absence of governingor about the state governing less. The government is still there, but notvery visible at first sight, surrounded as it is by ”flexibility”, ”individualautonomy” and ”freedom” as words of honour and executed by thepromotion of quasi-economic models - based upon a competitive”market” logic - for individual, collective and institutional action.Liberalism means state governing that is cautious, economic andmodest. But liberalism as we know it today is not the same kind ofliberalism that Foucault saw emerging as a mentality of government inthe early nineteenth century. Burchell, for example, distinguishesbetween early liberalism and neo-liberalism. 31 What the two forms ofliberalism have in common, analyzed as governmental activities ratherthan institutions, is their mutual concern with the market and with thepromotion of market ideology and market functioning. But while theearly liberalism’s primary concern was to secure the conditions necessaryfor the ”natural” market mechanisms to operate and develop, by reducingstate and other limitations/obstacles, the neo-liberal governing strategiesare more active, more offensive/aggressive. The question for neo-liberalismis to actively construct or reconstruct a state and a civil society onthe basis of liberal (economic) freedom. This means to deploy ”...organizational forms and technical methods in order to extend the fieldwithin which a certain economic freedom might be practiced in the form ofautonomy, enterprise and choice”. 32The enterprise-based - market competion-oriented - practice refersto both institutional and individual/collective action. To the liberalstylegoverned individual the main lesson becomes to learn the properuse of individual freeedom. Burchell refers to Donzelot (1991) 33 in thisrespect and to the procedures of ”contractual implication”. Theseprocedures means the offering of possibilities to active involvement insocial areas by tradition considered being the state’s or society’s areas of100

esponsibility to individuals and groups, in exchange for individual andcollective active responsibility for these actions, for the actions themselvesand for them being carried out in accordance with approved models ofaction.According to Burchell, different systems of goverment, put intopractice for instance in the shape of institutional/organizational formsand behaviour, individual and collective dispositions and behaviour andby the aid of different technical methods and means, interconnect andlink up with each other. And procedures of auditing, accountabilityand management - features of the modern administrative panopticscheme - promote consistency between the systems as well as they alsocontribute to the survival and success of liberal government.And there we are, in modern society, facing a pedagogical liberaldiscourse put into practice in the shape of an educational form namedopen learning and and with new computer-based educational tools servingas devices for supervision, normalization and examination. Barry 34argues a propos communication networks and liberal goverment that”... communication networks have increasingly been seen as enhancing theself-governing capacities of society itself.” 35 and he describes the functionof communications structures as ”... perfect embodiments of the liberalpolitical imagination”. 36 This descripton of communication networksalso counts for the educational situation. Information technology providespossibilities to maximize the density, intensity and extension ofinteractions at the same time as it minimizes the direct/outspokendemands on the students. Instead learning is taking place under slogansas freedom, flexibility and individual responsibility.When it comes to the introduction of information technology anddistance education in educational settings, there is also a close connectionbetween this discourse and economical strong interests. ”There has beenhuge economic pressure behind the introduction of new informationtechnology [IT] because IT is not just an education tool (as were, for example,the programmed learning machines of an earlier decade). IT is now pervasivein all economic sectors. The pressure has come from statements on the ’needsof industry’, skill shortage and on the ’growing demand for IT skills’...”. 37But this connection is most often obscured, the power interests behindit and supporting it are kept hidden. Instead the discourse in question -101

information technology, open learning - is presented as ”natural” and”inevitable” in our contemporary and future society.That is what happens. According to Foucault, power is productiveand it usually disguises itself as ”truth”. ”What makes power holdgood, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t onlyweigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and producesthings, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourses. Itneeds to be considered as a productive network which runs through thewhole social body, much more than as a negative instance whosefunction is repression.” 38 .Educational discourses shall not and can not be seen only as neutraldescriptions of reality, they are also productive. They represent particularimages of ”normality”, particular views on the role of education ineconomic and social life. They are integrated in the exercise of powerand are therefore strategically important for the ongoing anduninterrupted struggles for power that are going on in all social contexts.ReferencesApple, M. W.: Mandating Computers: The Impact of the new Technology on the LabourProcess, Students an Teachers. In: Walker, S. & Barton, L. (Eds): ChangingPolicies, Changing Teachers. Open University Press, 1987.Barry, A.: Lines of communication and spaces of rule. In Barry, A., Osborne, T., Rose, N.(Eds): Foucault and political reason. Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities ofgovernment. The University of Chicago Press, London 1996.Barry, A., Osborne, T., Rose, N.: Introduction. In Barry, A., Osborne, T., Rose,N. (Eds):Foucault and political reason. Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities ofgovernment. The University of Chicago Press, London 1996.Burchell, G.: Liberal government and techniques of the self. In Barry, A., Osborne, T.,Rose, N. (Eds): Foucault and political reason. Liberalism, neo-liberalism andrationalities of government. The University of Chicago Press, London 1996.Beynon, J. & Mackay, H.: Information technology into education: towards a criticalperspective. Journal of education policy. Vol 4, No 3, 1989.Ds 1992:3: Långt borta och mycket nära - En förstudie om svensk distansutbildning. (Far Awayand Very Close - A Pre-study of Swedish Distance Education) Utbildningsdepartementet.Allmänna Förlaget, Stockholm 1992.Deleuze, G.: Postscript of the societies of control. October, 1992: winter, s 3-7.Edenius, M.: Ett modernt dilemma. (A modern dilemma.). Akademisk avhandling förfilosofiedoktorsexamen. Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Stockholmsuniversitet, 1996.102

Edwards, R.: The inevitable future? Post-Fordism and open learning. Open Learning, Vol 6,No 2, 1991.Farnes, N.: Modes of production: Fordism and distance education. Open learning, Vol 8,No 1, 1993.Foucault, M.: Övervakning och Straff (Discipline and Punish). Arkiv förlag, Lund 1987.Goodson, I.F. & Mangan, M.: Computers in schools as symbolic and ideological action:the genealogy of the Icon. The Curriculum Journal, Vol 3, No 3, 199?.Goodson, I.F. & Mangan, J. M.: Computer literacy as Ideology. British Journal of Sociologyof Education, Vol 17, No 1, 1996.Jonassen, D. et al: Constructivism and Computer-Mediated Communication in DistanceEducation. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol 9, No 2, 1995.Juler, Ph.: Promoting interaction; maintaining independence: swallowing the mixture.Open Learning, Vol 5, No 2, 1990.Kember, D. & Murphy, D.: A synthesis of open, distance and student centered learning.Open Learning, Vol 5, No 2, 1990.Lauzon, A. C.: Integrating Computer-Based Instruction with Computer Conferencing: AnEvaluation of a Model for Designing Online Education. The American Journal ofDistance Education, Vol 6, No 2, 1992.Lewis, R.: Open learning and the missuse of language: a response to Greville Rumble.Open Learning, Vol 5, No 1, 1990.May, S.: Collaborative Learning: More Is Not Necessarily Better. The American Journal ofDistance Education, Vol 7, No 3, 1993.Mcconnell, D.: Managing Open Learning in Computer Supported Collaborative LearningEnvironments. Studies in Higher Education, Vol 19, No 3, 1994.Moore, M.: Recent contributions to the theory of distance education. Open Learning, Vol5, No 3, 1990.Mosco, V.: Information in the Pay-per Society. In: Mosco, V. & Wasko, J.: The PoliticalEconomy of Information. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1988.Paine, N.: Open learning and the misuse of language: some comments on the Rumble/Lewis debate. Open Learning, Vol 5, No 2, 1990.Phelps, R. H., Wells, R. A., Ashworth, R. L. & Hahn, H. A.: Effectiveness and Costs ofDistance Education Using Computer-Mediated Communication. The AmericanJournal of Distance Education, Vol 5, No 3, 1991.Poster, M.: The mode of information. Polity press. 1990.Raggatt, P.: Post-Fordism and distance education - a flexible strategy for change. OpenLearning, Vol 8, No 1, 1993.Razzol, N.: Post-Fordism? Technology and New Forms of Control: the case of technologyin the curriculum. British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol 14, No 3, 1993.Richardson, M.: Open learning and the misuse of language: some comments on theRumble/Lewis debate. Open Learning, Vol 5, No 2, 1990.Rumble, G. (a): Labour market theories and distance education I: Industrialisation anddistance education. Open Learning, Vol 10, No 1. 1995.Rumble, G. (b): Labour market theories and distance education III: Post fordism - the wayforward? Open Learning, Vol 10, No 3, 1995.SOU 1993:23: Kunskapens krona. (The Crown of Knowledge) Huvudbetänkande avutredningen om effektivare vuxenutbildning. Utbildningsdepartementet.Stockholm 1993.103

Tagg, A. C.: Leadership from Within: Student Moderation of Computer Conferences. TheAmerican Journal of Distance Education, Vol 8, No 3, 1994.Thorpe, M.: The Expansion of Open and Distance Learning - A reflection on marketforces. Open Learning, Vol 10, No 1, 1995.Wagner, E. D.: In Support of a Functional Definition of Interaction. The American Journalof Distance Education, Vol 8, No 2, 1994.Wellington, J. J.: The impact of IT on the school curriculum: downwards, sideways,backwards and forwards. Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol 22, No 1, 1990.Notes1Rumble, G. (1989) ’Open learning’, ’distance learning’ and the misuse of language.Open Learning, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 28-35.2Moore (1990), p. 14.3Ibid.4Cook, J. 1989. The liberation of distance: teaching women’s studies from china. InCritical Reflections on Distance Education, eds. T. Evans and D. Nation, 23-37. London:The Falmer Press.5Hughes, M. and M. Kennedy. 1985. New Futures. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.6p. 32.7It is possible to compare the meaning that Deleuze gives to this concept to the societycalled ”postmodern” in other scientific and philosophical literature.8Burchell in Barry, Osborne, Rose (1996), p. 19.9Barry, Osborne and Rose (1996), p. 8.10Poster (1990), p. 85.11Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon,1977, p. 24. Cited in Poster (1990), p. 93.12Zuboff, S. 1988. In the Age of the Smart Machine. New York: Basic Books, p. 322.Citation excerpted from Edenius (1996).13p. 192.14Michel Foucault cited in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Colin Gordon, ed. New York: Pantheon, 1980, p. 93. Citation excerpted fromPoster (1990)., p.87.15Burchell (1996), p. 30.16These analyses also agree when it comes to describing the Fordist, as well as the post-Fordist society. The description that is given in the text is shared by all the above authors,even though in the following text I only refer to one of them.17Murray, R. (1989). Fordism and Post-Fordism. In New Times: The Changing Face ofPolitics in the 1990s. S. Hall and M. Jacques, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart,pp. 38-53.18Mosco (1988) talks about the pay-per society in which ”large business... use the computercommunications to increase profit and extend control over workers and consumers.” (p 8).19This thesis is questioned by Rumble (1995b), for example. But since Rumble’s challengeleads to a variation on Farnes theory instead of knocking it down, I have decidednot to refer to his argument in this context.104

20For example, the Commission for Competence appointed by the Labor Market Ministryand the Commission for Higher Education, the Commission for Distance Education, theCommission for a More Effective Adult Education, and Agenda 2000: Knowledge andCompetence in the Next Century (the Ministry of Education).21For example, SOU 1993:23 The Crown of Knowledge, Ds1992:3 Far Away and VeryClose - A Pre-study of Swedish Distance Education.22p. 38.23Rumble (1995a), p. 14.24See for example the dicussion in the report presented by the Distance EducationCommittee (the Ministry of Education) presented in May 199825Duning, B. 1990. The coming of the new distance educators in the United States: Thetelecommunications generation takes off. In Distance Education. International Journal,11, 1, pp 24-49. Referred to in Thorpe (1995).26Rumble, G. (1989). Interactivity, Independence and Cost. In Interaction andIndependence, ICDE Conference papers, ICDE, A. Tait, ed..27p.44.28p. 273.29p. 21.30p. 8.31Burchell, G. (1996): Liberal government and techniques of the self.32Barry, Osborne and Rose (1996), p. 10.33Burchell (1996), p. 29.34Barry, A. (1996): Lines of communication and spaces of rule.35p. 128.36p. 128.37Wellington (1990), p. 61.38Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge, Brighton, Harvester Press. Quoted in Edwards(1991), p. 36105

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L Y N N F E N D L E RMaking Trouble: Predictability,Agency, and Critical Intellectuals”All reification is a forgetting.“Theodore AdornoCritical theories since those of the Frankfurt School have begun withthe assumption that social relations are infused with injustices, and thatit is the responsibility of intellectuals to recognize and address powerrelations. Power relations have changed dramatically throughout historyin accordance with shifting contributions from governmental,economic, religious, aesthetic, scientific, philosophical and technologicalsectors.It is not easy to recognize emerging forms of power because the socialtechnologies--including educational pedagogies--are enacted beforethe exercise of power is recognized as such. For example, it is only recentlythat critical theorists have begun to analyze the ways in which the shiftto liberal democratic forms of government necessitated a self-disciplinedcitizenry and the ”reform [of] individuals at the level of their personalskills and competencies” (Barry, Osborne & Rose, 1996, p. 1). In aneffort to identify emerging forms of power relations, it becomes necessaryto problematize the analytical categories of previous critical theories,and to consider how new social technologies may require new analyticaltools of critique.The task of critical research in education is to provide theoreticalmechanisms which allow for radical change in social relations. In orderto allow for change, it is useful to understand what is taken for grantedas unchangeable in any given system of thought. In this chapter I askthree questions in attempt to discern what is taken for granted in variousstrands of contemporary educational discourse: 1) What is the organizingschema (also called the system of reasoning or principle of coherence)?2) How is the subject constituted (especially in relation to the ”object”and to the social)? 3) What is the role of the critical intellectual?107

For each of these questions, I first characterize the most common paradigmof educational discourse in terms of its assumptions. Then Iexamine two other strands of educational research which proposeapproaches which are critical of the most common forms of discourse.The first strand is critical modernism, in which I consider Marxian,Frankfurt School, and Habermasian contributions; the second is postmodernism,in which I consider the historicizing approaches such asthose of Foucault and poststructural feminists. For each of the threequestions, I examine the ways in which the various ”alternative” strandsof educational discourse interrupt and/or perpetuate the assumptionsof common educational discourse.The Trouble with PredictabilityIn general, educational discourse in the present historical moment isorganized around a totalizing principle in a paradigm which is called”analytic”, ”rationalistic”, or ”scientific”--in the sense of proceeding byexperimental method. That is, the criteria by which research practicesare evaluated are those which can be generalized and whose results canbe validated in terms of statistical testing. Most importantly, in thisschema, the generalizable principle is privileged over individuals; generalprinciples, in other words, are held to be more valid, and perhapsmore true, than particular cases, ”exceptions”, or ”deviations.” Specifically,in this organizing schema, making sense entails evaluation onthe basis of logical-analytical coherence which can be related to someempirical referent. In other words, it is generally considered reasonableto reject an assertion if it can be demonstrated to contradict some widelyaccepted premise. In this organizing schema, the criteria of evaluationare generalizable and abstract, not aesthetic or theological.An example of a analytical organizing schema in much educationaldiscourse is the assumption of developmentalism, as in the study of”child development.” It is widely assumed that there is a discernablepattern of growth which is delimited by age. The developmental patternis a generalizable principle, and it is validated in terms of statistical testing.The developmental theories of Piaget, Kolberg, and Gilligan arewidely debated in educational circles, but the scholarly arguments aregenerally limited to questions of periodization (e.g. What are the criteria108

of a ”stage” of development?) and applicability (e.g. Can a singledevelopmental scale be applied to various races, ethnicities and genders?).Educational discourse generally takes it for granted that children’s growthcan be understood as conforming (or not conforming) to a generalizable(i.e. developmental) pattern. Moreover, if a child’s growth does not conformto a given pattern of development, then the child is judged to be”abnormal.”This sort of judgement is significant because in an analytical organizingschema, the theory of developmentalism is held to be ”true” andthe child is held to be ”deviant.” That which is generalizable is believedto be normal, and the lives of individual children are evaluated withreference to a statistical norm. The analytical generalization takesprecedence over the broad range of variations by calling some children”normal” and some children ”abnormal.” In order to understand theimplications of these assumptions, consider what could have been thecase in an alternative schema: In another schema, the theory ofdevelopmentalism might be judged faulty because it cannot account forthe range of empirical data--namely the wide variations in the wayschildren grow. That is, the wide variations in the ways children growmight be considered sufficient evidence to invalidate--or at leastweaken--the assumption of generalizable norms in development.An analytical organizing schema is taken for granted in much currentdiscourse; however, historically, Descartes’ seventeenth century formulationof an analytic method was a critical interruption. A formalizedanalytical method effected an epistemological break from thestranglehold of medieval theological assumptions. Descartes is oftencredited with birthing the age of reason. His systematic methods ofhypothesis testing have been heralded as paving the way for an”enlightened” view of the universe. Interestingly, however, Descarteswas fundamentally an idealist who grounded the justification for hismethod on the content of his dreams. His Discourse on Method was anearly formulation of abstract, rational inquiry; and the Discourse isremarkable precisely because it was the mutant offspring of formalmetaphysical idealism.The formalization of an analytical method was a critical contributionin the early seventeenth century, but it gradually entered general discourse109

and has since attained the status of an unquestioned assumption incontemporary thought. Historical hindsight reveals that the originalformulations of Descartes’ rational method were debated for a while;after a time the method was tentatively employed in analyses, such analysesbecame widespread in philosophical discourse (for reasons of historicalhappenstance; see e.g. Toulmin, 1990), the method becameformalized and conceptualized, the validity of the conceptualizationceased to generate controversy, the controversy was forgotten, the practiceof analytic rationality became a habit, the habit eventually becameembedded in discourse as an ”ism”, and the habitualized assumption ofrationalism became commonsense.An examination of common educational discourse suggests that therules of ”rationality” have changed dramatically over time, and thechanges were unpredictable. Current analytical discourse tends to assumethat a generalizable method is grounds for truth; that is, if a researchmethod obeys a set of formal procedural rules, then the conclusions canbe considered valid. This analytical schema is based on principles (orlaws) of repeatability, generalizability, and rational coherence. In thisdiscourse, the ”truth” of a principle (e.g. developmentalism) is strongenough to label some events (or some children) deviant (rather thanvice versa).Assumptions of an analytical principle in education are evident inthe extent to which analytical and experimental methods informeducational discourse. It is widely taken for granted that human behaviorand learning can be understood and/or explained on the basis of experimentaltesting and generalizable laws of development. A considerablenumber of research projects in education are justified under theassumption that teaching, learning, cognition, behavior and dispositionare accessible to ”scientific” observation, explicable in terms ofdevelopmentalism, and susceptive to intervention based on experimentaldata. Moreover, such an analytical schema tends to accept conclusionssolely on the basis of their methodological (i.e. experimental) validity,and without regard to their social, political, or historical context.Critical discourses in education have argued that an analytical approachto education ignores sociological and political factors which havesignificant impact on schooling. Critical modernist discourses--including110

Marxian, Frankfurt School and Habermasian threads--have offered analternative organizing schema which maintains some features of analyticdiscourse, but also departs somewhat from the assumption of ananalytical schema. The modernist organizing schema can be characterizedas dialectical. The dialectical schema departs from the analytical principleby positing conflicting (or oppositional) positions to make sense of theworld. An analytical approach assumes a unified principle of coherence;however, the dialectical approach assumes (at least) two opposing forcessuch as ”oppressive/liberatory” and ”marginalized/empowered”, as in,for example, liberatory pedagogy. Moreover, while analytical schemaare generally justified on formal methodological grounds, the moderncriteria of evaluation are generally sociological (in Kantian terms,”synthetic”) because modern assertions are typically justified on the basisof socio-political (and/or ideological) referents.Critical Marxian discourse arose in the historical context of nineteenthcentury modernization which entailed the development of nationalisms,social organizations, bureaucracies, economic institutions, Darwinianlaws of nature, and collective forms of governance. Such social, politicaland economic circumstances made it possible to think about powerrelations in terms of populational entities such as ”class” and bureaucracy.These conditions of modernity formed the historical matrix whichengendered and sustained Marx’s theories of economic determinism andcollective consciousness.One prominent group to extend Marx’s work was the Frankfurt Schoolin Germany (ca. 1923-1950). The historical circumstances of the FrankfurtSchool, however, included aspects unknown to Marx, most notablythe rise and fall of fascism, the emergence of psychology as a socialscience, and the influence of Sigmund Freud. Historically speaking,the Frankfurt School faced two strands of established discourse. Thefirst strand was the analytical schema (which the Frankfurt School termed”instrumental reasoning”) because the analytical approach replacedthe humanist subject (in its multiple variations) with the rationalizedsubject (which conformed to a generalizable pattern); moreover, theanalytical schema devalued subjective reflection while it privileged formalprocedural methodology. The second strand was Marxian historywhich posited class relations as the ”motor” of history, thereby111

decentering the individual subject and replacing the humanist subjectwith a notion of modern social, political, and economic ”role.” TheFrankfurt School targeted both the technologies of ”instrumental reasoning”and the decentered subject of Marxian history in an effort toundo the determinism and loosen the restrictions imposed when theanalytical schema was (mis)applied to human history.The Frankfurt School argued against instrumental reasoning byexplaining instrumental reasoning as a product of the Enlightenmenttaken to unreasonable extremes. In response they sought to interruptinstrumental reasoning through an emphasis on aesthetics. It was positedthat aesthetics was not reducible or explicable in terms of rationality,and therefore the aesthetic realm offered the possibility of escape fromthe domination of instrumental reasoning. Herein lay the emancipatorypotential of Critical Theory for the Frankfurt School.Eventually, a grandchild of the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas,asked the question: How can the aesthetic realm be consideredautonomous if the moral realm and the scientific realm were ”colonized”by instrumental reasoning? On what basis could the aesthetic realm beset apart? Habermas logically concluded that it could not. However,rather than abandon the emancipatory project of Critical Theory,Habermas then defended the autonomy of each of the realms--aesthetic,moral, and scientific. This was an interesting move because it historicizedthe subject by acknowledging that modern subjectivity was characterizednot by transcendent unity but by dispersal among various social ”roles.”Habermas’ theory then endowed the dispersed subjectivity of modernitywith emancipatory potential. That is, Habermas recognized the historicalconstitution of the subject--namely that it had been dispersedinto modern roles; and then he used that separability to insulate partsof human nature from domination by instrumental reasoning. TheFrankfurt School argued that the modern subject was not the same asthe traditional subject. To that extent, the Frankfurt School historicizedthe subject, and that historization of the subject was a critical breakfrom an analytical schema. However, there are also significant continuitiesbetween analytic and critical modernist schemas. Mostimportantly, the critical modernist explanation of history still assumes akind of logical causality in events. A modern dialectical organizing112

schema posits relatively formal relations among historical events andphenomena; specifically, critical modernist analyses tend to posit causal”reasons” to explain social relations. For example, a child’s ability tolearn may be ”explained” according to a generalizable pattern which isattributed to his or her socio-economic status. Thus, the theory takesprecedence over the multiple variations of historical events; generalizabilityis favored over multiplicity of explanations.When a theory assumes that history obeys some rational or logicallaws--whether those be syllogistic, causal, or progressive--that theory isanalytic insofar as it privileges a generalizable pattern over multiplevariations. Concomitantly, that theory limits possibilities for the futureaccording to what is rationally predictable. If an historical analysisassumes that a sequence of events in history could be explained as logicallypredictable cause and effect, then it follows that events in the futureought to be predictable in terms of cause and effect. Therefore, in thisorganizing schema, possibilities for the future are theoretically limitedto what can be rationally argued in the present. This constraint isproblematic in terms of an emancipatory agenda because untoldpossibilities for the future are foreclosed. Ironically, it was Marx whosaid that true freedom could not be envisioned by people who were notyet free.Another organizing schema of critical educational discourse is characteristicof postmodernist histories, namely historical contingency. Apostmodern premise is that systems of reasoning do not exist objectivelyor evolve progressively; rather, systems of reasoning have their bases inhistorical happenstance. Systems of thought are themselves products ofpower relations; that is, it is possible to think in a given way only becausea specific history of power relations has made it possible to think in thisway. There are no systems of thought that are ”pure”, ”natural”, orseparable from human history.Following Foucault, many postmodern historicizing critiques searchfor amalgamations of social technologies (e.g. linguistic transformations,institutional reorganizations, legal precedents, economic redistributions,disciplinary regimens, artistic innovations, religious movements, andacademic redefinitions) which--when taken together--generate, sustain,and inscribe a given rational system. We can think of these as social113

technologies because through social engagement, people’s thoughts,actions, speech, and perceptions are shaped by the existing practicalsystems. For example, the invention of the concept of ”race” and itsdiffusion through social and educational discourse, has made it possibleto think that children require different pedagogies depending on howthey are racially classified (see e.g. Young, 1990).Postmodern historicizing critiques examine social technologies inorder to analyze the ways in which particular social technologies produceparticular kinds of thinking. This postmodern organizing schema oftenemploys the concept of ”discourse” in the examination of technologiesin order to indicate that when we think of them as discursive technologies,theory and practice are indistinguishable.The organizing principle of historical contingency asserts that principlesof reasoning change, and that there is no necessary or predictablerelationship between the present and the past, or between the presentand the future. Accordingly, justification for historically contingentassertions is generally based in references to social contexts such aseconomic conditions, political reorganizations, legal enactments, culturaltrends, aesthetic expressions, and pedagogical technologies. Historicallycontingent social analyses are neither rationalistic nor arbitrary; that is,history is neither determined nor random. Rather, history can beexplained by reference to particular amalgamations of social, political,economic, aesthetic, and technological conditions.For example, in educational discourse today, it is common to thinkof children as members of populational groups such as Hispanic, gifted,or learning disabled. However, the identification of children accordingto populational criteria is a relatively new way of thinking. Populationalclassification is characteristic of the Progressive era in the United Stateswhen it was used as a means for managing large groups of immigrantchildren in the school systems (see e.g. Popkewitz, 1991). Populationalthinking in the Progressive era was embedded not only in educationaldiscourse, but in an amalgamation of social technologies includingeconomic, legal, and political.Critical postmodern historicizing has focused on commonplaceassumptions--such as populational thinking--and analyzed the technologieswhich inscribe and perpetuate those assumptions--such as114

ace-based or gender-based pedagogies, curriculum for the ”gifted andtalented”, I.Q. testing, populationally defined state policy, and ethnicallyspecific dress codes.In postmodern educational discourse, historical contingency isadvocated on two grounds. First, historical contingency does not embedthe theoretical mechanisms of predictability which constrain historicaland future possibilities. A contingent organizing schema allows an analysisto un-determine future possibilities. This is a departure from criticalmodernist histories which tend to paint a picture of a better future as ameans of offering ”solutions.”Second, historical contingency is a critical move in the face of currentsocial and political conditions. Arguments which assert historicalcontingency fly in the face of an analytical schema. An analytical schemaseeks generalizable laws and predictable relations in its analyses. Criticalmodernists seek causal relations for social circumstances. However,historically contingent arguments seek to explain that currentcircumstances did not arise as inevitable, necessary, natural, or predictableeffects of previous circumstances; and furthermore, social technologieshave shaped subjectivity to the extent that one can no longer assume an”authentic humanist” (i.e. pure and unsocialized) subject.Postmodern historicizing takes an assumed Truth of the universe andexplains it as a historical happenstance, and then examines theconstruction of that Truth as embodied in social technologies andtechnologies of the self. When assumed Truths are reconstituted as beinghistorically specific, those Truths lose their reins on thought; and whenthe constitution of the subject is problematized, the effects of power onthe self can be critiqued. Herein lies the critical potential of postmodernhistoricizing.Constitution of the SubjectThe subject assumed in most educational discourse is not the Cartesiansubject whose ”subjective” experiences of dreams and revelations formedthe basis for conjecture. Rather, the subject of most current discourseresembles the Kantian subject who can be studied objectively. Moreover,it is generally assumed that ”I” (as subject) am ”knowable” (asobject), so that objective-subjectivity also functions to constitute identity.115

The ability to study the ”self” (as subject/object) has been consideredto be a legacy of the Enlightenment, of which Kant’s work can be consideredthe culmination. That is, the ”self” is no longer transcendent ormystical, but rather the ”self” is now knowable through the objective”light” of science.The Frankfurt School attacked the dominance of an analytical schemaby calling it ”instrumental” or ”subjective reasoning” (meaning,ironically, the form of reasoning imposed on the subject from theoutside), and advocated instead the value of ”objective reasoning”(meaning, again ironically, the form of reasoning innate to humansubjects). Adorno’s Minima Moralia (1951), for example, attacked”abstract, coherent, architectonic systems”, and promoted ”subjective,private reflection” (quoted in Jay, 1972, p. 277). The agenda of theFrankfurt School was to reinsert possibilities for ”authentic humanist”responses to counteract the dominance of instrumental reasoning. Thisform of critique is characteristic of the Frankfurt School’s place in relationto Marxian theories of history and Freudian theories of innate humanism.The modus operandi of the Frankfurt School was a concerted campaigndirected against the loss of the subject and against the proliferation ofinstrumental reasoning (or the Eclipse of Reason, in Horkheimer’s terms).the Enlightenment’s overemphasis on logical formalism and itsassumption that all true thought tended towards the condition of mathematicsmeant [to Horkheimer and Adorno] that the static repetitionof mythic time had been retained, thwarting the dynamic possibility ofhistorical development. ...The instrumental manipulation of nature byman [sic] led inevitably to the concomitant relationship among men.(Jay, 1973, p. 261)On this point, critical modernists and postmodernists agree; the targetof all these critical theories has been the ”loss” of the subject throughobjectification and colonization by instrumental reasoning. What theFrankfurt School calls, ”the overemphasis on logical formalism”,Habermas calls, ”the ’colonization’ of the life-world by an instrumentallogic that focuses exclusively on technique” (quoted in Kloppenberg,1994, p. 86), and Foucault (1979) calls ”governmentalisation.” Thesecritical theorists began their social analyses with the same historical116

postulate, namely that throughout the twentieth century, the spread ofinstrumental reasoning and technologies of surveillance (such aspsychology) inscribed a new form of governance and concomitant shiftsin power relations. Many recent critical theories argue that modern formsof governance could not exist unless individual subjects wereself-disciplined; current economic and social systems depend upon theinculcation of particular tastes, desires and aspirations among thecitizenry. Modern and postmodern critical projects as a whole weredirected against the loss of the subject, the colonization of the subject,or the discipline of the subject through technologies of the self.Remarkably, then, there is considerable similarity among modernistsand postmodernists concerning the loss of the subject in history. Theyagree that forms of reasoning and power relations have problematizedthe assumption of an authentic subject. Finally, critical modernist andpostmodernist theories have focused on the loss of the subject as thecentral problem of modernity to be critiqued.While the modernists and postmodernists share the problem of theloss of the subject, they disagree significantly on what to do about it.The Frankfurt School reconstituted a humanist subject by assuming atranscendent subject throughout their historical analyses. For example,in his appeal to ”subjective, private reflection”, Adorno assumed withoutquestion that an individual is capable of authentic reflection. ”Aestheticexperience” served as evidence for the humanist subject, and the definitionof ”beauty” was analyzed as implying a ”non-identical” relationbetween subject and object. In other words, the Frankfurt School deniedthat subjectivity was socially (or discursively) constructed.The assumption of the ”authentic humanist” subject is the basis formodernist assertions of agency. The transcendent subject of the FrankfurtSchool is one who is unadulterated by instrumental reasoning andis therefore an agent capable of resistance. This theoretical position isbased on an a priori autonomous subjectivity, in which an ”authentic”subject must be first assumed in order to provide a theoretical mechanismfor escaping the total domination of instrumental reasoning.By not problematizing a priori subjectivity, the Frankfurt School tacitlyconstructed a stable, ahistorical, and non-objectifiable agent position,in the tradition of humanism and commensurate with Freud. Frankfurt117

School critical theory did not ask questions about where this sort ofhumanist subject might have come from, or what its relation to historyor power might be; it assumed that there must be human agency whichwas pure, free, and capable of resistance. Therefore, even as the FrankfurtSchool painted a bleak picture of the dominance of instrumentalreasoning, there was throughout their social analyses, the assumptionof agency for a ”humanist” subject.While the earlier Frankfurt School theorists assumed a transcendenthumanist subject, Habermas problematized the subject. In this sense,Habermas’ response to the ”’colonization’ of the life-world by instrumentallogic” departed somewhat from that of his teacher, Adorno.Habermas’ response to the loss of the subject was to invoke asemi-autonomous humanist subject in theory according to his postulatethat the moral, aesthetic, and scientific realms were semi-autonomous.That is, in order to combat the dominance of instrumental reasoning,Habermas (re)inserted a capacity for resistance into history by invokingan agentive, humanist subject which was asserted to be (to a degree)independent from the dominance of instrumental reasoning. Habermasrecognized a problem in assuming a transcendent subject (e.g. Wheredid it come from?) and opted (in a move which some have argued isreminiscent of German idealism) to write a subject into the text, that isto construct a (semi-) autonomous subject in terms of language. InHabermasian theory, the subject is made (semi-)autonomous, that ismade (semi-) independent, from social dynamics in order to ”resist”colonization by social forces.In sum, the critical modernist (including the Frankfurt School andHabermas) project was to write history in such a way that acknowledgedmodern collective forms of social power, and at the same time, providea theoretical account of possibilities for human resistance. Adorno didthis by assuming an individual capable of aesthetic experience andmeaningful reflection; and Habermas did this by theoreticallyconstructing an autonomous subject in dialectical relation to instrumentalrationality.The trouble with this modernist assumption of agency is that it doesnot consider the possibility that ”subjective” experience has already beenshaped by historical circumstances and social technologies. There is no118

satisfactory mechanism in critical modernist theory for discriminatingbetween ”authentic” experience and ”socially constructed” experience,no way to investigate which practices may be ”free” and which may beeffects of domination, and no theory which can discriminate betweenacts of resistance and acts of compliance.Furthermore, the reliance on agency and aesthetic experience tendsto deny one of the primary contributions of the Frankfurt School, namelythat social technologies--such as instrumental reasoning--shapesubjectivity. Critical modernist analyses do not account for the wayssubjective perception, tastes, desires, and hopes are effects of historicalcontexts. Critical modernist analyses generally do not acknowledge thecurrent historical context which entails the self-discipline of theindividual.Therefore, insofar as subjective experience is not problematized,critical leverage is lost. That is, without questioning the ways in whichsubjectivity is an effect of power, it is impossible to criticize the effectsof power at the subjective level. In this way, the transcendent,unproblematized, subject may inadvertently perpetuate existing powerrelations.Dehistoricized Subject. The work of Louis Althusser (Foucault’steacher) began to point to a significant analytical difficulty in the FrankfurtSchool theory. This analytical difficulty can be called the problemof the dehistoricized subject. Briefly, the problem was that the FrankfurtSchool had granted dominant status to socio-economic power inorder to account for the massive scale of modern institutions. However,if socio-economic power was made so dominant, then the theoreticalpossibility of a resisting subject--an agent--must necessarily be ahistorical.In other words, if socio-economic forces of history are so powerful, howis agentive resistance in history possible?The problem of the dehistoricized subject is exemplified in somepedagogies which are based on a discourse of ”democracy.” Suchpedagogies rest on the assumption that students--as a populationalgroup--are oppressed vis-à-vis the educational system. This approachrecognizes that teachers and administrators are vested with institutionalpower because of their positions in the institutional structure; the historicalcontext includes power relations, and a structural historical con-119

text includes structural power relations. The emancipatory task of thedemocratic pedagogue, then, becomes to ”empower” students throughsuch technologies as ”giving students voice” and introducing democraticdecision-making procedures.The analytical difficulty with this theory is that it makes studentsoppressed and empowered at the same time: If students are by definitionoppressed, how can they become empowered? And if students areempowered, how can they still belong to the (necessarily) oppressedgroup of students? The critical modernist response to this difficulty hasbeen to assert that students have the subjective capacity for resistance,and this capacity is independent of historical power relations--hencedehistoricized.This is why, in critical modernist theory, the human agent is describedas dehistoricized. That is, in critical modernism, history was understoodas the story of economic, social, and cultural oppression; and agentiveresistance was postulated to be independent of historical relations.Therefore, the work of the Frankfurt School critical intellectual hadbecome to author the agent and thereby the possibilities for resistance.Eventually, following Habermas, the possibilities for agency came tomean the sort of agency that could be objectively and literally constructedin a text; possibilities for agency were authored by the critical intellectual.In other words, critical modernist theorists have tended to define”agency” according to a Habermasian tradition, which means to inserta resisting subject into the text by declaring explicitly that subjects areendowed with agency, and that a history of oppression has no bearingon the capacity for resistance.Description and Performativity. There are many similarities betweenHabermas’ linguistic analyses and those of critical postmodernists (e.g.Lyotard, 1984). Habermas’ remarkable Theory of Communicative Actionelaborated the linguistic distinctions between instrumental rationalityand communicative rationality. This distinction does not refer torelatively superficial changes in vocabulary and terminology. Rather, itrefers to paradigmatic shifts in what linguists have called ”speech acts.”For example, consider the descriptive act of the statements, ”The harvestwas abundant” and ”They got married”, in contrast to the performativeact of the statements, ”Bless this harvest” and ”I now proclaim you120

husband and wife.” These are examples of two (of many) different speechacts which construct two different ”realities” in terms of language. Understandingthe first statement as descriptive requires an acceptance of astructural reality in which language can represent something. And understandingthe second statement as performative requires an acceptanceof a constructed reality in which language can effect something.Recent postmodern feminists (e.g. Butler, 1990) have critiquedHabermasian theories of communicative action and contributed aninnovative perspective which interrupts previous assumptions aboutdescriptive and performative rhetoric.The contribution of Butler regarding ”performativity” can be understoodby drawing an analogy to an earlier historical shift. The shift from”traditional” to ”modern” discourses entailed differences between whatstatements were understood to be descriptive acts, and what statementswere understood to be performative. For example, in the sixteenthcentury, when the pope said, ”Luther is a heretic”, that was understoodas a performative act: The power of the sovereign was to pronouncereality. Then, modernity broke with that epistemological model andmade it possible that authoritative pronouncements could be understoodas descriptive, rather than performative.Modernity entailed an historical shift in the heuristic of ”interpretation.”It is not difficult to imagine the emancipatory potentials of thismodern discursive shift: a word from the sovereign would no longernecessarily ”make it so”; the sovereign could ”get it wrong”; or theremight be an ”alternative interpretation.” Power took on new meaningsbecause the noble power to perform reality shifted to the scientific powerto describe and interpret reality.Recent critical work can be characterized as effecting an analogous(but inverse) shift in power. That is, recent critical theorists have beensuggesting that modern descriptive categories of discourse--like race,class and gender--have been functioning as disciplinary technologies.If we assume, for example, that any characteristic of race or gender is”descriptive”, then we assume a certain ”truth” about race or gender.That is, if we assume that ”better at language and worse at math” isdescriptive of a woman, then we have assumed that the ”true” identityof a woman is one who is better at language and worse at math. The121

analytical difficulty in this descriptive heuristic is that any person whois ”worse at language and better at math” cannot be a ”true” woman. Inthis way, descriptive language functions to determine (discursively) howa woman can be.In some multiculturalist pedagogies there is an elaboration ofdifferences among various ”cultures”--usually racially, but sometimesethnically, defined. Multiculturalist pedagogies use a language whichdistinguishes and identifies students according to cultural descriptors.Generally speaking, the language is understood to be descriptive ofsomething ”real.” That is, the descriptors are usually derived throughempirical research, and they are justified on the basis of appeals toobservable evidence. These cultural descriptors have several effects: thecultural descriptors correlate particular cultures with particular activities,propensities, tastes, and problems; the language sets up culture-basedexpectations regarding students’ behaviors and abilities; the descriptorsrender race, class and gender as significant determinants of identity; thelanguage constructs specific ways for students to understand themselvesand identify themselves; and the language descriptors--by virtue ofomission--obliterate alternative perceptions of identity which are notbased on ”culture.” In other words, race, class and gender are assumedto be descriptive of subjectivity.Multiculturalist discourses can call attention to the ways educationalpractices which are assumed to be universal are actually historically orgeographically specific. Moreover, there are situations in which culturallyspecific language can be very useful for addressing injustices in theclassroom and in society at large. However, postmodern critical theorieshave called attention to the ways discourses construct subjectivity inmultiple ways, some of which may undermine the intended objectivesFor example, if a discourse identifies students as ”at risk” or”disenfranchised” or ”privileged”, then that language ascribes to studentsthose characteristics as descriptive of self and identity. Postmodern criticaltheorists have recognized that there is a problem when these identitiesare assumed to be descriptive of subjectivity. That is, when culturalidentities are assumed to be descriptive, then those descriptors stabilizesubjectivity and reinscribe existing power relations. An example of thisis when the definition of a feminist is a woman who believes that women122

are oppressed. In that definition, it is theoretically impossible to be awoman and be emancipated at the same time. When subjectivity isstabilized and power relations are reinscribed, then the theory does notallow for significant breaks from the status quo.Many postmodern critical theories have problematized the descriptivefunction of language. In postmodern theories, categories (such as race,class and gender) are no longer assumed to be necessarily descriptive ofidentity, but rather are regarded as performative of identity--in a similarsense as when speech acts are descriptive or performative. This theoreticalmove introduces possibilities for subjectivity which go beyond what can bedescribed in the text. That is, subjectivity is no longer objectified as a functionof textual description; identity is no longer stipulated by descriptors. Rather,another form of performative subjectivity has been introduced.In order to conceive of the subject which is no longer text-bound, itmay be helpful to think of the subject-as-reader as being part of the text.This performative (reading) subject is not described in the text, is notpredictable, and is not stable. There exists the theoretical possibilitythat multiple texts and multiple subjects can exist. The notion of aperformative subject opens theoretical possibilities for profound breaksfrom existing power relations.For example, in her creative critical response to the objectified subject,Butler (1990) theorized gender as performance. When subjectivity is castas performance, self-presentation functions as a presence in an active, ratherthan a passive way; a student’s identity is not seen as ”representative” ofher gender or his race. In performative subjectivity, ”the subject presentsitself” (active tense), which is different from ”the subject is visible” (passivetense). For example, a student who is female would not necessarily carrythe identity as one who is ”better at language and worse at math.”The critical aspect of this move is that it does three things simultaneously:it effects an epistemological break by shifting from a descriptive to aperformative mode; it opens up possibilities for changing existingpatterns of power by challenging assumed structures; and it theoreticallyforecloses the possibility of determinism by invoking the improvisationalaspects of performance.Herein lies one of the significant distinctions between critical modernistand postmodernist work. On the one hand, modernist theories123

have insisted that there must be an indomitable essence of subjectivitywhich can serve as the source or agent for an emancipatory vision; thisoccurs when a pedagogical approach calls for ”voice” and ”resistance.”This denial that subjectivity can be totally dominated is often perceivedas an ”optimistic” or ”hopeful” stance.On the other hand, postmodernist theories have been skeptical aboutthe extent to which subjectivity has been disciplined. Postmodernhistoricizing responses generally assume that social technologies (includinggovernmental, legal, economic, aesthetic, and pedagogical) have workedto constitute subjectivity in a particular way which then makes it problematicto assume that the subject is necessarily capable of agency from an”uncolonized” place. This skepticism is not to insist that the subject hasbeen totally dominated and there is no agent. Rather it is to suspendjudgment in analyses of social situations in order to be able to examine thecomplex--and seemingly contradictory--ways power operates to constructsubjectivity; it is to problematize the ways in which thinking may alreadyhave been disciplined. Postmodern critical theories assume that there areways subjectivity has already been constituted (i.e. ways power operates) ofwhich we are not aware. Furthermore, if an agentive resisting subject isassumed, then some disciplinary effects of power may go undetected anduncriticized.In sum, recent postmodern critical projects, in skeletal syllogistic form,have argued something like this:Assumption: Critical intellectual work is not deterministic.First premise: If intellectual work makes history predictable, then it makessubjectivity determined, unless the theory assumes or invokes a (semi-)autonomous (”resisting”) subject.Second premise: The present day subject has been instrumentalized,colonized, or objectified (i.e. ”lost”) through technologies ofgovernmentality (or instrumental reasoning).Q.E.D.: In the current moment: 1) if intellectual work is predictive, itinscribes determinism; 2) if a subject is either assumed or invoked, thatsubject is always already an effect of power, and therefore it is notautonomous.Foucaultian and other postmodern historicizing projects depart fromFrankfurt School traditions by refusing to assume--and refusing to124

insert--an autonomous subject. This refusal by postmodern accountsto insert a subject (or construct a textual subject) has been attackedby critical modernists as being ”nihilistic.” However, the refusal toinsert subjectivity has had other consequences. One effect has beento historicize the subject; that is, in postmodern historicizing thesubject is understood within the historical context of governmentality(i.e. subjectivity is not analyzable separately from history). Anothereffect has been that the subject is no longer textually (objectively)determined in the writing (i.e. the text works instead to deconstructdiscursive constraints on subjectivity). That is, research does not havethe job of envisioning or stipulating possibilities for subjectiveidentities. Further consequences of postmodern historicizing on therole of the intellectual is the focus of the following section.The Trouble with Intellectual Work: Examplesof Pedagogical Critiques“There is no knowledge that is not power.”Mortal Kombat IIIThe first part of this chapter discussed the political consequences oftheories which assume predictability in historical analysis. The secondpart analyzed the effects related to assumptions of agency. This thirdpart questions the implications for the role of the intellectual given thetroubles with predictability and agency.Recently, the problem has been to figure out how intellectual workcan effect political critique and at the same time eschew intellectualvanguardism. The issue is: What is the political role of critical workwhich does not validate itself on the basis of generalizable principle,which does not foreclose possibilities for radical breaks in the future,which does not presume authority over (i.e. determine) subjectivity,and which does not usurp responsibility for explaining and predictinghistory and social relations?Critical modernist and postmodernist intellectuals in education haveoffered various critiques of current pedagogies. Variations in the role ofthe critical intellectual can be illustrated through the differences in theirrespective critiques of a given pedagogical practice.125

The example of current pedagogical practice offered here is journalwriting. Requiring students to write in journals is a pedagogical techniqueof increasing popularity which is being used not only in language artsclasses for composition practice, but also in mathematics and sciencesclasses in order to facilitate metacognitive awareness of methods,procedures and problem-solving strategies. Students are often requiredto keep ”double-entry” journals in which one entry reflects the curriculumcontent of a lesson, and the second entry reflects the students’ feelingsand responses to the content of the lesson. In another variation on thistechnique, students are asked to use a journal as an outlet to express andrecord private thoughts or personal experiences. The assumption is thatjournals not only facilitate literacy, but also allow the students to engagedirectly and personally with the material.Critical intellectuals affiliated with modernist traditions (e.g. Marxian,Frankfurt School, or Habermasian) offer various critiques of journal-keepingas a pedagogical technique. The critiques tend to highlight three themes:voice/silence, representation/empowerment, and solidarity/transformativity.For example, modernist critiques of pedagogy are concerned with the degreeto which classroom power dynamics contribute to the ”silencing” or togiving ”voice” to marginalized and/or oppressed people. These critiquespoint out the ways in which students’ journals sometimes serve to facilitateexpressive voices, and sometimes serve to recapitulate a deferential attitudetowards the authority of the teacher. Modernist critiques analyzemulticultural variations in subject matter and rhetorical form in order toreveal the ethnocentrism of certain topics or writing styles. These critiquescall attention to power differentials among different groups of people, andstrive to empower those groups who have less power than others.In addition, modernist literary analyses have criticized prescriptivistgrammatical expectations on the grounds that dialectical variations ingrammatical form ought to be represented. Finally, modernist criticshave been concerned with the transformative potential of journal writing;therefore, studies are done to determine whether the practice of writingjournals actually results in any transformation of prejudicial behavioror attitudes, or alternatively, in any sense of empowerment.In general, current modernist social analyses do not simply criticizeoppressive practices. Modernist critics tend to employ a dialectical frame-126

work of analysis, and therefore, the analyses tend to explain relations interms of opposing forces. Moreover, this tradition has recently tendedto inscribe a Habermasian strategy of interpolating autonomoussubjectivity. Therefore, in the face of dominant power, such analysestypically conclude with a call for agentive resistance as the dialogicalalternative. They may close with an appeal to a spirit of freedom, andan exhortation to reform oppressive practices and empower thedisenfranchised. Some analyses include specific suggestions for reformwhich may be methodological, conceptual, political, or attitudinal. Thetenor of such critical analyses tends to be one of hopeful revolution, asif to say, ”Oppression is real, but here is a way to end oppression andmake the world better.”In these critical analyses, the modernist intellectual assumes the roleof the liberated and the liberator, but not the powerful. Assuming anoptimistic (but often oppressed) stance, the critical intellectual providesa vision of a better world as the dialogical counterpoint to oppression.The modernist intellectual has the moral responsibility to bring the lightof hope to those whose vision has been denigrated, and whose spirit hasbeen demoralized. In the face of oppression, the role of the intellectual is toboost morale and provide a direction of hope for the future.By assuming this role, the modernist intellectual assumes a peculiarplace in relation to history and in relation to subjectivity. That is, ifhistory is theorized in terms of sovereign power (i.e. some people haveit and some people don’t), then that same history cannot account forchanges in who has power. Rather, the autonomous resisting subject--inthis case the critical intellectual--can account for changes in who haspower. The intellectual must take a subject position outside of historyin order to ”resist” dominant forces. This relation suggests that a theoryof history which rests on the assumption of sovereign power requiresautonomous (ahistoric) subjectivity. Furthermore, any possibility ofemancipation requires the intervention of the critical intellectual in orderto write the autonomous subject into theory. The modernistintellectual is central in history.How have postmodern critics analyzed the pedagogical practice of journalkeeping? Themes of postmodern critique have been those of language,discipline, power, and subjectivity. Regarding journals, the postmodern127

critic has asked, ”How have the technologies of journal writing operated toconstitute the subject of education?” Postmodern critics have investigatedthe possibilities that journal-keeping be a means of surveillance, and/or itmay be a means of disruption. That is, journal-keeping may be a technologywhich monitors students’ intimate thoughts and makes the students’ privatelives accessible to the teacher, and/or journal-keeping may be a technologywhich interrupts existing power dynamics.Postmodern critique does not assume that anyone can know inadvance how power will be expressed at any given moment. Therefore,postmodern analyses of pedagogical practices such as journal-keepinghave tended to highlight multiple and contradictory ways in which powerwas exercised: the teacher encroached on the private life of a studentand then intervened; a student used the journal to develop an opinion;a teacher interrupted a destructive prejudice; a student used the journalto explain to the teacher that journals were intrusive and manipulative.Other postmodern critics have taken journal-writing as a piece ofevidence which gives clues to the history of schooling and how itspedagogical practice has shifted from training behaviors, to educatingminds, to disciplining souls.Postmodern critics have been influenced by Foucault, and tend toregard all social practices and systems of reasoning with great suspicion.Furthermore, in the tradition of Foucault, postmodern critics--unlikeHabermasian critics--generally refuse to offer a vision of the future. Postmoderncritical intellectuals refuse to offer a vision of the future (suchas providing a solution, ideal, or utopian hope) because to do so wouldset limits on possibilities for the future.This point is irresistibly ironic: Foucault is often called (and has calledhimself) a pessimist. However, he refused to offer a vision of the future infear that he might inadvertently foreclose--a presumably better--future.That is, when systems of reasoning are unjust, it becomes counterproductiveto offer a vision of the future based on those existing systems of reasoning.Furthermore, to offer a vision of the future is to assume a position of politicalauthority (”intellectual as center”), which is a position that Foucaultand many feminist theorists have generally declined on ethical grounds.Rather than a vision of the future, postmodern critics tend to offer ahistory of the present (often called genealogy). The political agenda of128

genealogies is generally to demonstrate that there is nothing necessary orinevitable about our present circumstances. The purpose of genealogicalcritique is to render events and circumstances historically contingent. AsFoucault says, it is to ”restore chance to its rightful place in history.” Postmoderncritics offer a vision of the past because, at this historical momentin which principled rationality is seen as pervasive (the critical legacy of theFrankfurt School), a vision of the past serves to divest that principledrationality of its natural, assumable commonsense. Moreover, when the”laws of nature” and the ”progress of science” are shown to be inadequateor invalid (i.e. when they are deconstructed) in the face of historical evidence,then there is a theoretical possibility for a (unforeseeable) radical break.The role of the critical intellectual in this tradition is not one offorecasting, it is one of remembering: ”All reification is a forgetting.”The ethical position is one of ”pessimistic activism”, in which morefaith rests on the unforeseen and uncontrolled possibilities for the futurethan on the ability of intellectuals to solve social problems.The critical leverage of genealogical critique is historically limited;genealogies can be characterized as critical only insofar as they challengea significant level of commonsense assumptions at this historicalmoment. Whenever the approach of genealogy becomes formalizedand instrumentalized, critical intellectuals will be called upon tointerrupt that approach, too.In ClosingIn sum, critical intellectuals since the Frankfurt School have targetedthe ”colonization of the life-world” by instrumental reasoning. Modernistcritics have traditionally responded to this colonization by invokingan objectified version of an autonomous, humanist subject as part ofthe text. This invocation of an agent has several effects, including: 1)dehistoricizing the subject, 2) circumscribing and delimiting possibilitiesfor subjectivity, 3) recapitulating existing power hierarchies by appealingto established principles of verification, 4) establishing a relation of alienationbetween the textual subject and the subject-as-reader, and 5)presupposing the loss of the subject.The postmodernist response to this colonization has challenged themodernist response at several dimensions, including: 1) problematizing129

the assumption of autonomous subjectivity, thereby reuniting historyand subjectivity, 2) deconstructing the textually objectified subject, 3)historicizing the systems of reasoning which have become naturalizedassumptions, 4) shifting analytical perspective so as to undermine thedichotomous relation between textual subject and subject-as-reader, and5) rejecting the inevitability of the loss of the subject by explaining thecurrent state of the subject as a product of particular social practiceswhich have disciplined and shaped possibilities for subjectivity.The critical political project then, involves making power andsubjectivity functions of history--which is theoretically mutable--ratherthan functions of generalizable principle--which is theoreticallyimmutable. An interruption of the status quo is made possible only ifthe theoretical explanations of history (as change) allow for genuineinnovation including radical breaks. If theories of history make changepredictable, regular, calculable, or determined, then there is no theoreticalmechanism for breaking the existing power hierarchies. On the otherhand, if theories of history explain change as an effect of unpredictablesocial and historical practices, then existing power hierarchies lose theirposition of privilege.130

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Notes1Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, 1982)outlines a theory of development specific for women.2Foucault (1972) designates chronology in terms of ”thresholds”: ”The moment at whicha discursive practice achieves individuality and autonomy, the moment therefore at whicha single system for the formulation of statements is put into operation, or the moment atwhich this system is transformed, might be called the threshold of positivity [e.g. systematicmedieval investigations into empirical observation]. When in the operation of a discursiveformation, a group of statements is articulated, claims to validate (even unsuccessfully)norms of verification and coherence, and when it exercises a dominant function (as amodel, a critique, or a verification) over knowledge, we will say that the discursive formationcrosses a threshold of epistemologization [e.g. Descartes’ articulation of the Discourseon Method]. When the epistemological figure thus outlined obeys a number of formalcriteria, when its statements comply not only with archaeological rules of formation, butwith certain laws for the construction of propositions, we will say that it has crossed athreshold of scientificity [e.g. assumption of experimental hypothesis-testing as ”the scientificmethod.”]. And when this scientific discourse is able, in turn, to define the axiomsnecessary to it, the elements that it uses, the propositional structures that are legitimateto it, and the transformations that it accepts, when it is thus able, taking itself as astarting-point, to deploy the formal edifice that it constitutes, we will say that it hascrossed the threshold of formalization” [e.g. positivistic foundations of social science] (pp.186-187).3Although the Frankfurt School placed great emphasis on aesthetics, it is an aspect whichhas been virtually ignored in recent years, even by Frankfurt School adherents. Whetherthe aesthetic realm could be considered to be ”autonomous” from the influences ofinstrumental reasoning was a significant controversy in Frankfurt School debates.4Moreover, they analyze uses of language and concrete social practices in order to understandthe loss of the subject.5This assumption about subjectivity is often called ”essentialism” or the ”essential subject.”6It is interesting to note that while the Frankfurt School was committed to outlining atheory of emancipation, they explicitly denied that reason could or should suggest praxis:”The age needs no added stimulus to action. Philosophy must not be turned into propaganda,even for the best possible purposes” (Horkheimer, quoted in Jay, 1973, p. 266).7What is interesting to note is that critical theories, including modernists andpostmodernists, have generally accepted the validity of the assumption, the first, and thesecond premises. However, modernists tend to conclude that critical theories musttherefore deny totalizing domination and construct (or ”empower”) a resisting subject.133

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I N G V A R R Ö N N B Ä C KScience and Evaluation :Critical research or instrument fordestructiveness?IntroductionOn August 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshimain Japan. In a split second some 120,000 people were killed by a bombcalled ”the little boy”. The repugnant name given to this monstrousweapon could nevertheless be said to contain a grain of truth. The natureof this weapon was anything but little and innocent, but it wassomething new, something qualitatively different. A new world had beenborn. Never before in the history of the world had it been possible todestroy an entire city with one bomb. It was a technological masterpiecebut a horror for humanity. No longer was it possible to seek shelterfrom falling bombs. The atomic bomb guaranteed the total destructionof the people and material that happened to be at the point of impact.With time, the range of the atomic bomb expanded to encompass morethan just a single city. The inconceivable explosive power of present-daynuclear arsenals is sufficient to reduce the whole planet to a smokingpile of ashes. 1The construction of this ”doomsday weapon” requires knowledge, avery special kind of knowledge. Practical skills are not enough, one needsto be able to understand the theory produced by talented scientists.This scientific framework was a prerequisite to the manufacture of theatomic bomb. The military and political establishments needed helpwith this technological challenge. They turned to the leading researchersof the day, who agreed to create a whole new type of weapon, theatomic bomb. 2The moral of this brief account? That science is not value-neutral, ofcourse. Science and ethics belong together, they are inseparable. Theresearchers who participated in the production of the atomic bomb couldhave said no, we do not want to be involved in the creation of such a135

weapon. 3 The clear-cut division between ”existence” and ”value” whichhas been one of science’s hallmarks is therefore a misconception whichshould be challenged. 4 Scientific results and the application of theseresults can always be discussed and should be discussed. The abovementionedaccount also shows that research and science stand in relationto other social institutions and exist in a social, economic and politicalcontext. Scientific knowledge may thus be used by institutions,organizations and groups with dubious and inhumane goals in mind.This is a fact which each researcher needs to keep in mind. The aim ofthe above account is to provide a brief background to the problems andissues which will be addressed in this paper. The atomic bomb illustrateshow research and science are neither free from politics nor from valuesand morals. All research is involved in and a part of society.More specifically, this paper examines four problem areas closely linkedwith each other. The first problem area considered concerns thesimilarities and differences that obtain between research and evaluation.Within the second problem area, the main focus is on how the evaluatorshould view ”development”. The third problem area addresses what ischaracteristic of the scientific conception of the world and theconsequences this conception has for society in general. The fourth andfinal problem area deals with the relation between the evaluator and the”client” who has commissioned the knowledge produced by theevaluator. The thesis pursued in this paper is that there is no greatdifference between research and evaluation, that evaluation is closelyconnected with the idea of development, that the classical scientificworld-view contains a number of misconceptions and that the evaluatormust always think about ethical questions when given a commission.The paper should be viewed as a critical inquiry of scientific rationality,a rationality that has developed since the 17th century with effects onthe ”modern” and ”postmodern” world 5 . This inquiry have led me to adiscussion of what the consequenses are for ”evaluators” or scientists ingeneral in terms of ethical considerations. The paper should not beviewed as a ”program for change”. My main concern has been to discussthe ethical difficulties that all researchers and evaluators are confrontingwhen given a commission or a scientific task.136

Research and evaluationResearch and evaluation are not the same thing, even though there aresimilarities and points of contact. The aim of research and evaluativeactivity is ideally one and the same, namely the truth. Even if ”truth” isa complex concept resistant to facile interpretation, it neverthelesscomprises the ultimate goal of both research and evaluation. Theresearcher and the evaluator seek knowledge about ”existence” and areconsequently also forced to decide whether humans can gain ”reliable”knowledge about this ”existence”. In scientific terminology these arecalled ontological and epistemological issues. Such issues are fundamentalto subjects like philosophy and the theory of science but are addressedwithin other disciplines as well - in fact within all forms of scientificactivity. 6 It is my contention that evaluation is also a scientific activity. 7The main difference between research and evaluation is the object ofstudy. In principle, researchers can study anything they want, a fly, asociety, a historical event or person, a natural object, a philosophicalsystem, etc., etc. As regards evaluation the situation is somewhat different.Evaluation is first and foremost about studying goal-oriented humanactivities; one of its fundamental assumptions is the idea that ahuman being has a consciousness and that this consciousness can choosebetween various actions in the search to attain one or more goals.Evaluation is also about appraising the goals set up by humans as well asthe actions aimed at achieving these goals. 8 Thus in the concept ofevaluation the aspect of value occupies a central position.What I attempt to say with the above distinction between researchand evaluation is that both are about trying to grasp ”truth”. This is alsothe ”credo” or highest goal of science. 9 All the philosophical andmethodological problems contained within a scientific work can thusbe found in both research and evaluative activity.The fundamental difference thus lay in evaluation’s clearer connectionwith human activities when compared to research. It is not possible to”evaluate” the quality of precipitation or whether a beaver has built itsdam according to acceptable building standards. Nor is it possible to”evaluate” human scriptures such as the Bible or the Koran, or the politicalsituation which prevailed in the Europe of the 1800s. It is possibleon the other hand to study and research these phenomena. The concept137

of evaluation incorporates the idea that humans hold a unique positionamong the species of the earth, and that this unique position meansthat humans have a consciousness which allows them to make choices.A human being can thus do something ”better” or ”worse”, and it isthe task of evaluation to determine which value applies. Naturally, theterms ”good” and ”bad” can mean very different things to differentpeople. How can one determine what is ”good” and ”bad”, and who isto make this determination? The evaluator? It is clear that the role ofevaluation is not entirely uncontroversial. The Finnish philosopherGeorg Henrik von Wright, to whose work and thought I will makefurther reference, says for example the following:”Here I should like to briefly comment on two particular ways in whichthe State’s approach to research, and partly also industry’s, has changed.Both are aimed at ensuring that the sums invested in science are effectivelyremunerative. The first is the assessment of the work of one’s colleagues,which has become known by the name of ”evaluation”. A group from onecircle of institutions comments on the quality of the research being carriedout at certain other institutions. Or it may be a matter of a multinationaljury given the task of judging the level of their discipline in a particularcountry. The idea is of course not so much to praise those being evaluated fortheir competence as it is to force them to raise their standards after theequivalent of an intellectual flogging. The simple awareness that such anexamination is in the offing should have an stimulating effect on researchthreatened by apathy, or so the thinking goes. I thoroughly disapprove of thisphenomenon. Perhaps I am one of science’s lone, lost wolves, but neverthelesswhen I speak about the prerequisites for creative work I do so from theexperience of a lifetime and not as a hesitant beginner fearing criticism”. 10That evaluation could in some way be ”revolutionary” in relation toestablished paradigms is inconceivable to von Wright. Rather it is thecase that the evaluator or evaluators (if it is a group) contribute to thestreamlining of science inasmuch as researchers who do not proceedfrom established viewpoints are branded as ”eccentrics” playing futilegames in the backyards of science. 11 The fact that directions of researchand approaches diverging from the norm fail to receive the attentionand support they perhaps should have naturally has far-reachingconsequences for the shape and evolution of society. For von Wright138

the evaluator becomes the technological and dehumanizing society’sdefender and controller. Whether this is correct will be considered withinthe scope of the following heading.Evaluation and developmentAs previously indicated, evaluation is based on the idea that the concepts”better” and ”worse” can be applied to the form and function of society. Itmust also be based on a belief that a person can choose between differentactions and thereby create a better society. Evaluation and the belief that abetter society can be created are thus closely linked. The question is, betterfor whom? And what constitutes a good society? To be able to reflect onthese questions, it is necessary to look back in history in the hopes of findingout what was previously considered a good society and what the conceptof ”development” actually stood for. How else are we to determine thevalue of that which was and the society we now live in? It is particularlyimportant to crystallize the roots and content of the modern concept ofdevelopment. In contrast, a retrospective analysis where relevant facts areidentified and described is no simple matter. To which historical sourcesdo we turn, whom do we listen to in order to ensure a correct descriptionand analysis of this gigantic mound of information that is our history?As previously mentioned, I make use of Georg Henrik von Wright’sthoughts with regard to these questions. He is by no means alone in hisanalysis, but the authority he brings to bear on it is hard to equal. Thereason why von Wright’s analysis in particular is of import in this contextis because he devoted his time to trying to understand the world-viewthat characterizes the modern society, a world-view which can be saidto be a scientific one. If, as has been said, evaluation is a scientificactivity, it seems reasonable to try and determine just what science is. Italso seems important to try and delineate the consequences this visionof the world has had for the society we live in, i.e. modern society.The scientific world-view and its consequences for societyWhat is science? This is a question which many have tried to answer,and the answers vary depending on which period of time we are talkingabout. Shall one attempt to describe the scientific world-view in termsof the scientific disciplines, or shall one try to ascertain the main139

assumptions upon which science is based? If one attempts the first, thatis, to understand science in terms of the disciplines extant at the world’suniversities, one will probably get a rather fragmented picture of whatscience actually is. A physicist, a biologist and a psychologist, for example,have very different objects of study. Moreover, even within the individualdisciplines there are differences in focus and method. In spite of thefragmented picture of knowledge produced and exhibited by science,von Wright still tries to say something about the core of the scientificworld-view, especially the world-view that emerged during what is calledthe Renaissance and which has been evolving up until the present day.It is true that the roots of the viewpoint that ”blossomed” during the1600s are found in the Greek-antique culture and in the Christian one 12 ,but one can nonetheless say that it was during the Renaissance that thescientific world-view began to seriously compete with the religiousconceptions that dominated at that time. A series of scientific discoveriesupset the world-view that was primarily advanced by the church.Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galiei are famous namesin the history of science. Blood flowed and dissenting opinions werebranded as heresy. The power which the church wielded was howeverfated to wane: the process of secularization had begun.Naturally there are a lot of interesting things to say about this time,when the power of the church decreased and other outlooks secured afoothold. But it would seem more important to focus on what vonWright believes is characteristic of the scientific world-view. By sciencehe does not mean all the disciplines that employ scientific methodology,rather it is the natural sciences which attract his attention. The reasonfor this is that these fields in particular are making enormous progress.The humanities and the social sciences are left to try and imitate theunprecedented achievements of the natural sciences. Nature is charted,classified, examined and stripped of its mysteries by men such as Carlvon Linné, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. It is reduced to an objectover which humans can increasingly exercise control, and the scientificexperiment becomes the tool whereby human dominance of the plantand animal kingdoms is attained. Armed with the discoveries andknowledge acquired through the scientific method, human beings assumea new role. They become the measure of all things, and the ideas which140

informed Greek philosophy, namely the concept of equilibrium betweenhumans and nature, are now replaced by an exploitative standpoint.According to von Wright this attitude is pure arrogance. The scientificspirit bears the signs of hubris. Humans believe they are God, that theirpower permits them to dominate the environment in which they live.This hubris can only lead to the goddess of revenge, nemesis, strikingback with full force. 13 We have only an inkling of what will happenwhen the majority of the earth’s inhabitants demand the same materialstandard of living that we in the rich, industrialized countries enjoy.The wear and tear on the environment would be enormous. And wehave only an inkling of what will happen to the already deterioratingozone layer when refrigerators and freezers are found in every home.The lifestyle that has emerged in the so-called civilized part of the world,in the West, is not ecologically sustainable and thus not a workable”developmental model” for the long run. The mechanical-deterministicschema on which science has leaned is an illusion. Natural events andprocesses are not as predictable as has previously been supposed; ratherthere is a large degree of unpredictability in the ecosystem. The worldviewcreated by science was thus a gross simplification, to be found onlyin laboratories. Far more complex connections obtain in the real world,with phenomena dynamically interacting in a way that is hard to grasp. 14Not only does the scientific world-view embody a dominating andexploitative conception of nature, it forces its way into the social institutionswhich are evolving simultaneously with the growth of science,in politics and in the economy. Thus even humans become objects whichcan be manipulated and subjected to various forms of influence. 15 Onesource of influence is the group of institutions whose task is to informcitizens about what is right and proper, for example the school system,the mass media and different types of agencies belonging to the apparatusof the State. One might also mention the advertising which proceedsfrom industry’s push to survive and increase its capital. The informationis often geared towards convincing people that economic growth isnecessary for society and that the division and specialization of labor issomething good. Society must be efficient in its manufacturing of anever-ending stream of more or less useless products. Human beings inthis society become means, things to be used - indeed used up if necessary.141

The fundamental rationality of modernized and technicalized societymay be described as ”goal-oriented” and is summarized by von Wrightin the following way:”The type of rationality which prevails in a society freed from the religiousand social prejudices of previous generations and based on the credo of reasonconsists first and foremost of a mastery of the means for achieving variousgoals. It is an instrumental or technical, goal-oriented rationality, whichrequires an increased efficiency in the production of goods and theorganization of services, the services of society. It ”streamlines” our lives. Onthe other hand it stands bewildered before the value-based premises whichare supposed to legitimize the goals for societal action. As a result, respect forthe individual (”human dignity”) declines, and new forms of repression andunfreedom are possible in a society where power lies in the hands of thosewho run the ”state apparatus”, as it is revealingly named. Thus emancipationfrom outmoded relations leads to new constraints in the modern world.Wrapped in the straitjacket of technological rationality, humans are led in asociety governed by unreason and primitive instincts, where power andviolence have superseded humanity as ideals. 16Von Wright’s summary can be traced back to the so-called FrankfurtSchool. He believes that the representatives for the Frankfurt School,including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Jürgen Habermas,made a good diagnosis of modern society but were less successful atfinding a way out of this society marked by technological rationality.Nor did von Wright feel able to show how this enslavement under ”themyth of progress” and technology could be broken. He says for examplethat:”Of course the problems need solving! But how? Protecting the environmentagainst the pollution and poisoning caused by industries is expensive. Thuswe must get richer to be able to afford the cost. The cure for unemploymentis new workplaces. But if these do not pay for themselves by increasedproduction they become unprofitable. In short: continued economic growthis a prerequisite to the solution of the problems which an intensified andrationalized industrial production itself creates. Social progress enters into acircle whose continued movement is dependent on continued growth. This isa slightly caricatured picture of what I mean by growth as an all-embracingpolitical ideology. I do not wish to criticize policies professing this ideology,142

as I realize how difficult it is to be free of it. Nevertheless, I believe suchpolicies are short-sighted and that the obstacles which they may at first overcomewill return in greater size. Persons engaged in practical affairs maynot think so, or perhaps only in their hearts. But I have yet to meet with onewell-reasoned and convincing argument in favor of such optimism. It is inthis regard that my own opinion can truly be called pessimistic. I find itdifficult to believe that those trends which are moving us closer to the loomingdanger will weaken or change. The force of these trends is referred to inVetenskapen och Förnuftet as the dictatorship of circumstances, a straitjacketwrapped around society by an accelerating and relatively autonomoustechnological evolution and the concomitant need for uninterrupted economicgrowth and expansionism. Naturally this is not a question of absolute necessity,let alone predestination. Humans create their own history, and it is up tothem to free themselves from the constraints imposed by their own senselessactions”. 17Von Wright is desperately looking for a new attitude among people,and particularly among the groups that wield power in society,comprising some form of self-control and basic solidarity towards otherhumans and living creatures. Not everything which can be done shouldbe done. The atomic bomb neither has to be used nor manufactured,even if we have the technological capacity and knowledge to producesuch a weapon. The sense of solidarity which von Wright proposes extendsbeyond one’s immediate family or even nation. The less fortunate inhabitantsof the poorer countries and continents must become part of one’s personalresponsibility. Above and beyond that, those alive now must feel a sense ofobligation towards the unborn. As von Wright says:“Solidarity can no longer be limited to a narrow circle of blood relationsor mutual family ties or professional interests. It must transcend all national,racial and religious boundaries and become a sense of global responsibility- global also in the sense that it extends to those who will walk the earthafter us. At heart, this is nothing else than the fulfilment of the Christiancommandment to love others as we love ourselves”. 18The practical consequences of this solidarity might take the followingforms:”A development of the kind proposed here means among other thingsthat the inhabitants of the industrialized countries would have to change143

their lifestyle, consent to live rather more frugally and renounce the desiresthat they have become used to satisfying but which can be done without. Wein the industrialized countries must quite simply become poorer, so that thegrowing polarization between First and Third World countries, but alsobetween the have and have-nots in the former, does not completely destabilizethe globe”. 19The global sense of solidarity which von Wright is looking for iscounteracted by the fact that we, as he puts it, sit at other tables andnegotiate pay raises, tax breaks and various measures designed to stimulatethe economy and strengthen the international competitiveness of ourcompanies. 20 One can only agree. There are a lot of paradoxes in ourworld. The international community, led by the UN, has throughoutthe war in the former Yugoslavia supported and imposed a weaponsembargo on all sides in the conflict. Despite this, a massive arms tradehas been carried out, with weapons flowing in from all corners of theglobe. 21 Similarly, it can be said that the Swedish weapons export policyis an equivocal phenomenon that brings shame on Sweden. We havethe most restrictive legislation in the world in this regard but havemanaged on several occasions to supply weapons to areas where armedconflicts are raging. In spite of these legal restrictions, there is no realwill among Swedish politicians to address this problem. The reason issimple enough: national interest weighs more heavily than moralprinciples. 22The diagnosis which von Wright makes regarding modern hypertechnologicalsociety is anything but naive and unrealistic. We knowthat there is an enormous wear and tear on the nature off which we live.We know that the gap between poor and rich countries and betweenpoor and rich people is increasing. We also know that a fraction of theworld’s military arsenal could reduce the earth to an uninhabitable, sterilewasteland. And we know that the majority of humans have no controlwhatsoever over their own lives. Our highly compartmentalized andhierarchical society with its enormous bureaucratization of the socialapparatus is anything but democratic, for all the formally democraticnature of system.Our hopes lie in the ability of humankind to choose a different path.With respect to research, this means that ”the search for truth” must144

also encompass ethical dimensions; researchers, too, need to ”do theright thing”. The question remains, however, whether research andevaluation can be anything else than servants of the rationality which isdestroying the planet we live on and thus human society as well. Thisissue will addressed in the final part of the paper.Power, evaluation and ethicsAs previously indicated, research does not exist in a societal vacuum.There has to be a demand for the type of knowledge which researchproduces for there to be any scholastic institutions at all. Of course, it istheoretically possible for a lone wolf with a passionate thirst for truth tocreate new types of knowledge. But it is presumably uncontroversial tostate that practically all research is greatly dependent on economic supportfrom well-heeled institutions and organizations in society. Thisbegs the following questions: what kind of rationality informs theseinstitutions and organizations? Have researchers any chance at all topursue a dialogue and influence the social institutions’ self-consciousness?Or is it the bitter truth that research is so imbued with the goal-orientedrationality described by von Wright that no other type of discourse ispossible?It could be the truth, but probably not the whole truth. Historyitself is proof that human society and self-understanding changesconstantly. Today an increasing number of people have access to informationabout the problems von Wright describes. Issues like the thinningof the ozone layer, the devastation of the forests, energy supply andpopulation growth are public property in a whole different way thanbefore. It would be strange if researchers did not also take these threatsseriously and look to understand the causes underlying the problemsand find solutions. It would also be strange if the issues of global survivaldid not leave their mark on the areas of politics and the economy. Perhapsthe biggest cause for alarm is the short time we have to deal with manyof the problems facing humanity. Perhaps it is already too late. Is theglobal destruction of the environment irreversible, or can a change inpolicy alleviate the wear and tear on Mother Earth. It could be that theenvironmental destruction is too far advanced, and perhaps it isimpossible to stop the explosive population growth, and perhaps hu-145

man selfishness is too great. But as von Wright himself says, the onlyreply to the question whether there is hope for the future is this: let uswork to ensure that there is one!! 23For the evaluator this would mean being critically aware of theconsequences following the advance of the so-called technosystem. 24Concepts like progress, growth and development would thus need tobe closely examined, which would allow evaluators to be more activelyaware of the explicit or implicit demands their ”clients” make on theresearcher to affirm the premises upon which science is based. Naturally,this awareness on the part of the evaluators might compromise them inthe eyes of their clients. Those who have power in society presumablylook for loyal underlings who will not criticize too much. This is perhapsalso the greatest problem for individual researchers, the threat of losingtheir jobs because of their views and enduring sceptical looks from more”realistic” colleagues. The solidarity which von Wright speaks of is no”fair-weather” solidarity. Instead it demands that people be prepared todie for ”the others”, the unborn, the victims. There are examples ofpeople who have been excluded from their communities because theyhave defended the rights of others and fought on their behalf. Manyhave been thrown into prison, tortured and executed for such acts ofconscience, acts far different from those of researchers defending therights of the powerful and who believe solely in technological solutionsto social problems.146

ReferencesAgrell, Villhelm, (1981). Rustningens drivkrafter. Studentlitteratur.Agrell, Willhelm, (1989). Vetenskapen i försvarets tjänst. Lund University Press.Barash, David P, (1991). Introduction To Peace Studies. Wadsworth Publishing Company.Bauman, Zygmunt, (1989). Auschwitz och det moderna samhället. Daidalos.Bernstein, Richard J, (1987). Bortom objektivism och relativism. Röda bokförlaget.Fischer, Dietrich, Nolte, Willhelm & Öberg, Jan, (1990). Vinn freden - strategier och etikför en kärnvapenfri värld. Pax förlag.Guba, Egon G (ed.), (1990). The Paradigm Dialog. Sage Publications.House, Ernest R, (1993). Professional Evaluation. Sage Publications.Johansson, Ingvar & Liedman, Sven-Eric, (1987). Positivism och marxism. Norstedts.Karlsson, Svante, (1994). Freds- and konfliktkunskap. Studentlitteratur.Ofstad, Harald, (1987). Vi kan ändra världen. Prisma.Selander, Staffan, (1992). Forskning om utbildning. Brutus Östlings Bokförlag.Selander, Staffan, (1986). Kunskapens villkor. Studentlitteratur.Westander, Henrik, (1995). Vapenexport - svenskt stål biter. SÄK-häfte. Svenska freds- andskiljedomsföreningen.von Wright, Georg Henrik, (1978). Humanismen som livshållning. Månpocket.von Wright, Georg Henrik, (1986). Vetenskapen och förnuftet. Månpocket.von Wright, Georg Henrik, (1993). Myten om framsteget. Bonniers.Öberg, Jan, (1994). Liten Guide till stort krig - Korta svar på svåra frågor om Jugoslavien.Transnationella stiftelsen för freds- och framtidsforskning.Notes1For a discussion on nuclear weapons see e.g. Karlsson, S, (1994) Freds- och konfliktkunskapor Barash, D, (1991) Introduction to Peace Studies.2One scholar who has studied in detail the links between science, research and the militaryis Willhelm Agrell. Two books can be mentioned in this regard: Agrell, W, (1981) Rustningensdrivkrafter and Agrell, W, (1989) Vetenskapen i försvarets tjänst.3I do not say that the researchers involved in the ”atomicbombproject” didn´t have otherinterests than scientific ones. Winning the ”war” were surely a strong motivation forparticipating in this project. What I want to say is that science leans strongly towards aninstrumentalistic and objectivistic view of knowledge. Science are therefore running therisk of being an instrument for inhuman purposes. For a discussion of this issues, see e.gFischer, D, Nolte, W & Öberg, J (1990). Vinn freden - Strategier och etik för en kärnvapenfrivärld och Ofstad, H (1987). Vi kan ändra världen. It´s also important to have inmind that there were scientists with the capability and skills required to produce such aweapon who protested against the ”atomicbombproject”.4It should perhaps be noted that ethical questions are not absent in intra-scientic debate.See e.g. Guba, E G, (ed.) (1990) The paradigm dialog, House, E R, (1993) ProfessionalEvaluation, Bernstein, R J, (1987) Bortom objektivism och relativism and Selander, S,(red.) (1986) Kunskapens villkor. But I think it´s right to say that scientific results to alarge extent are presented and used as ”objective” information.147

5With this I don´t say that science can be seen as homogenus activity and phenomenon.I just say that scientific rationality holds a set of assumptions that makes it differentfrom other types of ”rationalities” and therefore ”appears” to the world as ”science”.With other words, science is a beliefsystem that can be interpreted in many ways but stillis science. Within this ”scientific beliefsystem” there is a struggle between different actorsabout the meaning of science. I think it´s possible to compare science with otherbeliefsystems in these aspects.This paper stresses that science, so far, has contributed tothe ”crise-like” situation for mankind.6For an exposition on the foundations of science, see e.g. Johansson, I & Liedman, S-E,(1987) Positivism och marxism.7It is perhaps particularly important in this respect to point out that the legitimacy ofevaluation is based precisely on this claim, that it is scientific. See House, E R, (1993)Professional Evaluation, p 30.8The above description of the concept of evaluation is perhaps controversial as it does notdescribe the various evaluative models that do exist. The debate among researchers ofevaluation is missing in my report, but I believe that the ”mainstream” within evaluationresearch can be reasonably described in the above manner. Another approach is the socalledtheory-oriented evaluation which is based on social research and theory. Thisapproach is characterized by a scientific focus on knowledge and analyses which do notattract as much attention. It could be that this theory-oriented evaluation is a modelparticularly well suited for the kind of critical reflection on the responsibility of researcherswhich I am looking for. One criticism of theory-oriented evaluation is that it ought tobe called research pure and simple, a viewpoint which I wholeheartedly share. See Lindensjö,B & Lundgren U P: in Selander, S (red.) Forskning om utbildning.9This statement could perhaps be questioned by some (or several?) researchers. I amaware of the ”paradigmdebate” and the critic of the ”modern project”, but, even if ”truth”has become more ”relative” since this types of questions has come up, I dont think thatany researcher can escape from the fact that every statement they do about the ”world”is a statement about how they think the ”world” looks like. So, even if the try to breakdown or question every possible theory or ”truth”, that in it self becomes a truth.10von Wright, G-H (1986), Vetenskapen och förnuftet, pp. 125-126. In my opinion, thisbook is an excellent contribution to the debate on the rationality that characterizes modernsociety. von Wright is a critic of civilization in the sense that he calls into questionthe so-called ”idea of progress”, which according to him consists of an exaggerated beliefin technology’s ability to create a better society.11Ibid. p. 127. For a discussion on the concept of paradigms, see also Guba, E G, (1990)The paradigm dialog, Bernstein, R J, (1987) Bortom objektivism och relativism and Selander,S, (red.) (1986) Kunskapens villkor.12It is difficult to summarize the contributions made by the Greek and Christian culturesto the evolution of science and society. As von Wright points out, Greek philosophypaved the way for both the development of theory and the search for knowledge basedon observation. During antiquity the ”theoretical human” was born, the one who asksquestions and tests, embodying an attitude that had far-reaching consequences for theevolution of science. The Greeks also emphasized the need to base knowledge on observedfacts, laying the ground for the tradition within scientific theory called empiricism.148

This, too, was an important aspect of scientific epistemology. Another seed was found inChristian culture. In the first chapter of the Bible it is written that God created theworld and said: ”Let us make humans in our own likeness, to be our equal; and theyshall have dominion over the fish in the sea and over the birds under the heavens andover the herds and the whole earth”. Nature was thus supposed to serve humankind andnot vice-versa, an attitude very much in evidence today.13Hubris and nemesis are concepts which derive from the Greek mythology. These areessential concepts to von Wright. He has also analysed his view on other mythologiesand folk-tales with the focus on the analysis of the paradise myth of the Bible, thePrometheus myth form the Greek mythology and the story of Dr Faust. All three storiesgive topical interest to the problem whether humans are fitted to handle their inherentabilities. Von Wright´s analysis of these stories can be found in ”Humanismen som livshållning”from 1978.14von Wright discusses these problems both in ”Vetenskapen och förnuftet” and ”Myten omframsteget”. The realization that the mechanical-deterministic world-view is collapsing,according to von Wright, has caused a crisis in classical science. In contrast, he takes noposition as to whether the world really is unpredictable or whether it is just our own lackof knowledge, that is, whether the limitations are ontological or epistemic.15One scholar who has discussed in an interesting fashion the consequences of scientificrationality for the modern society’s social structure is Zygmunt Bauman. See Bauman, Z(1989). Auschwitz och det moderna samhället. He argues that scientific morals is insufficientto stop genocide, they rather facilitate the extermination of large ethnic groups.Bauman also argues that modern society is so thoroughly bureaucratized it itself fostersimmorality. No one knows what anyone else is doing and the ”victims” of bureaucracy’sobsession with efficiency remain invisible.16von Wright, G-H, (1986) Vetenskapen och förnuftet, pp. 17-18.17von Wright G-H, (1993) Myten om framsteget, pp. 9-10.18Ibid. p. 55.19Ibid. p. 146.20Ibid. p. 151.21See Öberg, J (1994) Liten Guide till stort krig - Korta svar på svåra frågor om Jugoslavien.22Se Westander, H, (1995) Vapenexport - svenskt stål biter.23von Wright, G-H, (1993) Myten om framsteget, p. 56.24By technosystem von Wright means an alliance between science, technology and industry.149

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M A R Y B A U M A N NThinking the young woman’sbleeding: early discursiveinvestigation of menarche”In order to make the story tellable, one has toseparate and put into sequence events which inreality were so entangled as to be inexplicable.”(Wolf 1970, 64)Medicine, psychology, sociology, history, education, and commercialenterprises, while historically excluding women from the process of thecreation of discourses, have each assembled a large amount of materialwhich has attempted and continues to endeavor to ”understand,””regulate,” ”define,” and ”control” young women. This multiplicationof discourses about young women requires problematization.Menarche, a young woman’s first menstrual bleeding, exemplifiesthis process of intellectual ownership and ’responsible’ investigation byexperts within fields based on a male-developed rationality. Never simplya biological episode, menarche is a discursive event, a material andlinguistic reality, which frames and forms the young woman as a sexualbeing and places her within a binary—male/female—in which she isthe inferior element. It is at this event that a young woman encountersher body, not simply as materially different and limited, but as a surface,signified by taboos and transgressions (Lee 1994). When a youngwoman begins to bleed, she confronts the material reality of her body,located and defined within a cultural context.Using menarche, I want to consider how the body of a young womanis made intelligible, can be thought about. Through a suspension of anycommitment to the notion of a materiality unaffected by thought, I wantto problematize the term ”menarche,” to open it to considerations whichreconceptualize the bodily process as something other than ’natural’ or’biological.’ I want to explore ideas about the construction of bodiesthrough discourses which consolidate and conceal power relations.151

I ask: In what concrete ways are young women, their bodies and theirsexuality produced and reasoned about in the discursive considerationsof menarche? What are the implications of these public discussionsfocused on young women’s bleeding? What are the governing principlesin public discourse on menarche? How are these ways of telling the”truth” about menarche the effects of power? Through what regulatorynorms is the young woman’s sex materialized?I will investigate the explosion of information about and examinationof menarche in the 19th and early 20th centuries, its pathologizationby medical, psychological, and commercial expertise and its integrationinto educational science and practice, utilizing Michel Foucault’s notions(1978) of the productive power of discursive regimes and feministpoststructural thought about the construction of the body and its sex.This selective historical overview of the intersections and interactionsof discursive sites—medicine, psychology, education and commerce—will interrogate the cultural frames and screens through which this materialexperience of beginning to bleed has been made intelligible.Imagining the female body: the fabrication of a separate, inferiorfemale sex”To the extent there is a perceived need for the male/femaledistinction to be constituted as a deep and significant one, thebody must ’speak’ this distinction loudly, that is, in every aspectof its being. The consequence is a two-sex view of the body”(Nicholson 1995, 9).The human body has been considered a concrete reality whose specificityand authenticity seem not to require interrogation. However, thecommonsense notions of the pure existence and apparent unqualifiedmateriality of the body have been transformed over centuries. Ideas abouthuman bodies have gone through many changes, making different bodiesthinkable, illuminating previously invisible contours, and focusingattention on formerly indiscernible elements. Certainly, the materialityof the body is irrefutable. However, the matter of the body is unthinkableother than through the management of ideas. Materiality exists in concertwith discursive investments, incorporating the disciplines and norms152

in the society around it (Foucault 1978). The assignment of sex to abody is a regulatory practice compelling the materialization of that bodyin specific ways (Butler 1993).The discursive technologies previous to the eighteenth century framedone essential human body with variations. Sexual differences werenoted but were considered variations on a theme, elements of one sex.The ”organs, processes, and fluids we think of as distinctive to male andfemale bodies were rather thought of as convertible within ..a moregeneric unity” (Nicholson 1995, 47). The inferiority of woman’s bodieswas a matter of degree rather than one of fundamental distinctions.Male and female were two poles on a bodily continuum, a ”medicalregister passing from female, cold, passive, and weak to male, hot, strongand engaged...(forming) a scale of ascending human worth; it treatedmales as superior to females made of the same material” (Sennett 1994,43). Both shared the same organs in different dimensions and sizes.The discursive image of a menstruating woman of the time was of animperfect man, a creature closer to the earth, passionate, bleedingmonthly in order to rid herself of excess fluids. These medical andscientific ”truths” lasted two thousand years.By the eighteenth century the body had become a site of politicalstruggle within a distinct technology of territorial and populationalgovernance. With the earlier dissipation of sovereign regimes in manylocalities, the discipline and management of the social body becameindispensable, requiring a quantification of information about the populationas a whole and an analytical discernment of the individualbody (Foucault 1978). Sexuality assumed an importance in matters ofregulation. The body became a source of understanding and discipliningof the individual; sex became a thing to be managed (Foucault 1978).Reproductive anatomy acquired foundational status for the explanationof differences, conceptual and the linguistic, between men and women.The postulation of woman as man’s opposite was not a preduscursive’fact’ but was a ”function of our knowledge” (Scott 1988 as cited inNicholson 1995, 39). Situating the female in binary opposition to themale further enforced the hierarchical positioning within this relationship.Her ontological separation occurred simultaneously with amore distinct positioning of private and public space. Women was man’s153

direct contrary and her space was in the home, apart from the civic areawhich was open to men. This sharp differentiation of women as men’santithesis was an effect of power, a productive power which made aninferior subject of the female due to her materiality, her otherness, herdissimilarity to the norm embodied in the male subject.Objectifying the female body: the scientificinvestments of medicine”The human body is always a signified body and as such cannotbe understood as a ’neutral object’ upon which science mayconstruct ’true’ discourses. The human body and its historypresuppose each other.”(Gatens 1992, 132)The discursive information about women from the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries was a product of a system of reasoning andgovernance which perceived the social world as rational, evolutionary,responsive to the rational pursuit of progress (Hunter 1996). Withinthis intellectual climate, human activity was understood as amenable tomanagement and regulation through the intervention of scientificexperts. These authorities were thought to be able to comprehend andeffectively predict the scope and implications of human movement,purpose, and operation. Populational reasoning classified people indiscursive spaces in order to govern change and administer progressthrough the observation and ordering of people as data. The belief inthe perfectibility of society through the merger of science and socialprograms provided the intelligence and direction to social change.A diverse conglomeration of persons and disciplines, experts andsystems of information, produced knowledge about women’s bodieswhich would define, categorize, and classify individuals within the fabricof social administration. The public discussions about women and theirbodies were the intellectual possessions of distinctly male enterprises,whose learned specialties and ideologies were inseparable (Lander 1988).These discussions gave public meanings to the experience of being sexedas a woman, accompanied by norms and regulations.154

In the early nineteenth century, the female body and its reproductiveorgans became a medical map to be plotted, requiring the gaze ofspecialists, who were able to see clearly what the woman only understoodvaguely about her body . Initially, therapeutic professionals maintaineda positive view of menstruation. In his Introduction to Midwifery in 1802,Dr. Thomas Denman noted that bleeding on a monthly basis was ahealthy activity of the female body and did not require any change inhabit or behavior. It was proper and necessary for women to continuewith their physical labor throughout the year, with little or no attentiongiven to a particular time of the month.However, as gynecology began to assert itself as a distinct medicalspecialty in the mid-1800’s and as the notions about women’s labormodified, menstruation and menarche were deemed pathological medicalevents, involving imbalance and affliction. The notions of a ”naturalinfirmity” and ”monthly sickness” emerged in medical journals (Lander1988, 49). A.F.A. King, whose Manual of Obstetrics had eleveneditions, portrayed menstruation as the sickness women spent most oftheir time suffering or convalescing from. Asserting the natural stage ofwoman as pregnancy, the time of her best health, King further positedin the Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children thatbleeding was a transgression of a natural law, a ”result of interferencewith nature, a thwarting of her designs, a violation of her laws, and ispreventable by obedience to these laws” (cited in Lander 1988, 49).The experience of menarche, obviously important to the species, wasnonetheless constructed as pathological, requiring extreme caution anda woman’s passive acceptance of medical management. The doctor alonecould restore the female body to equilibrium. Medical practitionerspromoted a theory in which the body was considered a closed systemwith a limited supply of energy. Dr. Edward H. Clarke, professor at theHarvard Medical School in 1873 noted that ”undue and disproportionatebrain activity exerts a sterilizing influence upon both sexes...(femalesare more vulnerable because of)...the larger size, more complicated relations,and more important functions, of the female reproductiveapparatus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be abortedor deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for its constructionand maintenance” (cited in Lander 1988, 34). Within this intellectual155

climate, the consideration of a woman’s educational and political activityexpressed by gynecologist Lawson Tait in 1883 is not surprising: ”Thequestion raised by the advanced advocates of women’s rights are to besettled, not on the platform of the political economist, but in theconsulting-room of the gynecologist” (cited in Lander 1988, 38).Medical knowledge worked to preserve the advantages of the bourgeoisie.Middle-class culture portrayed the woman as the bastion ofrespectability, the beacon which illuminated the inherent superiority ofa specific class, system of governing, and race. The notion of ”truewomanhood” (Welter 1976) brought with it an ethical superiority. The”true woman” was white, sculpted and isolated within the depository ofher home. Utility was not a part of the composition of this ideal female.The placement and deliberate maintenance of her position away fromthe nastiness of economics and politics juxtaposed her with her black orworking class counterpart.Vilifying the female body: the constructionof a dangerous female sexuality”(T)he feminine body was analyzed...as being thoroughlysaturated with sexuality; whereby it was integrated into thesphere of medical practices, by reason of a pathology intrinsicto it; whereby, finally, it was placed in organic communicationwith the social body (whose regulated fecundity it was supposedto ensure), the family space (of which it had to be a substantialand functional element), and the life of the children (which itproduced and had to guarantee, by virtue of a biologico-moralresponsibility lasting through the entire period of the children’seducation)”(Foucault 1978, 104).Menarche announced a young woman’s entrance into two separate yetinterrelated positions within a male-dominated hierarchical structure.Her maturing body located her as the future mother of men’s children.Simultaneously, her newly-found sexuality positioned her as an objectfor a heterosexual male’s pleasure.156

The public images of the young woman which emerged from thesemedical discourses were contradictory. One stereotype was of a youngwoman who was passive and fragile. (Lander 1988, Nathanson 1991).The construction of menstruation as a time of weakness paralleled thenineteenth century social construction of women as extraneous,economically superfluous, situated within the private home, ornamentalwithin bourgeois society. This woman was innocent, passionless,disinterested in and lacking knowledge about sex. Admonished by asparse resources theory to limit her pursuits, specifically her intellectualendeavors, she was exhorted to avoid any dissipation of her energieswhich might threaten her true vocation as mother of the race, especiallyduring her monthly bleeding. Her fragile nature was threatened fromwithin by the possibility of masturbation and from without by menwho, according to their natures, were less able to control themselves.She was constructed as responsible for arousing the passion of youngmen and as such assumed the position of gatekeeper in a society inwhich the maintenance of her virginity was required.A second, more dangerous image emanated, that of a precocious childbeginning her sexualized embodiment, whose bodily orifices andsecretions took on a sexual connotation (Brumberg 1993, Lee 1995).Menarche demonstrated the thorough erotic saturation of her body,establishing her promiscuity and immanent immoral behavior(Groneman 1994). During mid-nineteenth century scientific explorationof the causes for the beginning of menstruation, it was commonlyassumed that sexuality led to earlier menarche, excessive flow and painfulmenstruation. The timing of menarche was often thought to be apunishment for promiscuity. Reflecting the rationale which tiedmenarche to overdeveloped sexuality, urbanity, abundant food and drink,Dr. W. W. Bliss, in 1870, noted that bleeding was hastened by ”passionstirringpictures, statues, conversations upon love, constant proximityto and fond toyings of and personal freedom with, the opposite sex,(involving) the fashionable display of arms and bosom” (cited in Lander1988, 20).The young woman’s sexuality was constructed as dangerous within ahierarchical heterosexual social structure, requiring constant surveillanceand guidance. Her passion was thought to be a disorder, the cure of157

which was the responsibility of gynecologists whose options includedthe remedy of surgery. Menarche, as a dangerous conflation of sexualityand reproduction (Lee 1996), required the management of a professionalstrategist and a maternal supervisor. The young woman was given ananatomical description of menarche which precluded any insinuationof sexuality and a program of obligatory behaviors of hygiene, dress,and exercise. ”The problematic characteristic of the adolescent girl hadbeen recognized by the mid-nineteenth century and the essence of theproblem was the containment of sex” (Nathanson 1991, 6).Psychologizing the female body: menarcheas beatification or symbolic castrationIntersecting with medical discourse and augmenting the public explicationof the young woman, the late nineteenth university-baseddiscipline of psychology analyzed the behaviors of individual women inclinical isolation and established ”timeless laws of human behavior byanalysis with the laws of natural science” (Danziger 1990, 146).Influenced by the rise of Darwinism and seeking the status and credibilityavailable to a nineteenth-century physical scientist, early psychologistG. Stanley Hall applied the scientific method to a study of youth. Heconcluded that adolescence was a stage in the recapitulation of the species,the most dangerous, final burst of primitive desire, requiring understandingand managed redemption. Hall considered adolescence genericin women, the stage that a woman never outgrows, a ”culminating stageof life...(in which she) lingers, magnifies, glorifies” (Hall 1905, 297).Hall gave early menstruation a religious significance, describing it as a”sentimental period...of instability...(a) sacred time (demanding)exemption from the hard struggle of existence in the world andfrom the mental effort of school...a time to lie fallow... when herhealth for her whole life depends upon normalizing the lunarmonth, those times which suggest withdrawing to let nature doits beautiful work of inflorescence”(Hall 1905, 285-6).158

Hall promoted the medical belief that mental activity was potentiallydamaging to a woman’s physical and sexual development. In a discussionof the greater likelihood of female college graduates remaining unmarried,he wrote that the educated woman had ”taken up and utilizedin her own life all that was meant for her descendants... (she is) theapotheosis of selfishness” (Hall 1905, 305).Freudian psychoanalytical analyses of menarche did not specificallybegin until the early 1900’s. The ensuing psychological discussionsrepresented menstruation with the earlier conceived ideas associatingwomen with penis envy, oedipal imaginings, and immature orgasms.The pain of menstruation was indicative of the fear associated with theyoung woman’s apprehension about her mother’s revengeful reaction tothe child’s sexual fantasies of her father (Lander 1988). Within thisphallocentric analysis which defined women by their anatomical lack,menstrual blood represented the castrated penis; the pain of bleedingsymbolized the anxiety of this possibility in a woman who unconsciouslylonged for a man’s sexual organs. The difficulties that young womenhad with menarche was due to her mother whose concern with age andher upcoming menopause was made painfully apparent by her daughter’smenarche (Lander 1988).As an emerging science, psychology participated in the process ofgovernmentality, in the disciplining of the population and of individuals.It asserted that observation and theorizing generated administrativelyuseful knowledge. Insisting that the young woman could be made normalthrough expert intervention and management, it linked redemptionto personal development. This style of reasoning allowed young women’sbodies to be understood in very particular ways and foreclosed differentconsiderations. The ideal young woman was thought to be a passiveindividual, whose distinct biology and psyche required that she liveaccording to parameters, which had been established for her own good.The scientific principles which pervaded the times considered menarchea weakness and a danger, a sign of inferiority. The young woman wasrequired to follow established ideas which confined her movement andher access to work, school, and the political sphere. Within a frame ofreference which conceived of the peril of immigrant genes, the maliceof the urban sphere, and the weakness and inferiority of the female159

physiology, the incarceration of the young woman within her ownanatomical structure was thought biologically necessary, politicallyexpedient, and philosophically true.Disciplining the female body: the curricularinclusion of menarche and woman’s work”(T)he strategies of regulation that have made up our modernexperience of ’power’ are thus assembled into complexes thatconnect up forces and institutions deemed ”political” withapparatuses that shape individual and collective conduct in relationto norms and objectives but yet are constituted as ”non-political”(Rose 1996, 38).At the turn of the century, a variety of voices and pressures from socialworkers, parents, citizens, religious and political leaders, who consideredthe effects of industry and urbanization on girls as ”outrunning alleducational and social arrangements,” demanded an educational response.”Perhaps never before have young people been expected to workfrom motives so detached from direct emotional incentive. Neverhas the age of marriage been so long delayed; never has the workof youth been as separated from the family life and the publicopinion of the community... It (education) alone has the powerto organize a child’s activity with some reference to the life he willlater lead and of giving him a clue as to what to select and whatto eliminate when he comes into contact with contemporary socialand industrial conditions. And until educators take hold of thesituation, the rest of the community is powerless”(Addams 1909, 109).Educational science not only responded to these mandates but was transformedby its participation in the phenomenon of industrialization.Throughout the years 1893-1918, a variety of educational commissionsand national associations summoned forth a more rationalized, restructurededucational system, one which would meet the political andeconomic injunction for practical education, preparing students for160

vocational and social life-adjustments. A result of these incentives wasthe differentiated curriculum, one which would develop each individualstudent’s knowledge, interests, and habits. According to psychologist A.L. Pechstein, the responsibility for training youth for social and moralefficiency involved ”intelligent sorting and class placement...flexible anddifferentiated group study, failure prevention, the establishment of moralvalues and right type of habit-reactions, proper individual and groupcontacts between the sexes, citizenship training, socialized activity,vocational guidance” (1924, viii).The inclusion of young women within this system of public educationwas interrogated. ”(T)he modern community is uncertain as to what itwishes to make of its women...she herself is not at present entirelyqualified to pass judgment...three decades ago she was astonished tofind she had an intellect” (Slaughter 1911, 91, 95). The prevailing notionwas that education should offer her ”narrow choices...to save her frommany difficult problems and serve to make her course a continuousone” (Slaughter 1911, 53). The earlier reluctance of medicine andpsychology about the dangers of educating young women were evidentin the opinion that ”we must constantly keep in mind that we areeducating the mother of the race” (Bennett 1919, 23).In the early 1900’s the National Educational Association, the U.S.Bureau of Education, the Department of Agriculture and eventuallynational legislation pursued ideas about women’s work which facilitatedthe acceptance of young women as members of the school community.Within these discussions, home economics acquired a scientific statusand was promoted as the foundation of science and business, amicrocosm of government, a model for world affairs. Public instructionin homemaking was encouraged in order to raise standards of living,promote hygienic habits and assure acquisition of knowledge aboutnourishment and child rearing techniques. By 1920, home economicshad become an acceptable component of junior high and high schooleducation.Thus, menstruation no longer barred the participation of the youngwoman within public education. Rather, the educational focus on lifeskills allowed menarche and menstruation to become instructional topics.Reflecting new scientific documentation and national concern about161

the contaminating characteristic of menstrual blood, menstrualpreparedness was injected into the health curriculum. Constructed as ahygienic crisis, capable of polluting if not carefully safeguarded, woman’sbleeding was taught in ways which effectively incorporated the medicaland psychological formulation of menstruation as debilitating andsignaling inferiority.The educational organization of menarche was influenced by anotherexpert knowledge system that merged with science in acommercialization of the young woman’s body. The Kimberly-ClarkCompany and its production of the revolutionary disposable sanitarynapkin Kotex assumed knowledge of and responsibility for theexplanation of menarche and its management. Commercially-developedpamphlets supplied schools with texts, vocabulary, and suitable rationalesfor conversations about menarche with young women. These bookletsutilized medical language, marketing techniques, curricular objectives,mass media stylistics, and familial concerns in the subjection of the”newly-bleeding” young woman.In the early decades of the twentieth century, public education becamea central site in which expert knowledge permeated the home interiorthrough the discipline of the young woman. The scientific approach towork in the home envisioned the young woman as a distributing agentof a very specific form of governmentality, as a citizen whose subjectivitywould be instrumental in the continuation and strengthening of a formof governance. Further, education sought to redeem the young womanby making her aware of the potential contamination of her menstrualblood and of commercial means for safeguarding herself and family.Multiple sites outlined a very particular discursive space for the youngwomen and claimed her body within a certain kind of governing.”(T)he meanings associated with menarche in our culture,like sexuality itself, are produce through effects of powerrelations in order to regulate women’s lives”(Brumberg 1993,90)This investigation into the discursive constructions of the young womanis based on a belief that transgression and resistance to unhealthy cultural,social, political and economic configurations are made more probable162

through a questioning of the texts which comprise what is termed”knowledge” about young women. Currently, the situation in whichyoung women find themselves, surrounded by a culture fixated on theirbodies, belies the notion of ”You’ve come a long way, Baby!” Thepositioning of young women within political, educational, and socialarenas in which they have diluted status is often attended by drasticactions—self-starvation, early pregnancy, school failure and suicide. Itis through a recognition and study of the history of the present, theunveiling of invisible exclusions and silenced assumptions, rather thana self-congratulatory sloganeering, which can open notions of truth toskepticism and possible transformation.ReferencesAddams, Jane. 1909. The spirit of youth and the city streets. NY: MacMillan & Co.Alaimo, Kathleen. 1992. Shaping adolescence in the popular milieu: Social policy,reformers, and French youth, 1870-1920. Journal of Family History17 (4), 419-438.Bennett, G. Vernon. 1919. Junior high school. Baltimore: Warwich & York, Inc.Bordo, Susan. 1993. Postmodern subjects, postmodern bodies, postmodern resistance.Unbearable weight. Berkeley: University of California Press.Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. 1993. “Something happens to girls”: Menarche and theemergence of the modern American hygienic imperative. Journal of theHistory of Sexuality 4, 1. 99-127.Butler, Judith. 1990. Performative acts and gender constitution. In Performing feminisms:Feminist critical theory and theatre. Edited by Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press._____. 1992. Contingent foundations: Feminism and the question of postmodernism.In Feminists theorize the political. Edited by Judith Butler and Joan Scott.NY: Routledge._____. 1993. Introduction to Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “ex.”NY: Routledge._____. 1995. Subjection, resistance, resignification: Between Freud and Foucault.In The dentity in question. Edited by John Rajchman. NY: Routledge.Danziger, Kurt. 1990. Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Delaney, Janice, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth. 1988 The Curse: A cultural historyof menstruation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Foucault, Michel. 1977. In Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Translated and edited by Colin Gordon. NY: Pantheon Books._____. 1978. The history of sexuality, Vol. 1. An introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley.NY: Vintage Books.163

_____. 1980. The Uses of Pleasure. Vol. 2. The history of Sexuality. Translated by RobertHurley. NY: Vintage Books._____. 1982. The subject and power. In Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism andhermeneutics.By Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press._____. 1988 Technologies of the self. In Technologies of the self: A seminar with MichelFoucault. Edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick H. Hutton.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press._____. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. Edited byGraham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.Gatens, Moira. 1992. Power, bodies and difference. In Destabilizing theory: contemporaryfeminist debates. Edited by Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.Groneman, Carol. 1994. Nymphomania: The historical construction of female sexuality.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 19, 2. 337-367Hall, G. Stanley. 1905 Youth in education, regimen and hygiene. NY: D. Appleton & Co.Hall, G. Stanley. 1904. Adolescence. NY: D. Appleton & Co.Hunter, Ian. 1996. Assembling the school. In Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neoliberalismand rationalities of government. Edited by Andrew Barry, ThomasOsborne, and Nikolas Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Kliebard, Herbert M. 1995. The struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958. NY:Routledge.Lander, Lois. 1988. Images of bleeding: Menstruation as ideology. NY: Orlando Press.Lee, Janet. 1994. Menarche and the (hetero)sexualization of the female body. In Genderand Society 8, 3. 343-362.Lee, Janet, and Jennifer Sasser-Coen. 1996. Blood stories: Menarche and the politicsof the female body in contemporary U.S. society. NY: Routledge.McNay, Lois. 1992. Foucault and feminism. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1995. Feminist encounters: Locating the politics ofexperience. In Social postmodernism: Beyond identity politics. Edited by LindaNicholson and Steven Seidman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Nathanson, Constance A. 1991. Dangerous passage: The social control of sexuality in women’sadolescence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Nicholson, Linda. 1995. Interpreting gender. In Social postmodernism: Beyond identitypolitics.. Edited by Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Odem, Mary E. 1995. Delinquent daughters. Protecting and policing adolescent femalesexuality in the United States, 1885-1920. Chapel Hill: The University of NorthCarolina Press.Pechstein, L.A. & McGragor, A. Laura. 1924. Psychology of the junior high school pupil.NY: Houghton Mifflin.Popkewitz, Thomas. 1996. A changing terrain of knowledge and power: A socialepistemology of educational research. Unpublished manuscript.Rabinow, Paul. 1984. Introduction. The Foucault reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. NY:Pantheon Books.Riley, Denise. 1988. Am I that name?: Feminism and the category of ”women” in history.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.164

Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Governing ’advanced’ liberal democracies. In Foucault and politicalreason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government. Edited byAndrew Berry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.Scott, Joan. 1992. On Experience. In Feminists theorize the political. Edited by JudithButler and Joan Scott. NY: Routledge.Sennett, Richard. 1994. Flesh and stone: The body and the city in Western civilization.NY: W. W. Norton & Co.Slaughter, J.W. 1911. The adolescent. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.Terneman, Ann. 1989. Cashing in on the curse—Advertising and the menstrual taboo.In The female gaze: Women as viewers of popular culture. Edited by LorraineGammon and Margaret Marshment. Seattle: The Real Comet Press.Treichler, Paula A. 1987. AIDS, homophobia and biomedical discourse: An epidemicof signification. In Cultural Studies 1, 3. 263-305.Welter, Barbara. 1976. The cult of true womanhood: 1800-1860. In Dimity convictions: TheAmerican woman in the nineteenth century. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.Wolf, Christa. 1970. The Quest for Christa T. NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.165

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H A N N A H T A V A R E SPoststructural Feminisms andAlter-pedagogical Tales“The political task, in a time of closure and danger, is to try to openup what is enclosed, to try to think thoughts that stretch and extendfixed patterns of insistence”.William E. Connolly, Identity/DifferenceAn important intellectual and political encounter has taken place insidethe academy between feminist educators and adherents to ”criticalpedagogies.” Because it is an encounter, as opposed to say a dialogue,the issues that are raised and the rhetorical style in which they are raised,present this encounter as contentious and acerbic. 1 But, polemicaldiscourses have political purposes too. They are strategic interventionswhich agitate the seemingly natural and neutral order of things. Theywake us from our slumber.Cases in point are the writings issued from poststructuralist feminismsagainst a number of critical educational research agendas. 2 Their maincritique is aimed at research called ”critical pedagogies,” but alsoimplicated are both neo-marxist analyses and those that come out ofalternative critical traditions. 3 As an intervention into the encounter, Iwould like to think with, as well against, some of the critiques that arebeing raised. 4 By thinking with, I focus on the power of the critiquesespecially in terms of excavating critical pedagogies’ latent assumptionsabout self and world which allow the emergence of an important alterpedagogicaltale. I think against, by raising the question of rhetoricalcare, especially in relation to imagining an alternative pedagogical vision.Related to the thinking against, I encourage an ambivalentattachment and paradoxical relation toward critical traditions. 5The anthology, a first in the field of education, edited by CarmenLuke and Jennifer Gore (1992), Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy (FCP),is an encounter with educational research that is defined as ”criticalpedagogy.” 6 The circumstances that brought these feminist educatorstogether were similar personal experiences with critical pedagogical167

practice (Luke & Gore, 1992: 1). Luke and Gore describe some ofthose circumstances as a general dissatisfaction with ”implementingstrategies prescribed by critical pedagogy discourse,” as well a ”skepticism”toward the ”theoretical bases” known as critical pedagogy (Ibid).While the anthology does not claim a unitary feminist epistemologicalorientation, ”feminisms” is key in its approach, it is a book that is markedby its collective endeavor to resist the ”unexamined assumptionsunderlying the discourse of critical pedagogy” (Luke & Gore, 1992: 2).The anthology is situated within an intellectual and political identity:poststructural feminisms. Again, Luke and Gore:A poststructuralist feminism acknowledges its own position in discourseand in history, and therefore remains critical of its own complicity in writinggender and writing others ... a poststructural feminism does not give up itstheoretical foundations ... In line with the feminist project of standpoint—standing firm on a politics of location and identity—poststructuralistfeminisms do not disclaim foundation. Instead, they ground theirepistemology on the foundation of difference (1992: 7).I understand poststructural feminisms as an eclectic amalgamationof feminist criticism, especially influential are elements from DonnaHaraway’s (1985) ”cyborg politics,” and elements from poststructuraland postmodern theories. 7 These of course will be elaborated as thisanalysis unfolds. At the outset, however, I will enumerate some of themain themes of the critique that are being waged against educationalresearch called ”critical pedagogy.”The myth of critical pedagogiesFirst, what is critical pedagogy? Patti Lather has a lucid definition that Ifind exemplary:Within my definitional web, critical pedagogy is positioned as thatwhich attends to practices of teaching/learning intended to interruptparticular historical situated systems of oppression. Such pedagogies goby many names: Freirean, feminist, anti-racist, radical, empowering,liberation theology. With both overlaps and specificities within andbetween, each is constructed out of a combination of Frankfurt Schoolcritical theory, Gramscian counter-hegemonic practice and Freireanconscientization (in Luke & Gore, 1992: 121-22).168

As Lather points out critical pedagogues fail to probe the degree towhich one of their main premises, ”emancipation,” actually perpetuatesrelations of dominance (in Luke & Gore, 1992: 122). For example,emancipation presupposes an ”un-liberated Other” in need of liberation(Ibid). In other words, it is the critical pedagogue who is the possessorof liberated pedagogies and has the ability to empower and free theoppressed. Citing Elizabeth Ellsworth, Lather puts it this way:”’empowerment’ becomes something done ’by’ liberated pedagogies ’to’or ’for’ the as-yet-unliberated, the ”Other,” the object upon which isdirected the ’emancipatory’ actions” (Ibid). The relations of dominancethat are implicitly reinforced through critical pedagogies stem from itspassive construction of an ”Other.” It is assumed, according to Latherand Ellsworth, that the possessor of liberated pedagogies (teacher), notunlike the intellectual vanguard, knows what is best, that the teacherhas ”the truth,” and that truth shall set the oppressed (student) free.Lather’s and Ellsworth’s insight is of no small significance. It is an attemptto challenge the ways in which relations of dominance are perpetuatedthrough seemingly benign emancipatory efforts. They problematizethe discourse of critical pedagogy by placing in sharp relief thepresuppositions of liberation and emancipation.Yet I think it is worth considering whether this particularly strongreading of liberation rhetoric, dismisses the ways in which the languageof liberation and emancipation ”interpellates individuals as subjects” inways that act against and divulge reified power relations. 8 For example,as a Filipina-American attending community collgege, the language ofemancipation is what allowed me to politicize my class and genderedcircumstances. The discourse of critical pedagogies gave me a languageof critique. More importantly, that language encouraged me to imaginea very different ordering of the social. While I heed Lather’s andEllsworth’s insight, I also want to be mindful of the varying circumstancesthrough which power operates and the limited tools I (we) have at my(our) disposal. My sense is that Lather and Ellsworth would agree withme that critical pedagogies are not unambiguous endeavors. 9A second criticism articulated succinctly by Ellsworth is that criticalpedagogies ”operate at a high level of abstraction [my emphasis]” (in Luke& Gore, 1992: 92). In her unsuccessful attempt at implementing some169

of the strategies critical pedagogies promote, Ellsworth found that shewas left with a series of abstract words stripped of any useful meaning.She notes:I found ... that educational researchers who invoke concepts of criticalpedagogy consistently strip discussions of classroom practices of historicalcontext and political position (Ibid).Historical context and political position are important dynamics inclassroom practices. In regard to political position, the discourse ofcritical pedagogy, which uses words such as ”critical,” ”radical educator,””socially responsible,” disguises what Ellsworth regards as worthy politicalcommitments and agendas—namely, ”antiracism, antisexism, antielitism,anti-heterosexism, anti-ableism, anticlassism, and antineoconservatism”(in Luke & Gore, 1992: 93). Ellsworth prefers namingone’s political agenda so that political and ideological commitmentscan be made accountable. Favoring a language game of testimony, Ellsworthwants an assertion of the political commitments that one regardsas legitimate and imperative goals for educators and for education (Ibid).I think what Ellsworth finds most disturbing is the overall duplicity ofa critical pedagogy discourse that she conceives as hiding behind whatshe calls ”code words” necessitating ”a posture of invisibility” (Ibid).But I am wondering whether words can ever be stripped of theircodes given that they are linguistic mediations occuring in a diverserange of socio-cultural contexts. I think that post-Saussurean approachesto discourse have underscored the indeterminacy of language andmeaning. 10 While I agree with Ellsworth that expressions such as ”radicaleducator” may be abstract and may disguise worthy political agendasand commitments, I am also uncomfortable with the implicit assumptionregarding the transparency of words in expressions such as ”anti-racism.”I think we also need to pay attention to the performativity of theenunciation and consider the context in which it is a politicalenactment. 11In addition to the high level of abstraction, a third criticism is thatcritical pedagogy is predicated on a notion of fully rational subjects. AsEllsworth puts it:By prescribing moral deliberation, engagement in the full range ofviews present, and critical reflection, the literature on critical pedagogy170

implies that students and teachers can and should engage each other inthe classroom as full rational subjects (in Luke & Gore, 1992: 93).The assumption here is that teachers and students can and shouldnegotiate their views through rational deliberation. Yet as Ellsworthobserved, based on her own teaching experience and working with theMinority Student Coalition (MSC), some participants hold views thatare ”non-negotiable” (in Luke & Gore, 1992: 94). Their ownexperiences of racism, sexism and marginalization speak to them in waysthat cannot be articulated in a model of rational deliberation. She notes,moreover, that rational deliberation is often used to regulate conflictand/or to calm dissonance.One example Ellsworth describes deals with the demands written bythe MSC delivered to the university administration. The demands, shenotes, were not written in the spirit of engaging in a rational or analyticaldebate, or, holding up other views and positions (in Luke & Gore,1992: 94). In this particular context, she says, it is inappropriate tosubject the MSC demands to rationalist debate (Ibid). She argues that”words spoken for survival come already validated in a radically differentarena of proof and carry no option of luxury or choice” (Ibid).She does add to this, however, that the positions of students of color orany other group should not be taken up unproblematically, an issue shedeals with later in her essay when she moves to advocating pedagogygrounded in the unknowable. Her point, as I see it, is that there may becircumstances in which a model of rational, analytical deliberation anddebate is simply inappropriate.Although I am sympathetic to critiques aimed at rational deliberationand agree that in some contexts it is limited and works to containdissonance, I wonder if the privileging of views advanced as ”nonnegotiable,”elides a more vexing issue over the reproduction andestablishment of the authoritative voice, be it rational or non-negotiable.How can both views be entertained legitimately without reproducing astructure of authority? Or is a structure of authority the necessarycondition for expression and intelligibility? If this is the case, whatwarrants one authoritative structure over another, be it rational or nonnegotiable?Clearly, Ellsworth’s criticism accentuates the academicauthority operative in a rational deliberation model, no doubt a valuable171

political insight. Moreover, she illustrates how such a model tends tomute what is not recognized as ”rational” discourse. Her attempt atresignifing what constitutes appropriate discourse in an academic settingis an important contribution. I would like to suggest, however,that rather than presenting the problematic as one of antithesis, as tworadically dissociative positions, that a re-framing of the problematic interms of their mutually constitutive dependency be considered. Theyare mutually dependent in the sense that rational deliberation requiresits other, that which is ”non-rational,” for both intelligibility andlegitimacy. 12 The converse is also true for views that are deemed nonnegotiable.In other words recognizing what is a ”non-negotiable” viewrequires the recognition of what is a ”rational” view. In this way theyare mutually constitutive for the one requires its other for its intelligibility.Perhaps a reconsideration of the negotiable/non-negotiable relation, interms of their dependency is in order. Such a reconsideration may allowfor a more reflexive and perhaps even more frank discernment of thepower dimensions generated by both, be they ”rational” or ”nonnegotiable.”Moreover, it points to a certain unavoidable paradoxicalrelation that is operative in both views.A fourth criticism issued from poststructural feminisms is that criticalpedagogies have not seriously attended to the masculinist subject in liberaland critical traditions. Carmen Luke develops this point through ahistorical mapping of critical pedagogy. She identifies its roots in themarxian legacy of historical materialism which assumed only male wagelabor power (neglecting unpaid domestic labor power of women) andwhich privileged male subjects as the historical and universal actor.Implicated in this critique are gramscian and neo-marxist analyses ofgender. Luke writes:The failure to recognize the gender blindness in marxist theory, aswell as its historical genesis in industrial capitalism, leads contemporaryneo-marxist social theorists to reflect on ’gender’ in the post-industrialpresent with a masculinist theoretical template of another age (in Luke& Gore, 1992: 30).Her point is more than simply a failure to recognize gender in marxisttheory. Central to her critique is the way in which gender has beentheorized in marxist oriented social theories. For the most part gender172

is typically analyzed as an appendage to class analysis or simply theresult of the imperatives of industrial capitalism. What is importantand a main concern for Luke is that the critical pedagogy project ignoresgender by not systematically engaging with ”specific feminist theoreticaland practical concerns, and by a de facto erasure of women altogether,through appeals to patriarchy’s exclusionary grand narratives ...” (inLuke & Gore, 1992: 33).Luke’s point of grand and master narratives leads me to the finalcriticism regarding the viability of totalizing systems of explanation. Asnoted in the preceding paragraph, Luke regards critical pedagogy as a”master” narrative. But just what does the expression ”master narrative”signify? 13 In the foreword to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s (1989) monographThe Postmodern Condition, Fredric Jameson discusses master narrativein this way:The great master-narratives here are those that suggest that somethingbeyond capitalism is possible, something radically different; and theyalso ’legitimate’ the praxis whereby political militants seek to bring thatradically different future social order into being. Yet ... master-narratives... have become peculiarly repugnant or embarrassing to First Worldintellectuals today: the rhetoric of liberation [my emphasis] has ... beendenounced with passionate ambivalence by Michel Foucault ... whilethe rhetoric of totality and totalization [my emphasis] that derived from... Germanic or Hegelian tradition is the object of a kind of instinctive orautomatic denunciation by just about everybody (in Lyotard, 1989: xix).Critical pedagogy is regarded as a master narrative insofar as it adheresto a ”liberatory rhetoric.” Recall the unprobed assumption underlyingliberatory and emancipatory discourse. In order for liberation to occuran ”un-liberated Other” is required. As poststructural feminisms pointout, a political question remains that eludes the rhetoric of liberation,that is, who shall be designated to the category of ”un-liberated Other”?And who shall be the designated ”liberators”?In many ways the critical pedagogy project revisits a recurring problemin critically oriented education and social theories. The aim ofthese theories is to emphasize, by way of critique, a social order thatcreates social and economic burdens that are asymmetrically distributedamong for example, class, gender and race. Through a critical analysis173

of structural forces, of which the economy is central, what often occursis that agents get dissolved in structures, or in other cases, sign anddiscursive systems. In the preceding example, agents are not only dividedinto two camps, ”liberator” and the ”un-liberated Other,” but are thendissolved into a ”master narrative” without any integrity of their own.Yet there is something very captivating about master narratives,specifically the liberatory and emancipatory kind. That ”something” inliberatory rhetoric is what inspires and motivates one to imagine otherpossibilities for ordering social life; it enables a vision that is ”counter”to what presently is. While poststructural feminisms are right to pointout that unprobed utopian imaginaries of emancipation are rooted indualisms, they have not seriously engaged with its motivating andtransformative power. Master narratives are powerful precisely becausethat ”something” in question can be aroused.The writings by Thomas Popkewitz (1996) may provide a historicaland cultural context for what I have deemed the inspirational power ofmaster narratives. Popkewitz’s analysis, while written in a differentcontext than this one, points out that a ”messianic view of progressinscribed a culture of redemption” in social and educational sciences(1996: 4). 14 The notion of redemption is persistent with the view ofprogress in contemporary reforms and in educational research. Hiswork offers important historical and political links between a culture ofredemption and contemporary liberatory rhetoric. Within acontemporary context, he notes, for example, that the professional expertis likened to a ”modern oracle” who can decode ”social affairs inorder for subjects to act with agency” (1996: 7). His work, moreover,includes an important reminder of the inescapable historicity ofcontemporary forms of conduct and their relation to effects of power.I would like to suggest that there is yet another posture that onemight consider when confronted with the viability of totalizing systemsand the imaginative and motivational power of master narratives. Thatposture involves accepting a certain ambivalence toward masternarratives. The writings of Michel Foucault (1984), for example, providean important contribution, specifically his ambivalence toward reasonand critical thought. He concedes that one needs to ”accept thissort of spiral, this sort of revolving door of rationality that refers us to174

its necessity, to its indispensability, and at the same time, to its intrinsicdangers” (1984: 249). It seems to me that Foucault’s posture of”passionate ambivalence,” to use Jameson’s expression, encourages a morethoughtful posture toward master narratives particularly thoseemancipatory ones which find their import in critical pedagogies, andmore generally, in critical traditions. My point is not simply to suggestan appreciation of this relation, but to suggest that it is precisely thisambivalence that is also in need of serious engagement.Now that I have presented what I find to be some of the main themesof the critique issued by poststructural feminisms, I would like toturn to what that posture enables in terms of an alternative form ofsocial criticism for educational research and for pedagogy.Poststructural feminisms and cyborg politicsCentral to poststructural feminisms is a combination of social criticismand strategic essentialism, the latter operating as a self-consciousforegrounding of one’s political and ideological commitments. The socialcriticism dimension is informed by elements from poststructuraltheory and feminist theory; it is what provides the rich theoreticalfoundation for poststructural feminisms. It may be beneficial to elaborateon that foundation. In the introduction to FCP Luke and Gore discussthe theoretical foundations in the following way:The poststructuralist agenda focuses on the deconstruction of takenfor-grantedhistorical structures of socio-cultural organizations withinwhich various versions of the ”individual” have been inserted and,importantly, on the language and theoretical structures with which theindividual and the social have been written. ... Post-structuralism andpostmodernism take issue with the centuries-long rule of Enlightenmentepistemology and the fictions of the individual it spawned. Both rejectthe self certain subject, the truth of science and fixity of language, andthe functionalist order imputed to the social and to theories of the social(Luke & Gore, 1992: 5).Let me highlight the points in this passage that characterize thepoststructural elements of poststructural feminisms. First, historicalstructures of socio-cultural organizations, which include language andtheoretical structures, cannot be taken-for-granted, they must be175

deconstructed, for they not only produce a particular conception of the”individual” (recall the conception of the individual in liberal or marxisttheory provided earlier by Luke), but also produce a particularconception of the social. Before I proceed perhaps something shouldbe said here about deconstruction.Patti Lather, citing Elizabeth Grosz, defines (”uncomfortably”) threesteps of deconstruction:Deconstruction can be broken down into three steps: 1) identify theboundaries, the oppositions that structure an argument; 2) reverse/displacethe dependent term from its negative position to a place that locatesit as the very condition of the positive term; and 3) create a more fluidand less coercive conceptual organization of terms which transcends abinary logic by simultaneously being both neither of the binary terms(in Luke & Gore, 1992: 132).It may be helpful, as an example, to remember the ways in whichunprobed emancipatory efforts reinscribe relations of dominance.Unprobed emancipatory efforts presuppose a liberator and an unliberatedOther. This binary presents a hierarchy which privileges andassigns value to one of the binary oppositions. In this case the liberatoris valued and the un-liberated Other is devalued. To put it in JacquesDerrida’s (1981) words, ”a violent hierarchy” and ”order of subordination”is established within these oppositions. The point of deconstructionthen is to demonstrate the order of subordination in binary oppositions.But there is also a second phase to deconstruction which Grosz rightlyrecognizes. This is what Derrida refers to as ”double writing.” It isimportant to stress, therefore, that deconstruction is not just a simpleinversion of the oppositions but also the ”emergence of a new concept,that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous[binary] regime” (1981: 42). An example of double writing which ispertinent here is Donna Haraway’s (1985) notion of ”cyborg.” 15 Theimagery of cyborg, for example, blurs the distinction between; nature/culture, human/machine, fiction/reality and in so doing it provides analternative to binary logics.The second point I want to highlight has to do with enlightenmentepistemology and the ”fictions of the individual it spawned.” This isrelated to two other points in Luke’s and Gore’s remarks on the rejection176

of ”the self-certain subject,” and the ”truth of science.” Taken togetherthese points refer to what is often credited to the achievements of theseventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, and the confidence in humanprogress which characterized the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.While it is true that both were movements more than two centuriesago, the Enlightenment is also a mode of consciousness; a set ofunderstandings, assumptions, and presuppositions about self and worldthat have and continue to infiltrate and organize contemporary modesof thought. For example, the Enlightenment is credited with assuminghuman history as an ongoing process of emancipation. Moreover, theretends to be an overconfidence in the ability of human reason to orderindividuals and collectivities. Luke and Gore, influenced by the cautionsencouraged from poststructuralism and postmodernism, promote a deepskepticism toward Enlightenment epistemology and ideals.The final point refers to the treatment of language in poststructuralthought. A poststructural understanding of language is informed by asensitivity to textuality; for example, it discloses the figures, grammaticaland rhetorical tropes that are operative in a text. 16 This emphasis onlanguage as a writing practice permits poststructuralists to identifycommitments (forms of authority) that elude the writer partly becausethe writer treats language as a neutral tool and partly because there isalways, in every text, something that is not present to the writer orthinker. In their various excavations of critical pedagogy, FCPdemonstrated a series of myths operating in critical pedagogy that eludedits very architects.These are the points which characterize the elements of poststructuraltheory. Now, let me turn to some of the points which characterize theelements of feminist theory. They can be summed up in the followingway. First, there is the issue of a patriarchal regime and the continualneed to contest that regime, recognizing, of course, the specificity ofwomen’s oppression (Luke & Gore, 1992: 7). Second, the issue that”knowledge is always provisional, open-ended and relational” (Ibid).And lastly, poststructual feminisms ”stand firm on a politics of locationand identity” (Ibid). All of these elements from ”post” and feministtheories provide a rich theoretical foundation for poststructuralfeminisms. That foundation, as noted earlier, is a combination of social177

criticism and strategic essentialism. Thus, poststructural feminisms providean alternative to critical pedagogy and an alternative form of politicsas well.The alternative pedagogy and politics as noted earlier is woven in theimage of the cyborg. Donna Haraway’s (1985) cyborg tale is an attemptto ”build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, andmaterialism” (1985: 65). The aspects of that myth that are relevant topoststructural feminisms include a commitment to an epistemology ofprovisional and partial knowledges and identities. Identities are regardedhere as contradictory, partial and strategic. What this implies is a breakwith ”essentialist” unities and a bonding based on coalition and affinity.Haraway summarizes this point when she considers the formation ofthe political identity ”women of color,” she says:This identity marks out a self-consciously constructed space that cannotaffirm the capacity to act on the basis of natural identification, butonly on the basis of conscious coalition [my emphasis], of affinity, ofpolitical kinship (1985: 73).To regard identities as contradictory, partial and fractured does not,as Haraway sees it, preclude collective action. After all, collectivitiesand political unity are based on political kinship, as opposed to sayidentification, which relies on a ”logic of appropriation, incorporation,and taxonomic identification” (1985: 74).Cyborgs can also subvert the central myths or master narratives whichinclude the origin tales of western culture (Haraway, 1985: 94). Origintales, like dualisms are seen as the bane of ”western” tradition. Thecyborg challenges these tales and dualisms in a provocative way becauseit has no origins. As Haraway notes:[t]he cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration ofthe garden ... does not dream of community on the model of the organicfamily ... the cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is notmade of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust (1985: 67).Thus cyborgs are free from the chains of origin tales, they are inHaraways’ words, ”the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchalcapitalism,” of which fathers are ”inessential” (1985: 68). 17Binary regimes in which a hierarchial value gets assigned are alsoseriously impaired with the image of cyborg. The cyborg is neither the178

”one” (self) or its ”other” (non-self) because it is unclear where cyborgresides in a binary regime. As Haraway puts it, ”it is not clear whomakes and who is made in the relation between human and machine”(1985: 97). These aspects of the cyborg are what are so compelling forpoststructuralist feminisms. The cyborg image allows for an alternativepolitics which is not characterized by a subordinate relation found indualistic forms of reasoning in critical pedagogy, and more generally inmarxist oriented social theories. Most of the authors of FCP subscribeto a cyborgian political project and see the potential in it for creating analternative to emancipatory narratives that are ”grand.” A cyborg politicspermits the development of an emancipatory feminist pedagogy,one which insists on standing firm on its political and ideologicalcommitments. At the same time, a cyborg politics recognizes that thosepolitical commitments are grounded in partial, contradictory, irreducible,unfinished and imperfect epistemology.In the following section I would like to remark on a tension betweenstanding firm on one’s political and ideological commitments andadhering to an epistemology that claims to be partial and contradictory.This tension is relevant to two overlapping issues. The first has to dowith the rhetorical style in FCP, that is to say, the way political andideological commitments are made present. In other words how thosecommitments are written (their style) as opposed to say what they areabout (their content). Attention to rhetoric presupposes that ”languagecaptures and constructs events,” rather than simply ”refers” to it (Bennett& Chaloupka, 1993: xii). 18 And the second, which intertwines withthe first, has to do with the imaginative and motivating power of writingan alternative tale.Rhetorical styleIn her essay, ”Primate visions and alter-tales” political theorist, JaneBennett (1993), pays attention to the rhetorical style of Donna Haraway’s(1989) Primate Visions and her crafting of an alter-tale: the cyborg.Bennett notes how the interpretations offered in Haraway’s text disturbour settled understandings of self and world. But she also points outthat coexisting with that disruptive skepticism is another voice, onethat wants to promote some political claims. Bennett puts it this way:179

Haraway’s texts ... consistently disturb settled understandings abouthuman (i.e., nonanimal) identity, about woman, about science, aboutnature. But this disruptive skepticism coexists in the text with anothervoice, one deeply committed to a set of political claims. Theseaffirmations are repeated as a kind of litany, a cyborg profession of faith[my emphasis] ... and it goes something like this: to idealize perfectionand unity is to suppress anomaly and multiplicity; to define beauty asharmony is to elevate fear of difference into an aesthetic imperative; todream of an original order is to depoliticize the current one; to behomesick for the Father’s land is to be tempted to assign the status ofTruth to the way’s of one own (in Bennett & Chaloupka, 1993: 257).Bennett’s point is that the imaginative power of the alter-tale isovershadowed when one insists to much on placing one’s political andideological commitments at center stage. 19 She is right to point outthat there is an uneasy coexistence between a constant foregroundingone’s politics and trying to create an ”alter-tale,” particularly when thattale is based on a deep skepticism toward the knowable. 20In the context of FCP, cyborg politics is what informs and helps toinduce the alter-pedagogical tale. The rhetorical style of the anthology,unfortunately, diminishes the imaginative power of the alter-tale. Forexample, the constant insistence on making one’s political and ideologicalcommitments present becomes the issue rather than enabling one to seethe appeal of the alter-tale. Bennett suggests that perhaps what is neededis a more thoughtful crafting of Haraway’s rhetoric. Perhaps poststructuralfeminisms is also in need of a more careful crafting of theirrhetoric so that the alter-pedagogical tale—like the tale of the cyborg—is the issue rather than one’s insistence on political positioning. Enhancingthe imaginative power of the alternative pedagogical vision may requirecrafting a rhetoric that is tentative and skeptical. It may also require, andthis leads to the following discussion, an ambivalent posture towards criticalpedagogies and critical traditions more generally.Ambivalent attachmentsThere are two silences in the critique produced by poststructuralfeminisms that I would like to address. The first has to do with a similarlymotivated critical political project shared by poststructural feminisms180

and critical traditions. The second, which is not unrelated to the first,has to do with an ambivalent attachment that is often elided or notrecognized by both poststructuralist (deconstruction/genealogyapproaches) and critical traditions (hermeneutic/interpretation approaches).21The first point relies on political theorist Michael J. Shapiro’s (1984)analysis of textual practices as political intervention. He notes thattextualism, ”’feeds off’ other radical epistemological strategies inasmuchas it is an attack on fetishes, on objects which enchant to the extent thatthey appear natural, universal or in some way beyond human artifice orinvention” (1984: 225).A fetish, in a politicized interpretation, can be regarded as performingwhat he calls, ”the ideological function of removing power and authority”from the realm of human practices (1984: 226). Moreover, to revealthe operations of a fetish in a text is to show how a text can be readpolitically as a product of power rather than merely a benign thing (Ibid).I want to turn now to some examples of ”attacking fetishes.”A feminist approach to the fetish, for example, is to point to thesystem of patriarchy or phallocentrism that is operative in a text. InFCP poststructural feminisms have demonstrated cogently in variousways operations of a masculinist subject in their textual readings ofcritical pedagogy.Similarly, a marxian approach to the fetish is to reveal the humanrelations lost in the commodity. The hidden text operative in thecommodity fetish is the organization of human social relations aroundlabor production. As Shapiro points out, ”Marx’s reading of societywas, in effect, an attempt to divulge a hidden text” (1984: 226). Marx’scontribution was to recover human social processes (labor and its relations)that are masked in a discourse of things.Poststructuralism offers another approach to attacking fetishes. Apoststructural approach to the fetish pays attention to, among otherthings, the style of language. The fetish for poststructuralists operatesin linguistic practices and rhetorical and grammatical tropes. Anunpoliticized view of metaphors and tropes is that they serve asadornments or neutral additions. Such a view fails to see how metaphorsare productive; they are tied to ideological commitments. A181

poststructural approach tries to demonstrate how language is implicatedin the production of subjects and values. An example of the politicalsignificance of this approach, not unlike the political significance of theother approaches, is demonstrated by Michel Foucault in his analysesof discursive formations. As Edward Said succinctly puts it, ”Foucaultallows the text to assume its affiliation with institutions, offices, agencies,classes, academics, corporations, groups, guilds, ideologically definedparties, and professions” (in Shapiro, 1984: 225). Thus, a textual readingis used to politicize the model of authority and power that isimplicitly operating in the discourse.These illustrations suggest that these projects are motivated by a similarpolitical orientation toward disclosing reified power relations. Theseprojects have radically different philosophical and epistemological claimsthat may not be congruent, but, are aligned around the strategy of”attacking fetishes.” There is, however, a strange silence regarding thisshared affinity. The advocates of both often position themselves as ifthey were completely dissociative.Yet, feminist and political theorist Kathy Ferguson (1991), amongothers, has pointed out in a different context that ”the two projectsconnect to one another in important ways” (1991: 335). While herfocus is on the contending strategies of argument between interpretationand genealogy within feminism, what she has to say about theirconnection emphasizes my point. Her argument is pertinent to theencounter between poststructural feminisms and critical pedagogies.She notes, for example, that both ”can be seen as postures toward powerand knowledge that need one another, while they stand in irreducibletension and cannot be cordially joined [my emphases]” (1991: 337).Both the ”need” and the ”irreducible tension” is what could be read asan ambivalent attachment toward each project. That ambivalence mightbe encouraged to problematize the fixed patterns of closure in socialmodes of inquiry by focusing on the irony of that attachment, ratherthan the re-establishment and maintenance of intellectual and politicalboundaries. She writes:The tension between longing for and being wary of a secureontological and epistemological home, if handled ironically, need not bea source of despair; it can instead produce an appropriate humility182

concerning theory and an ability to sustain in the contrary pull of continuingto want what cannot be fully had [my emphases] (1991: 339).In the context of this analysis producing an appropriate humilitytoward critical pedagogies and poststructural feminisms begins, as I seeit, with acknowledging a similar political purpose. 22 At the same time,however, it would be wrongheaded to read that political affinity as agesture toward integration and harmony. That is not what I proposenor endorse; rather, I want to emphasize what William E. Connollycalls, ”the code of paradox” (1991: 60) in modes of social inquiry. Thatcode, which I point out as an ambivalent attachment shared by criticalpedagogies and poststructural feminisms, if treated ironically, mayencourage a politics which works to loosen the patterns of insistenceand closure. Perhaps Patti Lather’s suspicion toward constructingoppositional space via the terms of opposition, recognizes in part, thecode of paradox that I am trying to promote (in Luke & Gore: 132).I would like to conclude by reiterating that the critiques issued frompoststructural feminisms are of no small significance. They haveproblematized the discourse of critical pedagogy by placing in sharprelief the unprobed presuppositions of liberatory and emancipatoryefforts. Their move toward a cyborg politics is an attempt to displacemaster narratives that are posited as universal. Yet there is a tensionbetween an alter-tale based on a deep skepticism toward the knowable,and a posture of constantly foregrounding one’s political and ideologicalcommitments. That constant foregrounding, as I see it, operates like a”recipe of self-restriction” which tends to diminish the alternative tale. 23As I suggested earlier, with Bennett’s reading of Haraway, one way tomitigate that tension is to pay more attention to how one writes. Astrategy of rhetorical care may allow for a non-dogmatic way ofpromoting political commitments and enhancing the ideational andpolitical power of poststructural feminisms alter-pedagogical tale. Thetension should not be regarded as precluding the power and richness ofthe critique, after all, polemical and oppositional discourses are politicalinterventions; they disturb theoretical complacency.183

ReferencesAlthusser, Louis. 1971. Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Trans. Ben Brewster.New York: Monthly Review Press.Apple, Michael W. 1996. Power, meaning, and identity: critical sociology of educationin the United States. British Journal of Sociology of Education 17, no. 2: 125-44.Bal, Mieke. 1992. Narratology and the rhetoric of trashing. Comparative Literature 44,(Summer 1992): 293-306.Barrett, Michele. 1993. Althusser’s Marx, Althusser’s Lacan. In The Althusserian legacy.Eds. E. Ann Kaplan & Michael Sprinker. London & New York: Verso.Bennett, Jane. 1993. Primate visions and alter-tales. In In the nature of things. Eds.Jane Bennett & William Chaloupka. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.Brown, Wendy. 1995. Wounded attachments: late modern oppositional politicalformations. In The identity in question. Ed. John Rajchman. New York:Routledge.Butler, Judith. 1997. Sovereign performatives in the contemporary scene of utterance.Critical Inquiry 23, no. 2: 350-77.—. 1996. Performativity’s social magic. In The social and political body. Eds.Theodore R. Schatzki & Wolfgang Natter. New York & London: Guilford Press.Carroll, David. 1987. Paraesthetics. New York: Methuen.Clark, Suzanne. 1995. Women, Rhetoric, Teaching. College Composition andCommunication 46, no. 1: 108-22.Connolly, William E. 1991. Identity/difference democratic negotiations of political paradox.Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Positions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Ellsworth, Elizabeth. 1992. Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working throughthe repressive myths of critical pedagogy. In Feminisms and critical pedagogy.Eds. Carmen Luke & Jennifer Gore. New York: Routledge.Ferguson, Kathy E. 1991. Interpretation and genealogy in feminism. Signs 16,no. 2: 322-339.Finke, Laurie. 1993. Knowledge as bait: feminism, voice and the pedagogicalunconscious. College English 55, no. 1: 7-27.Foucault, Michel. 1984. Space, knowledge, and power. In The Foucault reader.Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books.Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions. New York : Routledge.—. 1985. A manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminismin the 1980s. Socialist Review 15, no. 2: 64-107.Jameson, Fredric. 1989. Foreword. In The postmodern condition. Mineapolis:University of Minnesota Press.Jay, Gregory S. 1987. The subject of pedagogy: lessons in psychoanalysis and politics.College English, 49, no. 7: 785-800.Kirsch, Gesa E. 1995. Feminist critical pedagogy and composition. College English 57,no. 6: 723-29.Lather, Patti. 1992. Post-critical pedagogies: a feminist reading. In Feminisms and criticalpedagogy. Eds. Carmen Luke & Jennifer Gore. New York: Routledge.Luke, Carmen & Jennifer Gore. 1992. Feminisms and critical pedagogy. Eds. New York:Routledge.184

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1989. The postmodern condition. Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press.Orner, Mimi. 1992. Interrupting the calls for student voice in ”liberatory” education:a feminist poststructuralist perspective. In Feminisms and critical pedagogy.Eds. Carmen Luke & Jennifer Gore. New York: Routledge.Oxford English reference dictionary. 1995. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Popkewitz, Thomas S. 1996. State reforms, educational sciences and the governingof the teacher: some comparative historical notes. Unpublished manuscript.Shapiro, Michael J. 1984. Literary production as politicizing practice. In Languageand politics. Ed. Michael J. Shapiro New York: New York University Press.Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1974. (First published in French 1916). Course in generallinguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. London: Fontana.Todorov, Tzvetan. 1990. Genres in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Todd, Sharon. 1995. Psychoanalytic questions, pedagogical possibilities and authority.The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 17, no. 1: 15-26.NotesI am indebted to Jane Bennett for answering my queries and for criticisms of an earlierdraft of this paper. Her essay ”Primate visions and alter-tales,” enabled me to thinkthrough and frame two themes; rhetorical style and ambivalent attachment. I also wantto express my gratitude to Michael W. Apple, Grace Livingston, Glenabah Martinez,Thomas Popkewitz, Michael J. Shapiro and the Friday reading group for their criticismsand insights on earlier drafts.1 . I do not what to characterize all the essays as positioned in opposition to critical pedagogiesand their architects. Patti Lather’s essay while critical and suspicious of the underlyingassumptions of critical pedagogies is as suspicious of crafting oppositional space viaoppositions (in Luke & Gore: 132).2 . The term ”critical” is being used here to identify analyses broadly associated with variantsof western marxist and gramscian social theories in the field of education within a northamerican, british and australian context. In this designation I am bracketing analysesassociated with postmodern and poststructural modes of social inquiry in education.This artificial bracketing may cause some to squirm, after all ”critical” when broadlyconceived refers to the discernment of power relations which suggests a similar politicalpurpose among these various intellectual and political projects. For now, though, Iwould like to stand by my bracketing in order to clarify, I hope, the social theoreticalorientations the critique is being waged at.3 . My use of ”critical traditions” refers, again, to the variants of western marxian andgramscian social theories in the field of education. See also note 2.4 . For a more critical assessment of the anthology see Sharon Todd’s (1995) essay”Psychoanalytic questions, pedagogical possibilities and authority,” in The Review ofEducation/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies which is issued from a psychoanalytic angle.5. The notion of ”ambivalent attachment” and ”paradoxical relation” was brought to my185

attention when reading an eloquently written essay by Jane Bennett, ”Primate visionsand alter-tales” in In the nature of things. For more on this see especially the section,”Identification,” p. 257.6. I have selected this anthology because it is, among other things, the first and perhapsmost well read representation of a poststructural feminist pedagogy mode of inquiry inthe field of education. Because my approach is not a ”review” in the conventional sense,many have done so already (see Suzanne Clark 1995; Gesa E. Kirsch 1995; and ElisabethHayes 1993 among others), I have selected only the chapters which underscore themain tenets of the critique.7. I am a little uncomfortable with my expression ”eclectic” for often it is used disparaginglyin academic practice; as a trope to ”trash” and dismiss a colleague’s work. That is not myintention here. For more on ”trashing” as a narrative genre see Mieke Bal’s (1992) essay,”Narratology and the rhetoric of trashing.”8. I am using interpellation in the Althusserian sense. For more on interpellation seeespecially the section ”Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects” in Lenin andphilosophy and other essays (1971). For a feminist reading of interpellation as genderedsee Michele Barrett’s (1993) ”Althusser’s Marx, Althusser’s Lacan” in The Althusserianlegacy.9. By ambiguous I am referring to the overdetermination of critical pedagogies effectivity.Educators writing on the structure of desire operative within pedagogical practice is onegood example of this overdetermination. See, for example, Sharon Todd (1995), LaurieFinke (1993), and Gregory S. Jay (1987).10. There is the tendency to wrongly conclude from the ”indeterminacy” thesis that allsigns (meanings) equally participate in an endless sign of signification. Clearly, this isnot the case. The criminalization of certain bodies or the regulation of women’s wombsare but two examples of the indeterminacy determined.11. I would like to thank Glenabah Martinez for this valuable insight. For more on languageand performativity see Judith Butler (1996, 1997).12. I take this insight from Ferdinand de Saussure’s (tr. 1974) hypothesis language as asystem of differences which implies meaning or intelligibility is derived out of a relationof differences.13. I had trouble finding a succinct definition for the expression ”master narrative” in thetext. Therefore I have taken the liberty to discuss master narrative within the termsoffered by Fredric Jameson which I think fits nicely with how it is being used in FCP.14. Popkewitz’s study is focused on the discourses about professionalization in contemporaryeducational reform.15. The definition of cyborg in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary (1995) says thefollowing: ”a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond human limitations bymachine technology (as yet undeveloped) [cybernetic + organism].”16. The essay by Mimi Orner (in Luke & Gore 1992) is sensitive to the issue of textuality.See her essay ”Interrupting the calls for student voice in ’liberatory’ education: a feministpoststructuralist perspective” especially pp. 79-80.17. Wendy Brown’s essay, ”Wounded attachments,” complicates Haraway’s suggestion thatfathers are ”inessential” when she introduces the structure of desire. She reminds us that”the psyche of the bastard child is hardly independent of its family of origin” (p. 208).186

18. Implicit in such a focus is a critique of the systematic inattention to rhetoric as a site forpolitical intervention by those political projects which focus soley on issues of equityand access. While issues of equity, access, and I might add entitlement, are issues thatmust be part of any political agenda, I also want to suggest that the way in which suchissues are instantiated in language (e.g., patterns of inclusion and exclusion, making ofsubjects and values, and so on) is of political importance as well.19. This point was brought to my attention by Bennett.20. Todd’s (1995) essay characterizes this tension as a ”precarious relationship betweenpoststructuralisms’s ’anti-foundationalism’ and feminism’s grounding in a politics oflocation, difference and identity” (pg. 18).21 . This point is made by Michael J. Shapiro’s (1984) essay, ”Literary production aspoliticizing practice,” and also by Kathy E. Ferguson’s (1991) article ”Interpretation andgenealogy in feminism.” They both note that hermeneutic/interpretive strategies createthe conditions of possibility for deconstructive and genealogical strategies.22. Mike Apple (1996) suggests a different type of strategy. He recommends that theepistemological and philosophical tensions between ”neo” and ”posts” rub against eachother. He notes that a ”little tresspassing may be a good thing” (141).23. I borrow this expression from Connolly (1991:56).187

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LISA HENNONSpatial Patternsof Inclusion/Exclusion:Governmentality and Urbanismin the USAThe ministers of knowledge have always assumed that the wholeuniverse was threatened by the very changes that affected theirideologies and their positions. They transmute the misfortune oftheir theories into theories of misfortune. When they transformbewilderment into ”catastrophes,” when they seek to enclose thepeople in the ”panic” of their discourses, are they once morenecessarily right?—Michel de Certeau, ”Walking in the City” 1IntroductionOne of the great challenges of the modern nation state is to developstrategies for social inclusion at a time when profound changes haveoccurred in global economies, patterns of migration, and a rise in longtermunemployment (Silver 1994). Social and educational policies seekto devise strategies of inclusion through reforms of schooling (see e.g.Istance 1997). In the USA, educational reform discourses give the problemof inclusion a geographical sense by targeting ”urban” or ”innercity” schools for reform. The discourses present the issue as an ”urbansuburban”dichotomy and claim to be offering ”new” ways to devise aninclusionary system of schooling.However, as inclusion strategies are sought, patterns of exclusionremain foremost. The binary of ”urban-suburban” articulates a ”panic”about social exclusion (to use de Certeau’s phrase above), but reformcampaigns overlook the ways in which urbanism is part of an oldertrajectory that historically has been a system to exclude. I use the term”urbanism” to refer to discursive constructions of ”urban-ness,” or whatit means to be ”urban.”189

”Urbanism” is a historical and conceptual tool of analysis to raise thetheoretical question of how a critical framework can be provided forcomparative approaches to issues of social justice and equality. Discursivedeployment of the ”city” produces political and moral effects bygoverning the ways in which we see, think, feel, aspire, act upon anddivide ourselves and others. In other national contexts, American urbanismwill not apply, but the social implications of urbanism should notbe read as a provincial issue of education in the U.S. A theoretical readingof the analysis can provide ways to explore the more general questionof how oppositional spaces are constructed. Underlying my endeavor isan attempt to think theoretically and comparatively through theproblematic of governmentality about how schooling functions toinclude/exclude.Since the U.S. was first established, educational reform discourseshave attempted to envision the entire space of the nation by invoking ageographical division in which images of the ”city” are contrasted tosomething which it is not. The historical trajectory of urbanism can beunderstood as undergoing three shifts. In the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, urbanism shifted to discourses of land that opposed city tocountry. By the turn of the twentieth century, urbanism shifted to discoursesabout society that opposed urban to rural. Currently, urbanismhas shifted to discourses of community that oppose urban to suburban.While the intent has been to make schooling more inclusive, at eachjuncture (city-country, urban-rural, and urban-suburban) an older formof reasoning—that divides, excludes and reorders concepts—creates newexclusions.Urbanism and the Metaphor of Land as NationFrom the 1780s to the 1880s in the USA, the discursive space of urbanismtied educational reform movements to images of land in emergentdiscourses of the nation state. The nation state was given a symbolicand physical order, or ”landscape,” which was mapped onto territoryand population. The landscape served to locate problems and todistribute the common school based upon patterns of inclusion/exclusion.190

The Opposition of City and Country:Cosmopolitan and Pastoral Images 2To understand how the opposition of city and country was connectedto discourses of land and to common school movements, it is helpful torecall the historical significance of ”land” in social thought. A priorimage was the ”heavens.” The theologian St. Augustine divided the worldinto two cities, the heavenly city and the earthly (Davies & Herbert1993). The ”heavenly city” was the theopolis where heaven touchedearth and took physical form in cathedral cities and dioceses. Earthlycities were outside a Christian moral order. Protestantism and colonialismtranslated the division into ”heavenly” and ”secular” which took adifferent physical form. In 1710, a Puritan in North America, CottonMather, declared the colony of Massachusetts a ”heavenly city” (Banfield1970).Discourses of the nation state appropriated the division of the worldand transformed the image of the heavenly city by replacing God withNature (Becker 1932; Toulmin 1990). Drawing upon conceptualizationsof Greek city states and Roman republics, the religious cosmographywas displaced by a land-based metaphor, geo-graphy. The question of ademocratic state became how to govern over large distances and on acontinuous and regular basis. Lands and peoples were envisioned asdivided into nation states which took physical form by dividing surfaceof territory, or land, into bounded and contiguous entities (see Anderson1991). The ”New World” was envisioned as a project to model ademocracy on Nature’s heavenly city.Land was the focus for various interlocking discourses of wealth, stability,and unity (Shefter 1984). Discourses of political economy calculateda nation’s wealth in terms of its capacity to be agriculturally selfsustaining.Discourses of political philosophy, however, rejected theinequalities created by feudalism that remained in England and Europe.Social conflicts were seen as inevitable outcomes of failing to rootout vestiges of aristocracy and peasantry. For a republic based on citizens’participation in self-government to be stable and to survive, it was believedthat widespread ownership of land was necessary. By owning land,the citizen would have an economic incentive to act in national inte-191

ests of wealth and stability. The role of government was to encouragethe ownership and cultivation of land and to encourage populationgrowth to insure a nation’s wealth and stability.Land became a metaphor for national unity through discourses ofcartography and populational reasoning. Land was mapped physicallyand symbolically to make it possible for the individual to act as citizen.Erecting a frontier and defining the inhabitants of the territory nationallywas a new form of boundary rather than an established tradition (Wagner1994). Map lines and the first census in 1790 inscribed ”America”onto land, bodies, and imaginations (see also Meinig 1986).In discourses of nation as land, national space was envisioned inmultiple ways, for a variety of spatial divisions were available, such aspost-colonial regions and constitutionally defined states and territories.In thinking about the educated citizen in relation to land, however, thebinary between city and country tended to neatly capture ”all” of nationalspace (see also Chartier 1988). Country had the double meaning ofboth the symbolic territory of the nation, and the forests, mountains,pastures and agricultural settlements within it (see Williams 1973).Ironically, images of the city made the country, in both senses, intelligible.The city and country opposition can be understood in two analyticframes, cosmopolitan and pastoral. Stephen Toulmin (1990) has coinedthe term ”Cosmopolis” to characterize the world order of nation statesand the scaffolding of discourses that went into its construction. I adapthis term to characterize the cosmopolitan image of city and country.Pastoralism is ordinarily understood as a genre of literature or landscapepainting, but as Leo Marx (1984) has argued, American pastoralismcan be understood as formative of social thought and policy. The pastoralimage of city and country served as a counter-balance to thecosmopolitan in American thought. Each image contributed keyelements to the American landscape.The cosmopolitan image of city and country established norms of”civilization.” The cosmopolitan image ordered both administrative andsymbolic representations of national space. The territory outside theoriginal thirteen colonies was considered to be ”unsettled” because itlacked an American stamp on its terrain. The cosmopolitan view of thecity helped construct an American landscape by thinking of the ”city”192

as a microcosm of its geographic territory. Mapping proceeded as thoughindividual states were extensions of the elements found in cities but ona larger scale. American cities were seen as serving the surroundingcountryside but also as a way of bonding the country into a nationalsystem of agricultural, cultural, and political interconnection (Meinig1993). The architectural relations of the city—with its network of places,systems of movement and exchange, and structures for civic activity—provided a template for administering and regulating the peopling andsettling of territory (see also Foucault 1980, 1984; Gordon 1991). Allof national space could be understood in its entirety by ”seeing” the”country” through the ”city.”Cosmopolitan urbanism set up a symbolic opposition between thesavagery associated with a harsh ”wilderness” or ”jungle” in oppositionto ”civilization.” A ”civilization” was recognizable by its construction ofcities. The cosmopolitan image of the city was associated with theachievements of reason, progress, liberty, human perfectability, andcivilization (Williams 1973). Racial discourses of ”civilizations” placed”races” along an evolutionary road of reason and progress. The destination(and destiny) of reason and progress was the civilization that builtcosmopolitan cities (see also Young 1995).The pastoral image of city and country established norms of ”nation.”Images of the countryside were endemic to the American democraticproject. In American pastoralism, land was thought to be unifying ofthe nation by giving the citizen a moral (rather than economic) stake innational interests. Pastoral urbanism adopted Enlightenment beliefs insocial harmony and reason but combined them with a Protestant imageof the Garden of Eden (Marx 1964). Pastoralism linked the ”progressive”element of cosmopolitan urbanism to human moral perfectability. TheAmerican citizen was constructed to have an exceptional relationship to”native soil” as the site of moral conversion. In 1844, an American philosopher,Emerson, expressed this vision succinctly: ”We must regard theland as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative[redemptive] and Americanizing influence which promises to disclose newvirtues for ages to come” (quoted in Wills 1997, p. 217, my brackets).In the ”New World,” savagery was associated not only with non-Christians and lesser ”races” of the wilderness; pastoral urbanism193

associated depravity with populations in European and British cities. Ina Protestant United States, the secular city was seen to function solelyfor economic ambition which encouraged political abuses andcorruption. The political upheavals abroad and social conflicts in citiesthreatened the country as a whole. Similar neglect in shepherdingpopulations in the countryside could be fragmenting and destabilizing.Pastoral urbanism set up a different symbolic field of positive and negativevalues which situated the ”country” as the norm between the wildernessand the secular city.Normalizing Space: Inclusions/Exclusionsof a National LandscapeThe role of government was to safeguard American democracy byconstructing an inclusionary national landscape to instill ”natural” virtuesin its citizens. Discourses of cosmopolitan and pastoral urbanism helpednormalize the space of the nation state to stabilize the making of meaningand the meaning of national space as a condition of freedom (see alsoDumm 1996).The ”space” of the nation state has a social dimension which is distinctfrom empire or territory. One way to think about the ”space” of nationstates is suggested by Anthony Giddens (1990) who argues thatpreviously, social practices and social identities were intimately linkedto the place or locale of face-to-face interactions. Technologies of themap and census, as well as standard calendars, mechanical clocks, nationalcurrencies, and city school timetables began to coordinatemeanings without the negotiation of meaning having to occur in faceto-faceinteractions. The coordination of social practices across a nationalspace established new chains of interaction, making it possible for”absent others” to organize and structure meanings for those ”present”in the physical locale.The establishment of chains of interaction between ”absence” and”presence” ”dis-embedded” meanings of particular contexts and ”reembedded”them as general principles. The meanings of normative placesin national space, such as the local school, homestead or home, beganto be structured by inserting the locale into discourses of nation statesand of national identity. Governing could occur in face-to-face194

interactions in terms of an ”absent” State; the ”local” could be governed”at a distance” (Rose 1996a). Social identities were uprooted and newcollective contexts were created.The discussion of normalizing the space of the nation state helps usthink of inclusion/exclusion as strategies related to the construction ofplaces. In the strategy of enclosing national space, there were those whohad no ”place” on the map of the citizen. The American Revolutionestablished a boundary line of exclusion. Mixtures of European, Asian,and pan-American ”Indians” already living in ”unsettled” territory wereexcluded by representing the mapped land as ”empty” (Gitlin 1992).People who were given no place were neither counted as American norassigned to national territory. Instead, they were ignored, pushed to the”frontier,” or destroyed.The strategy of internment immobilized people in one and only oneplace. The practice of enslaving Africans and interning them in theplantation gave them a place of containment in national space. We canalso consider the practice of relocating Indians to sites of ”protection”in the reservation as a strategy of internment. Missionaries may haveadvocated religious instruction for Indians and slaves, but before the1870s people excluded from political representation were thought to beungovernable and were immobilized in national space.To ”include” the governable involved determining their place in thelandscape. Positive and negative values in images of the city and countrycreated a normative pull on ”space” in both directions. The ”city”was the norm for ”civilization.” The ”country” was the norm for ”nation.”Together, they constituted an American vision of a national landscapeprimarily as small farms in the countryside, country estates isolatedfrom yet having access to a city’s commerce and civic activities, andlocal communities in villages and towns. The reasonable AmericanCitizen did not live far from the ameliorative forces of land, eitherthrough owning it, or by being schooled to cherish and spiritually thrivewithin it.Normative inclusionary categories based on discourses of land establishedan included/excluded social status in which citizenship embodiedand mutually implicated both inclusion and exclusion, an in-betweenstatus that goes unrecognized by the binary of inclusion versus exclusion195

in political representation. When normative places began to structurenational space, systems of social inclusion/exclusion were embedded inthe landscape and the mapping of the ”common” school.Inclusions/exclusions of the common school were mapped onto the pastoralcity and local community. Exclusions effected by urbanism occurredthrough the construction of normative places such as the pastoral cityand the local community. Biological discourses about the secular cityand populational health made it possible for nature to be a part of urban-ness.A healthy pastoral city was compared to the biology of a healthybody: streets and roads were the city’s arteries and veins, parks and gardenswere its lungs (Sennett 1994). The Jeffersonian image of theenlightened citizen referred to the citizen of the countryside, the ”independent,rational, democratic husbandman” (in Marx 1964, p. 122).We can read the social movements to build public parks, gardens, andthe kindergarten in a pastoral city as applications of the same reasoning.However, the normative vision of the pastoral city paled beside thereality. Cities of industry were plagued by not only sooty air, open sewers,and irregular familial living arrangements, but also by an alarmingunregulated movement of people and neglect of moral conversion.Reformers believed that city dwellers ”outside” the normative visionneeded far more than parks and gardens to be included—they neededtechnologies of moral hygiene and mechanisms such as the commonschool to enable economic and moral citizenship.The construction of the local community in the countryside seemsto capture a universal motif of places where all were on an equal footing.Urbanism scaffolded systems of ideas about the nation state, populationalreasoning, and reasoning about geographic scale to hierarchically nestthe ”local” within the enclosure of the ”nation.” From the perspectiveof self-government, the local community was thought to give citizensboth a sense of autonomy over local affairs and national representation.The ”local community” embodied national relations among citizensand of citizens to land. Conceptualizations of the ”local,” however, wereneither uniform nor unproblematic. In the South, the ”county”represented the ”local community” where small-plot farmers, traders,and plantation owners met infrequently. To the northeast, in contrast,New England practices of ”local community” took the form of the ”town”196

where families from a single Protestant congregation went to settle, asin migrations westward (Meinig 1986).The ”town” form of ”local community” became a normative placeon the map of the citizen. The Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787inscribed the ”town” form of the ”local.” The ordinances were federalacts to survey land and to lay the administrative groundwork forregulating the settling of territory. The formalization of discourses ofland mapped territory as ”township” and ”range” to induce populationto form individual counties and states which were then expected to jointhe republic of ”United States.”The more dispersed settlement pattern in the South set up aberrantrelations. In the northern tier of the U.S. a city system emerged with afar more developed transportation network of ports, canals, stage coachroads, and railways. The network of connection and exchange gave theNorth an unforeseen advantage by settling people into smaller, moredensely populated areas, and by establishing chains of interaction forindustrial development. The southern region was excluded geographicallyand symbolically in ”national” relations because southern practicesof the ”local” developed neither a city system nor ”civilized” pastoralcities.The more precise telescopic pinpointing of the individual—withinthe localization of the ”town” as the normative place of ”localcommunity”—brought the body of the population into tighter relations.The vision was a regulative machinery to penetrate all regionsand administer them for the common good (Rose 1996a). Later, JohnDewey’s thesis on ”community” in Democracy and Education (1916)appropriated and dis-embedded northern practices and meanings andre-embedded them as universal principles of freedom and obligation.The common school was an ordering component and normative placethat linked the ”local community” to the nation. The land ordinancesof the late 1700s required townships to set aside sections to fundconstruction of schools and wages for a teacher, which signaled theremapping of a cosmography of schooling into a geography of governing.197

Inclusions/Exclusions of National Identityin the ”Common” SchoolUrbanism related to a range of inclusions/exclusions that were boundto notions of a ”common” and ”local” school—in cities, countrysides,regions, and unsettled territories. The problematic of inclusion in therhetoric of the ”common” school can be read as a nationalist discourseattempting to define what was common among those who were alreadyrecognized as American and to invent strategies for instilling thosecommonalties within the young. The task seem by common schoolreformers was to transform ”Carolinans” or far away ”Californians,” aswell as ”settlers,” ”immigrants,” and former ”British loyalists,” intoAmericans. The disciplinary role of schooling was to enable men (withthe help of their sisters and mothers) to raise up the next generation ofcitizens for participation in self-government. The systems of inclusion/exclusion of urbanism mobilized educational discourses to constructthe common school to save a nation careening toward separatism,conflict, and moral depravity; its purposes were transformative andredemptive (see Popkewitz 1996).Specific reforms of common school movements drew upon themapping of the governable citizen: the American Citizen was Protestant.He spoke an ”Americanized” English and practiced Anglo orNorthern European culture. He was ”racially” responsive to the”civilizing” benefits of education and was clean and industrious inthought and demeanor. He demonstrated his allegiance by being ”settled”within the national landscape (or by aspiring to move and then settle).Potential citizens were understood in terms of what they ”lacked” inorder to be governable. Within the in-between of included/excluded,pastoral urbanism was applied to deficiencies of cities, and cosmopolitanurbanism was applied to deficiencies of the countryside.Excluded populations associated with cities, such as nomadic,indigent, or immigrant city dwellers, and those who lived a precariousexistence on the periphery, lacked both an economic and moral stake inthe nation. Their ”unsettledness” threatened the stability of the landscape,and their ”uncleanliness” and poor health threatened the nation.Providing schooling for the children of poor, laboring, and immigrantpopulations in cities would ”include” them by supplementing and198

intervening into their lives to make them more ”stable” and to givethem skills and dispositions for economic participation and moralallegiance (see also Kaestle 1983).A pastoral system of ideas drew together a variety of city schools (e.g.infant, charity, dame, and monitorial), and appropriated variouspedagogies into a system of moral tutelage. For example, monitorialpedagogies unique to cities used ”monitors” instead of ”teachers” becauseteachers for city populations were believed to be suspicious and lackingin moral character (see also Jones 1990). Monitors oversaw predeterminedphysical regimens of precise and standardized routines. Theroutines were thought to instill compliance and punctuality needed forinitiation into economic citizenship. Pastoral urbanism appropriatedthe monitorial system to revise the ”urban-ness” of the young intoredeemable souls to include them in moral citizenship.Constructions of the young were tied to reconstructions of the teacher.The ”city” teacher was given an evangelical role consistent with thepastoral vision of the city garden. The new ”normal” school for teachertraining constructed a moral dimension of the ”pastoral teacher” to conformto standards of female conduct, dress codes, and domestic virtues.She was expected to become the focus of pupils’ attention and affectionsand to have a refining and moral influence over the development oftheir character (see Murphy 1990).Cosmopolitan urbanism addressed the problem of achieving nationalunity at a time when residents of districts, settlements, and regionsargued for their separate sovereignties. Populations that maintained aseparateness of identity in the countryside by speaking and practicing”incoherent” languages and cultures ”lacked” moral dispositions fornational unity. And residents of southern states who disputed the nationallandscape needed to be ”included” because they ”lacked” allegianceto the republic.”Common” school movements systematized country schools bycoordinating them with city school timetables and by regulating instructionin language, religion, and national identity. Webster’s dictionaries and grammarsdisseminated a unique but standard ”American” English; school textspromoted an interdenominational Protestantism; and an added curricularcomponent was the study of national geography (Kaestle 1983).199

During the painful dis-embedding of social collective contexts and reembeddingof nationally nested enclosures, campaigns for the commonschool installed a system of supervisory offices at the state, county, andlocal levels. Those who disagreed argued that local parental control ofschooling was a fundamental right. Reformers shamed those whoobjected by labeling them as ”provincial” for placing religious or regionalvalues and identities above the ”nation.”To summarize, from the late 1700s to the decades immediatelyfollowing the American Civil War in the 1880s, urbanism and discoursesof the early common school movement mapped the citizen. Themapping established chains of interaction between the ”local” and the”nation” by solidifying geopolitical ”levels” of state, county, and localsupervisory offices.In the remapping of territory into national space, ”problem places”and the included/excluded citizen were constructed at the very momentof their inclusion. Wherever the envisioned stability and unity ofthe national landscape were threatened—by ”unstable” populations incities or by ”provincialism”—problem places were constructed througha moral and nationalist discourse about identity and its relations toowning land.Urbanism and the Metaphor of Nation as SocietyIn contrast to the land metaphor of the early 1800s, from the late 1890sto the 1950s, ”society” became the way to imagine the nation state. Theopposition of urban to rural displaced city and country. A newconceptualization of ”urban society” was understood as the loss of ”ruralcommunity.” To address the problems of an urban society, educationdiscourses campaigned for mass schooling. Mapping of social differencewent into the explicit production of citizens for an urban society.The Conception of UrbanSociety as the Loss of Rural CommunityThe shift to ”society” can be read in early discourses of sociology thatclaimed ”society” as its domain of study. Sociological reasoning at thetime conflated ”the general concept of ’society’ with the empiricalphenomenon of territorially bounded social practices” of nation states200

(Wagner 1994, p. 30). While conflating ”society” and ”territory” Americansociology from the 1890s to the 1930s concerned itself with thenature and problems of city life. In 1915, the American Journal ofSociology published an exhaustive research agenda in an article entitled”The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in theCity Environment.” Sociologists, it was argued, should view the city asa ”laboratory or clinic” for the study of ”society” (Lindner 1996, p. 61.)A reprint in 1925 changed the title from ”City Environment” to ”UrbanEnvironment” in an attempt to give ”urban society” an empiricalgrounding.The idea of ”grounding” enfolded the metaphor of ”land” into a”higher” empirical form. If one wanted to study the distinct ways ofliving in ”society,” one went to the ”city.” When reformers accepted thecity as the ”laboratory or clinic” of society, their investigations were groundedin geographic locations that excluded the rural from conceptualizations ofsociety. Again, the attempt was to ”see” national space in its entirety(including/excluding its ”rural-ness”) through the ”urban.”Even as the opposition between urban and rural was articulated, bythe late 1880s, new chains of interaction were established through theinventions of global ”time zones,” coordinated intercontinental railroadtimetables, and the telegraph and telephone. The perception held bysociologists, borrowing from the German theorist Georg Simmel, wasthat the influence of cities ”spread” throughout society. Rural areas wereheld in opposition to the urban but were ultimately subsumed underthe rubric of ”urban society” (Lindner 1996).An urban-rural dichotomy produced and ordered the opposition of”society” to ”community.” ”Community” came to represent the ”natural”or rural way in which dispositions for collective cooperation andsocial harmony were instilled in the individual. In contrast, an ”urbansociety” represented a complex way of life in which a ”heterogeneity” ofcivic, occupational, ethnic, and professional relations lead tospecialization, separation and conflict (Savage & Warde 1993; Franklin1986). 3 Social problems (i.e. in cities) were understood as the irretrievable”loss” of a means for ”social control” found previously in rural existence.The shift to an urban society as an all-encompassing spatial understandingcan be read as a dis-embedding/re-embedding of social con-201

texts of identity and location. The urban-rural binary constructed newcategories of inclusion/ exclusion.The pastoral/cosmopolitan image shifted to the ecological. Cosmopolitanand pastoral images of the city-country were enfolded into the metaphorof nation as society. Biological conceptions of the ”city” as analogous tothe human body became taken as a model for society as a whole. Ahealthy social body was compared to a healthy city. That is, a healthysocial body had the anatomical structure of the city—its organization,relations, and pathological locations. For instance, Jane Addams (1912)argued that the ”city street” was an unhealthy place for the ”spirit ofyouth” because it provided unregulated intercourse with pleasures foundin dance halls, vulgar theaters, alcohol and cocaine. The pastoral ”veinsand arteries” of cities became sites of social pathology. Social-biologicaldiscourses initiated ”ecological” public health reforms in urban designand city planning by locating deviance and abnormality (Glazer 1984).Social science ”laws” began to be cast in statistical form and reshapedreasoning about reform. ”New kinds of people came to be counted”(Hacking 1991 p. 183). Demographics of ethnicity, occupation, marriage,or age became standardized and differentiated collective contextsfor the individual. The creation of statistical regularities as populational”groups” cleared social space of ambiguities and related the governingof society to newly defined social identities (Wagner 1994). It becamepossible to map cities (and society), to correlate ”groups” to other socialmeasures (such as ”intelligence” or birth rates), and to make predictions.A statistics of social difference relocated the citizen in new administrativeidentities that could be policed within the same system of policingcity streets.Just as bodily pathologies were associated with ”alien” organisms andpoor hygiene, social pathologies were associated with the immigrant”slum” or ”settlement district.” New immigrants—from Ireland, Italy,Slovakia, Poland, Turkey, Russia or China—fared the pooresteconomically, had to compete for the lowest paying jobs, and werecrowded into housing located next to the foundry, dock, railroad andfactory. They were classified as unskilled or as ”peasant stock” similar tothe itinerant farm wage-laborer and southern ”negro” sharecropper.Eugenics and psychometrics discourses calculated the dangers that new202

immigrants posed to the American ”social body” because the groupsdiluted the ”gene pool” and degenerated intelligence and morality (Kamin1974; Gould 1981). The construction of ”urban-ness” took onnew and ominous national overtones because American ”society” wasbelieved to be most threatened by the unregulated growth andmismanagement of populations in cities.The ”Burgess Ecological Model” of urban growth emerged as a wayto correlate the biological pathologies of a ”social body” to its”laboratory,” the ”city” (Glazer 1984). The model conceived of cities asfollowing a general and statistically regular (and therefore ”natural”)pattern of outward growth through concentric zones. The ”wave pattern”of segregation, invasion, conflict, and succession was believed to be a ”natural”process of Americanization. The model’s narrative went like this:first, groups sorted themselves into segregated neighborhoods; as onegroup gained economically and invaded another area, it came intoconflict with the group already there; after a certain populational ”tippoint,” the new group would replace or succeed the old. Until an immigrantgroup had been properly assimilated—researchers found it usuallytook two or three generations—formal means of social control wereneeded.The ecological image of the city explained and justified the immigrant”slum” as an inclusionary/exclusionary strategy of internment.The immigrant represented a ”viral” threat: the social body needed tobe protected from invading and virulent organisms by quarantining itsinfected areas, treating the disease, and then waiting for the healthyparts of the social body to absorb them.Technologies of social control were legitimated by the ecological model.One method of ”social control” enfolded the metaphor of land intomarket discourses. ”Real estate” bankers and developers used an implicit”filter-down” housing model that assumed the poor wouldeventually be able to move up and out of the slum into the betterhousing left behind by the more affluent. Another means of socialcontrol regulated movement. ”Restrictive covenants” and zoning lawslisted who could or could not live in an area and were recognized asthe legal use of the police power of a municipality. 4 Although theecological model became a contested argument about the nature of cities,203

it continues to be used to predict real estate value and to decide whogets home-mortgage loans (Palen 1995).At the time, nothing could be discursively further from the ”city”than the ”rural community.” Urbanism contributed to the developmentof policies for social control because it helped to differentiate amongnew immigrant groups. At the turn of the century, a large portion of”rural” populations were immigrants, but the enclosures of ”ruralcommunities” were believed to give them the ”natural” dispositions forself-government. ”Young Citizens” leagues were established in rural areasto help the process along, but educators directed as much concern tolinking ”lagging” rural school practices to an industrial world. It wasthe presence of immigrants in the cities and urbanization, however, thatprompted reform movements for mass education (Gulliford 1984).The problematic of inclusion situated schooling as a means to ”treat”the ”disease” at the ”local” level. The formalization of the ”comprehensive”high school can be read as a feature of the zoned landscape. During asecond round of ”common” school reforms, the scaffolding of discoursesof urbanism, professionalism, and human development redefined ”common”into ”comprehensive” in which individuals were grouped accordingto statistical norms. Stages of ”childhood,” special needs of ”adolescence,”and the ”truant,” ”delinquent,” or ”incorrigible” mapped a new terrain forcurriculum (Baker 1988; Kett 1977). The ”mentally defective” wereconfined to the home or county asylum because they were believed to beunfit for an urban society.In relation to the comprehensive high school, the ”local” becamedifferentiated according to degrees of pathology and was brought underprofessional regulation. The shift occurred by identifying ”healthy” zonesof the social body as the top of ”civilized society” (e.g. the occupationaland residential zones of civic leaders, businessmen and professionals)(Tyack 1974). Through a revised spatial reasoning, residents of slumsand segregated neighborhoods were no longer trusted to exercise theirpolitical privilege to elect school officials. The advent of city-wideelections of professional superintendents displaced previous forms ofcity politics based upon neighborhood and ward systems. Defining the”municipality” (legally and administratively) as the indivisible politicalunit was like the American Civil War writ small. The new enclosure of204

the ”municipality” relocalized self-government, over which theprofessional school superintendent presided.The reconstruction of national space into an urban society issignificant to an understanding of schooling as an instrument ofinclusion. The shift to discourses of society redefined problems ofparticular city locations into national terms. The image of an ”urbansociety” represented a national developmental trend in which the ”rural”became read as ”backward” and ”out of step” in thought about socialproblems having national proportions (see also Gulliford 1984). Themethods invented to solve problems in cities were extended to the entireterritory of society. Social and educational policies that ”worked” forthe city school were believed to be equally efficacious when applied tothe rural school (e.g. intelligence testing and the production of expertknowledges).The larger point is that historical narratives ”forget” that particularcities, such as Chicago, were the testing grounds for generalizedapplications of social control. An empirically defined and vivisectedAmerican ”society” was born out of an amalgamation of discursivepractices, statistical operations, and the invention of new administrativecontexts that arose in particular pathologized locations. The shiftcan be read as a dis-embedding of identity and location which werethen re-embedded in the space of ”urban society.”Inclusions/Exclusions of Social Identity as CitizenshipConcern for citizenship was reflected in the Cardinal Principles ofSecondary Education (1918). We can read the report as remapping thecitizen into an explicit figure to be pondered and produced. The statedpurpose was to coordinate the secondary school and the performanceof citizenship with new social institutions by preparing the individualto take up pre-existing identities.In the report, the curriculum for the ”adolescent” was organized anddifferentiated around ”adult life performances.” A good citizen took on”adult” responsibilities for his family’s health, aspired to a vocation,cooperated with others, engaged in appropriate leisure pursuits, anddeveloped character by assuming personal initiative and service to hisnation. Good citizenship meant recognizing one’s literal place in so-205

ciety by fulfilling economic and moral responsibilities as a ”member ofneighborhood, town, or city, State, and Nation” (p. 14). A differentiatedand unequal landscape became a legitimate and inviolable order.A curriculum for citizenship had a distinct pedagogy. Taking on therole of citizen entailed the acquisition of ””habits in cooperation,””collective thinking,” and ”collective responsibility” as ”attitudes andhabits important in a democracy” (p. 15). The citizen not only has torecognize his social location but perform it in a prescribed manner.The idea of ”collective” is a discursive strategy of enclosure thatworks to include/exclude. The inclusionary rhetoric positions theyoung as ”outside” the space of the reasonable citizen. Although youngpeople participated in strikes, boycotts, and dissemination of dissidentliterature in various challenges to the social order, the curricularand pedagogical reorganization reconstructs the young to serve thenation through a circumscribed role as active performers in the”neighborhood” (see Kett 1977; Murphy 1990). Young people’s politicalparticipation was reclassified as ”truant” or ”delinquent” if it wasseen as ”immature” identification with the wrong people and places.Not only were the young regarded as too ”immature” to participate,the performance of citizenship, itself, became something to be craftedand schooled into the citizen. Since ”society” could no longer dependupon ”rural communities” to instill the dispositions for selfgovernment,pedagogical strategies and psychological identities wereinvented to regulate citizenship. The vectors of citizenship were realignedwith the zoning of physical and social inclusion/exclusion ofsocietal identities.As the report remapped deficiencies according to the demands ofan urban society, it also remapped the teacher. Previously the pastoralteacher functioned to guide moral development through evangelicalaffection and disciplinary regimens of comportment and recitation.The new configuration of psychology, professionalism, and administrationlaid out a different terrain for the ”teacher.” The figure of the”professional teacher” began to redistribute pastoral nurturing intopedagogical specialties that addressed ”needs” of psychologicaldevelopment whereas the professional teacher herself was expected tomaintain a proper ”social distance.”206

No doubt, reformers perceived a change away from a rural to an urbanway of life and sought to harness change to the engines of progress. Itwas an attempt to maintain and zone a national landscape by orderingnation as society. As Nikolas Rose (1996a) writes, ”[p]lanned and sociallyorganized mechanisms were to weave a complex web that would bindthe inhabitants of a territory into a single polity, a space of regulatedfreedom” (p. 164). We should not regard the shift in reform discoursesas a reaction to social change as much as change itself: other forms ofpolitical participation and cultural organization are taken off the mapof the citizen.To summarize, the further normalization of space combined withthe advent of twentieth century statistics produced new relationsconceived of as society. Uprooted and displaced social identities werere-embedded in new administrative and psychological mappings.Identification with one’s background was subsumed by ”American”identity in which standardized social locations became the collectivecontexts for identity and self-governing.Governing a Multicultural Society Through ”Community”:Redefining the Problematic of InclusionA new urbanism has emerged in current American educational reformdiscourses of multiculturalism and community. Multicultural discoursesaddress national and global changes. Global populational migrationshave created a racial and cultural diversity for which the schools arebelieved to be an instrument of inclusion (see e.g. Istance 1997).The discursive reconstruction of an ”urban society” into a”multicultural society” reconfigures meanings of ”difference,””heterogeneity,” and ”diversity.” Multicultural discourses associate thenew diversity with cities, particularly ”inner cities.” When multiculturaldiscourses use the labels ”urban” or ”inner city” without designatingrace, race is still implied. ”Urban” acts as a shorthand euphemism forpoor ”black” and people of color (see also Lemann 1991).In various studies of demographic shifts in school populations,concepts such as ”inner city” and ”isolated rural” have become part ofthe construction of ”urban” as opposed to ”suburban.” Schematically,multicultural, poor, and people of color are discursively located in207

”urban,” ”inner city,” or ”isolated rural” areas. In contrast, monocultural,white, and middle or upper class populations are discursivelylocated in the ”suburb” (Haberman 1995; Goodlad 1990; Noordhoff& Kleinfeld 1990; and Weiner 1989).As multicultural discourses overlay the schema of urbanism, issues ofsocial justice and equality are redefined in terms of social class and race.For example, a national report on diversity and a ”crisis” in educationfinds that in the largest school districts, up to seventy percent of publicschool enrollment are children of color. These children ”are more likelyto be poor, hungry, in poor health, and to drop out of school than theirwhite counterparts” (Zeichner 1992, p. 3). In an all-encompassing contrast,teacher education students are portrayed as ”overwhelmingly white,female, monolingual, from a rural (small town) or suburban communityand . . . come to their teacher education programs with very limitedinterracial and intercultural experience” (p. 4). The problematic ofinclusion/exclusion has shifted.Social discourses of ”society” and ”community” remapped the ”city.” Theshift in problematics is readable in the ways in which the overlay ofurbanism and multiculturalism draws in various discourses of ”society”and ”community.” In a recent overview of the upcoming conference forthe American Educational Research Association (AERA), the scaffoldingof multiple discourses maps a new landscape. The 1998 theme is”Diversity and Citizenship in Multicultural Societies” (Sleeter and Banks1997). I (re)present the overview to highlight the interweaving (andpanicking) discourses of urbanism, multiculturalism, society, andcommunity:Educators in multicultural societies face a new challenge as the gapbetween rich and poor widens. There is a crisis for people of color ininner city communities because jobs have moved to the suburbs.Joblessness and poverty impact the citizenship of the new urban poorby eroding social and cultural life and robbing young people ofdreams. The role of education is to develop citizens to be politicallyactive in restoring all communities.To think of an ”inner city” as a ”community” would have been impossibleat the beginning of the century. The idea of nation as a multiculturalsociety incorporates and reformulates the previous notion of an urban208

society. Previously, administrative identities were invented to understandan ”urban society” as ”heterogeneous” because the space of social relationswas differentiated into hierarchies of occupational, civic, institutional,and demographic groups.The idea of the United States as a ”multicultural society” situates”heterogeneity” on a new map of the citizen. In multiple discourses thatrefer to a global context to address the role of schooling in nation states,social space is redefined. Out of respect for cultural and racial identities,the idea of assimilation is rejected; multiple communities, it is argued,make up a multicultural society rather than a heterogeneous but unitary”social body.” Differences of race, culture, and social class are recast asidentities which are understood as membership in multiple communities.The problematic for inclusion in a multicultural society has become: howdo we reform schooling so that multiple (and conflicting) communitiescan achieve social justice and equality, particularly the inner city community?The Turn to Community:From Societal Identity to Identity as LifestyleA shift to discourses of ”community” engenders a new and salient vocabularyfor thinking about the ”urban” school. For instance, school professionals areexpected to foster ”community” relations: teachers are to work closely withthe geographic ”community” of the school as well as consider schools as”learning communities” and their classrooms as settings in which they workto instill a ”sense of community” in their students (see e.g. Annual UrbanConference 1997).The turn to discourses of ”community” requires a careful reading.Like the previous motifs of the ”local” and ”common” school, ”community”suggests a separate sphere of autonomy protected from stateintervention in which individuals participate equally in determining theirlives. Discursively, however, a variety of particular senses of ”community”are used to problematize, analyze, and intervene. A ”sense of community”can convey Dewey’s sense of shared norms and values to create socialharmony, whereas a sense of ”community activism” can connote challengesto the social order, as in the American Civil Rights movements. The ideaof ”community control” can also be used to argue against the patronizingand disabling social institutions of the welfare state which the previous209

shift to society invented (Cohen 1985).In many ways, the idea of ”local” or ”community control” sharessimilarities with the technologies of ”social control” at the beginning ofthe century. In the 1960s, ”community activism” was a mobilization ofparticipation to question political and social conventions. Today, in placeof ”society,” ”community” takes on a normative function: citizens in amulticultural society, it is argued, inhabit multiple communities thatmake claims upon them, of which they need to be made aware. Theeffort to recuperate ”community” and ”local control” from the stateemerges, ironically, from the expert discourses that construct communityas a means to govern.Social locations have become identity as lifestyle. We can think of appealsto the citizen’s participation in ”communities” as a discursive shift thatrelocalizes self-government. The site of ”community,” as Nikolas Roseargues, is a discursive space of new moral relations in which individualshave obligations and allegiances to multiple and heterogeneous communities(1996a, 1996b). Community becomes a ”micro point of management” ofa variety of overlapping networks which are no longer anchored in physicalspace or the ordered space of society. The ”community” becomes a projectof political reflection which aligns the capacities and aspirations of thecitizen with the aims of government (Popkewitz 1996).The subject of government is transformed by attaching governmentalidentities directly to the life space and life course of the individual whomust actively reshape his or her social position in a constantly movingsocial context. A new citizenship in neo-liberal discourses implies a”lifestyle” related to individual consumption patterns and practices ofleisure in which one takes an active role in defining and creating a socialidentity (Wagner 1994). A liberal ethos of choice and self-promotiontransforms the qualified citizen into one who takes personal responsibilityand initiative in managing one’s social destiny and risks. To do so, thecitizen must be flexible in identifying with multiple communities and,therefore, must be taught the psychological dispositions and capacitiesfor making reasonable choices.210

Urbanism and Lifestyle: Neo-liberalDiscourses of Markets and MulticulturalismEven though discourses of markets and multiculturalism pursue differentideological agendas, they both contribute to the construction ofcitizenship as lifestyle. In each, the oppositional space of urbanism servesto distinguish communities and to organize interpretations and practices.Market discourses mobilize implicit meanings of community as”lifestyle.” The self-governing citizen does not belong to a cohesivelydefined ”community” but is nonetheless empowered through an identityas consumer to act within a ”local” and private sector. Market discoursesemphasize ”local” school decision-making and parental involvementin schools (see e.g Powell, et al. 1985). But political choices are redefinedas choices of where to live, to shop, what to eat, where to enroll childrenin schools, or how to manage one’s health (as in a ”healthy lifestyle”).Redefining issues of justice and equality as differences in lifestyleoccludes social inequalities embedded in the American landscape andreinscribes patterns of inclusion/exclusion by making normativedistinctions. The ”suburban” lifestyle is an implicit norm that subordinatesthe ”inner city.” For example, Chubb and Moe (1990) argue that”heterogeneous” urban schools have ”troublesome clientele” who areoverburdened by a bureaucracy that doesn’t allow them to choose. Theauthors claim that a more fair and just system of schooling would takeas its model the ”homogeneous” and ”suburban” school in which parentscan act as discerning ”consumers.” Market discourses assume that eachand all are situated equally to make reasonable choices. But, the failureor refusal to choose appropriately or to live one’s life in a way thatdemonstrates personal responsibility and initiative demarcate the newlyincluded/excluded. The excluded are no longer understood as membersof social groups; they are dispersed into a variety of expert pedagogicalspecialties or are subjected to more invasive strategies of surveillance(see e.g. Murray 1995). The ”new urban poor,” the ”jobless,” and thoseon ”public assistance,” are recast as ”troublesome clients” who need to betaught to live a better lifestyle, to make better use of leisure time, and tomake better consumer decisions. Markets, and schools designed to provideconsumer products, offer expertise in the neighborhood by renderingpsychological services in job seeking, health education, or parenting.211

Multicultural discourses make normative distinctions amongcommunities by referring implicitly to lifestyle. We can read the liberalethos in the AERA overview as constructing a citizen who has dreamsand aspirations. The role of education is to develop active, involved,goal-oriented citizens whose missions are to strengthen and construct”community” collective contexts in which a variety of lifestyles maycoexist.The ”crisis” of ”urban” or ”inner city” schools is understood in termsof demographic predictions which identify a gap between the ”urban”child and teacher. The ”gaps” that position the ”urban” child and teacherare translated into descriptions of their different life courses, life spaces,and lifestyles. A shift occurs from discourses of demographic differenceto a psychological register (Popkewitz, in press). Issues of racism, gender,and social inequalities are transformed into psychological issues ofself-awareness, individual attitudes, and beliefs. The ”urban” child andteacher are understood as members of geographical, social and racialgroups, but their group identity is then transformed into oppositionalpsychological biographies.Lifestyle as Psychological Biography: Inclusions/Exclusions in the New Pedagogies of CommunityA variety of proposals attempt to locate the ”crisis” throughgeographical metaphors. For example, proposals focus upon theprospective teacher in efforts to reform teacher education to addressurban settings rather than the ”suburban or relatively mildly urbanschool” (Goodlad 1990, p. 254). Others argue that if teacher educationis to effectively respond to the crisis, then orienting the curriculum tothe inner city also applies to the suburbs and rural areas, but not viseversa(see e.g. Weiner 1989). Still others express doubt that teachereducation can transform the ”culturally incompetent teacher who mightsurvive in a small town or suburb [but] will not last a day in an urbansituation except as a failure or burnout” (Haberman 1995, p. 92, myemphasis). Implicit in the remapping of individual competencies intogeographical ”settings,” ”areas,” or ”situations” is a binary of differentand oppositional lifestyle communities.212

To understand the ”urban” child, administrative categories of race andsocial class are remapped by psychological discourses of personality,dispositions, affect, and learning style. The ”urban” child is viewed ashaving ”street-wise intelligence,” ”potential,” and qualities of ”resilience,”but as lacking confidence, aspirations, and self-esteem (see the analysisby Popkewitz, in press). An implicit ”suburban” norm is used todistinguish the ”urban” child—not as an individual—but as a memberof a populational group. Psychological discourses construct a separateset of curricular and pedagogical guidelines for different racial andcultural rates of development and learning styles (see e.g. Murrell 1993).Moreover, in new ”constructivist” pedagogies—in which learning is moresecurely tied to the goal-oriented, active, and choosing individual—theblame for school failure is shifted even further onto the ”urban” child(Popkewitz, in press).Since ”urban” children need a teacher who ”cares” and who cannurture the very qualities that disqualify them, the teacher isreconstructed in discourses of socialization and psychological attitudesand beliefs. Issues of poverty, poor self-esteem, and a lack of aspirationsof the abnormal child are held in opposition to—if not explained by—the teacher’s cultural incompetence and limited experience. Theprospective teacher is cast as an unwitting captive of her ”suburban”location. Her teacher training must make her aware that she is ”culturallyinsular,” ”parochial,” ”provincial” and that she has ”limited geographicaspirations” (Zimpher 1989; Wisneiwski & Ducharme 1989). To remedyher inner deficiencies, she is immersed in the community of the urbanor rural school (Noordhoff & Kleinfeld 1990; Ladson-Billings 1994;and Zeichner 1992). The overlay of urbanism with the discursive figureof the professional teacher creates the need for a kind of moral ”baptism”after which she can assume a mobile and professional identitythat crosses over into internments of pathological communities.The discursive space of urbanism has shifted in which the field ofsymbolic values are reversed. What used to be believed as necessary anduseful has become the problem. For example, the shedding of one’sbackground identity to be an ”American” is now the affliction (exceptthe teacher must still sever her ties to an inadequate background). Also,to have ”street wise intelligence” is a good attribute since the ”urban”213

child cannot be recognized as having a ”normal” intelligence. The reversalof values is significant because they appear to be effecting importantchanges that open the school and make it more democratic for ”urban”children, families and communities. But the structure of the discursivefield has not changed; it reinscribes a pattern by which new categoriesof exclusion can be invented.Concluding CommentsThe analysis of urbanism allows us to ask what effects are particular tothe U.S. and more general questions about comparative studies andtheir implications for social exclusion. In the U.S. the revised field ofsymbolic values in a new urbanism seems to draw a more inclusive mapof the American Citizen. I have argued that inclusionary reformsstructured by the discursive space of urbanism have drawn differentmaps that historically worked to exclude. The act of locating ”problemplaces” encloses people in the panic of our discourses to save them fromcrisis. We ought to problematize this reasoning, not because the labelsare inaccurate or because implementation has failed. The ways in whichurbanism structures educational reform re-establishes categories ofexclusion that the discourses supposedly are arguing against.We can note several important reinscriptions in efforts to envision thespace of the nation. First, inclusionary rhetoric depends upon invoking acollectivity such as ”America” or ”community” as an enclosure that supersedesother identities. Deficiencies are then identified for which the role ofschooling is to invent strategies to include. But the inclusion simultaneouslyworks to exclude in revised normative distinctions. Second, the ”city”or ”urban” teacher has always been a figure to transform. The new configuration—ofplacing the ”rural,” ”inner city,” and ”urban” outside thespace of reason—has repositioned the teacher. Multiple discourses weremobilized in the recurrent transformations of the monitorial, pastoral, andprofessional teacher. The reconstructed professional teacher has beenreinserted into an ”inner city community” with new technical knowledgesand competencies to instruct the child in dispositions, attitudes, and beliefsbelieved to be necessary for social inclusion/exclusion.And finally, the oppositional space of urbanism re-establishes a needto police, investigate, and subject to further rigor the space of the ”ur-214

an” and bring it under new strategies of discipline. The overlay of anew urbanism with discourses of multiculturalism, society, markets,community, and lifestyle reproduces unrecognized exclusions at the verymoment they seek to include; new exclusions are inscribed in the Americanlandscape.Urbanism as an oppositional space relates to comparative studies ofglobalization and regionalization that invoke a dichotomy between ”global”and ”local” or ”national” and ”local.” An implicit assumption hasbeen that geographic scale helps us to understand issues of social justiceand equality. The embedding of geographic scale into populational reasoninginvests the state with a sovereign notion of power in which groupsof people wield their power to dominate others. The bigger thegeographic scale over which privileged groups exert control, it is assumed,the more power is used and abused.But in the problematic of governmentality, the dichotomy of globallocalobscures the productive side of power in which power is localizable.I draw upon an argument by the geographer, Nigel Thrift (1995) toelaborate. To subsume the particular or local under the national or globalis a way to exclude. In the case of urbanism, the early metaphor ofnation as land helped construct both the ”local” and ”national” to makegovernment ”at a distance” possible. Images of the city were used tolocate ”national” problems by dis-embedding meanings from particularcontexts and re-embedding them ”locally” as universal principles.Moreover, the ”national” or ”global” mobilizes large scale, theoreticallyencompassing questions and answers that gloss over the historically singularand particular effects of power that construct patterns of inclusion/exclusion. When discourses shifted to nation as society, the theoreticallyencompassing rubric of ”urban society” mobilized multiple social reformsthat subordinated ”rural” and ”local” issues and excluded socially definedgroups under ”American” identity. The merging of urbanism with currentdiscourses of community relocalizes power but does not destroy it ormake it more equitable.The discursive localization of power is important to discussions thatuse oppositional categories such as the dichotomy of global-local. Global-localdistinctions, such as centralization versus decentralization, stateversus civil society, or social economies versus markets, are used to frame215

arguments for social reform and can work to reinscribe new forms ofinjustice and inequality. The point is that we can understand issues thatare of ”national” or ”global” importance while at the same time recognizethat the dichotomy of global-local does not make all issues of democraticfreedom intelligible. The dichotomy can work, instead, to obscure therecognition that locally identified governance can be just as effective(and exclusionary) as nationally identified governance.The reinscription of patterns of inclusion/exclusion relates to a largerissue in comparative studies of education that make assumptions aboutthe relations of the present to its past and future. Historical relationsare conjunctural rather than linear. Past formulations form a trajectorythat can join at any present moment with newer formulations. Whetherthe oppositional space of urbanism will produce similar discursive effectsin the future cannot be predicted and cannot serve, therefore, as a guidefor educational reform. The analysis of urbanism can serve, however,to reopen the terms of the debate. Recovering unrecognized patterns ofinclusion/exclusion opens up ways of thinking and allows otherpossibilities to be thought.ReferencesAddams, Jane. 1912. The spirit of youth and the city streets. New York: MacmillanCompanyAnderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spreadof nationalism. London & New York: Verso.Baker, Bernadette. 1998. Childhood-as-rescue in the emergence and spread of the U.S.public school. In T. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucault’s challenge:discourse, knowledge and power in education, New York: Teachers College Press.Banfield, Edward C. 1970. The unheavenly city: The nature and future of our urbancrisis. Boston, Little, Brown.Becker, Carl. 1932. The Heavenly city of the eighteenth-century philosophers.New Haven: Yale University Press.Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education: A report of the commission on thereorganization of secondary education, appointed by the National EducationAssociation. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918,No. 35. United States Government Printing Office. Washington: 1937.de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. S. Rendall (Trans.). Berkeley,Los Angeles, & London: University of California Press.Chartier, Roger. 1988. Cultural history: Between practices and representations. LydiaCochrane (Trans.) Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.216

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Silver, Hilary. 1994/5-6. Social exclusion and social solidarity: Three paradigms.International labour review. Vol. 133, pp. 531-578.Sleeter, Chritine E. and Banks, James A. Annual Meeting 1998. Educational Researcher.Vol. 26, No. 8, November 1997, p. 37.Thrift, Nigel. 1995. A Hyperactive world. In R.J. Johnson (Ed.) Geography and globalchange. Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. 18-35.Toulmin, Stephen. 1990. Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity. ChicagoUniversity Press.Tyack, David B. 1974. The one best system: a history of American urban education.Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.Wagner, Peter. 1994. A sociology of modernity. London & New York: Routledge.Weiner, Lois. 1989. Asking the right questions: an analytic framework for reform of urbanteacher education. The urban review. Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 151-161.Williams, Raymond. 1973. The city and the country. New York: Oxford University Press.Wills, Gary. 1997. The American Adam. New York Review of Books, March 6, pp. 30-34.Wisniewski, Richard, and Edward Ducharme (Eds.) 1989. The professors of teaching:an inquiry. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.Young, Robert J. 1995. Colonial Desire: hybridity in theory, culture, and race. London &New York: Routledge.Zeichner, Kenneth. 1992. Educating teachers for cultural diversity. National center forresearch on teacher learning, NCRTL. Special report, September. Michigan:Michigan State University.Zimpher, Nancy. 1989. The RATE project: A profile of teacher education students.Journal of teacher education. November-December, pp. 27- 30.Notes1 From de Certeau (1984), pp. 95-96.2 Throughout, the terms ”image” or ”landscape” can be thought of as a ”process by whichsocial and subjective identities are formed” (Mitchell 1994, p. 1). Representations arediscursive practices that scaffold images and landscapes into systems of ideas and actions.The imagery imposes itself on social and physical reality, and it shapes expectations andorientations. The scaffolding constructs and reconstructs collective contexts in whichsocial identities are formed.3 The notion of an ”urban society” as heterogeneous is different from late twentieth centuryusages that signify cultural and racial differences in a ”multicultural society.” This pointis taken up in the next section.4 Restrictive covenants and zoning laws began in New York City in 1916 and weresubsequently adopted by city planners around the country (Palen 1995). As new policies,they exemplify how meanings are dis-embedded and then re-embedded as generalizableprinciples219

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THEODORA LIGHTFOOTMetaphor, Imagery and theImmigrant as ”Other.”[In recent years we have developed] a new professional vocabularywhich speaks of the process of exclusion, of marginal populations,communities and individuals [which] is significant in that it indicatesa revised problematization... of those who cannot fulfill theirresponsibilities as qualified citizens. They are unable to enterprise theirlives or manage their own risk; the risk they pose, on this account, tothemselves and to others, must be managed by experts. Of course thisclassification can be articulated in very different ways and with differentconsequences, depending upon whether it is couched in the language of‘welfare dependency’ from the right, [or] in the language of social injusticefrom the left. But these different articulations operate with a surprisinglyconsonant picture of the subjects of exclusion. (Nicholas Rose, 1995)In tune with the quote from Nicholas Rose, above, I will be using thispaper to explore the topic of “excluded” groups, or as “others” incontemporary public discourse in the United States. In this case, I willprimarily be looking at the concept of excluded others in the discourseof educational reform, by examining the imagery of marginality, andcultural deficit which has accrued to immigrants and other speakers ofEnglish as a second language through the construction of special languageinstruction programs to serve these groups. In making this argument, Iwill be exploring and undermining a myth common to educationalreformers— which is that educational policy makers and advocates canstand apart from the injustices and prejudices of society at large in orderto ”fix” social injustice through the educational system.Within this mythology, reformers and policy makers can proposestraightforward solutions to social, economic and educational problems,liberating society’s unfortunates and empowering them to become welleducated,productive citizens.221

In this paper, I will be undermining the myth of the reformer or policymaker as liberator, and replacing it with a more complex and nuanced, butalso darker view of educational reform, in which policies always representa trade-off. In this view, educational change always has unexpected andpotentially risky consequences. While any given reform may potentiallybenefit a certain group in a certain way, it must also be suspected of thepotential to exacerbate power differentials in other ways, perhaps furthermarginalizing a different group, or perhaps by granting certain benefits tothe targeted group, while increasing their difficulties in other ways.This view of reform will not argue against educational change. As aneducator who has worked for many years with speakers of English as asecond language, I would strongly agree that the educational system hasnot treated members of this group fairly, and that steps should be takento make their educational experience less difficult and aversive than ittoo frequently is, at present.However, I do wish to present an argument for undertakingeducational reforms carefully, and with full awareness of the fact thatany educational system is embedded in a complex network of powerrelations, which encompasses not only students, teachers and citizens,but also educational researchers, policy makers and reformers, no matterhow concerned they are with doing good. Knowing that one isworking with complex power networks will not take all of the risk outof educational reform. However, an awareness of the fact that one isinevitably dealing with risk, and with trade-offs may at least make itpossible to mitigate these dangers while making a desired change.I will be making this argument, then, by examining the languagesurrounding immigration, educational reform, and compensatoryeducation in the United States since World War II.I will be arguing that language, and imagery, are integral to the workings ofpower, of inequality and of injustice in society. While some sort of ”reality”undoubtedly exists outside of human experience, as culture-driven beings whoseminds are structured through language, we are unable to experience that realitydirectly. All members of any given society share a number of discursive, orrhetorical devices which bring them together as a cultural and linguistic group.In other words, all members of a society share a number of underlying tropes, orsymbolic constructions expressed through language, which they use, both to make222

sense out of the mass of sensory input which humans are receiving every instant,and to affirm their identity as part of a cohesive social group. These tropes arelargely unconscious, forming an apparently ”neutral” background against whichwe weave the stories of our everyday experience. The color of this ”neutral”background only becomes evident when compared to the backgrounds framingother cultures and other time periods. (Foucault, 1972)However, since our current society also seems to heavily hierarchical,these underlying tropes which frame our consciousness also form atightly woven mesh of power relations. In this outlook, then, languageis inextricably linked to power, and power, at least in a contemporaryWestern context, is inextricably linked to inequality. Power, andinjustice then, are part of the fabric of our every day experience—ofthe way we speak, that we form our thoughts, that we live our dailylives, and that we understand our own identities and those of theother beings who surround us. In the words of the philosopher SusanBordo:...certain groups and ideologies ...have dominance...[but this dominanceis sustained] not by decree of design from above...but through regulating themost intimate and minute elements of the construction of space, time, andembodiment..(Bordo,1993, 26-27)Because language is so important to power relations, then, not onlyfiction and poetry, but any text from everyday life can be read as literature.As the literary scholar Edward Said points out, there is no realdistinction between ”objective” writing and literature.We cannot speak of history today, without, for instance, making room in ourstatements about it for [the concept that] all historical writing is writing anddelivers figural language and representational tropes, be they in the codes ofmetonymy, metaphor, allegory, or irony. (Said, 1993, 304)Furthermore, it is crucial to undertake a close reading of the texts of everydaylife, if we wish to begin the process 1 of understanding the power-loadeddiscursive structures, or tropes, which structure our reality. Once we understandthat this level of reality exists we will still not be totally ”free” of it. Infact, it may not be possible to be ”free” of discourse, and to be fully human.However, we can begin to work with, and manipulate this level of reality.In this case, I will be looking at literary imagery, or tropes whichstructure three types of discourse—that of the anti-immigrant right,223

that of the early years of elite oriented post-war bilingual education,and that of the mass-programs in English as a second language andbilingual education which are directed towards ordinary immigrantfamilies, and which have characterized immigrant education since themid-1960s. These three discourses have been regarded as radically differentfrom each other. What I wish to show, is that in fact, all threediscourses share the focus and limitations of a common discursivestructure, or common root metaphors. None of the reforms havemanaged to step out of these discursive structures to do anything radically”different” either for or to immigrant students. Without challengingthese structures, it is unlikely that anything will change radically in thelives of immigrant students or their teachers.Anti-immigrant imageryThe most extreme discourse concerning immigrants and immigrantstudents is, obviously, that of the anti-immigrant right-wing. As can beexpected in a country which has traditionally had a high rate of immigration,there has been a long history of anti-immigrant voices in theUnited States. In recent years, a number of these anti-immigrant voiceshas coalesced in a relatively coherent discourse, which has framed manypeople’s fears of immigration in a post-World War II context. This understandingis framed in a number of salient tropes, or images.A central, unifying theme running through many anti-immigrantstatements, is the idea that immigrants pose an urgent threat to thiscountry because immigration is ”out of control.” This idea, with itspotency increased by a metaphor representing Mexico’s populationincrease as a ”hemorrhage” (underscoring the sense of an emergency, ofvital interests at stake, and of life threatening “leakage”) can be seen inthe following quote from the Washington Times:On the border, with Mexico in various stages of collapse and itspopulation hemorrhaging, things are totally out of control. Wholebusinesses have sprung up, producing every type of Social Security card,voting card, green card, driver’s license, and passport.(Geyer, 1986, in Dudley, 199, 163)Also implied in the ”loss of control,” seen in the quote above, is a threat tothe sovereignty of the United States, as ”foreigners” take over regulatory224

powers which used to be functions of the U.S. government. In the citationfrom the Washington Times, these powers involve the rights of citizenship,or residency, embodied in official papers such as ”green cards” or passports.In other related strands of discourse, such as Pat Buchanan’s campaignspeeches, the lost powers also include regulations over trade, or tariffs.Under the overarching image of immigration as “out of control,”which is frequently represented, as above, by tropes referring to thespillage of liquid, (similar verbal imagery abounds, represented in phrasessuch as a “flood of illegal aliens” a “surging tide” of immigrants, or theclaim that irresponsible policymakers have opened the “floodgates” toimmigration) come a number of sub-images, or sub-themes, referringominously to more specific “dangers,” “risks,” or “losses,” resulting fromthe “out of control” immigration process.One ”danger” often presented in discussions of immigration is thatimmigrants will bring crime and social ”pathology” into this country.Immigrants are often rhetorically linked with images of crime anddeviance. This link is demonstrated in the following series of excerptsfrom the Immigration Time Bomb by Palmer Stacy and Wayne Lutton.One of the consequences of ceasing to enforce sensible immigration controlshas been the wave of alien-related crime that has struck this country fromcoast to coast. [Despite laws denying entry to criminals] politicians haveallowed thousands of dangerous criminals and perverts to enter ourcountry...As many as 40,000 hardcore [Cuban] criminals and sex deviateswere welcomed by Jimmy Carter with ”an open heart and open arms.”Bullets and knives were soon entering the hearts of other Americans.(In Dudley, 1990 91)One important theme, often presented in terminology which explicitlylinks immigrants with other “underclass” groups such as African Americans,and “welfare mothers,” is the idea that this group lacks skills,and thus has a negative impact on the economy. This negative impacttakes place on three levels.First of all, tied in with the idea of immigration as a toxic anduncontrolled “liquid” implied in terms such as “flood,” “leakage,” or“hemorrhage,” is the idea that unskilled immigrants are a predatorygroup which causes a “drain” of economic resources, by coming to thiscountry and demanding welfare and expensive social services, which225

they do not “earn” through their tax dollars. This prevalent metaphorcan be seen in the following quote:The news media portray all the “Josés” in our country as hard-working,scared refugees from oppression. In reality, most of these people are simplyeconomic refugees who only serve to take jobs from American citizens anddrain our welfare and other benefit programs. (Stacy and Lutton, 1988 inDudley, 1990, 149)A similar sentiment, lacking only the image of a drain, is expressed inthe following quote from a fund-raising letter distributed in 1986 bythe organization English First.Tragically many immigrants these days...never become productivemembers of society. They remain stuck in a linguistic and economicghetto, many living off welfare and costing working Americans millionsof tax dollars every year. [If we don’t take legal steps] we’ll create apermanent underclass of unemployed citizens. And you and your childrenwill have to pick up the tab. (Pratt, 1986 in Crawford, 1996)Second, in a strand of rhetoric already familiar from the campaignspeeches of Pat Buchanan, comes the image of immigrants as peoplewho ”steal jobs” from disadvantaged sectors of the U.S. population.This point was made recently by Jack Miles in the Atlantic Monthly.What difference is there between exporting jobs and importing workers?...If there were no Latinos —and no other immigrants— around to doall the work that there is to be done in Los Angeles, would blacks not behired to do it? I think they would be. Wages might have to be raised. Frictionmight be acute for a while. But in the end the work would go looking foravailable workers... The influx of immigrants willing to work long hoursfor low wages has depressed wages and increased competition beyond anythingthat [this country has] ever faced. (Miles, 1992, 57)Finally, using imagery tied into the idea of “human capital,” antiimmigrantgroups imply that the presence of immigrant groups,which are presumed to be uneducated and uneducable, in the U.S.economy, holds this country back from the type of economic”development” which can only result from an ”educated workforce.”In this picture of development, even educated and professionallyemployed Americans are negatively affected by the presence of ”unskilledimmigrants”, because the collective educational level of the226

workforce provides the human ”capital” which propels a nation’seconomy forward.In this type of argument, then the education and other skills of potentialworkers are explicitly compared to money, or capital. Within theparameters of the metaphor of human capital, education is an”investment” or involves some sort of money exchange, and the nationis conceptualized as having a ”bank account” of human skills, whichcan be directly assessed and evaluated in terms of monetary gains, andlosses. This type of imagery is exemplified by the arguments below:The United States is one of several countries competing for thephysical and human capital of immigrants. As compared to two otherpotential host countries— Australia and Canada— the United Statesnow attracts the least skilled immigrants.... The fact that the newimmigrants are less skilled than the old is responsible for a significantreduction in the potential national income of the United States. If thepersons who migrated between 1975 and 1979 had been as skilled asthose who came in the early 1960s, national income would be at least$6 billion higher in every single year of the immigrants’ working life.The accumulation of these losses over time, combined with the continuingentry of unskilled immigrant flows, implies that the long-run reduction innational income and the corresponding losses in tax revenues may besubstantial. There are large economic costs associated with American’s poorperformance in the immigration market....The fundamental question facingpolicy makers is whether these costs exceed the benefits of unskilled immigration.(Borjas, 1990, 20, 22)The next group of images involves the unifying trope of the”melting pot.” In this type of verbal imagery, traditional U.S, societyis portrayed in some way as being a ”melting pot” in which peopleenter to emerge transformed into a ”typical American. 2 ” This transformationis often compared to a ”sacred trust” or a ”contract” inwhich people are expected to willingly exchange their old languages,cultures, and habits for the opportunities offered them by the UnitedStates. In contemporary right-wing discourse, current immigrants areportrayed in various ways as ”unmeltable lumps” which cannot be”digested” or as ”tribes.” (Brimelow, 1995) This type of imagery isoften combined with allegations that the government has ”lost227

control,” and that some sort of legal action is necessary to forceimmigrants to either conform or to stay out.Many of the most visible debates about immigration and the ”meltingpot” involve language. This concern with the United States as a linguisticcauldron, in which immigrant languages must be melted away at theborder in order for this country to preserve its unity is reflected in theproliferation of English language amendments being proposed in thiscountry both in many states, and on the national level through proposedlegislation such as Congressman Toby Roth’s (R-WI) H.R. 739 andPete King’s (R-NY) H.R. 1005, both of which would severely restrictthe rights of speakers of languages other than English to use those languagesin public arenas.Former Senator Warren Huddleston explicitly contrasts the idea ofthe United States as a linguistic ”melting pot” with the idea of thiscountry as a Tower of Babel.The United States is presently at a crucial juncture. We can either continuedown the same path we have walked for the last two hundred years, usingthe melting pot philosophy to forge a strong and unified nation, or we cantake the new path that leads in the direction of another Tower of Babel.(Huddleston, 1983, in Crawford, 1992, 117)Some of the arguments for the United States as a linguistic ”meltingpot” ironically depict linguistic boundaries as a kind of symbolic national”border” which must be made impermeable and defended againstalien invasion in the same way that Pat Buchanan has pledged to ”defendthe borders of the United States.” (Buchanan in Welker, 1996)A nation cannot survive if it fails to control its borders and adapt auniversal language and culture. There is absolutely no future in Americaunless English language skills are mastered. Any tolerance of the polyglot isat cross-purposes with a harmonious society and can only lead to a cesspoolof ethnic and social strife. (Anonymous letter to the editor, The CapitalTimes, May 23, 1991)Other arguments stress the ”melting” aspect of the ”melting pot”philosophy, and argue that English must be used ”inclusively” to breakimmigrants out of ”linguistic ghettos.” (Pratt in Crawford, 1996) Thissecond argument is used a recent advertisement for the U.S. Englishorganization.228

I am proud of my heritage. Yet when I emigrated to the United States fromChile in 1965 to study architecture at Columbia University, I knew that tosucceed I had to adopt the language of my new home. As in the past, it iscritical today for new immigrants to learn English as quickly as possible.And that’s so they can benefit from the many economic opportunities thatthis country has to offer. ...On the job and in the schools we’re supportingprojects that will ensure that all Americans have the chance to learn thelanguage of equal opportunity. (Mujica, U.S. English, 1994)However, arguments sung the image of the ”melting pot” go beyondlanguage into the broader realm of culture. In these cases, the image ofa ”melting pot” represents the need for a ”core” of common culturalvalues to ”hold the country together.” Attached to this image is theassumption that without common traditions, common values, and acommon view of history, the United States will be filled with conflictand ethnic strife. In fact, some writers set the terms ”tribe” or ”tribalism”(with their associations with ”dark” ”Third World” people) as explicitopposites idea of the ”melting pot” or the ”unified nation.” (Forexample, see Brimelow, 1995) Recent immigrants, then, are ”tribalists”or disruptive forces who bring previously unknown levels of conflictinto a previously peaceful and unified country. These ”disruptive” or”bad” new immigrants are explicitly contrasted with the ”good” oldimmigrants, who made good on the ”contract” they made when immigratingto this country, and subjected themselves to the forces of the”melting pot” or the ”Americanization process.”In the following quote, Robert Reinhold, a staff writer for the NewYork Times presents a public hearing to discuss the adoption of a set ofhistory textbooks for the state of California as a vivid metaphor the role ofnew (disruptive) ethnic elements in destroying a national unity once createdby a core of (primarily European) values. In this quote, the implicationsthat a raucous and divided public burst suddenly into a ”shouting” matchafter quietly reciting the pledge of allegiance, aptly symbolizes the feelingof confusion and betrayal felt by many conservatives from ”old” Europeanimmigrant backgrounds when confronted by demands for cultural pluralismmade by assertive coalitions of ”new” immigrants. 3As the packed meeting got underway, most people stood for the pledgeof allegiance. Indians, Chinese Americans, blacks, Hispanic Americans,229

Jews, Christians and Muslims all fell silent, placed hands over hearts andintoned ”One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice forall.” But the raucous hearing that followed was anything but indivisible. Infour and a half hours of shouting, a parade of speakers stepped before themicrophone to denounce the[State of California’s selection of historybooks.]....If the concept of the melting pot is outdated, what is to replace it?History, some say, is a kind of property whose owner controls the future.From that perspective, the future...still belongs, however tenuously, to theproponents of traditional Western values. The current debate suggests,however, that an increasingly polyglot America has yet to come to terms withits diversity. (Reinhold, 1991,26, 27, 52)In contrast, another New York Times staff writer, Richard Bernsteininvokes the image of an older Jewish immigrant from the wave of ”good”or ”assimilable” immigrants of the 1920s, who is puzzled anduncomprehending at the unwillingness of today’s ”new” immigrants tomake the commitment made by his generation to their new country.In his autobiography, ”A Margin of Hope,” the critic Irving Howe,speaking about the ”ethnic” generation of the 1920s and 1930s, recalls hishunger for school as a child of Jewish immigrants growing up in the Bronx;for Howe, mastering the English language was a badge of Americanness.”The educational institutions of the city were still under the sway of a unifiedculture, that dominant ’Americanism’ which some ethnic subcultures mayhave challenged a little, but which prudence and ambition persuaded themto submit to. (Bernstein, 1991, 52)Finally, some writers from the right imply that the ”newest wave” ofimmigrants is ”indigestible” or ”unmeltable” (Brimelow, 1995) becausethey different racially from the ”norm” which has traditionally dominatedthe United States and will thus will never be ”assimilated” into themainstream without altering the country to the point where it isunrecognizable. This idea draws on the image of the White, EuropeanAmerican as this country’s archetype, or norm. The writer PeterBrimelow, whose book Alien Nation attracted a great deal of mediaattention in 1995, uses particularly striking imagery in his portrayal ofthe United States as a White, Anglo-Saxon nation 4 . Interestingly, bothBrimelow and his wife are immigrants. Brimelow is from England, andhis wife from Canada. However, by painting a picture of the United230

States as a primarily White nation based on Anglo-Saxon cultural values,Brimelow is able to portray himself as an insider, fighting to defend thiscountry from an inflow of threatening outsiders, or ”others.” Below hedescribes his infant son, who, as a blue eyed blond, symbolizes the”traditional” White male ”American” whose interests are beingthreatened by the growth of the proportion of people of color in thepopulation, primarily through immigration.My son Alexander, is a white male with blue eyes and blond hair. He hasnever discriminated against anyone in his little life (except, possibly youngwomen visitors whom he suspects of being baby-sitters). But public policynow discriminates against him. The sheer size of the so-called ”protectedclasses” that are now politically favored, such as Hispanics, will be a matterof vital importance as long as he lives. And their size is basically determinedby immigration. (Brimelow, 1995, 11)In other parts of his book, Brimelow makes even more explicit hisvision of a nation as community of ”blood” links, implying that peoplehave common interests only when they share ”racial” or ”ethnic” traits.The word ”nation” is derived from the Latin nescare, to be born. Itintrinsically implies a link by blood. A nation in a real sense is an extendedfamily. The merging process by which all nations are created is not merelycultural, but to a considerable extent biological.(Brimelow, 1995, 203)In fact, using this type of logic, a White, Anglo Saxon immigrant likeBrimelow may see himself as more integrally a part of the UnitedStates than racial ”others” whose families have lived in this countryfor generations. Here Brimelow’s commentary on a story told by theAsian-American Ronald Takaki whose family has been in the UnitedStates for generations demonstrates the strength of the archetype ofWhites as ”typical” Americans.[Takaki relates a story in which a White taxi-driver who asks him howlong he has been in this country because he speaks ”excellent English.].Onany reasonable scale [Takaki’s] complaint is trivial to the point of paranoia.He, after all is the famous author and tenured professor from theUniversity of California at Berkeley. The white Southerner is, perfectlypolitely, driving the cab. To the extent that there is any content to Takaki’scomplaint, it is because he is Asian in a predominantly white society.And there is no cure for that except radically increasing the numbers of231

minorities and breaking down White America’s sense of identity.(Brimelow, 1996, 271-272)In other words, for many members of right-wing, anti-immigrant groups,immigrants are ”others” or ”outsiders” who represent various types of”threats” to the interests of ”insiders” who ”belong” in this country.These ”threats” are variously represented. They appear as populational,or demographic ”risks.” They may be portrayed as economic problems,such as job loss, increases in the cost of social services, or in dilution ofhuman capital They may be seen in terms of safety as a risk of increased”immigrant crime.” Finally, the threat of immigration emerges in the specterof a broken and betrayed nation, marked by linguistic and cultural disunity.These examples cited above, of course, are drawn from what canpossibly be seen as a radical fringe discourse. Certainly figures like PatBuchanan, and, to a lesser extent, writers like Peter Brimelow go fartherthan many other Americans in painting a stark picture of a hypotheticalcontrast between a presumably unified and productive ”native” population,a small group of ”benign,” or ”harmless” immigrants like Brimelowhimself, and an unmanageably large group of disruptive, destabilizing,poorly educated, and unproductive immigrants who threaten the nation’sborders, identity and economy. What we will see in the followingsections, however, is that the image of immigrants as what Rose, in theopening quote, would label as ”excluded others,” goes beyond the radicalright, and, in fact, forms an important core metaphor for the way weform our images of, and plan programs for, immigrant and secondlanguage students. Like writers such as Brimelow, even many ”progressive”or ”liberal” educators and policy makers, are unable to break away fromthese core images of immigrants being divided into a small group of selfsufficientand benign immigrants who do not need special help, and alarger group of helpless and disenfranchized immigrants who need to bemanaged and transformed if they are not to cause social disruption, as theyare presumed to be incapable of taking care of themselves.The elite bilingual programs of the 1950sAfter a period of latency due to low rates of immigration during thedepression and the World War II years, the 1950s saw a resurgence ofimmigration. Language education programs for second language speakers232

had been dormant during this period of low immigration, and thushad to be reconstructed new, when significant levels of immigrationresumed after the war. These programs differed from previous languageeducation programs because they were sparked by Federal funding, andmodeled their rationales on the discourse of the funding programsavailable to them.Among the earliest of these programs were the two-way bilingualeducation programs provided in South Florida for Cuban refugeesfleeing Fidel Castro’s socialist society. As can be expected, many of therefugees coming out of Fidel’s Cuba were society’s elites. Since Cubahad been an economically and racially stratified society, those peoplewho had the motivation and the resources to leave Cuba were similarin crucial ways to elite groups in the United States— they were wealthy,highly educated, and largely ”White.” In other words, they were initiallyperceived 5 as fitting the image of Brimelow’s exceptional immigrants,who could come into this country and take on its characteristics withoutthreatening either its identity, or its economic structure.The early educational programs designed to serve the needs ofCuban students were drawn from the image of the exceptional, orbenign immigrant. These programs were funded, along with a numberof other elite programs in math, science, and foreign languages bymoney provided by the National Defense Education Act (NDEA)which was intended to train future intellectual elites, and operatedunder the slogan of ”Education for excellence.” (See Kaestle and Smith,1982.)These programs were initially developed then, within the frameworkof what Ruiz (1984) calls a ”language as resource” orientation,based on the assumption that Cuban students could help teach Spanishto their English speaking peers through two-way bilingual education.Naturally, these programs were largely implemented in upper-incomeneighborhoods, such as Coral Gables, a wealthy Miami suburb.Discussions of such programs were framed in terms of the immigrantstudents providing valued skills and intellectual resources to their hostcommunities. For example, administrators in one such program in theMiami area, proclaimed, describing the benefits of their bilingual programfor English and Spanish speakers alike, that their graduates would”have skills, abilities and understandings which will greatly extend [their]233

vocational potential and thus increase [their] usefulness to the community.”(Rojas in Mackey, 1977, 68)However, programs like the two way bilingual schools in South Floridawere to remain limited in scope, not only because of limited Federalfunding, but, perhaps more importantly, because the discourse beingused to frame the offspring of elite, White Cuban parents did not seemsapplicable to the masses of less educated and darker skinned immigrantscoming in from other countries. The trope of excptional education forexceptional immigrants had its limits, and these limits involved thediscursive exclusion of the majority of low to moderate incomeimmigrants from ethnic backgrounds which were less easily describedas ’White” in mainstream U.S. discourse. This larger group of immigrantswas also pushing for educational inclusion. However, in order to gainthis inclusion, they had to be subsumed under the rubric of a radicallydifferent discourse—that of ”compensatory education” for social justice.While this latter discourse gave large numbers of immigrant studentsaccess to funding for special educational programs, it also drew theminto a discourse of deficit and disenfranchisement which, as we shall seein the next section, defined them as a population which was both ”atrisk” and threatening to the social and economic stability of the nationas a whole, if they were not ”managed” and ”transformed.” This type ofdiscourse, while more ”compassionate” than the language of Buchananand Brimelow, nevertheless, carries with it the stigma of immigrants as”excluded others” who need to managed for their own good.Immigration and education for social justiceIn the mid 1960s, mainstream discourse shifted rapidly and drasticallyin terms of what appeared to be ”legitimate” social spending foreducation. Education was one of the top priorities in President Johnson’sWar on Poverty. (Plunkett,1985, 534) Furthermore, educational spendingin the mid 1960s was heavily skewed towards language orientedprograms. At this point, even programs like Headstart, which includedlarge numbers of immigrant students but were primarily oriented towardsnative speakers of English had important language components gearedtowards remedying the linguistic ”deficits” of234

children whose mothers are harassed by many obligations, who spend12 or more hours working in the fields or in someone else’s kitchen [andare not very likely to enjoy the maternal play and verbal interchangewhich children in more fortunate circumstances often know. [This affects]a child’s intelligence...[and constitutes] a verbal disability of a largepercentage of these children...(U.S. Congress, Subcommittee onEmployment, Manpower and Poverty, 1969, 52-53)However, the emergence of the word ”disability” in the above quoteshows the beginning of a new set of tropes infusing the language usedto legitimate educational programs which received the supplementalgovernmental funding (in addition to the budgets provided to localschool boards from property taxes) on which many educational programsfor immigrants had come to defend. These tropes, like the language wesaw calling for anti-immigrant policies, focused on the idea of deservingstudents as ”disabled,” ”deficient,” or ”handicapped.”Bringing in another set of imagery, drawn largely from the languagesof human capital, and of social pathology, also seen in the last section,programs were also able to successfully market themselves, by stressingthe fact that their students were ”at risk” for poor educational attainment,unemployment or underemployment, and social pathology. Thefollowing quote from a proponent of increased federal spending for potentialdropouts in the mid-1960s reveals an abundance of this type of imagery.The unyielding persistence of large volume and high rate unemploymentin the face of increasing industrial production and general economic expansioncontributed importantly to popular awareness of malutilization of humanresources... Even with a booming economy and skill shortages, theunemployed, because of their various deficiencies, could not be absorbedinto jobs (233)... The growth of population and youth reaching labor forceage...constitutes a major problem for our economy...The count of unemployedamong our youth by definition excludes large numbers of youngsters who areout of school and, though able to work are not even looking for work. It isestimated that perhaps 300,000 or more are in this group. Many of theseyoungsters do not regard work as a desirable goal. Their social values differfrom those of ”respectable” society...Resentment against society and its institutionsis commonplace and withdrawal and avoidance are not unusual.(235-236) (Levine, 1971, 233, 235-236)235

In other words, by the mid 1960s ”special” government funding overand above that provided by local school boards was abundant. However,programs billed as ”deserving” of this money had to situate themselveswithin a particular discursive space. In other words, instead of educationalprograms promising excellence for students who were perceived ascoming from the mainstream, funding was given preferentially tocompensatory programs, intended to bring ”outsiders” into the system,by changing them in order to make them socially acceptable and selfsufficient.This discourse implied, among other things, the frequent useof descriptors such as ”handicapped,” ”deficient,” and ”pathological”for participating students. It also brought with it a metaphor of ”humancapital” which made use of terminology from economics to justifyeducational spending as an ”investment” intended to avoid future”problems” and ”expenditures.”Thus Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act passedin 1968 called for special educational programs for Limited EnglishProficiency students (a term which was first used in this period, andwhich exemplifies the language of deficit which had begun to dominatediscussions of immigrant students) provided they were both ”poor” and”educationally disadvantaged because of their inability to speak English.”(In Crawford, 1991, 32, emphasis mine) Title IV of the CivilRights Act stated that ”school districts must take affirmative steps torectify language deficiency in order to open its instructional programs tothese students.” (In Crawford, 1991, 34, emphasis mine) Finally, theLau decision of 1974, which represents an important landmark inestablishing the legal obligation of school districts to provide specialinstruction to students who did not speak English, refers to thehandicapping quality of the inability to speak English, and explicitlycompares immigrant children to children who have physical disabilities.Invidious discrimination is not washed away because the able bodiedand the paraplegic are given the same state command to walk. (Hufstederin Crawford, 1991, 36)In the light of this shift in discourse, programs both in English as asecond language and in bilingual education began to legitimatethemselves in terms of the individual pathologies, the disadvantages,and the ”risks” posed to society and to the economy by their students.236

The following quote, from an article published in 1969 promoting anexpansion of English as a second language programs in Texas showshow thoroughly this language of pathology and risk had beenincorporated into descriptions of immigrant students by this time.Unemployment and sub-employment in these slums are-much morethan in other areas- a matter of personal rather than economic condition.No conceivable increase in the gross national product would stir thesebackwaters. The problem is less one of inadequate opportunity than ofinability, under existing conditions, to use opportunity. Unemploymentin these areas is primarily a story of inferior education, no skills,discrimination, fatherless children, unnecessarily rigid hiring practices andhopelessness. Fundamental to the problem seem to be the linguistic barriersMexican-Americans must fact when confronting the educational system,the labor market, and society in general. ...[Lack of proficiency inEnglish is] as much of a handicap socially speaking as a cleft palate, deafness,etc. are in organic or physical terms. This type of handicap can be overcomeby intelligent diagnosis and special instruction directed at the problemfacing the child-that is not understanding or speaking English.(Aparicio and Aparicio, 1969, 263-4, 272)A look at more recent discourse justifying educational programs forimmigrant or bilingual students shows that the discourse patterns referredto above have not substantially changed since the mid 1960s, except fora few minor shifts in terminology, such as the replacement of termssuch as ”culture of poverty” with other, more modern concepts such asthe ”underclass.”For example, an article from 1991, arguing for increased educationalfunding for ”Hispanic” students is entitled Winners and LosersCircles....From the discussion which has preceded this, it should beimmediately obvious who the ”losers” are.Being at risk means being diametrically opposed from obtainingacademic excellence...Students are at risk when they have the tendencyto disregard and ultimately drop out of school. Research conductedon students who drop out reveals consistency in the followingcharacteristics....a)They are frustrated with school; b) they have pooracademic records; they have discipline problems; they have adisadvantaged economic and social level; e) they are often members237

of a minority group, particularly Native American, or Black; and f)they posses low aspirations and inferior self-concepts....(Cuellar andCuellar, 1991, 116)The authors stress the fact that ”Hispanics” because as a group, theyinclude a high proportion of immigrants, and other ”limited Englishproficiency students are more ”at risk” and thus more pathological thanother racial minorities. Thus low achievement and social pathologyamong immigrants has become racialized.Hispanics, and other groups with language barriers have shown aparticularly lower level of scholastic achievement, even when standardsare already low. Additionally, the dropout rates of Hispanic studentsare the highest in the nation. (Cuellar and Cuellar, 1991, 116)At each stage in the circle that moves students away from academic excellence,language difficulties exacerbate the cycle. Not only is language adifficulty in academic tasks, but it also impairs students integration intothe social context of the schools....Academic excellence is virtuallyunattainable for language minority students who do not completely masterEnglish. ...(Cuellar and Cuellar, 1991, 129)Finally the authors make a strong plea for funding priorities to be movedfrom other areas into special educational programs for ”Hispanics,” in orderto avoid the problems they have so vividly depicted.These findings suggest that solutions to advance students ... are best obtainedin the school itself. This is a relevant issue to consider in the debate related toeducational funding, particularly in view of the fiscal crisis overwhelmingeducation in this decade. (Cuellar and Cuellar, 1991, 129)What we can see in the reading of the discourse of compensatoryeducation for immigrants, motivated by a desire for social equality andinclusion, which might initially appear considerably different from thelanguage of figures like Buchanan and Brimelow, who wish to keepimmigrants and ”racial minorities” outside of society. However, on closerexamination both discourses construct the majority of immigrants as notonly disenfranchised but also incapable ”others” who must be ”managed,”in the one case, by keeping them out of U.S. society, and in the other case,by managing and transforming, or in other words ”rescuing” them, toremedy their defects, and to mitigate the risk of their inclusion inmainstream society.238

ConclusionsWhat I hope to have shown here, is that we all, as members ofcontemporary U.S. society, are inevitably drawn, by a kind of linguisticgravity, towards a fixed set of verbal or ”literary” tropes, which fix certainparameters on the way we perceive the problems of immigration,education, and second language instruction. All of us tend to divideimmigrants discursively into a very limited group of ”benign elites,”who pose relatively little ”threat” to social and economic stability, but atthe same time need relatively few social services, and a much larger andmore ominous group of disenfranchised outsiders, who need to bemanaged, either by excluding them or transforming them, often at greatexpense, to make them ”like us.” It appears to be extremely difficult tobreak out of this paradigm, and envision immigrant students in a waywhich is free of this binary.However, educational reforms and educational programs whichattempt to bring about social inclusion by buying into the ”good immigrant/badimmigrant” binary, also bring with them their own problemsand own risks. First of all, the portrayal of second language speakers associally and culturally ”deficient” in order to obtain educational fundingrisks strengthening the discourse of the right wing, which would like tosee such individuals excluded both from the educational system, andfrom the nation as a whole. Second, the portrayal of a large majority ofsecond language speakers as culturally and educationally deficient, isbound to have a chilling effect on the programs and the materials designedfor them, as well as on the expectations their teachers hold forthem. Undoubtedly these discourses have numerous other effects, whichI, as a member of this culture, and thus of the same discourse communityI am ”reading” in this paper, am not easily capable of perceiving.This paper has, then, raised a problem, of how to plan and implementeducational policies, given the fact that policy makers, like all othercitizens, are members of a discursive community which entwines all ofus in webs of metaphorically based power inequities. Unlike many otherwriters, I will not propose an easy solution to this problem. It is mycontention that this type of problem does not have a simple solution.In fact, the search for pure and simple answers has caused many of thedifficulties and frustrations experienced by educational reformers since239

World War II. I would like, however, to suggest that an understandingof the discursive basis of power inequities, while obviating the type ofblind optimism which characterized many of the reform efforts of the1960s and early 70s, might provide a better long term strategy forbeginning to unravel, little by little, the metaphorical spider web ofinequity in which we are all entwined.ReferencesBernstein, Richard. (1991, October 14). A War of Words, New York Times SundayMagazine, 34-52.Bordo, Susan. (1993), Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Culture and the Body. Berkeley:University of California Press.Borjas, George. (1990), Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S.Economu. New York: Basic Books.Bouvier, Leon. (1992), Peaceful Invasions: Immigration and the Changing America.Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.Briggs, Vernon. (1992), Mass Immigration and the National Interest. New York: RandomHouse.Brimelow, Peter. (1995), Alien Nation: Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster.New York: Random House.Crawford, James. (1991), Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice. LosAngeles: Bilingual Services, Inc.Cuellar, Alfredo and Cuellar, Mariano-Florentino. (1991, Fall), Winners’ and Losers’Circles: Conceptions of Social and School Based Factors Affecting StudentAchievement, The Journal of Language Minority Issues, 9.Dudley, William (Ed.) (1990), Immigration:Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: GreenhavenPress.Huddleston, Walter. (1992), The Misdirected Policy of Bilingualism. In Crawford, James(Ed.),Language Loyalties: A Sourcebook for the Official EnglishControversy.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Levine, Louis. (1971). Implications of the Anti-Poverty Program for Education andEmployment. In Hallberg, Edmond, (Ed,), Guidance for Urban DisadvantagedYouth. Washington D.C.: American Personnel and Guidance Association, 232-243.Reinhold, Robert. (1991, September 29th).Class Struggle, New York TImes SundayMagazine, 26-52.Rose, Nikolas. (1995). The Death of the Social? Re-figuring the TErritoriality ofGovernment, Unpublished Draft Manuscript.Ruiz, Richard. (1984). Orientations in Language Planning, NABE Journal, 8 (2), 15-34.Said, Edward. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.240

Notes1It is understood that this is a long and difficult process which will never be completed, aswe can never be totally consciously aware of the language which structures our reality.2By this, of course they mean typical of English speakers, of European origin who live inthe United States— not the rest of the Americas.3Ironically, many of the strongest pleas for cultural and linguistic pluralism are made byAfrican-Americans and ”Hispanic” Americans, neither of which can be considered inany sense of the word a ”new” immigrant of ethnic group. However, both groups arerelatively new players in the power game determining the discourse of both popularculture and the culture of schooling.4It would, however, be a mistake to portray Brimelow as an isolated extremist, or as out oftouch with the discourse of the right on race. In fact, Brimelow considers himself, withsome justification as a relative moderate on race compared to many other members of”right-wing” groups. His ideas are explored at length here mainly because his imagery isso vivid and articulately expressed that he provides a particularly striking example of atype of discourse which is, in fact, quite common in anti-immigrant rhetoric.5Later conflicts over language and identity in South Florida have largely eroded this imageof Cubans as benign immigrants.(See Crawford, 1991.) However, the discourse we areexploring here comes from the learly 1960s, before these latter conflicts had time toerupt.241

ContributorsMary Baumann, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US.mbaumann@students.wisc.eduLynn Fendler, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US.lfender@students.wisc.eduDawnene Hammerberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US. ddhammer@students.wisc.eduLisa Hennon, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US.lnhennon@students.wisc.eduSigurd Johansson, Department of education, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.sigurd.johansson@pedag.umu.seDory Lightfoot, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US.tlightfo@students.wisc.eduKent Löfgren, Department of education, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.kent.lofgren@pedag.umu.seIngvar Rönnbäck, Department of education, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.ingvar.ronnback@pedag.umu.seHannah Tavares, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N.Mills Sheet, Madison, WI 537 06, US.htavares@students.wisc.eduEva Åström, Department of education, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.eva.astrom@pedag.umu.se242

ContentsSociety - Technology - EducationDawnene D Hammarberg: Disrupted Assumptions: Social and HistoricalConstructions of Literacy, Illiteracy, and E-literacySigurd Johansson: Chasm Between CodesKent Löfgren: Teacher Education, Statistical Methodologies and the Constructionof KnowledgeEva Åström: Computers as Panopticon - The face of the market in an educationalsettingResearch and the Researcher in SocietyLynn Fendler: Making Trouble: Predictability, Agency, and Critical Intellectuals:”All reification is a forgetting.“Ingvar Rönnbeck: Science and Evaluation: Critical research or instrument fordestructiveness?Gender PerspectivesMary Baumann:Thinking the young woman’s bleeding: early discursiveinvestigation of menarcheHannah Tavares: Poststructural Feminisms and Alter-pedagogical TalesThe Construction of "The Others"Lisa Hennon: Spatial Patterns of Inclusion/Exclusion: Governmentality andUrbanism in the USATheodora Lightfoot: Metaphor, Imagery and the Immigrant as ”Other.”ContributorsOrder<strong>Monographs</strong> on Teacher Education and Research Vol 1, 2 & Vol 3from the Office for Teacher Education (lärarutbildningens kansli),Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. Prize SEK 65, Vol 1 & 2,SEK 100 Vol 3, (incl. postage)Series editor: Ingrid NilssonTHE BOARD OF TEACHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH, UMEÅ UNIVERSITYUTBILDNINGS- OCH FORSKNINGSNÄMNDEN FÖR LÄRARUTBILDNING I UMEÅPrinted in Sweden ISSN 1104-523X