Gendered and Racialized Identities and Alliances in the Classroom: Formations in/of Resistive Space

Abstract

Challenging the Cartesian dualisms that essentialize difference, this essay offers strategies for building transracial, feminist alliances through pedagogy. The authors argue that resistive classroom spaces should be created in which students and teachers challenge the discourses of domination that structure our understandings of identity and difference. To this end, the authors offer autoethnographic descriptions of their identities and their relationship as scholars-teachersfriends and support these descriptions with a case analysis of how they addressed issues of "race" and gender in an Intercultural Communication classroom. They conclude that building alliances requires theorizing identity as relational, requiring embodied practice and willingness to make "self" vulnerable to an "other," particularly when the "self" is inscribed with privilege and power. The one who uses parrhesia 1 , the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything [s/]he has in mind: [S/]He does not hide anything, but opens [her/]his heart and mind completely to other people through [her/]his discourse. Michele Foucault (Pearson, 2001, p. 12) Solidarity means running the same risks. Che Guevara (Boal, 1995, p. 3)In this Western world, we often find ourselves lodged between the either and the or. This nether space of duality not only oppressively constrains us, but it presents us with an unending conundrum: How do we dialogue with those who are not-not us, not me-particularly when this notness is contextualized within a construction of being that essentially and inherently marks us as superior or subordinate? While this dualism "is a discursively constructed illusion," as Nicotera (1999) argues, "still, in our day-to-day visceral lives, we struggle with dual existence" (p. 433). Jackson (1999) points to the harmfulness of dualisms in our cultural embodiments and discussions of race: "In the production of dichotomies … cultural spaces are marginalized, identities are constricted, and difference is devalued" (p. 43).As scholars committed to transforming oppression, we are concerned with navigating Cartesian dualisms in ways that allow us to build alliances and move us into a space where social justice prevails. By addressing identity as relational (Jackson, 1999), we believe that a theoretical and practical framework for intercul-

Inviting the Breach: Confronting Homophobia in the Name of Social Justice

“…When additional students came out as bisexual or questioning and shared stories about being bullied and harassed, many troupe members were in tears. Johnson and Bhatt (2003) noted, "Alliances, like diversity, are not always pretty, easy, or harmonious. To build alliances means accepting pain and conflict as part of making connections with others" (p. 233).…”

Engaging Undergraduates in Feminist Classrooms: An Exploration of Professors’ Practices

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“…Still, given the benefits of these sorts of courses and the advantages of open, civil classroom climates, those challenges deserve our attention (White, 2011). In Johnson and Bhatt's (2003) view, in the ideal feminist classroom, the professor works "to open classroom dialogue and interaction in ways that shar[e] power with students" (p. 240, emphasis in original).…”

“…Johnson and Bhatt (2003) argued that feminist teachers should resist seeing power "as a tool for teacher control" (p. 232), and should instead critique the social use and production of power. For professors navigating the power dynamics of feminist classrooms, involving students in setting ground rules seems to manage-if not solve-part of the tension about who has the authority to set the rules for class interaction.…”

Contesting Neoliberalism Through Critical Pedagogy, Intersectional Reflexivity, and Personal Narrative: Queer Tales of Academia

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