tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86419290498056927772024-03-12T20:55:24.015-04:00ON BECOMINGI am no longer what I used to be last night.
A Blog by Awad Ibrahim, Ph.D.Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-75101761275692690632007-11-22T10:45:00.001-05:002007-12-02T12:44:53.084-05:00One is not born Black: Becoming and the Phenomenon(ology) of Race<div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="deleteBody"><h2 class="postTitle"> The day we became Black ....<br /></h2> <p class="postBody"> "[R]ace, exactly like sex, is taken as an “immediate given,” a<br />“sensible given,” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order.<br />But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only<br />a sophisticated and mythic construction, an “imaginary formation,”<br />which reinterprets physical features ... through the network of<br />relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen as black,<br />therefore they are black; they are seen as women, therefore, they<br />are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be<br />made that way)." Monique Wittig - One Is Not Born a Woman</p></div>Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-6790794634733840062007-11-22T10:44:00.001-05:002007-11-22T11:11:01.953-05:00The Question of the Question is the Foreigner: Towards an Economy of Hospitality<div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="deleteBody"><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-style: italic;">Isn’t the question of the foreigner [étranger] a foreigner’s question? Coming the foreigner, from abroad [étranger]?</span><br /><p class="postBody"> Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Law of World Citizenship Shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span> Emmanuel Kant<br /><br />“If someone else could have written my stories,” Elie Wiesel said: “I would not have written them. I have written them in order to testify.” To testify, Shoshana Felman argues, is “to vow to tell, to promise and produce one’s own speech as material evidence for truth.” This is because “no one bears witness for the witness,” and as a witness, this writer is under the ethics and the obligation to testify. Here, personal testimony, personal experience, as bell hooks put it, becomes “such a fertile ground for the production of liberatory [praxis] because it forms the base of our theory making.” It is, or can be, a way to know and can inform how we know what we know. The story I vow to tell in this article is a personal story. It dares to think through the reception of my body, my name, and my accent; that is, how I am gazed at, received, and hence treated. As a “foreigner” who is put in a different line every time I fly or go through the airport, as someone who is searched in person and who missed his flight because “they” had to check whether my name was in the terrorist list, and as someone who is always told “you speak different,” with an accent, the repetition of this story “appoints” me to think through its significance.<br /><br />This is an immigrant Black body that is assumed to be Muslim in a post-9/11 United States. It was born and grew up in Sudan, studied in France, and holds the Canadian passport. For political reasons, it found itself as a political refugee in Canada, my second home, and for job reasons, it finds itself presently in a small college town in Northwest Ohio. Involuntarily, as we shall see, it finds itself in a “third space,” torn between here-and-now and there-and-memory. Given this bodily experience, the question of the question is not a theoretical one, indeed, it is too personal to be otherwise. It summons and beseeches me as a witness, and raises a number of questions: First, “how can the hosts (<span style="font-style: italic;">hôtes</span>) and guests of cities of refuge be helped to recreate, through work and creative activity, a living and durable network in new places and occasionally in a new language”? Thinking specifically of the hosts, second, what reception do they extend to foreigners, those whose papers are not in order or those simply without papers (CF, 16)? Third, what is the nature of this ethic of reception, this economy of hospitality and how is it cultivated? Finally, do they receive foreigners as parricides, parasites or enemies with no right to asylum and who, in their minds, potentially commit acts of terrorism, or as beings at home with themselves (<span style="font-style: italic;">l’être-soi chez soi</span>)?<br /><br />Let us not anticipate simple responses to such questions, yet we already know certain things about foreigners. We know that they are coming, that they are already here, that they are staring us in the eye and reminding us that we have proper names and these names refer us somewhere else: to the old country. We walk up and ask them: “what is your name? tell me your name, what should I call you, I who am calling on you, I who want to call you by your name? What am I going to call you?” (OH, 27). Our question was not predicated on duty and obligation but on ethos and desire. We genuinely wanted to know, but the question seemed perturbing and confusing to them, hence they were not able to answer it. They did not understand the question. They did not speak “our” language. Language cheated us hosts and guests. It stood in the middle like a haunting Kafkaesquian figure. We didn’t know in what language they could address us or in what language they could receive ours; we didn’t know how to interrogate them; and above all, we didn’t know their names. Questions such as “who are you? where do you come from? what do you want?” (OH, 131) became unnecessary, if not outright violent. Contrary to their original intentionality which was warm welcoming, these questions moved us from <span style="font-style: italic;">hospitalité</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">pas d’hospitalité</span>, or from hospitality to hostility.</p><p class="postBody">This is the question of the foreigner. The foreigner is the other, the guest, the immigrant, the exile, the deported, the expelled, the rootless, the stateless, the lawless nomad, the displaced, those who come or go abroad, those who “turn up” at our front doors and “traumatize” (OH, 78). They traumatize, first, because we don’t know what to do with them. Do we give them asylum, “home,” and thus welcome them? If so, how? Or do we expel and return them to the place from which they were expelled? Second, they traumatize us through their stories. These tend to discomfort our comfortable selves and homes. This is well illustrated in the following example. I gave a public lecture on the genocide in DarFur, Sudan, to a group of highly educated senior citizens in Northwest Ohio. One of their central question was why should they care. They worked all their lives, they said, they saved good money and they are living good and comfortable lives. Clearly, whenever the question of the foreigner is posed, it has to be inverted into ethics: How can we go on living after witnessing trauma? Being Sudanese myself and a refugee I wonder how much I traumatize their comfortable homes! I wonder how much empathy they will offer the next refugee who knocks on their door and say, “here I am”! (OH, 56) Despite their absolute best intention, they invited me to talk about DarFur after all, these senior citizens cannot talk about what they do not know. And this is what makes the question of the question so urgent, especially after 9/11.<br /><br />Reading through Jacques Derrida’s book, Of Hospitality, my intent in this article is to articulate an “economy of hospitality.” First and primarily, I want to ask: How do we welcome the foreigner; how conditional or unconditional this welcoming, this hospitality? Second, being the foreigner myself, when do I become the host, or will I always be the guest, the perpetual foreigner? Finally, in my classroom, where I am supposed to welcome students, be the host, what does this mean in relation to being a foreigner? The paper is guided by two hypotheses: 1) in North America, I shall always be the “foreigner” thanks to language, race, and my proper name, but 2) this foreignness becomes a resource, source, and capital from which to draw and thanks to which I can be a host in my classroom. I am using the term North America through out the paper to refer to Canada (where I lived) and the U.S. (where I am living). The reader is thus requested kindly to travel with me back and forth, North and South of the 49th Parallel.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">UN/CONDITIONAL HOSPITALITY</span><br /><br />The law of hospitality is a law of tension. In fact, Derrida argued, the law of hospitality is plural, it contains two laws: conditional and unconditional. Unconditional or absolute hospitality is a law that breaks with the law of hospitality as right or duty. Instead, it “requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner… but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names” (OH, 25). It is an unquestioning welcome, where a double effacement takes place: an effacement of the question and the name. They both take a back seat, become unnecessary. However, Derrida asked, “Is it more just and more loving to question or not to question? to call by the name or without the name?” (OH, 29). His response is emphatic in that within the law of unconditional hospitality, “Let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is citizen of another country, a human… or a divine creature… male or female” (OH, 77).<br /><br />To do so, unconditional hospitality calls for suspending language, holding back of the temptation to ask the other who s/he is, what her/his name is, where s/he comes from, etc. (135). Unconditional hospitality, in sum, is a gracious act, a gift that is not governed by duty (performed out of duty), and certainly not about paying a debt or participating in an economy of exchange: my gift should not make you feel that you owe me your life. It is a law without law (83), where the stranger turns into an awaited guest and someone to whom you say not only “come,” but “enter”: “enter without waiting, make a pause in our home without waiting, hurry up and come in, “come inside,” “come without me,” not only toward me, but within me: occupy me, take place in me” (123).<br /><br />This gesture of unconditional gift, this act of love is impossible without sovereignty of oneself over one’s home. The law of hospitality therefore, for Derrida, is the law of one’s home. The alien, the stranger other is welcomed as non-enemy. Ironically, if not tragically, one can become xenophobic in order to protect one’s sovereignty, one’s own right to unconditional hospitality, the very home that makes the latter possible. (Think about the Patriotic Act passed by the U.S. Congress after the tragic events of 9/11, where conditional laws are imposed not only on foreigners, but on the very idea of democracy.) Once this is the case, the guest becomes an undesirable foreigner and as host I risk becoming their hostage (55). Retaining the self as self, very significantly, I need to be master at home, affirm my being there, and retain authority over that place. I do so by “saying” (usually by passing laws): this place belongs to me, we are in my home, welcome and feel at home but on the condition that you obey the rules of hospitality. Henceforth, the foreigner is allowed to enter the host’s home under conditions the host has determined.<br /><br />Derrida refers to this unconditional hospitality as “the law,” a universal, absolute and singular. For Derrida, unconditional hospitality is meaningless without its plural and dialectic other: “the laws.” The laws of hospitality are an expression of earthly laws and duties that are always conditioned and conditional, hence creating conditional hospitality. The law is above the laws, however, as he succinctly put it, “even while keeping itself above the laws of hospitality, the unconditional law of hospitality needs the laws, it requires them” (79). This is because to become effective the law has to be concrete, tangible, determined, and near, otherwise it risks “being abstract, utopian, illusory, and so turning over its opposite.” Conditional laws, Derrida adds, “would cease to be laws of hospitality if they were not guided, given inspiration, given aspiration, required, even, by the law of unconditional hospitality” (79).<br /><br />If there are no laws governing items such as visas, border crossing, local, national and international traveling, arm sales, technological communication, or even the right to asylum, to name just a few, unconditional hospitality becomes an impossible possibility. This is due to the fact that, though we as individuals might desire living in the ville refuge (refuge city) or ville franche (open city) where migrants and the expelled may seek unconditional hospitality and sanctuary, these cities can not escape geography (where are they in the globe and how do people get there?), law (are they governed by the Geneva Convention and international laws?), language (what language do/will people speak once they get there?), etc. As a matter of fact, in the case of the State, it is illegal, not to say impossible, to welcome unconditionally, especially after 9/11 and especially in the United States. The “foreigners” in the U.S. with names like mine, Ibrahim, could recite by heart the book of “laws of conditional hospitality.” Top of these laws is: Thou shall not piss the U.S. government, represented in local police, FBI or CIA!<br /><br />There can only be conditional hospitality there. Will Ibrahim always be a foreigner in North America? I will address this question later. The imaginary invoked by the name Ibrahim, significantly, recovers an assumed relationship between hospitality and the question, in other words of a conditional hospitality that begins with the name. The name invokes a place of birth and language. The foreigner is a foreigner by birth, born in a foreign land where people speak a different language than that of the host country. Inept at speaking the language, the foreigner “always risks being without defense before the law of the country that welcomes … him; the foreigner is first of all foreign to the legal language in which the duty of hospitality is formulated, the right to asylum, its limits, norms, policing, etc. He has to ask for hospitality in a language which by definition is not his own” (15). A central question that Derrida poses in relation to this is: what if he was speaking the language of the host country, with all that that implies, would he still be a foreigner and how do we think about hospitality in regard to him? Thinking through my classroom, again, I will address this paradox later.<br /><br />The exiles, the deported, the expelled, the rootless, the stateless, absolute foreigners, Derrida observes, share two sources of sighs, two nostalgias: their dead ones and their language. “On the one hand,” he writes, “they would like to return, at least on a pilgrimage, to the place where their buried dead have their last resting place… On the other hand, [they] often continue to recognize the language, what is called the mother tongue, as their ultimate homeland, and even their last resting place” (89). Clearly, we are dealing with a particular conception of language, a new name to an old phenomenon: language as a place, a homeland that never leaves us and we always come back to; a mother tongue that is a “sort of mobile habitat, a garment or a tent… a second skin you wear on yourself” (89). Language as the last condition of belonging, the most mobile of personal bodies, my cellular phone that I carry “on me, with me, in me, as me … a mouth, and ear, which make it possible to hear yourself-speaking” (91).<br /><br />If language is so central to the experience of the foreigner, there is a second layer of language that concerns not only the foreigner but also the citizens of the host nation in general: the language of the law. In the U.S., the law (or more accurately laws) of conditional hospitality is the Law of the Father. The master of the house, the host, the authorities, the nation, the State, the boss, the spouse, the lord, the king, the president is the one who lays down the laws of hospitality. “He represents them and submits to them to submit the others to them,” that is to say, he speaks with authority and through an authorized language (149). In so doing, he inflicts violence that most likely is recognized and recognizable only to and by those upon whom the laws are applied. Muslims and Middle-Easterns in the U.S. are currently experiencing what is recognized and recognizable to African Americans for a long time: the violence of being the absolute Other. Hospitality can only be conditional and to survive one is almost required to “have the gift of second sight” or, using Nietzschean terms, “the most subtle of ears” (20). That is to say, if we cannot hear the cry of the foreigner, and if we cannot see the foreigner crying – mostly because of lack experience (“For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear,” Nietzsche argued (20)) – that does not mean nothing is there, that the foreigner is not crying.<br /><br />So, Derrida concludes, in the eyes of the law, the exiles, the deported, the expelled, the rootless, the stateless above all are foreigners. They should be warmly welcomed, given asylum, and have the right to hospitality, but they should fall under the law of the land, they have a reciprocal obligation. Hospitality must be extended to them, Derrida emphasized, “certainly, but remains, like the law, conditional, and thus conditioned in its dependence on the unconditionality that is the basis of the law” (73). In other words, a tension, a dialecticism must remain between the law and the laws of hospitality. The former is hyperbolic and unconditional and the latter is conditional and juridico-political. “We will,” Derrida contends, “ always be threatened by this dilemma between, on the one hand, unconditional hospitality that dispenses with law, duty, or even politics, and, on the other, hospitality circumscribed by law and duty” (135). The economy and the ethics of hospitality must straddle the two. The two are and should be inseparable. Ideally, they should meet in, at, and during that moment that Derrida calls “moment without moment,” where they both imply and exclude each other, simultaneously, where they “incorporate one another at the moment of excluding one another,” where they exhibit “themselves to each other, one to the others, the others to the other” (81).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PAS D’HOSPITALITÉ: BEING THE GHOST</span><br /><br />To define who is the xenos, the foreigner, in a land of foreigners is virtually impossible. The very question, a critic might wonder, is unnecessary, feeds into xenophobia, and authorizes those who “speak an odd sort of language” (5) or with an “accent” be called “foreigners.” My simple response is: not to speak about foreignness does not do away with the existential phenomenon of the “event” nor the violence incurred as a result of its presence. Not to talk about it is a luxury afforded to few, an ethical position that I as a displaced subject cannot afford to take. Quoting Eli Wiesel again: “If someone else could have written my stories, I would not have written them. I have written them in order to testify.” And since testimony cannot be simply relayed, repeated or reported by another without thereby losing its function as a testimony, there is a need for personal testimonies, as I already indicated. This debate is too significant to be put aside, but we must. We are confronted with questions of “being,” not simply definitions, with the impossibility of this writer’s being in North America. The questions were first raised in Canada and are continuing now in the United States. As I have shown elsewhere, most displaced subjects find themselves straddling between here and now and there and memory, between the “old” and the “new home.” Marked mostly by language, the question of hospitality poses itself in the everyday. It is not one that displaced subjects choose to answer but are required to answer. With regards to my “case,” the question of the question is complicated by three factors: language, race, and my name. These have given me the “second sight,” “the most subtle of ears” that Nietzsche talked about above, and I have every intention to use them.<br /><br />Following a Hegelian philosophy, the foreigner is defined on the basis of the law which is laid down and determined by: the family, civil society, and the State (or the nation-state) (45). Within this law, the foreigner is the one who comes from abroad to a land or a country that is not his or her own by birth. They either seek permanent residency in their new “home” through immigration or for economic and/or political reasons, they seek asylum and political refugee status once in the host country. Increasingly, they could also come as students and then decide to stay. By and large, they tend to speak a different language (or languages) than the host country, but because of globalization, especially with the spread of the English language, more and more they speak the host country’s language fluently but with an accent. They could even be native speakers of English, yet their “accent” will haunt and mark them forever as “foreigners.” The work by Alistair Pennycook and Bonnie Norton is particularly informative in addressing this contention.<br /><br />In an interesting article, Sura P. Rath, an “American” of Indian descent, is asking us to “call him American.” Living in the U.S. since August 31, 1975 first as a “non-resident alien” student and then as a trainee, as a permanent resident (“resident alien” or holder of the coveted “Green Card”), and finally as a “naturalized citizen”; and, on the other hand, armed with a passport that bears his name, a social security card that identifies him as a wage earner, a driver’s license, a voter ID that recognizes him as a mentally sound person eligible to vote, etc. aren’t these enough to “make” him “American”? His answer is:<br /><br />My self-description as an American is a spatial identity; constructed from the external territory, it has nothing to do with my whatness, my essence or being as a person, until the larger culture readjusts itself to accommodate my presence. For the time, it is a contractual arrangement: in exchange for my willingness to accept the subject-hood of the sovereign nation called the United States of America, I am ‘subjectified,’ branded with a territorial marker of citizenship… Yet the territorial persona, as a mask of my identity, cannot fully represent the subject/object of my person, the material body and the psychic being.<br /><br />Therein lies my interest: “psychic being.” The latter is not a question of law, as Hegel suggested, in fact we know the language of psychic and desire is beyond the law; lawless and can never be fully captured; something about it is always in the excess. For me, foreignness is a psychic event which is not defined solely by the foreigner but, and more importantly, by those who possess the authorized language to define, the sovereign subjects who lay out or lay down the laws of hospitality. Rath wants to “be American,” but his language, culture and psychic cheat him. He will always be asked: “where are you from?” (not “who or what are you?”) which is usually followed by: “no, I mean where are you really from?” These questions, my own experience tells me, sometimes signify a naïve curiosity but oftentimes a resigned resentment or ressentiment, using a Nietzschean term.<br /><br />To repeat: I was born in Sudan, where I grew up and finished an undergraduate degree, the paper says, in Études françaises – French Studies – and Psychology. I also studied in France and spoke both French and English. Then as a political refugee, I found myself in Canada, my “home” away from “home,” where I finished my graduate school in applied linguistics, curriculum and cultural studies. Given my background in linguistics, especially phonetics, I am what you might consider if not a native speaker at least a native-like speaker of English. Some words and expressions pronounce me a “foreigner” to North American English speakers, who have as many accents as there are regions. Ironically, and I have been accused of being too apt and gifted with languages, this is less so in French and the other languages I speak. More ironic is that, three years to date, I reside in Northwest Ohio as a Canadian teaching, among others, a graduate course titled, “Teaching Canada.” I also teach an undergraduate course in social foundations (history, sociology and philosophy of education) to preservice students and two graduate courses in cultural studies and philosophy of education.<br /><br />Clearly, there are two sides and sites to the identity formation processes: the self and the other. My argument is that, in the larger Euro-American and Canadian societies, I shall always be asked where I come from, will I ever go back (I don’t know where!), and do I like it “here.” Contrary to the common saying, curiosity never kills the cat. What kills the cat is fact that it is never given a choice. Yes, I was born in a foreign land and yes, I am fully aware of the implications of this statement. By putting myself in a foreign land, one might ask, am I not feeding into, and giving ammunition to those who want to call me “foreigner”? As stated previously, I have no control over this. What I have control over is my desire, at some point, to claim – yes to tell myself that I “am” and should be treated as Canadian (and in Rath’s case American).<br /><br />Americanness and Canadianness are primarily narratives, stories we tell ourselves and others, a collective of ideas. The question we need to ask is whether this narrative is open to all to claim or whether it is exclusive. My contention is this, in the imaginary and the eyes of “native speakers,” if you have or speak with an accent, however slight or unpronounced it may be, and your name is Ibrahim, you will always be a foreigner. In Canada, furthermore, if you are not White, even if you are born in Canada, foreignness will most likely be assumed. Adrienne Shadd brilliantly speaks to how psychologically taxing it can be to be “Black” and “Canadian”:<br /><br />In my case, I am a fifth-generation Canadian whose ancestors came here [Canada] from the United States during the fugitive slave era… Yet, routinely, I am asked, “Where are you from?”… The scenario usually unfolds as follows:<br />“But where are you originally from?”<br />“Canada.”<br />“Oh, you were born here. But where are your parents from?”<br />“Canada.”<br />“But what about your grandparents?”<br />“They’re Canadian.”<br />As individuals delve further into my genealogy to find out where I’m “really” from, their frustration levels rise.<br />“No, uh (confused, bewildered) I mean … your people. Where do your people come from?”<br />“The United States.”<br />At this point, questioners are totally annoyed and/or frustrated. After all, Black people in Canada are supposed to come “the [Caribbean] islands,” aren’t they?<br /><br />As I already cited, my hospitality is conditioned by 1) language (having an accent), 2) my name (assumed to be Muslim and from the Middle East) and 3) race. Since I already addressed the language question, let me speak about the politics of race first and then my name. Before coming to North America, I argued elsewhere, I was not considered Black, as the term is defined in North America. Other terms served to patch together my identity, such as tall, Sudanese, and basketball player. In other words, my Blackness was not marked, it was outside the shadow of the other North American Whiteness. However, as a refugee in North America, my perception of self was altered in direct response to the social processes of racism and the historical representation of Blackness whereby the antecedent signifiers became secondary to my Blackness, and I retranslated my being: I became Black.<br /><br />There, I narrated a significant incident in my understanding of hospitality when one’s skin color determines who/what one “is.” It happened in May 16, 1999, the day I was officially declared “Black,” with a White policeman who stopped me in Toronto, Canada, for no reason other than “We are looking for a dark man with a dark bag,” as he uttered it. After questioning him about my “darkness,” he said, “We are looking for a Black man with a dark bag.” There is no need to mention that my bag is actually light-blue and now, however, I am metamorphosed from “dark” into “Black.” Before asking for my ID, he asked me to lay down my (dark?) bag, which I did. With his order, I widely opened my bag for anyone in the street to see. Since it was a tourist area, everyone was looking into my bag. Some, I observed, were pitying my plight and one White woman was smiling. I first gave him my citizenship card and after 10 minutes, I decided to use my professor identification. After writing down my name and date of birth, he then announced to the dispatcher telling her “All is OK now.” With no apologies, I was ordered to collect my affairs and my bag and, as he uttered it, “You are free to go now.” For me, this was his way of saying: Welcome to your new “home”!<br /><br />As for my name, in North America, it seems to invoke terrorism and Osama bin Laden, especially in the U.S. after 9/11, more than someone who is secular, not to say atheist. The idea that an Ibrahim can be atheist seems to surprise and trouble the imaginary of a number of people in North America. Three incidents will highlight my point. The first is a letter I received recently in February 2005 from an Islamic center in Greenville, South Carolina, to receive free copies of the Qur’an in different languages. The second is in Canada and also a letter from the Islamic Council of University Professors (ICUP) inviting me to attend a dinner hosted by the ICUP in October 2001 in Ottawa, Ontario. I did not know where my address and phone number were found, since the ICUP letter was followed by three phone calls. I wondered, subsequently, why I was invited to the ICUP dinner in the first place. I knew no one in the Council nor did I hear of it hitherto. My surprise came as no surprise, and it simply had to do with my name.<br /><br />The third incident happened in Canada three days after the horror of September 11. While at home, a Pastor –who I worked with in a refugee organization – called. She explained that she was organizing a university-wide religious panel to offer condolences to and show solidarity with the victims of 9/11. Each, she added, would recite from his/her respective scripture. She would represent Christians, there was a “Jewish professor” and I would “represent Muslims,” she explained. At this point, I did not know how or what “Muslims” would think of me representing them since to represent, for me, was to speak in their name and place. So I declined the invitation for I could not bear the responsibility of speaking in the name of “Muslims” while my very Islamic faith is doubtful.<br /><br />These incidents, including the one with the police, invoke something larger than trivial letters, simple phone calls, and routine police search. Powerfully, they are telling me how my body and name are already “read”, “marked”, “positioned” and “imagined.” They are imagined and read in ways that are beyond my control. Here, Ibrahim is, and is is already known. That is, given my name and my socially positioned “black” body, the Pastor, the police and the ICUP assumed their knowledge of me (almost with certainty). Thus, I become a tableau that people draw and read through however they want to. I become a ghost, a glassy figure to see through. These factors, henceforth, determine the nature of the laws (of hospitality) extended not to “me,” if I can be seen and heard, but to what my accent, race, and name represent and invoke in the imaginary of the host, the “lawmaker.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IN CONCLUSION: BEING THE HOST</span><br /><br />In my classroom, the situation is not as dramatic. In fact, not at all! It is, in two words, total opposite. I have one of the highest student evaluations at my school and university and have received a teaching award in 2001. The question I want to ask then is: what is happening to my foreignness in my classroom, and what am I doing in the classroom that students are able to see and hear me? I teach at a college of education and my undergraduate course, upon whom all my subsequent remarks are based, is a mandatory course. On average, I teach between 65-95 students each term; I have students lining up to take my course; and without any narcissism, I do receive some of the most heartwarming comments about my personality and teaching. The former would have to be put aside. It is worth noting that my students are primarily White, middle-class, females, from Northwest Ohio.<br /><br />It seems that this foreigner is most at “home” in his classroom. I am able to occupy the position of the host, not in the larger North American society, but in my classroom. Once I close that door, it seems, my students and I are able to sail away in/to a “foreign” land, where true intellectual dialogue and human connection are possible. By virtue of culture, my students recognize – most likely, only – conditional hospitality, whereas I, as we shall see, recognize only unconditional hospitality in my cultural life. Tentatively, one might conclude, those who grow up in a culture where individuality and “my” room, “my” car, “my” house, “my” book, etc. are emphasized tend to have the cultural language of conditional hospitality. On the other hand, those who either grow up in a culture or have little material possessions tend to recognize and practice mostly unconditional hospitality.<br /><br />There is a need in the following concluding paragraphs to name, sketch out my classroom philosophy, especially when it comes to the idea of teaching. Conscious of its significance in the learning process, the economy of hospitality in my classroom is best described as a Freireian praxis. It does not side step the position of the foreigner, it works through it; it becomes a capital of exchange. Foreignness is not a deficit but a position to be occupied both by me and my students. It is seductive, incredibly stimulating, and a necessary imaginative space in imagining the Other. The Other is no longer outside, but inside; the Other is myself, within myself; and she is there not to be consumed but critically dialogued and engaged with.<br /><br />I dare to teach – unconditionally – and “it” is not about making statements. Teaching, in my class, is an invitation, a form of seduction, a space of deskining ourselves from ourselves and our comfortable subject positions and hence be able to meet at the rendezvous of true and absolute generosity. It is a space of open, inverted and unconditional hospitality; where unity does not mean sameness and working across difference is possible regardless of race, gender, class, ability and sexuality; where difference concerns the labor of love, freedom and democracy as it does fear, poverty and nihilism. It is where pedagogy of freedom becomes a second nature; the word and the world are connected; students and myself are not reduced to clients; and critical, transformative and liberatory consciousness is our ultimate goal.<br /><br />As a sovereign space, occupied by sovereign subjects, I tell my students to “enter,” to “come.” Once there, I am in no fear of using the power and the authority bestowed on me by credentials and institutional structures. Using does not mean abusing power, hence I lay down the classroom rules and hand to hand give the course outline as a contractual arrangement: we are hereby ready to begin a “true dialogue.” It structures my power, on the one hand, and gives students responsibilities and obligations, on the other. Our rendezvous is usually in that “moment without moment,” a moment of suspense, of working with and through even what we do not agree with.<br /><br />This takes time and I am in no hurry. I take my time, I show my passion, I humanize and love the very act of teaching (without the grading!). I grew up within an economy of unconditional hospitality. In the African side of me, our home had little by way of material possessions, so we had to share. On the other hand, there was an unconditional gift of love, humor, security, patience, humility, and humanity. Coming to North America where individuality is the absolute signifier, my foreign consciousness manifests itself, wittingly or unwittingly, in my classroom and in my interaction with my students. I usually take my students to my “place,” not the physical but the mental and the intellectual one. I invite them there, I ask them to come in, to enter that safe space. Apparently, they see that safety and most of the time they voluntarily come with me, within me, and I in turn within them. Once there, we laugh, we humanize and question each other. It is very beautiful there. Contrary to Anne Dufourmantelle who argued that, “Perhaps only the one who endures the experience of being deprived of a home can offer hospitality” (OH, 56), one doesn’t have to endure the experience of being deprived of a home to be able to offer hospitality. At least, this is my hope with my students with their students. I hope, through empathy, being in my class and, like the senior citizens above, experiencing the foreigner, that the foreigner becomes them and they the foreigner. I want us to meet at the rendezvous of humanity. I want them to see and hear me, the foreigner, unconditionally. But above all, I want them to set me free, to be myself. I want to be and live in that city of refuge, where …<br /><br />Love’s procession is moving;<br />Beauty is waving her banner;<br />Youth is sounding the trumpet of joy;<br />Disturb not my contrition, my blamer.<br />Let me walk, for the path is rich<br />With roses and mint, and the air<br />Is scented with cleanliness.<br /> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Kahlil Gibran</span></p></div> <input name="postID" value="7048672449430927873" type="hidden"> <input name="blogID" value="8641929049805692777" type="hidden"> <div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="errorbox-good"><input name="securityToken" value="S5ymYp1C_Om1iCEqOUkd_ZkPTIU=:1195746224859" type="hidden"> </div>Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-86985979658160449032007-11-22T10:36:00.000-05:002007-11-22T14:34:56.508-05:00The New Flâneur:Subaltern Cultural Studies, African Youth in Canada and the Semiology of In-betweenness<div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="deleteBody"><h2 class="postTitle" style="text-align: center;">Abstract<br /></h2> <p class="postBody">Situated within subaltern cultural studies, and building on the work of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha and Mikhail Bakhtin, this paper tells the story of the “new flâneur,” a recent immigrant and refugee group of continental francophone African youth, who are attending an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. In it, I offer an alternative cultural framework of “translation” and “negotiation” as a way of seeing that which is supposedly competing and conflicting is indeed re-de-and-transformed and negotiated into New ways that make them radically performed. Their radicalness stems, precisely, from the notation that displaced identities, the focus of the paper, are not oppositionally articulated; on the contrary, they are negotiated, translated, and re-born in a more complex and hybrid space: a third one. This hybridity, I will show, is habitually performed in and through language – in its broad semiological sense. As part of an ethnographic research project, the paper will show the different ways in which the new flâneurs form and perform their identities. Here, the Old and the New are not ethnographically observed in competition; both are translated in the identity formation processes and in the process, they are negotiated so that both are found in the same sentence, in the same garments, at the same time to produce a third hybrid space.<br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Paper</span><br /></div><p class="postBody"><br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;">To walk is to vegetate<br />To stroll is to live<br />– Balzac<br /></div><p class="postBody"><br />Most often than not, subaltern cultural studies takes for granted that identity is best conceived in and within that complex intersection of multiple discourses of difference, subjectivity, language, history, memory and power relations. Ethnographically, however, what does this mean? How do these discourses work and how do we recognize their intersectionality? If identity is no longer, as Stuart Hall (2001) would argue, what does it mean to become? What is understood by language here and methodologically, how do I as an ethnographer access my research participants’ subjectivities, their identities? Grounded on an interpretive linguistic ethnography, this paper is an attempt to answer these questions. As such, it is contextually signified, modestly concluded, and ethnographically conceived. In fact, I am employing an ethnographic approach precisely to avoid the pitfalls of over-generalization.<br /></p><p class="postBody">Generally, the paper is a methodological, pedagogical and discursive intervention into the memetic logic of identity, race and becoming. It tells the story of the “new flâneur,” a recent immigrant and refugee group of continental francophone African youth, who are attending an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada, and who find themselves within what Nietzsche calls a “public gaze” where their bodies are already-always read and imagined as “Black.” They are caught within the spectre of “and”: being continental in Canada and possessing a body that is read in the dominant social imaginary as a diasporic African body. The spectre of “and” is also about what it means to be Senegalese or Nigerian, for example, and Canadian. This gaze, this social imaginary, which is yet to be fully understood within what Handel K. Wright (2003a) calls “cultural studies as praxis,” is a borné shift in rethinking the discourse of race, identity and pedagogy and has three main implications.<br /></p><p class="postBody">First, as I have argued elsewhere (Ibrahim, 2004), these youth were not Black in Africa; however, once in North America, they fall within “the eyes of power” (Foucault, 1980) where they become Black – and where Blackness is conceived as a performative category, a form of speech, an attitude and a social location one takes up. Following Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittiq (2003) argued that one is not born a woman, but that one becomes a woman. Accordingly, I am contending, one is not born Black either. In fact, one becomes Black. In this sense, Blackness becomes a code, a language, a set of cloths, a hair-do, a bodily expression, and above all an experiential memory. Second, as Meaghan Morris (1997) has argued, language in cultural studies is increasingly arrested within discourses of <span style="font-style: italic;">différance</span>, temporalization and play. My study attempts to free language by introducing the actual verbal utterance as both an expression of identity and a formation of it.<br /></p><p class="postBody">Becoming Black for African youth meant learning Black English which, in turn, meant becoming Black. That is to say, they are learning Black English because they are becoming Black, yet they are becoming Black precisely because they are learning Black English. Lastly, reflective of and informed by Handel K. Wright (2003a, p. 806) conceptualization of cultural studies as both “an inter/anti/post/disciplinary approach to the study of culture” and “an intervention in institutional, sociopolitical and cultural arrangements, events and directions” (see also Cohen, 1997), and borrowing from textuality and ethnography, I introduce “ethnography of performance” as an approach that allowed me to access the youth identities. For ethnographers, I conclude, identity is best accessed in the performed. Put simply, I have three objectives in this paper: to 1) rethink Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “third space,” 2) introduce ethnography of performance, and 3) through my research, rethink the relationship between race, identity and displacement.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Flâneurie: Theorizing identity through cultural translation and negotiation</span><br /><br />[This] is the dream of translation as ‘survival’ … as sur-vivre, the act of living on borderlines… [Here] the migrant’s dream of survival [is]… an empowerment condition of hybridity; an emergence that turns ‘return’ into reinscription or redescription; an iteration that is not belated, but ironic and insurgent. [T]he migrant’s survival depends … on discovering ‘how newness enters the world.’ The focus is on making the linkages through the unstable elements of … life – the dangerous tryst with the ‘untranslatable’ – rather than arriving at ready-made names (Homi Bhabha, 1994, pp. 226-7, original emphasis).<br /><br />Clearly, we live in a time of universal subjecthood, where identities and cultures are more than ever “elusive” (Yon, 2000), where sur-vivre – the act of displacement, of flâneur and of living in-between cultures, languages, landscapes and borderlines – has become a second nature. The universal subjects are ones who possess a symbolic, and to be specific, intellectual capital that allows them to be in Australia one year, Canada the following year and Britain or Berkley, California, USA, the year after. As a matter of fact, I stopped asking where Gayatri Spivak, Wole Soyinka or Homi Bhabha are teaching now. However, these universal subjects are not always as privileged. In fact, most of the time they are not at all. They are forced to flee their “home”lands because of economic situation, civil war, political ideology, religious persecution, gender mutilation or forced conscription and dictatorship. Voluntarily or not, they find themselves interstitially torn between here and now and there and memory. They had witnessed enough to see the need to hold on to the Old, but the everyday is reminding them of the need to go on living, to experience and enjoy the New.<br /><br />Significantly, the Old and the New are conceived here as historical temporalities, ways of being and as social, cultural, national, geographic and linguistic spaces. Thinking “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault (1986) convincingly argued that we live “in the epoch of space of simultaneity… in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the disperse” (p. 22). It is this dispersely heterotopic and semiotic space, this dialectique de triplicité (Lefebvre, 1974), third space, “both-and-also” (Soja, 1996), which is taking place beyond and in-between two (or more) cultures, languages and geographies that I want to explore first. Focusing particularly on identity as an ongoing “event” of translation and negotiation (Ibrahim, 2000a), my interest is to look at the ethnography of sur-vivre, that is, the impact and the outcome of displacement, of flâneurie.<br /><br />Framing the politics of identity within the poststructural language of cultural studies, Stuart Hall (1990) writes that, “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as already accomplished fact… we should think, instead, of identity as a “production,” which is never complete, always in process” (p. 222). It is, he continues, an on-going event that is best conceived at the borderland between the Self and the Other. It is a process, a split, “not a fixed point but an ambivalent point” (Hall, 1991, p. 11). Hall (2001) refers to this process of identity formation as the New Identity which he distinguishes from the Old Identity. The logic of the Old Identity is an expression of the Cartesian stable self where the subject is situated within essentialized and static discourses of history, self, and memory; whereas the New Identity discourse is more complexly different. It neglects neither history and the multiple discourses within which the subject finds herself and the contradictory nature of these discourses nor the power relations or the politics of positioning: that is to say, how our gendered, racialized and classed bodies are read socially and historically and the outcome of these social positions.<br /><br />The borderland between the Self and the Other is what Mikhail Bakhtin (2001) refers to as dialogism. Luminously conceived, perceived and lived, dialogism is a language, a philosophy, a semiotic space where being is conceptualized as an event, human being as a project or a deed and society as a simultaneity of uniqueness. That is to say, one finds oneself in and within a network, “a matrix of highly distinctive economic, political, and historical forces – a unique and unrepeatable combination of ideologies, each speaking its own language, the heteroglot conglomerate of which will constitute the world in which we act” (Holquist, 2002, p. 167). To be able to act, for Bakhtin (2001), also means to be addressed by Otherness. “It is only in that highly specific, indeed unique placement that the world may address us” (Holquist, 2002, p. 167). In a very real sense, Holquist argues, this becomes our “address” in existence, “an address expressed not in numbers, but by our proper name” and it is, very significantly, “only from that site that we can speak” (p. 167).<br /><br />It is largely through language, through the signature of my “proper name,” that I become an active actor, a subject. As such, I differ from the Other precisely because while I am here, the Other cannot. This, for Bakhtin (2001, p. 365), produces “heteroglossia” and “ideological translation,” where the self becomes “an act of grace, a gift of the other” (p. 364). To be able to receive this act of grace, this gift, however, I must occupy a location, a unique place in the ongoing event of existence that is mine, where existence is an event and my place, my identity in it is understood not only within time and space, but also as an activity, an act, a deed. My identity, my subjectivity which is determined by language (Bakhtin, 2001), therefore, is never singular. I belong as much to myself as I do to the Other, yet the signifier that is my body “makes manifest the subject of its signification” (Lacan, 1977, p. 207); it makes me unique. After all, I could sign my proper name, and “it” only belongs to me.<br /><br />The moment of identification in this dialectic relationship between the Self and the Other is of extreme importance. It impacts and guides the shape, the form, and the intensity of the ways in which the Self translates the Other and vice versa. The question of intensity is an issue of desire. Elsewhere (Ibrahim, 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2003), I showed that my research participants’ desire and identification with Blackness has certainly influenced their translation of the new Canadian context, what they learned and how. They named and identified, somewhat unconsciously, African American popular culture and language as sites for investment and yearning. Identification, I argued, is the starting point of identity formation. When the process of naming takes place, one might conclude, the process of ideological translation is inaugurated and in the case of my research participants, a third space is given birth to.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The third space: A semiology of in-betweenness</span><br /><br />My conceptualization of the third space is deeply indebted to Jean-Paul Sartre (1980), Edward Soja (1996) and Homi Bhabha (1990). Though Bhabha’s usage of the term is relevant and directly related, as we shall see, it is different from mine. I ground my analysis in an attempt to ethnographically explore and “see” the complex ways identities are formed and performed and ultimately link them to the processes of learning, whereas Bhabha’s framework is an inter/textual analysis. In doing so, I differ from Bhabha in being contextually specific and also in addressing the play of power relation in the creation of the third space.<br />In an interview with Jonathan Rutherford, Homi Bhabha (1990) advanced three notions that are relevant to the present discussion, and illuminous of the visuality and the make up of the third space. The first point distinguishes between what Bhabha calls “a creation of cultural diversity” and “a containment of cultural difference.” Bhabha argues that within the Western cultural practices, “although there is always an entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity, there is always a corresponding containment of it” (1990, p. 208). This containment usually takes place in a subtle way and through a process of normalization whereby the dominant culture becomes the normalizing gaze. In other words, “a transparent norm is constituted, a norm given by the host society or dominant culture, which says that ‘these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our grid’” (p. 208).<br />Unsatisfied with this liberal distinction, Bhabha advanced his second point by introducing his notion of “cultural translation.” It argues that “no culture is plainly plenitudinous, not only because there are other cultures which contradict its authority, but,” he continues, “also because its own symbol-forming activity, its own interpellation in the process of representation, language, signification and meaning-making, always underscores the claim to an originary, holistic, organic identity.” Cultural translation then is:<br /><br />a way of imitating, but in a mischievous, displacing sense – imitating an original in such a way that the priority of the original is not reinforced but by the very fact that it can be simulated, copied, transferred, transformed, made into a simulacrum and so on: the “original” is never finished or complete in itself. The “originary” is always open to translation so that it can never be said to have a totalised prior moment of being or meaning – an essence. What this really means [Bhabha argues] is that cultures are only constituted in relation to that otherness internal to their own symbol-forming activity which makes them decentered structures (Bhabha, 1990, p. 210).<br /><br />Cultural translation does not allow for an essentialization of what is known as the “original” or “originary” culture for the latter itself is, and always was, open to and for translation. It is only original in the sense of being anterior, Bhabha argues. He thus convincingly concludes that all forms of culture are “continually in a process of hybridity” (p. 211). However, Bhabha emphasizes, “the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity ... is the 'third space’” (p. 211, emphasis added). Therein lies my different path from Bhabha. I deploy the third space as an ethnographic performance of two or more languages, cultures, and belief systems. Indeed, for me, the third space is a trace, a synthesis, a performative act, and an articulation of these two or more cultures and languages, and since these traces are corporeally articulated, they are thus ethnographically perceptible. However, in the articulation (Hall, 1986), the Old and the New are now metamorphosed in forms that look neither fully like the former nor the latter, but the two: the Old and the New. The Saussaurean bipolar of signifié/signifiant is no longer useful. For me, moreover, the third space sees the body as the locus of embodiment where this semiosis is articulated. Tersely, my unease with Bhabha's definition stems from the fact that it doesn't subjectify, historicize, or make tangible the hybridization project. Where, for example, is the play of race, sexuality, gender, and class in the process of hybridization? In this process of hybridization, where are those who are historically marginalized from the “centers” of power? How does hybridity ethnographically look? Here, the Bakhtinian “ideological translation” responds better to these questions.<br /><br />For Bakhtin, the result of cultural and ideological translation wherein two linguistic, ideological, and cultural systems are to be mixed is to give birth to an organic world view which, in turn, will be performed in New linguistic and cultural practices. The product of this mixture is or can be “hybrid,” and for me it is socio-linguistically detectable and ethnographically observable. “It is of course true that even historical, organic hybridity is not only two languages but also two socio-linguistic (thus organic) world views that are mixed with each other,” Bakhtin asserts, “but in such situations, the mixture remains mute and opaque, never making use of conscious contrasts and oppositions.” Bakhtin adds:<br /><br />It must be pointed out however, that while it is true the mixture of linguistic world views in organic hybrids remains mute and opaque, such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new “internal forms” for perceiving the world in words (2001, p. 360).<br /><br />In other words, the third space is organic because it is historically situated and partially unconsciously executed. It is an indissoluble mixture of two, or more, linguistic, ideological, cultural, and belief systems. It is third because it is found in the inter-geographies, cultures, languages, and memories (see Figure 1). It is indeed where the “first” and the “second” are produced in the same sentence, in the same syntax, in the same grammar, in the same garment, at the same time. In the case of African students in this research, the product of the ideological translation of the Canadian context which synchronously starts at the moment of identifying and naming Black America/Canada as a site of investment by African students is a third space. That is, the third space for African youth is a product of the memory, experience, and cultural and linguistic behavioral patterns they bring with them when coming into Canada and what they translate in the latter context. They seem to identify with a Canada that is Black, thus making race a crucial category.<br /><br />Nonetheless, borrowing from Bhabha (1990) the third space “enables other positions to emerge. [It] displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom” (p. 211). These emerging positions are unrecognizable because they are the product of that luminal space where the Old is already in the New and the “different.” The Old and the New emerge and are born from longitudinal negotiations and translations. Bhabha (1990) refers to these negotiations as “the process of cultural hybridity” which “gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognisable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (p. 211).<br /><br />It is the understanding of this semiotic “new area of negotiation of meaning” that might illuminate our comprehension of identity formation processes, I contend, especially the identities of displaced subjectivities (including immigrants and refugees). To do so, Handel K. Wright (2003a) is worth quoting at length. Talking about his bodily experience as an African now living in North America, his displacement, and the different identities “assigned” to him, Wright sees the tension of hybrid identities thus:<br /><br />[I]n the move from Sierra Leone to Canada and then the USA, I have been assigned and have taken up not only African identity but also ‘black’ identity. The complexity of identity [he continues] means that rather than being singular or merely replacing one form of identity with another (e.g. ceasing to be Krio and becoming ‘black’) identity is a series of complimentary and contradictory identifications operating simultaneously, with some coming to the fore or receding depending on context. I live and work in the USA but am not an American citizen; I am ‘black’ but not African American; I am simultaneously a continental and a diasporic African. (Wright, 2003a, p. 811)<br /><br />The third space is this simultaneity of tension, being assigned and taking up both “continental and diasporic African” identity. Besides showing the dialogic nature of the third space, Handel Wright also calls for autoethnography in understanding the process of identity formation; for personal testimony, personal experience, which as bell hooks (1994) put it, can be “such a fertile ground for the production of liberatory [praxis] because it forms the base of our theory making” (p. 70). My personal experience as a refugee from Africa now holding the Canadian passport and working in the USA is no different than Handel Wright. Fearful of being essentialized, this experience taught me that displaced subjects find themselves in the borderland of two or more cultures, languages, and belief systems. In the process of understanding and translating the New context, subconsciously, displaced subjects also understand and translate the Old. We are located, I am arguing, in the landscape between the Old —which is part of us—and the New —which is becoming part of us.<br /><br />When it comes to the African body in North America, as we shall explore subsequently, it is caught between two systems of signifying practices (see also Wright, 2002, 2003a, 2003b). First, in Africa, I am tall, Sudanese, basketball player, academic, having different cultural, linguistic, tribal and ethnic lineages. Here, as Stuart Hall (1997) would argue, my Blackness is outside the shadow of the other North American Whiteness. However, second, as a refugee in North America, my perception of self is altered in direct response to the social processes of racism and the historical representation of Blackness whereby the antecedent signifiers become secondary to my Blackness, and I retranslate my being: I become Black.<br />Elsewhere (Ibrahim, 2003), I narrated a significant incident in my understanding of what it means to “be” Black in North America. It happened in May 16, 1999, the day I was officially declared “Black,” with a White policeman who stopped me in downtown Toronto, Canada, for no reason other than “We are looking for a dark man with a dark bag,” as he uttered it. After questioning him about my “darkness,” he said, “We are looking for a Black man with a dark bag.” There is no need to mention that my bag is actually light-blue and now, however, I am metamorphosed from “dark” into “Black.” Not that it matters either ways, I reflected after, but some people either can not see or have “color problem.” I am citing it here for two reasons. First, to frame the overall social context where my research participants circulate and form their identities; that is, to further our understanding of the everyday racism, human degradation, and general annihilation of Black people in North America. And second, to acknowledge how the present researcher is implicated in the research and the questions I am asking.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Just hanging out: The study and the ethnography of performance</span><br /><br />Between January and June 1996, I conducted a critical ethnographic research at Marie-Victorin High School (Ibrahim, 1998), which was then followed by short-term visits and informal observations in 2003. The research, which took place in an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada, looks at the lives of a group of continental Francophone African youth and the formation of their social identity. Besides their gendered and raced experience, their youth and refugee status was vital in their what I termed elsewhere moments of identification (Ibrahim, 2001): Where and how they were interpellated in the mirror of their society (cf. Althusser, 1971; Bhabha, 1994). Put otherwise, once in North America, I contend, very much similar to (Wright and) my experience above, these youth were faced with a social imaginary in which they were already Blacks. This social imaginary was directly implicated in how and with whom they identified, which in turn influenced what they linguistically and culturally learned and how they learned it. What they learned, I showed elsewhere (Ibrahim, 1999), is Black English as a Second Language (BESL), which they accessed in and through Black popular culture. They learned by taking up and repositing the Rap linguistic and musical genre and, in different ways, acquiring and rearticulating the Hip-Hop cultural identity.<br />In other words, continental African youth find themselves in a racially conscious society that “asks” them to racially fit somewhere, where it is their racial identity that influences, if not determines their answerability. This dialogism, I also showed elsewhere (Ibrahim, 1998), has strong influence in how African students “see” and translate themselves as well as others, how they go about negotiating their identity formation, and the spaces they eventually occupy. For African students, moreover, these processes of translation and negotiation convert into a re-articulation of what it means “to be” Black in a racially conscious society. Before their arrival to Canada, I argued, African students were not “Black,” in the North American sense, although, like the speaking “I” at this very moment, they had other adjectives that patch together their identities: “Sudanese,” “Somali,” “intellectual,” and so on. However, once in North America, these adjectives become secondary in their moments of identification. That is, soon after our arrival to North America, African students, Wright and I were/are seeking spaces, identities, and representations with which we could say, “We too are Black.” In their search for identification, African youth took up the identifiable Black Hip-Hop youth identity which in turn influenced what they learned and how. What they learned is BESL and how is by taking up and positing a Hip-Hop culture, especially Rap linguistic styles (Ibrahim, 1998, 1999). African youths, in other words, started the odyssey of their identity formation, and heretofore Blackness was/is the spatial representation of similitude, approximation, and affinity: thus becoming Black.<br /><br />To become Black is not without its discursive politics of resistance. To say —using language, the body or any other media —“I too am Black” is to embody, perform, and ally oneself to and with the political category of Blackness. That African youth locate themselves in/to the margin by taking up Rap and Hip-Hop and speaking BESL is by no means a coincidence. On the contrary, here, culture and language take on a different spin. They are no longer about language and culture per se, but become markers of desire and investment; an invocation of political, racial, and historical space. Downtown Toronto, and other metropolitan cities where African youth reside, is no longer a geographical space, it is also a language, an attitude, and a set of garments. “Whassup homeboy?” is no longer a simple linguistic expression nor about mastering a language. It is a “space,” a way of saying: “I too am Black” or “I too desire and identify with Blackness.” Baggy cloths and the myriad shades of sneakers, bicycle shorts, chunky jewelry, dreadlocks, braids, and other high-fade designs become “spaces” – downtowns? – which African youth perform and occupy very comfortably. They perform these inside and outside the school.<br /><br />It is here that ethnography of performance has proven to be most useful. As a research methodology, ethnography of performance argues that ethnographers’ best access to their research participants’ inner-Selves is the latter’s verbal and non-verbal performance. Put otherwise, the juxtaposition of what people actually and materially perform on and through their bodies, on the one hand, and what they say and think about those performances, on the other, give ethnographers the least distorted picture of their research subjects and their identities. Ethnography of performance is what might be called “hanging out” methodology. That is, first, it acknowledges that there is no one method that would capture especially the essence of identity, so, second, one is required to use triangulation or multiple methods. Third, since identity is multiple and performed in multiples ways and sites, it requires multiple observations, in different sites and over an extended period of time. The objective is to see a macro-picture, a set of patterns. For this research, I literally “hanged out” with my research participants for six months almost everywhere: classrooms, hallways, school steps, gymnasium, their homes, picnics, night clubs and parties, extracurricular school events, played basketball and became the basketball coach. Simply put, I took thorough notes of their multiple identities: notes that allowed me to see patterns and hence reach certain conclusions. I then asked the participants to reflect on my own observations, notes and conclusions. My research findings therefore are not simply mine, based on my notes and interpretations, but a gift from the youth.<br /><br />The site of the research, Marie-Victorin (MV), was a small French-language high school (Grades 7-13) in southwestern Ontario, with a school population of approximately 400 students from various ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds. Besides French, English, Arabic, Somali, and Farsi were also spoken at the school. I spent over six months, as I already indicated, I attended classes at MV, talked to students, and observed curricular and extracurricular activities two or three times per week. Because of previous involvement in another project in the same school for almost two years, at the time of this research I was well acquainted with MV and its population, especially its African students, with whom I was able to develop a good communicative relationship. My background as a continental African also helped me to decipher their narratives and experiences. Clearly, we shared a safe space of comfort that allowed us to open up, speak and engage freely.<br />At the time of this research, students (or their parents) who were born outside Canada made up 70% of the entire school population at MV. Continental Africans constituted the majority within that figure and, indeed, within MV’s population in general. They varied, first, in their length of stay in Canada (from 1-2 to 5-6 years); second, in their legal status (some were immigrants, but the majority were refugees) and, third, in their gender, class, age, linguistic, and national background. They came from places as diverse as Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre), Djibouti, Gabon, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, and Togo. With no exception, all of the African students in MV were at least trilingual, speaking English, French, and an African language, a mother tongue. Given their postcolonial educational history, significantly, most African youths in fact come to Franco-Ontarian schools already possessing a highly valued symbolic capital: le français parisien (Parisian French).<br /><br />My research participants were part of this growing continental francophone African population in Franco-Ontarian schools. I chose ten boys and six girls for extensive ethnographic observation inside and outside the classroom and inside and outside the school and interviewed all sixteen. Of the ten boys, six were Somali speakers (from Somalia and Djibouti), one was Ethiopian, two were Senegalese, and one was from Togo. Their ages ranged from sixteen-twenty years. The six girls were all Somali speakers (also from Somalia and Djibouti), aged fourteen-eighteen years. Because some interviews were conducted in French I translated them all into English.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Performing It Through Language</span><br /><br />The New Identity, Stuart Hall has argued above, neglects neither history nor memory. This was true in the case of African youth. Taking up the “New,” its linguistic and cultural practices was not done in opposition to their own “Old” culture and language. On the contrary, both cultures and languages, that is to say the historical, linguistic and cultural memories that African students brought with them to Canada, and what they took up/learnt once here (namely, Black popular culture and BESL), are found in the same sentence, in the same garment, on the same body and at the same time. The following is an excerpt, among many others, from my focus-group interview with male students. In it, we see that Sam and Jamal are not citing Black stylized English in opposition to their Somali and French language. There is certainly a space of inbetweenness, of simultaneity, of “inter” language, culture, and subjectivities:<br /><br />Sam: I don't rap man, c'mon give me a break. [laughs] Yo. A'ait a'ait you know, we just about to finish the tape and all clat. Respect to my main man. So, you know, you know wha'm mean, I m reprezi'in Q7. One love to Q7, you know wha 'm mean and all my friends back in Q7. Even though you know I haven't seen them for a long time you know, I still I got love for them you know who 'm mean. Stop the tapin boy.<br />Jamal: Kick the free style. [I am translating here from the Somali language] Get me the tape man.<br />Sam: A'ait this is Sam reprez'in AQA where it's born, reprez'in you know wha 'm mean? I wonna say whassup to all my niggers, you know, peace and one love. You know wha ' mean Q7 represin forever. Peace (rap music).<br />Jamal: crank it man, 'm coming up (rap music).<br />Sam: Je reviens man, you know. It's from Mecca yo, e reprezin you know, Mecca a'ait. You ask [laughs]. [In Somli] Put the music up, wallahi bellahi [in the name of Allah]. [In Somali] Look at this, a'ait a'ait.<br /><br />Expressions such as “a'ait,” “reprez'in Q7,” “boy,” “kick the free style,” “whassup to all my niggers” “peace and one love” are all very common in Rap sphere (Ibrahim, 1998, Ch. 7; Smitherman, 2000). Since Rap itself is a contemporary Black cultural form, re/citing it by African students is in fact a performance of where they want to locate themselves politically, racially, culturally, and linguistically. However, the desire to locate oneself to and with “Black” history and memory is espoused and entangled with the students’ embodied/embedded identities, history, culture, and language. The Somali language was not put off in the advantage of another. It is codeswitched in the same sentence with French and (Black stylized) English. Here, there is no either-or, there is on the contrary this and that. And metaphorically, but also literally, this is how cartography or demarcation of space is indicated, how we tell others who we are or what we have become.<br />In my focus-group interview with male students, I asked them in French to meditate on my above observation. Here are two significant responses:<br /><br />Musa: Here, we are in Canada, you see. We are going to keep our culture, but at the same time there is the new technologies, the new musics. There is also glamour and modernization of the cities and towns.<br />Mukhi: The way we dress, the way we talk, we are in Canada ... The small Angolot you know, the small cloth we put around [the bottom], it is like the way we dress backhome. We need to mix in different genres of dress here. Backhome, for example, we put on Boubou and all that. But, I don't find it embarrassing to go out like that.<br /><br />“We are going to keep our culture, but at the same time...” This is precisely the performance of tension between the Old and the New, which should be perceived as normal in the third space because there is a continuous code-switching between the two. Mukhi better expressed this idea of tension in his notion of “mix”-ing. This mixing is not done in favor of one or the other: “But I don't find it embarrassing to go out like that,” i.e. in Boubou. The Boubou becomes a signifier of national identity, but an ambivalent one since it is not put on by itself but “mixed” with a touch of Hip-Hop. There is no culture shock. Instead, there is simultaneity, parallelism and dialogism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Are These Really Moments of Contradiction?</span><br /><br />The following are two illustrative moments of the interstitiality, in-betweenness and their ethnographic observability. Again, the significance of these moments stems from the contention that they can be (read as) moments of contradictions. The language of the third space is developed, precisely, to argue otherwise, to make the reading of identity more complex. They may be moments of contention and tension, but, as we shall see, not of contradiction. As displaced subjects (including myself) who encountered new social, cultural, and linguistic spaces and practices, I will argue that African youths have become. They have become a negotiated product of the translated Old and New. To negate one or the other is to obliterate part of what has become. Since the third space is a language of in-betweenness, it does not have a fixed shape or form. Its shapes and forms depend on the sociohistorical conditions and on power relation. Edward W. Said, Salman Rushdie, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Samuel Beckett, Julia Kristeva, Joseph Conrad, Jacques Derrida (the list is too long to be continued and too complex to get into each of these individuals) are a sample of what the third space might look like. They are products of in-betweenness, an ambivalent product. The two moments cited below, which are excerpts from my observation notebook, are meant to show the ambivalent nature of in-betweenness, the third space. Here they are 1) and 2):<br />1) The day was April 12th, 1996. It was during lunch and early evening time. The lunch time: I was sitting in the foyer of the school just under the board of the recognized best students by the school. Should I be surprised that all the names, except for two, sounded very French? Dare I say that they brought whiteness to mind? After four months at the school, I am forced to say No to the first and Yes to the second. Najat and a group of seven African young girls were holding a tape-recorder which they brought with them. They stopped in the middle of the foyer in their way from the gymnasium to the library; two girls were having the hijab – veil – on. "Whassup Awad? Man School sucks," Najat talked to me in English. At the beginning of her second sentence, one of the girls plugged in the tape-recorder: it was Cool J who was rapping. Najat turned around and spoke to one female in Somali and hereafter everyone joined in the dance. Hands were moving, bodies were swinging and the girls were talking in Somali, French, and English. Two of the girls, as already cited, were putting on Islamic hijab, others were dressed in Somali national dress: a Boubou, others were dressed in baggy Hip-Hop dress.<br />2) The second illustrative moment was on the some day around 5:30 p,m. It was a moment of loosening and relaxation after a very busy schedule of practice at the school cafeteria/stage. Everybody was busy practicing for Black History Month activities. The same afternoon group of girls I have just talked about above, plus everyone else, mostly girls, joined the music that was playing on the sound system. It was again Cool J followed by Queen Latifa followed by Toni Braxton followed by African music from Zaire, Egypt, and Somalia. Yusuf (the 19-year old, organizer of the Black History Month gathering—there was no teacher to help and no institutional support) was the DJ. Most girls, including mostly the subjects of my research, were dressed either in costume for the practice or Hip-Hop “mixed” with traditional African dress from South Africa, Somalia, Zaire, among others. Those who knew the songs—most of the crowd—seem to mimic and recite them. The hairstyles seem to vary from dyed to dreadlocks to African braids. During and after the practice, during and after this described episode, everyone was codeswitching between English, French, and students' own languages.<br />Male and female students, as we can see, did enter the third space. However, given the patriarchal history and prescribed social and Islamic religious “tradition,” the background of almost all research participants, the female body seems to fall under stricter rules and policed more rigidly and systematically. Whereas males seem to enjoy what the Canadian context can offer, including dating, females are mostly denied this privilege (Ibrahim, 1998, p. 248). Clearly gender plays a major role in the intense experience of the third space.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dialectique de triplicité: An epilogue</span><br /><br />You know in any culture, there are advantages and disadvantages, strong points and weak points. I will keep the strong points and leave the rest, there are points we love about our culture and others we don't like. So, it's about your choices, do you accept the weak points or don't you? But that doesn't mean I am rejecting my culture when I choose a new one, I keep what's valuable in my culture.<br />Amani (17, Female)<br /><br />Perceptibly noticeable, nonetheless, are the ways in which the New and the Old intermingle in this complex third space. For African youth, to be is to become: to become a double-edged product, an ambivalent one. To become is to be answerable to more than one site. We answer through language, which is no longer an abstract category. On the contrary, it is a performed event in and through which identities are articulated. If identities are multiple, shifting and always in the making, as Stuart Hall (2001) and Judith Butler (1999) rightly tell us, then there are no pre-constructed identities that we just slip into. (Welcome to the constructed New Identity!) Moreover, it is certainly in language that identities are complexly performed. Code-switching then is not just about language, it is also, literally and metaphorically, about subjectivities that are code-switched depending on who is talking to whom, in what context, and for what purpose. The complex identity formation of displaced subjects, immigrants as well as refugees as I have shown, stems from the fact that once they are in the New socio-and-geo-cultural context, they endeavor to look for spaces of identification. African youth “chose” Blackness through arduous, complex and, mostly, subconscious processes of “translation” and “negotiation.” However, this was not done in opposition to, or in competition with their embodied memories and histories. The two, Old and New, are put forth in the same sentence, in the same garment, in the same space, at the same time.<br />Since I situated the language of the third space in a socio-historical moment and within power relations, it is Blackness that becomes a site of identification for African youth. They identified with a Black Canada and this was “declared” through language and culture, by invoking ritual expressions and bodily performances. Here, their Blackness highlights the extent of their racialized experiences and shows that the Black body speaks a language of its own, a language that is not fully theirs nor is it under their control. On their part, as we have seen, African youth have little difficulty in performing their culture and language along the translated New “Canadian” context. “Competition” and “entitlement,” even “being” and “becoming,” for me, therefore, have to be situated not in their abstract discourses, but rather in their contextual discursive space where to speak is to say — “I can also be partial, ambivalent, and a product of two.” The final question then is what are the possibilities of this partiality, ambivalence, and interstitiality to be named as such? The question, in other words, is multiple subjectivities and not singular ones since to be is to become, and to become in the dialectique de triplicité is to be forever born in two.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">REFERENCES</span><br />Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy. London: New Left Books.<br />Bakhtin, M. (2001). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.<br />Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of culture. London and New York: Routledge.<br />Bhabha, H. (1990). The third space: Interview with Homi Bhobha, In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity community, culture, difference (pp. 26-33). London: Lawrence & Wishart.<br />Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. (G. Raymond and M. Adamson, Trans.). London: Polity Press<br />Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.<br />Cohen, T. (1997). "Along the watchtower": Cultural studies and the ghost of theory. MLN, 1, 400-430<br />Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 10(3), 22-27.<br />Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. New York: Pantheon.<br />Hall, S. (2001). Introduction: Who needs ‘identity’? In Hall, S. and du Gay, P. (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 1-17). London: Sage.<br />Hall, S. (Ed.) (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: The Open University<br />Hall, S. (1991). Ethnicity: identity and difference. Radical America, 13 (4), 9-20.<br />Hall, S. (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity, community, culture, difference (pp. 222-237). London: Lawrence & Wishart.<br />Hall, S. (1986). On postmodernism and articulation. Journal of Communication lnquiry, 10(2), 45-60.<br />Holquist, M. (2002). Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London & New York: Routledge.<br />hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2005). There is no alibi for being (Black)? Race, dialogic space, and the politics of trialectic identity. In C. Teelucksingh (Ed.), Claiming space: Racialization and spatiality in Canadian cities (pp. 20-32). Waterloo, ON: Waterloo University Press.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2004). One is not born Black: Becoming and the phenomenon(ology) of race. Philosophical Studies in Education, 35, 77-87<br />Ibrahim, A. (2003). Marking the unmarked: Hip-Hop, the gaze and the African body in North America. Critical Arts: A Journal for Cultural Studies, 2(1), pp. 15-24.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2001). “Hey, Whadap Homeboy?” Identification, desire, and consumption: Hip-Hop, performativity, and the politics of becoming Black. Taboo, 5(2), 85-102.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2000a). Trans-framing identity: Race, language, culture, and the politics of translation. trans/forms: Insurgent Voices in Education, 5(2), 120- 135.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2000b). “Hey, ain’t I Black too?” The politics of becoming Black. In R. Walcott (Ed.), Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism (pp. 109-136). Toronto: Insomniac.<br />Ibrahim, A. (1999). Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, race, gender, identity, and the politics of ESL learning. TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 349-369.<br />Ibrahim, A. (1998). ‘Hey, whassup homeboy?’ Becoming Black: Race, Language, Culture, and the Politics of Identity. African Students in a Franco-Ontarian High School. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE: University of Toronto.<br />Jenks, C. (1995). Watching your step: The history and practice of the flaneur. In Chris Jenks (Ed.), Visual culture (pp. 2-15). New York: Routledge.<br />Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A Selection. New York: Norton.<br />Morris, M. (1997). A question of cultural studies. In Angela McRobbie (Ed.), Back to reality? Social experience and cultural studies (pp. 102-120). Manchester: Manchester University Press.<br />Sartre, J.-P. (1980). Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. New York: Pocket Books.<br />Simon, R. I. and Dippo, D. (1986). On Critical Ethnography Work. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 17, 195-202.<br />Smitherman, G. (2000). Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.<br />Soja, E. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.<br />Yon, D. (2000). Elusive Culture: Schooling, Race, and Identity in Global Times. New York: State University of New York Press.<br />Wittiq, M. (2003). One is not born a woman. In Alcoff, L and Eduardo, M. (Eds.), Identities: Race, class, gender, and nationality (pp. 159-164). Oxford: Blackwell.<br />Wright, H. K. (2003a). Cultural studies as praxis: (Making) an autobiographical case. Cultural Studies, 17(6), 805-822.<br />Wright, H. K. (2003b). Editorial: Whose diaspora is this anyway? Continental Africans trying on and troubling diasporic identity. Critical Arts, 17(1+2), 1-16.<br />Wright, H. K. (2002). Editorial: Notes on the (im)possibility of articulating continental African identity. Critical Arts, 16(2), 1-18.<br />Wright, H. K. (1998) Dare we de-centre Birmingham? Troubling the origin and trajectories of cultural studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 1(1), 33-56.</p><br /><p class="postBody"><img src="file:///Users/aibrahim/Desktop/Stephs%20and%20Morocco1%20036.jpg" alt="" /></p><p class="postBody"><br /></p></div>Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-20472995719314637742007-11-21T10:50:00.000-05:002007-11-22T11:56:26.950-05:00LINKING MARXISM, GLOBALIZATION, AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY POST 9/11<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">ABSTRACT </span><br /></div><br />In a post-9/11 world, where the politics of ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them’’ has reemerged under the umbrella of ‘‘terrorism,’’ especially in the United States, can we still envision an <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontières</span>: a globalized and critical praxis of citizenship education in which there are no borders? If it is possible to conceive it, what might it look like? In this review essay, Awad Ibrahim looks at how these multilayered and complex questions have been addressed in three books: Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur’s Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, Nel Noddings’s Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, and Gita Steiner-Khamsi’s The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. Ibrahim concludes that, through creating a liminal, dialogical space between humanism, environmentalism, materialism, philosophy, and comparative education, the authors in these books offer a critical pedagogy in which e´ducation sans frontie`res is possible — a project that is as visionary as it is hopeful.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Article</span><br /></div><br />[W]e are no longer strangers to the gift bestowed on us by those who rule us by the “noble lie.” We courier our wedding gifts of democracy to the rest of the world by F-16 fighter jets. Unfortunately, we will mistake the disease (free-market capitalism) for the cure (liberty and freedom)… [W]ill we continue to interpret our defeats as victories, to reaffirm our hegemonically reproduced and ideologically conditional reflexes, or will we finally see the writing on the wall?<br /> Peter McLaren & Ramin Farahmandpur<br /><br />In a world of instant communication and swift travel, we have become keenly aware of our interdependence. Many of us are now concerned about the welfare of human and nonhuman life, preservation of the Earth as home to the life, and the growing conflict between the appreciation of diversity and the longing for unity… We dream of peace in a world perpetually on the edge of war. One response to these concerns is the promotion of global citizenship<br /> Nel Noddings<br /><br />[We] take the process of globalization for granted, but have serious doubts about whether globalization necessarily leads to a “world culture,” “internationality,” or “internationalism” in education… [Here] globalization is for real, but the international community of experts agreeing on a common (international) model of education is imagined.<br /> Gita Steiner-Khamsi<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Éducation sans frontières</span> or education without (or free of) borders is a peculiar and mystifying notion. However, can education be free, especially, of borders and if it is possible to conceive it without borders, how might it look like? My desire in answering this question is subjective and personal. I am what you might call a universal subject, an <span style="font-style: italic;">identité sans frontières</span>. I was born and grew up in Africa (Sudan), studied in France and Canada, hold the Canadian passport and now teach in higher education in the United States. I do not, however, pretend to hold the Solomonic wisdom nor do I want to occupy the role of the “native informer,” so my intent in this essay review is to look at how, in multilayered and complex ways, others have responded to and answered this question. Namely, I want to review Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy (by Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur; Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, 299 pp.); Educating Citizens for Global Awareness (edited by Nel Noddings; Teachers College Press, 2005, 161 pp.); and The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending (edited by Gita Steiner-Khamsi; Teachers College Press, 2004, 235 pp.).<br /><br />For French-language speakers, <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontière</span> is a Lyotardian wordplay on the infamous and the world’s leading non-governmental medical relief organization: <span style="font-style: italic;">Médecins Sans Frontière</span> or MSF. Purposely working against, without and across borders, MFS has a noble charter that is directly related to the books reviewed here, especially Noddings’s. MSF mission is to offer “assistance to population in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict, without discrimination and irrespective of race, religion, creed or political affiliation;” to observe “neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance;” and to demand “full and unhindered freedom in the exercise of its functions.” Since MSF is run by volunteers who “are aware of the risks and dangers of the missions they undertake,” these volunteers “promise to honor their professional code of ethics and to maintain complete independence from all political, economic and religious powers” (http://www.msf.ca). If one replaces the word “medical” with “educational,” what picture would one have, especially at a global level? Reading the three books one ends up with overlapping, yet distinctive pictures. Though the noble charter is the same in all three books, the theoretical and discipline-based approaches taken by the authors offer different and in some cases, radically different answers and outcome.<br /><br />In all three books, this noble charter is built around the tension between the material and the philosophical, the personal and the public, the abstract and the concrete, the suggestive and the didactic, the humanist and the exploitative, and the global and the local. McLaren and Farahmandpur’s book is unapologetic rote materialist, Noddings is humanist, environmentalist and philosophical, and Steiner-Kamsi is squarely within comparative education. Yet all authors are fully aware of this poststructural tension, make use of it, and push its boundaries in new directions. Also, all authors operate with and centralize the idea of globalization and relate it to education. They all ask: Is éducation sans frontières possible? Given their broad, suggestive and expansive approach, I will begin with McLaren and Farahmandpur’s answer first.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marx, Globalization and Critical Pedagogy at Ground Zero </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism</span> is a collection of nine previously published essays in journals and edited volumes. It is a massive metatheory that has many different threads. With fear of simplification, the authors’ main project in these essays is to critique globalization, especially global capitalism, postmodernism, cultural hybridity, and the “new imperialism.” They do this through a return to the relevant dimensions of Marxist theory while proposing, as a cure, what they call “critical revolutionary pedagogy.” For McLaren and Farahmandpur, globalization is a deceptive and euphemistic term. It hides its “ugly” face: imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, U.S. project of unilateralism and world domination, exploitation of labor, Wal-Martization, state sponsored terrorism, militarization of public space, corporate media, “moribund” or “bargain-basement capitalism” where the environment is transformed into “Planet Mall” for short-term profits and at the expense of ecological health and human dignity. Thus, “cannibalizing life as a whole” (p. 15). As they sum it up, their book<br /><br />… does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of how we have arrived at this tragic state of affairs but attempt, if only modestly, to explore some of the central characteristics of U.S. imperialism and to situate these characteristics with a specific problematic that has been our province of research for a number of years, that of developing a philosophy of praxis that has gone by various descriptions: critical pedagogy, socialist pedagogy, and revolutionary critical pedagogy being among the most prominent (p. 1)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism</span> begins with a fierce critique of Hardt and Negri’s best-selling book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Empire</span>, published pre-9/11 and Iraq invasion. In it, Hardt and Negri announced the arrival of postimperialism and argued that, given the rise of Bush doctrine of New World Order; the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam; the expansion of nongovernmental organizations; the diminishing role of the welfare state; and the increase influence of multinational corporations and supranational organizations such as World Bank, WTO and the IMF, we have entered an era of “peaceful capitalist coexistence” (McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2005, p. 2). For McLaren and Farahmandpur, Hardt and Negri’s “stubborn insistence that state power has become obsolete or that its role has significantly diminished” (p. 3) is not only disagreeable, but it gives ammunition to the discourse of multinational corporations. In the case of the U.S., for example, McLaren and Farahmandpur argued, “the state continues to play a key role in advancing the U.S. imperial project of global dominance,” and it does so “by means of two interlocking processes: globalization and neoliberalism” (p. 3).<br /><br />Neoliberalism, according to McLaren and Farahmandpur, is a festival of masquerade and a theater of the absurd where unregulated market mechanisms rule, antimarket policies are eschewed, social subsidies are eliminated, limitless concessions are offered to transnational corporations, the market is established as the patron of educational reforms, environmental regulations are scrapped, public education is dismantled, “grab-the-profit-and-run,” and downsizing or “corporate anorexia” are celebrated in the stock market. Neoliberalism, in short, is “capitalism with the gloves off” or “socialism for the rich” (pp. 15-16). Coupled with neoliberalism for McLaren and Farahmandpur is postmodernism. By tacitly accepting a market economy; concentrating on superstructure of culturalist discourse; celebrating the death of universalism in favor of “hyperindividualism”; mummifying Marxism; and by proposing itself at the center of “the theater of educational transgression” and not accepting that “we are hardly in a ‘postcolonial’ moment,” McLaren and Farahmandpur argue, postmodernist theory falls prey to an identity politics of “facile form of culturalism” (p. 25). Hence collapsing into a form of “toothless liberalism and antibrushed insurgency” (p. 18). In its final analysis, postmodernism – much like other “posts” in poststructuralism, posthistory, postideology where différence, discursive struggles and desire are valued over material and political economy – amounts to a “Great Delusion” and thus becoming a “radical right.”<br /><br />So, what exactly are their contentions? They have three. First, they write, “ We believe that Marxist analysis should serve as an axiomatic tool for contesting current social relations linked to the globalization of capital and the neoliberal education policies that follow in its wake” (p. 22). They admit, however, “Marxist theory constitutes a social system of analysis that inscribes subjects and is seeped in the dross of everyday life. As such, it must continually be examined…” (p. 22). Second, when it comes to capitalism, their position is that it is “a universal system of domination that integrates and coordinates and ultimately subsumes all other forms of oppression to its brutal commodity logic and privileging hierarchies of exploitation” (p. 29). Third, when combined with capitalism, old-style militarism, financial practices, standardization of commodity, and the imposition of the law of the market, globalization has been whirled into a form of “new imperialism.”<br /><br />As a resistant pedagogy to this “new imperialism,” McLaren and Farahmandpur offer a “Freirean,” “working class,” “socialist pedagogy,” which they also refer to as “revolutionary multiculturalism,” “revolutionary citizenship praxis” or “revolutionary critical pedagogy.” We need “revolutionary critical pedagogy” because what we know now as critical pedagogy “must do more than unweave at night what each day is stitched together by the commodity logic of capital; it must build a new vision of society freed from capital’s law of value. A critical pedagogy, in order to advance revolutionary praxis,” they argue, “must be able to endorse the cultural struggles of workers and coordinate such struggle as part of a broader “cross-border” social movement unionism aimed at organizing and supporting the working classes and marginalized cultural workers in their efforts to build new international anticapitalist struggles along the road to socialism” (p. 150).<br /><br />Revolutionary critical pedagogy centralizes class struggle, political economy, and political education in raising workers’ revolutionary consciousness. It is empowering, democratic, participatory, and worker-centered pedagogy; it critiques corporate-sponsored multiculturalism; moves beyond the celebration of hybridized identities and pluralism; calls for a redistribution of wealth and a return to socialism; links the social identities of marginalized and oppressed groups with their reproduction within capitalist relations of production; and “addresses the importance of unity and difference not only as a sense of political mobilization but also as a practice of cultural authenticity that neither fetishizes tradition nor forecloses its allegiance to traditional knowledges” (p. 152). As they summed it up, “We need nothing short of a social revolution” (152).<br /><br />For those of us who are familiar with critical pedagogy, especially McLaren’s and Giroux’s work, you will see too much of a familiar language. There is hardly any new theorization. The connection between globalization, capitalism and pedagogy is a worthwhile project, but the 299 pages, could easily be reduced to half, and that would be generous. If the reader is concerned with Marxism, education, and globalization, I recommend this book. Otherwise, read chapter one and chapter five. There are three main critiques that I have for the book. First, its use of language. There are too many terms that are thrown around with a lot of assumption of who the read is or dare I say, should be. The irony of the book is that it calls for a “working-class pedagogy” in a language even those of us who are familiar with critical pedagogy will struggle over. Though the authors critique it, I am quite aware of the poststructural notion of reading, meaning, and textuality. McLaren and Farahmandpur do not invite their reader in, they tell you what you should think. They almost bark at you. When you are barked at so often, you get tired after awhile. In a classically Marxist language, we seem to be in a false consciousness, especially the Left; and as a postcolonial subject myself, I am told what I should think and how I should feel. How offendingly patronizing those moments were!<br /><br />My second critique concerns their idea of identity politics. Reading and rereading the book, I am still not clear on how they deal with the question of difference: race, class, gender, sexuality and ability, among others. Here, it seems, there is no tension between these categories with which we should live. There is a clear language of locating and subsuming the discussion, unfortunately in a classic Marxist language, under class struggle. My final critique which, again, is related to language, is the feeling one has as one is working through and reading the text. There is an almost Godly-figure hovering over you and pointing its finger telling you the reader, especially if you espouse a Left position, that you are not Left enough. Sadly enough, there is an increased competition in the Left of making oneself more (linguistically) chic (see even the authors’ picture at the end of the book) and more radical than the last radical. It is an uncomfortable feeling and it permeates a good majority of the book.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Question: </span>Is <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontières</span> possible?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">McLaren and Farahmandpur’s answer: </span>Yes, but a totally different and radical notion of border, pedagogy, and globalization has to be created, one that is grounded on Marx(ism) and class struggle and aims for “nothing short of a social revolution.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Globalization, Citizenship and Dialogue</span><br /><br />In editing her book, Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, Nel Noddings took a different turn, not to the Left but to progressive Humanism since, as she put it, “… a progressive orientation toward global citizenship will promote peace” (p. 4). Educating Citizens for Global Awareness is a thin volume of seven chapters that was published by Teachers College Press and The Boston Research for the 21st Century. The book begins with a foreword by Daisaku Ikeda, founder of The Boston Research for the 21st Century and president of Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist association. Ikeda begins with what could be a summation of the whole book. He writes, “The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States were a grave challenge to the ideal of dialogue between civilizations, the quest on which the world embarked at the start of the new century. They were acts of wanton mayhem that threatened to undermine humanity’s most basic right to live in peace.” He continues, “It is my belief that the eradication of terrorism calls for the creation of new, international political, legal, and economic systems, as well as security measures” (p. ix).<br /><br />For Ikeda, there are two sides to/of globalization: positive and negative. The positive side is democratization and the spread of awareness of human rights, and the negative is war, ethnic conflict, rising economic disparity, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the destruction of the “global ecology.” Education, for Ikeda and the rest of the authors in the book, holds the key to resolving especially the dark side of globalization. This “true education,” as he called it, “summons forth the innate goodness of humanity – our capacity for nonviolence, trust, and benevolence. It enables individuals to reveal their unique qualities and, by encouraging empathy with others, opens the door to the peaceful coexistence of humanity” (p. ix). If we are to foster “global citizens,” Ikeda argues, this kind of humanistic education is crucial. Situated within the Buddhist notion of “dependent originations” – the understanding and appreciation of interdependence – this “creative harmonization” calls for wisdom (the ability to perceive the interdependence of all life), courage (the courage to respect one anothers’ differences), and empathy (the ability to share the pain of every person and all of life).<br /><br />The Executive Director of The Boston Research for the 21st Century, Virginia Strauss, wrote the preface which was followed by Nel Noddings’ introduction of the book. Opening with Thomas Paine’s “My country is the world; to do good is my religion,” Noddings’ first question is, “what is global citizenship?” Because it is global, she contends, our definition of citizenship can no longer depend on the modernist notion of citizenship, referring to a national or regional identity, nor can we align it to a global citizenship that is solely defined in terms of economic, profit, and interest. The new definition, for Noddings, is anchored on the notion of “concern.” Global citizenship should be concerned with, first, the welfare of the national, the regional, the global and their inhabitants; second, the health of our physical world and the preservation of well-loved places; third, the balance of diversity, unity and universality; and, fourth, the worldwide social and economic justice. Emphasizing her ideas of caring about and caring for, Noddings spent the rest of her introduction explaining these “concerns.” Ironically, Iraq was only mentioned once and Afghanistan was totally absented in an introduction of a book on global citizen and peace education post 9/11.<br /><br />The first chapter is written by Peggy McIntosh. This is a worthwhile read and probably, beside Nash and Ladson-Billings’ chapters, a highlight of the book. McIntosh introduces an approach to global citizenship that is both personal, historical and social. She associates global citizenship to several capacities of the mind: the ability to observe oneself and the world around one; make comparison and contrasts; see plurally; see power relations; and balance awareness of one’s realities with the realities of entities outside of the perceived self. She also associates global citizenship to several capacities of the heart: the ability to respect one’s own and others’ feelings and delve deeply into them; experience conflicting feelings; experience affective worlds plurally; wish competing parties well; observe and understand how the “politics of location” affect one’s own and others’ position and power in the world; and the ability to acknowledge the embedded nature of culture in the hearts of ourselves and others (p. 23). To help teachers operationalize this framework McIntosh developed fives interactive phases.<br /><br />Phase 1 acknowledges the absent, Phase II admits the needs to include the absent, Phase III acknowledges the absence of the absent as a dynamic and a question of power relation, Phase IV works with non-binary thinking and sees everyone as a knower and everyone’s knowledge production is worth of study, Phase V is a “version in which the world of knowledge is redefined and reconstructed to include us all” (p. 33). Depending on the political choices we make, according McIntosh, this will take us 100 to 200 years to conceive.<br /><br />In Chapter 2, Stacie Nicole Smith and David Fairman show how a group of students in grade 10 World History class in Newton, Massachusetts, was able to work with conflict resolution. Students were required to develop a better understanding of how and why Americans might legitimately disagree on what the United States should do in response to September 11. They were introduced first to “Workable Peace Framework.” This is a framework that begins with the identification of the source of conflict (one of four: identities, interests, beliefs and emotions), and builds on conflict management strategies. The latter can either move towards peace (prepare to seek peace, explore needs and concerns, acknowledge needs and rights, control violence, and engage in negotiation) or war (stop trying to meet each other’s needs, resort to threats, abandon talks and wage war) (see p. 45). This framework is another highlight of the book and noteworthy.<br /><br />Chapter 3 is by Nel Noddings who revisits her idea of “place-based education.” The chapter is an answer to why we love certain places and be ready to fight and kill for them. It also investigates the connection between the concepts of local and global citizenship. In Chapter 4, Gloria Ladson-Billings explores what she calls “new” or “flexible citizens.” These are “complicated citizens” who are created within, and in relation to global capitalism, international travel, communication, and mass media. As she summarized it, “Instead of being bound by geopolitical boundaries and national loyalties, people who are developing multiple allegiances that transform them into “flexible citizens.” Such citizens,” she argues, “are more committed to their work and careers than to any particular national identity” (p. 74). Yet, she distinguishes between “diasporas” and “cosmopolitanisms.” The former, for Ladson-Billings, “are comprised of marginalized, displaced, and victimized subjects trying to make a place for themselves in the modern world,” whereas the latter “are worldly, progressive intellectuals who decide to be global citizens” (p. 74, original emphasis). Ultimately, Ladson-Billings argues, the aim of education is the creation of that organic, cosmopolitan, and active citizen and intellectual who is investing in developing a consciousness of global citizenship and is engaged in the public good, locally and globally.<br /><br />In Chapter 5, Stephen Thornton is thinking about the different ways in which we can incorporate in the curriculum teaching for and teaching about internationalism, especially in social studies classrooms. From World War I, to Serbia, Balkans, Great Depression, UN, and Austro-Hungarian Empire, among others, he sees nationalism and internationalism as inextricable and provides many suggestions on how to include teaching for and about internationalism. Chapter 6 by Robert Nash is a personal letter to secondary school teachers on teaching about religious pluralism in public schools. “The events of 9/11 have thrown our provincial and isolationist American worldview, particularly its religious, political, and cultural elements, into turmoil,” he writes (p. 95). Nash provides probably the most urgent discussion on how to think and talk about, as well as how to teach religions in public schools. His letter is a must read for every history, government, and social studies teacher. It is personal, genuine, and offers tremendous experience and wisdom on what might be described as the most urgent discussion that needs to take place in the West: the role of religion in public space, especially extremism whatever its believes and wherever it comes from. He argues that we need to become “more globally aware, religiously literate citizens” (p. 93). The globally aware and religiously literate citizen is a “cosmopolitan person who is knowledgeable about, and receptive to, the complexity and richness of religious diversity throughout the world;” one who is “literally educated and knows that it is impossible to understand the history, culture, or politics of most modern societies if one is ignorant of the fundamental role that religion has played in every country” (p. 93-94). After all, Nash quoted Rig Veda, “Truth is one, but the wise call it by many Names” (p. 104).<br /><br />Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Linda Lantieri wrote Chapter 7 where they make the case that, once given the occasion, young people can do wonder. The chapter tells the story of a middle school in Quincy, Massachusetts. It all began when a Pakistani boy named Iqbal Masih visited this middle school. Masih talked to the kids about child labor. Two years later, students received the news that Masih was shot dead suspiciously in Pakistan. Students banded together and mounted a campaign again child labor. They created an endowment in his name and forced the United Nations to pass a resolution to toughen child labor laws. For Carlsson-Paige and Lantieri, this is the kind of citizen we desperately need, one who is not only aware, but can do something. Nel Noddings followed this chapter with the book conclusion that answered the question, “what have we learned?”<br /><br />Nel Noddings is a philosopher and as such she has some areas where she shines and in others where the light seems to dim a little bit. The book is more in the latter than in the former. How can one write an introduction and a conclusion on peace, global education, and war without a mention of the current political situation especially in the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan? One literally sees a change in language and tone when Noddings reverts to philosophy, specifically her idea of “care.” In the book, she tries to apply that idea to the ecological system with less success. When she talks about fertilizers, pesticides, and biogenetic diversity, one wonders why doesn’t she focus on what she does best, philosophy? Her idea of “place-based” education and pedagogy is redundant and is addressed better in other chapters in the book.<br /><br />Overall, generously read, there are basically four main ideas in this book that are new for me. The first is McIntosh’s interactive Phases. She developed them as part of a larger framework she calls S.E.E.D. (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity). These phases are not only practical, but they offer concrete ways to deal with equity, diversity, and global citizenship. Thanks to McIntosh’s framework, the latter is no longer an abstract category. For those of us who teach social foundations, I highly recommend these phases. The second idea is Stacie Nicole Smith and David Fairman’s notion “Workable Peace Framework,” which I discuss above. Given what is happening in some postcolonial countries in Africa, South America and Asia, as well as in the Middle East, this framework is worthy of study. The third idea that is noteworthy in the book is Nash’s letter. It is layered and I will do no justice to explain every idea in it. Read it! The fourth idea is more personal. Ladson-Billings’ “flexible citizen” hit home, it stared me in the eye. This is what I would term the “universal subject,” which is myself. Born in Africa, studied in France and Canada and living in the United States. The allegiances are multiple. Given her intellectual capital, the universal subject is she who can live and function anywhere. She carries not her bags, but her books. She can be in Australia one year, the U.S. the following year, while spending her sabbatical year between France, Germany, Argentina and South Africa.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Question:</span> Is <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontières</span> possible?<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The volume’s answer: </span>Yes, of course! In peace and (global) citizenship education, there are many examples showing this possibility.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Politics of Educational Policy and Intellectual Borrowing and Lending</span><br /><br />The third book, The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, was edited by Gita Steiner-Khamsi of Columbia University. Conceived within a post-Fordist economy, the book comprises 12 chapters that are divided in three parts, an introduction and a conclusion by the editor, and a foreword by Thomas S. Popkewitz. Although the authors in the book come from many disciplines, the book distinctly locates itself within the field of “comparative education.” In his foreword, Popkewitz offers a succinct summary of the book while adding his own vision of globalization and the politics of educational borrowing and lending. He begins with a fiercest critique of how globalization is increasingly treated as a fait accompli, on the one hand, and fatalistically ahistorically, on the other. We need to deal with globalization not as “planet speak” – a ubiquitous word that everybody knows – but as an empty signifier that is historically and socially defined. This is, he argues, the advantage of this book. It deals with an educational policy phenomenon – educational borrowing and lending – and explores its historical and contextual dimensions in their national and transnational studies. As such, education plays a central role in globalization, especially in the process of knowledge production, yet Popkewitz argues, education “often is assumed peripheral, if considered at all” (p. viii) in the discourse of globalization.<br /><br />The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending centralizes education at the heart of globalization and sees the school as “the major institution in which the circulation of knowledge about the modern self is positioned” (p. viii). Well summarized by Popkewitz, the book has seven basic themes. First, there is a post-structural understanding of knowledge production, where knowledge is historically and socially produced and so there is no universal and absolute knowledge. The very idea of citizenship has to be contextually defined within a participatory notion of civil society. Second, following this is the need to empirically examine how knowledge flows within networks, social systems and institutions. Borrowing, lending and converging become central concepts in the process of knowledge flow. Borrowing, for Popkewitz, does not mean copying. It is a concept to examine “how patterns of thought move through and are transmuted in different layers of the local and global systems” (p. ix). Third, what was missing in the first two books is centralized here: how concretely and empirically the local and the global talk to each other, so to speak, dialogue, produce and reproduce each other. The studies in the book look at how the local family, child, community, and nation take up, translate and transform the global in local varieties.<br /><br />Fourth, from multiple angles, the book examines the role of international agencies, such as the World Bank, IMF, UN, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as Care and Save the Children. Fifth, while centralizing comparative education, the book is exceptionally interdisciplinary and it gives, sixth, systematic and historical understanding of the relationship between the local and the global, as I already indicated. Finally, the book offers a non-normative approach to comparative research. Unfortunately, the field of comparative education, according to Popkewitz, “often is designed around developing ameliorative models for the “transferring” of ideas and practices” (p. x). That is, transfer what works! Instead, the studies in the book show how people hold on to their localities while learn “lessons from elsewhere.”<br /><br />In her short introduction, Gita Steiner-Khamsi gives an overview of the book, which is a response to “the global trend of transnational borrowing and lending in education” (p. 1). It is an examination of the politics of why and how educational policies are imported or exported, and how they are adapted locally once they have been transferred from one context to another. As she put it, “this book addresses globalization in education, and attempts to introduce both a historical and a contextual dimension that we find lacking in the ongoing debate [on the link between] the increase transnational flow of goods, finance, communication, people and ideas (globalization), and changes in national educational systems” (p. 3). Complexifying the “semantics of globalization” and thinking through the idea of “global civil society,” Steiner-Khamsi argues for a reconceptualization of the idea of “borrowing.” For her, borrowing “draws our attention to processes of local adaptation, modification, and resistance to global forces of education” (p. 5).<br /><br />Part One of the book comprises three chapters. The first chapter by a well-known scholar in comparative sociology and history, Charles Tilly of Columbia University, is meant to set the stage theoretically for the book. Tilly argues that there is a misconception of globalization as a “new” phenomenon. “Since the movement of human out of Africa some 40,000 years ago, humanity has globalized repeatedly,” he writes. “Any time a distinctive set of social connections and practices expands from a regional to a transcontinental scale, some globalization is occurring. Each time an existing transcontinental set of social connections and practices fragments, disintegrates, or vanishes, some de-globalization occurs,” he adds (p. 13). Tilly’s chapter deals with “global flows.” He differentiates between three recent flows or waves of globalization: around 1500, between 1850-World War I, and post-1945. What distinguishes the latter wave of globalization is the “relative emphasis on commerce, commitment, and coercion” (p. 16). He calls it the “darker sides of globalization.” Looking at economic disparity and the ecological effects of globalization, Tilly offers a larger social context analysis of the existing inequalities within globalization.<br /><br />In Chapter 2, Jurgen Schriewer and Carlos Martinez offer an analysis on how, given the global flow of ideas, there is a tacit assumption that scholars and people in general would be reading the same books and/or sharing increasingly similar ideas. This is not true. Hence, the authors make a distinction between globalization or internationalization (which is real) and internationality (which is imagined). This is a dense and confusing chapter. Chapter 3 by David Phillips presents a conceptual framework for studying cross-national “policy attraction” in education. By studying the British fascination with and interest in educational provision at all system levels in Germany (including universities), Phillips provides a model and a methodology for studying policy borrowing, which he sees it in the following stages: cross-national attraction, decision to borrow, implementation, and internationalization or indigenization. As Steiner-Khamsi put it, “cross-national attraction can be interpreted as an act of international cooperation advancing convergence… or as an act of inter-state competition strengthening divergence…” (p. 10; emphasis added).<br /><br />The meat of the book, however, is in Part Two, dealing with “the politics of educational borrowing.” This section, according to Steiner-Khamsi, is informed by three ideas: 1) that “externalization” or educational reforms tend to take place more frequently where politics can interfere, such as privatization of education, standardization, and deunionization of teachers, among others; 2) that the implemented policies at the local level barely resembles their original sources; 3) that to legitimize their reforms, decision makers and policy makers make international references, even though similar policies may exist in their backyard. In Chapter 4, Iveta Silova addresses what Phillips calls in Chapter 3 “phony policy borrowing.” This is more rhetorical than actual policy, that is, policy makers borrow the rhetoric from elsewhere with no intention of implementing the practices that accompany that rhetoric. Latvia, for example, ratified a minority-language policy without implementing it when it came to the Russian-language speakers.<br /><br />Chapter 5 is exceptionally interesting where the author, Tali Yariv-Mashal, shows how the “Israeli Black Panthers” borrowed both the rhetoric and the practice of the Black Panther Movement in the United States. In Chapter 6, Carol Anne Spreen discusses the case OBE or outcome-based education in South Africa. Convincingly, she demonstrates the indigenization of OBE, originally borrowed from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Chapter 7 by Bernhard Streitwieser shows the ongoing debate about the role of education in post-unification Germany. Should education be for Erziehung (with an emphasis on personal, social, and political development) or for Bildung (with an emphasis on literacy). Streitwieser found that the role of education was conceived differently in East vs. West Germany, and the current system reflects that tension.<br /><br />In Chapter 8, William deJong-Lambert asks: What happens to science when it is used as an instrument of oppression? He looks at the Polish academic community which used Lysenkoism, a method to propagate Marxist genetics in Poland. Lysenkoism ended up, deJong-Lambert shows, providing Leninism and Stalinism with “scientific rationality.” deJong-Lambert goes on to investigate how the Polish scientific community is dealing with that legacy now. Chapter 9 by Frances Vavrus is, I think, worthy of study. She examines how the World Bank policies of water privatization were translated locally in Tanzania. By translation, she means both literally (from English into Swahili) and figuratively. Using Bourdieu’s idea of champ or field, where complex and contradictory discursive frameworks are constructed, Vavrus demonstrates the interplay between external and internal, top-down and down-up, global and local changes. Vavrus offers a complex reading, yet she doesn’t account for power relations: Who gives and who has the money? There seems to be no center of/to power. Another chapter worthy of study is Thomas Luschei’s, Chapter 10. Luschei looks at the current Brazalian educational reforms that started in 1998. It is called Escola Ativa and modeled after, borrowed from the Colombian model of Escuela Nueva. Luschei shows how, in order to be able to borrow $62.5 million from the World Bank, the Brazalian government had to discredit its own previous reforms. In the end, Luschei argued, Escola Ativa became a joint rhetorical venture between the World Bank (which needed to hear the language of borrowing and reform), the Brazalian government (which needed the money), and the Colombian model (which seemed to have “worked”). They were telling each, Luschei conclude, that the money was not going to waste.<br /><br />The final part of the book is on “the politics of educational lending,” where the authors argue that we need to keep the actors in mind and that there is no educational process of borrowing and lending that is free of politics. Dana Burde in Chapter 11 looks at the role of NGOs in a preschool reform project in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The project focused on establishing and enhancing parent-teacher associations (PTAs) as a way of building civil society. These PTAs however did not work, yet NGOs kept on holding on to their original ideas because this is how they get their fundings. In Chapter 12, Phillip Jones investigates the role of the World Bank as both a loan and lending entity. In the 21st century, the World Bank sees itself more as an education policy lender than a loan-providing bank. As such, it is rearticulating and reimagining itself at least discursively. In her conclusion, Gita Steiner-Khamsi reminds us of the history of comparative education where the emphasis was on exporting what “worked.” Noteworthy in the conclusion is her definition of the “externalization thesis.” Defined first by Schriewer, Steiner-Khamsi sees externalization as an educational borrowing or “the references to lessons from elsewhere… in which either an imaginary international community (“international standards”) or a concrete other (e.g., national education systems, reform models, reform strategies, etc.) is evoked as a source of external authority for implementing reforms that otherwise would have been resisted.” Phrased otherwise, “the act of lesson drawing often is used as an effective policy strategy to certify contentious policies at home” (p. 203, emphasis added). She concludes the book with a second overview of the lessons learned from the different chapters.<br /><br />There are many interesting chapters in this book, especially Tilly, Phillips, Yariv-Mashal, Vavrus and Luschei’s. McLaren and Farahmandpur would be enjoy this book since as Popkewitz put it in the foreword, “Through the concept of externalization we … can consider the idea of neoliberalism that floats through much of contemporary comparative analysis.” Indeed, neoliberalism floats through much of this book, yet it is complexly layered and one can see many approaches to the global politics of educational borrowing and lending.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Question:</span> Is <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontières </span>possible?<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The volume’s answer: </span>Yes, of course! It is already taking place and all the chapters in the volume show that. Indeed, the very concept – <span style="font-style: italic;">éducation sans frontières</span> – was first read and introduced in this volume (see p. 3).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">There Is No Conclusion With Globalization</span><br /><br />In Globalization, Zygmunt Bauman (1998) writes that, “‘Globalization’ is on everybody’s lips; a fad word fast turning into a shibboleth, a magic incarnation, a pass-key meant to unlock the gates to all present and future mysteries. For some,” he continues, “‘globalization’ is what we are bound to do if we wish to be happy; for others ‘globalization’ is the cause of our unhappiness” (p. 1). Clearly, this is the tension in all three books. McLaren and Farahmandpur are unhappy with globalization, though they acknowledge its impossibility, since it is obliterating the communal sense of work and productivity. Globalization, for McLaren and Farahmandpur, is another name for predatory and exploitative capitalism. For Nel Noddings and Gita Steiner-Khamsi, there are many possibilities that come with globalization. Following an Aristotlean approach, if not a post-structuralist one, Noddings and Steiner-Khamsi are calling for a contextualized notion of globalization that is both resistant to and work with global forces. On a personal level, as a universal subject my approach to globalization and is probably closer to Noddings and Steiner-Khamsi and their authors than to McLaren and Farahmandpur. Yet, what McLaren and Farahmandpur raise will haunt me for awhile. It is powerful and ethically unresolvable. But we need to read their questions since, as Bauman put it, “The price of silence is paid in the hard currency of human suffering… Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguable the most urgent of the services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves” (p. 5). The best is yet to come, but it will not come if we don’t envision it. I read all three books with that lens and I advice you to do the same. Yes, there is life after the Panopticon and yes, we need to move through the world as opposed to the world moving by us (Bauman, 1998). Indeed, we need to feel chez soi locally, nationally and globally. This would require éducation sans frontières and rigorous intellectual border crossing. In this sense, applied to education, MSF charter should be our guiding philosophy, our critical revolutionary pedagogy post-9/11.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reference</span><br />Bauman, Z. (1998). <span style="font-style: italic;">Globalization</span>. New York: Columbia University Press.Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-8764707810820061232007-11-21T10:39:00.000-05:002007-11-21T10:48:33.890-05:00Operating Under Erasure: Hip-Hop and the Pedagogy of AffectThe black pathfinder is offset by the crazy gold trim. Moving down 52nd Street, cruise style. There is a super phat sound emanating from the other side of glory. Neither Milton’s paradise regained or lost. It’s just paradise in and of itself.<br /> Spady (1993, p. 96)<br /><br />Anything you wanted to know about the [L.A.] riots was in the records before the riots… I’ve given so many warnings on what’s gonna happen if we don’t get these things straight in our life… Armageddon is near. How close is near.<br /> Ice Cube<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Jouissance</span> – and affective in general – seems to invariably be cheated in language. It is always-always in the excess, that which can only be accessed in and through the performed, that which can not be fully captured in language, something about it is always left over (Butler, 1999; Grossberg, 1992; Hall and du Gay, 1996; Kristeva, 1982; Lacan, 1977, among others). My interest in this paper is to navigate through this cultural space of left over, namely Black popular culture, Hip-Hop to be specific, and link it to a larger framework of pedagogy and learning. Affective, Grossberg (1992) explains, is “the unrepresentable excess – the sublime? – which defies images and words, which can only be indicated” and popular culture, especially when operating within an affective sensibility, “is a crucial ground where people give others … the authority to shape their identity and locate them within various circuits of power” (p. 83).<br /><br />On their part, Giroux and Simon (1989a) argued that, “Popular culture represents a significant pedagogical site that raises important questions about the relevance of everyday life, student voice, and the investments of meaning and pleasure that structure and anchor the why and how of learning (p. 5). If this is so, it is surprising then how little attention the intersection of pedagogy, affective/investment, and popular culture within school sites has received. Here, my focus is on ethnography in general and critical ethnography in particular (see Simon and Dippo, 1986 for full discussion). I shall therefore begin with a theoretical framework –pedagogy of affective – then discuss my research and offer a conclusion on the need to rethink the connection between Black popular culture, which is currently operating under erasure, the curriculum, identity investment, and the process of critical teaching and learning.<br />Mapping What Matters<br /><br />The complexity of studying popular culture ethnographically stems from the fact that it works at the notoriously difficult plane of affect. Why we love a particular music, read a genre of novels, or watch “sleeze TV,” Grossberg (1992) explains, might be explained, but never fully. All we feel emotionally is that quasi-orgasmic rush, juissance, running through our veins. However, I want to argue, this rush is neither neutral nor without its politics of identification (Ibrahim, 2003), which eventually influences (if not determines) what we learn and how we learn it. That is, the rush is not simply ideological (where we as consumers are manipulated by a ruling class) nor simply affective or emotional; afterall our emotions have their own (rational?) structure and language (Bourdieu, 1984; Williams, 1979). It is at this intersection of the consciously rational, willful, committed, and the unconsciously emotional, passionate, pleasurable and volitional that I want to locate popular culture.<br /><br />Mapping what matters within popular culture is a “mattering map” (Grossberg, 1992), where no investment is haphazard and where people’s identities and everyday lives are formed and performed. Popular culture is increasingly pervasive and powerful force not only economically (think about how many millionaires rap has created), but, more importantly, pedagogically and educationally. It is where people and youth in particular socialize their identities and thus envision the possibilities of their existence. Popular culture can be defined as a durable, transposable disposition, structured champ (Bourdieu, 1984) or a discursive formation (Foucault, 1977) whose meaning is only possible within a theory of articulation (Hall, 1986). The latter argues that diverse elements or formations, which have no intrinsic, historical or apparent connection, can be connected, accumulated and articulated together to produce a new event, be it identity, musical or otherwise. For example, the articulation of dance hall music, DJing, MCing, break dancing, R&B, sound system, graffiti and fashion produced what we know now as Hip-Hop.<br /><br />Such articulations, Grossberg (1992) argues, create a series of “alliances” which in turn make “a number of different positions available to different groups” (p. 71). That is, different cultural articulations invade, populate and incorporate different bodies differently, and in the process effectively guarantee their singular sensibility, investment and engagement. However, no alliances are absolute and each has its own circuits of power that either empower or disempower. They do so because people affectively authorize them. As Grossberg (1992, pp. 83-4) aptly put it,<br /><br />People actively constitute places and forms of authority (both for themselves and for others) through the deployment and organization of affective investments. By making certain things matter, people “authorize” them to speak for them, not only as a spokesperson but also as a surrogate voice… People give authority to that which they invest in; they let the objects of such investments speak for and in their stead. They let them organize their emotional and narrative life and identity.<br /><br />To affectively authorize a discursive formation to “speak” on our behalf is to enter the plane of belonging and identification (where identities are formed through interpellation (Althusser, 1971), and insofar as these moments of identification are fragmented and dispersed, identities are similarly dispersed). To affectively authorize a discursive formation is to find ourselves “at home,” at least temporarily, with what we care about, “partly because there seems to be no other space available, no other terrain on which [we] can construct and anchor [our] mattering maps” (Grossberg, 1992, pp. 84-5). Hence they become sites of empowerment. On the other hand, however, affective relations can also be disempowering because “They render ideological and material realities invisible behind a screen of passion.” They blind and position “people in ways which make them particularly vulnerable to certain kinds of appeals, and, most frightening, they can easily be articulated into repressive and even totalitarian forms of social demands and relations” (Ibid., p. 87). For example, misogyny and homophobia in Hip-Hop, which originally emerged as a subaltern creative cultural space of resistance, are cases in point. So there is no affective investment, and for that matter no popular cultural form, that is not complexly contradictory.<br /><br />For Grossberg (1992), “mattering maps” are like “investment portfolios” where changing investments matter as much as where, how and the intensities and degrees of investment. They “define different forms, quantities and places of energy, They “tell” people how to use and how to generate energy, how to navigate their way into and through various moods and passions, and how to live within emotional and ideological histories” (p. 82). Mattering maps, he continues, “also involve the lines that connect the different sites of investment; they define the possibilities for moving from one investment to another, of linking the various fragments of identity together. They define not only what sites … matter but how they matter” (p. 84). Put otherwise, it is these mattering maps that regulate not only our passion, investment, and texture of our affective, but eventually our identities, identification, and the possibilities of we could become. In the following section I want to propose a larger “articulation” between race, curriculum and investments as they relate to the above framework of affective and mattering maps.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Race, Curriculum and Mattering Maps</span><br /><br />“I still remember,” I wrote in my field-notes diary, “on my first day at the high school where I am conducting my research, while standing in the middle of the foyer, the 14-year old girl Najat came running to embrace me in a manner of a lost old friend. She then wondered in French if I was coming to school to teach. “Non,” I responded in French, but I was equally curious why she wanted me at the school. “Just because there is nothing Black in this school. All you see is white, white, white,” she responded in English.” First, I knew Najat since I was working in another research project in the same French-language high school for almost two years and second, I want to argue, in these non-identificatory spaces where self-consciousness undergoes the experience of desire to be reflected, seen and recognized, other spaces of identification, mattering maps will emerge: Black popular culture. In this case, Black popular culture – and diasporic Black hybrid identities in general – will emerge not only as sites of identification, but also as curriculum sites where learning can and does take place. I intend to show that, in the present research, when Black/African youth were unable to participate in dominant (“white, white, white”) spaces, Black popular culture emerged as a mattering map of investment, learning and desire. Hence creating a “null curriculum”; by which I am referring to the sites of affective and pedagogical investment that are directly implicated in youth identity formation, but are not formally acknowledged in their schooling/learning processes (cf. Eisner, 1979).<br /> This raises a number of research and pedagogical questions, two of which will be addressed here. First, where (and how) do our youth form their identities if not within and in relation to the realm of popular culture, which is negated most often within formal education settings (Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001; Giroux and Simon, 1989 a&b) and, second, what are the implications of this negation in reframing and reconceptualizing critical curriculum studies? Put otherwise, I want to ask, do social identities, especially race and gender, and their formation processes have any significant role in the process of learning; how do we engage these identities; and how can critical educators bring student-based and student-produced knowledge into the classroom, not to be consumed but rather to be critically engaged, deconstructed? This, furthermore, raises questions of voice and experience. How do we acknowledge previous experience as legitimate content and challenge it at the same time? How do we affirm student voices while simultaneously encouraging conscientization (Freire, 1993): the interrogation of such voices? And how do we avoid the conservatism inherent in simply celebrating personal experience and confirming what people already know? (cf. Eisner & Powell, 2002; Giroux and Simon, 1989a; Quinn & Kahne, 2001).<br /><br />These questions can not be understood separately from a diagnosis of the modern condition of what Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) call “the age of difference.” It is a temporal, poststructuralist and globalized historical moment where desire, agency, identification and identity count and, indeed, where the politics of identity is the center of teaching and learning. A moment where identity itself is mediated by technological media, on the one hand, and by its relation to the Other, on the other. A moment where movements of goods, ideas, arts and bodies are ever made easier; a moment where postcolonial subjects are increasingly forming part of the metropolitan centers. In this moment, Dewey’s (1916, p. 6) classic notion of “formal education” which was defined as “the deliberate educating of the young” would miss a wide range of aspects of learning that go on in sites other than classrooms. Such may include homes, hospitals, factories, night clubs, sport sites, concerts, museums, and so on (see Beer and Marsh, 1988; Cremin, 1976; Giroux, 2000; Nieto, 2000), as well as school sites such as hallways and gyms. The tension between what goes on in the hallways and gyms where learning can and indeed does take place and where students identities are formed (Giroux and Simon, 1989b; Ibrahim, 1998, 1999, 2000a&b), on the one hand, and classroom pedagogies and practice strategies, on the other, is scarcely dialogued about within the field of curriculum studies; at least not until recently (see also Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001; Goldberg, 1997; Kelley, 1998). There is therefore a need to rearticulate that tension and, as I shall do, show the potency of popular culture, more specifically Black popular culture, in the process of students’ identity formation, cultural and linguistic practice. Here, the question of what I term the politics of embodiment: sexualized, gendered, abled, classed, and racial/ized identities that students bring with them to the classroom and how these identities are formed is vitally important to the praxis of imaginative critical educators.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the age of difference is also the age of boundary maintenance, quick fixes, moral panic, competence measurement, unthreatening forms of multiculturalism, “accountability,” “clientele,” and the language of panacea and technique (what Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001 call “technicist discourse”). It is an age of what Nietzsche called “ressentiment” (resentment), a “practice by which one defines one’s identity through the negation of the other” (Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001, p. 4). This ressentiment, Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) explain, is pronounced more clearly in how difference, multiplicity, and heterogeneity are dealt with in educational settings; how knowledge formation, mattering maps, genres of representation, and bodily encounters are all regulated by ressentiment. The Other is here capitalized, absolutized and rancourly put either in the inner-city or “overthere” in the Third World. The identity of social victim, interesting enough, especially in the United States, is claimed by the professional middle-class dwellers of the suburb. “In so doing, the suburban professional class denies avenues of social complaint to its other, the inner-city poor.” This in turn projects the “suburban worldview as the barometer of public policy, displacing issues of inequality and poverty with demands for balanced bugets, tax cuts, and greater surveillance and incarceration of minority youth” (Ibid., pp. 4-5).<br /><br />In education, the politics of ressentiment, especially as expressed by mainstream (conservative?) educational theorists, tends to “draw a bright line of distinction between the established school curriculum and the teeming world of multiplicity that flourishes in the everyday lives of youth beyond the school” (Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001, p. 2). No where in the U.S. is this narcissistic line (and its moral panic) more drawn than against Black popular culture in general and Hip-Hop in particular. The conservative TV host Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News Network single handedly forced Muppets and Pepsi Company to drop the rappers Snoop Dogg and Ludacris, respectively, from their advertisements and as their commercial representatives. Ironically, Ludacris was replaced by the Osbornes. Race as much as political agenda determine who gets to be represented and how and, in education, they regulate and govern who gets to be included in the curriculum – the “main text,” as Maxine Greene (1992, p. 2) refers to.<br /><br />For Eisner (1979) the “main text” can be divided into three typologies: implicit, explicit, and null curriculum. In the explicit curriculum, students enter a discourse and culture whose common signifier is “schooling,” with publicly sanctioned goals. These goals are usually presented as ideologically neutral and pedagogically necessary if one is to become a “functional citizen.” In the implicit curriculum, also known as the “hidden curriculum” (Apple, 1990, 1982), students are expected to conform and follow certain patterns of cultural practices of schooling that are not stated explicitly. “Take, for example, the expectation that students must not speak unless called on,” Eisner (1979, p. 76) explains, “or the expectation that virtually all of the activities within a course [or a class] shall be determined by the teacher, or the fact that schools are organized hierarchically.” For Eisner, what the school is doing through these implicit but firmly expected cultural practices is preparing “most people for positions and contexts that in many respects are quite similar to what they experienced in school,” that is “hierarchical organization, one-way communication, routine; in short, compliance to purposes set by another” (1979, p. 77).<br /><br />The “null curriculum” is defined as “what schools do not teach” (Eisner, 1979: 83; original emphasis). It is a configuration of knowledge, a mattering map that is linked to students’ identities and ways of knowing and learning but not directly addressed in their schooling processes. Eisner argues that most subject matters that are now taught in school systems are taught out of habit. That is, schools teach geography, math, chemistry, and so on, for no reason other than that these were always taught (Eisner, 1979, p. 88). It is of course unwarranted to suggest that Eisner is negating their importance as subjects of study. To the contrary, he is reminding us of this question, which is rarely asked in educational settings: Why are we teaching what we are teaching? Hence, Eisner concludes, “we ought to examine school programs to locate those areas of thought and those perspectives that are now absent in order to reassure ourselves that these omissions were not a result of ignorance but a product of choice” (1979, p. 83).<br /><br />It is here, I argue, that we should locate Hip-Hop, the cultural space or mattering map which accommodates both internal tensions and dynamic cultural ciphers, mediating the corrosive discourse of the dominating society while at the same time functioning as a subterranean subversion. Hip-Hop is a null curriculum that is so subtle and subterranean that Ice-T likened it to a home invasion. “Homes are being invaded by hip-hop theories and Hip-Hop flavors. White kids are being injected with black rage and anger. People like KRS-One, Public Enemy, Cube are stimulating kids to question authority. And moms says, ‘My home has been invaded by these new ideas. How did it get here?’ It comes through the walkman. These homes are being invaded by us. And they know it. They know we are in their homes” (cited in Spady, 1993, p. 95).<br /><br />But this home as well as school invasion and bombardment of popular culture images, Greene (1997) warned us, frequently has the (negative) effect of freezing the imaginative thinking of youth, thus potentially whirling them into “human resources” as opposed to “centers of choice and evaluation” (57). For critical educators, the latter will happen only when, on the one hand, we as critical pedagogues recognize the temporal and non-static nature of youth identities and when the youth themselves, on the other, are able to gaze back at these images and consciously “read” (through) them, a “conscious participation in [the art]work, a going out of energy, an ability to notice what there is to be noticed” (Greene, 1997, p. 58). Following Greene, my interest in the null curriculum is a recall to emphasizing the intersectionality between identity, politics, experience, and pedagogical dis/engagement and the process of learning. Building on this, I want to show below that students do appropriate and develop aspects of “null curriculum” as part of their identity formation; and in the case of Black popular culture, such a curriculum can be utilized in and as a form of critical pedagogy and praxis. This way, I conclude, we may contribute to bringing in Black students' previously unwarranted and non-validated forms of knowledge, address the feeling of alienation that Black students have in relation to Eurocentric curricula, and contribute to a more relevant, engaging and integrative anti-racist curriculum (Dei, 1996).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Against Temporality: Race-ing the Everyday</span><br /><br />“The everyday” (Nietzsche, 1977) was quite a feast for my research participants, a group of continental francophone African youths. It was both a space of contradiction and confrontation. It was where they encountered the overdeterminded racial (racist?) gaze and it was, interestingly, their rendezvous with the juissance of identification, investment, and desire. The former is linked to their Blackness. Here, all individuals who possess the Black body and who either live or immigrate to the West enter, so to speak, this “overdetermined gaze,” what Gilroy (1997) calls “ethnic absolutism.” This was well expressed by Frantz Fanon (1967, p. 116) when he talked about himself as a Black Antillais coming to the metropolis of Paris, “I am the slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance [my emphasis].... I progress by crawling. And already [my emphasis] I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes.” There is no métissage here, no creolization, no hybridity: just one lump sum category, and one that is already determined, defined: Black. As a result, ironically, Blackness and its cultural and linguistic expression emerge for African youth as sites of bond, investment, and learning. The research data clearly shows that African youth choose Black popular cultural forms as sites of identification (Ibrahim, 1998, 2000a&b, see also below). They do so as part of their identity formation processes and their search for what it means to be Black in North America. As well, depending on their age and gender, they variably perform, enact the North American Black-stylized English and Hip-Hop identity. Hence, they create a null curriculum; color the everyday “little things” (Nietzsche, 1977); and heretofore begin the odyssey of becoming Black.<br /><br />Being is being distinguished here from becoming Black (see also Ibrahim, 1999). The former is defined as an accumulative memory, an experience, an understanding and an apprehension upon which one interacts with the world around her/him, whereas the latter is the process of building this apprehension, this memory. For example, as a continental African, I was not “Black” in Africa, though I had other adjectives that used to bricolage my identity, such as tall, Sudanese, basketball player, etc. That is, my Blackness was not “marked,” as Stuart Hall (1997) would argue, since it constituted part of the norm which was taken for granted, it was outside the shadow of the dominant North American Other. However, as a refugee in North America, my perception of self was altered in direct response to the social processes of racisms and the historical representation of Blackness whereby the antecedent signifiers became secondary to my Blackness, and I retranslated my self: I became Black (Ibrahim, 2000a). <br /><br />Similarly, the research findings point to the fact that continental African youth are constructed and positioned, much like Fanon, and thus treated as “Blacks” by North American hegemonic discourses, representations and dominant groups, respectively. This positionality offered to continental African students in exceedingly complex ways through interlocking representational discourses does not and is unwilling to acknowledge students’ – ethnic, language, national and cultural – identity difference. Blackness, as I already noted, becomes the encompassing category and the umbrella under which African youth find themselves. This racialized perception and treatment is enforcing and simultaneously enforced by a social imaginary, a discursive space where Blackness is projected further into negative historical memory and representation (Smedley, 1999; West, 1993). Elsewhere I show that this cartography of Blackness , influences students’ sense of identity, which, in turn, influences what they linguistically and culturally learn and how (Ibrahim, 1998, 1999, 2000a&b). What they learn, I will outline below, is Black-stylized English, which they access in Black popular cultural forms, such as films, newspapers, magazines and, more importantly, rap, reggae, pop, R&B and other types of music.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Study: Site, and Participants</span><br /><br />This paper is part of a larger critical ethnographic research (Ibrahim, 1998) that was guided by the following questions. How and in what way does race social identity difference enter the process of learning? What is the role of race and racism in students’ identity formation? How are continental African youth positioned and constructed in and out of school? What are the implications of this construction in their social identity formation, and how are these identities formed and performed ?<br /><br />The site of the research is a small, urban Franco-Ontarian high school, which I will refer to as Marie-Victorin (MV) and which is located in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Being a Franco-Ontarian school, the official language is French, however, the language spoken often in corridors and hallways is English. Besides English and French, Arabic, Somali, and Farsi can also be heard at other times. MV has a population of approximately 400 students from different ethnic, language, religious, and national backgrounds. One-third to one-half of the 400 are students of colour. Despite this disproportionate percentage, all teachers, administrators and staff are White.<br /><br />When continental African students arrived en mass at MV from their homelands starting in 1991, they constituted from one-third to one-half of the school population. They come from cultural and linguistic backgrounds as diverse as their countries of origin: Somalia, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre), Togo, South Africa, Gabon, and Senegal. The Somali speakers make up the majority within this group. The continental African youth vary in age, gender and class. Most come from a middle-class or affluent background; their ages range from twelve to twenty; and they spread from grade seven to thirteen. Some came to Canada as landed immigrants, the majority however came as refugees.<br /><br />I knew the school and its population very well since I worked in another research project in the same school for almost two years. With permission from the school administration, I restarted to visit the school and to “hang out” with African students at least once a week, and in most cases, two or three times from January to June of 1996. I took the role of a participant-observer, keeping regular notes and diaries. Having determined what they could offer to my research, I chose for extensive observation sixteen students – ten boys and six girls – between the ages of fourteen and twenty. The girls were Somali-speakers form Somalia and Djibouti. Of the ten boys, six were Somali-speakers – from Somalia and Djibouti, two Senegalese, one Ethiopian and one Togolese. I observed them in and out of the classrooms as well as in and out of school. With the consent of students and their parents, I interviewed them. I videotaped and audio-taped interactions and exchanges among students. I attended soirées, plays, basketball games, and graduations; and was delighted to be invited to their residences. I transcribed the interviews and some of the videotapes, and analyzed the data by grouping them by theme, category and subject.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Whassup With Hip-Hop? Enacting Black Hybrid Identities</span><br /><br />The identification of continental African students with Hip-Hop culture needed no second observation after six months of being at MV. This identification with Hip-Hop, which is a Black male cultural practice, seemed to cut across all ages for the boys. Depending on their age, the situation with the girls was somewhat different. Girls in grade twelve and thirteen tended to be more postmodernly eclectic in their dress: oscillating between Parisian, eloquent North American middle-class, Hip-Hop and traditional national dress. Some of them, for example, dressed in traditional Somali dress for the multicultural celebration day. Conversely, like the boys, the younger girls of grades seven, eight and nine dressed in Hip-Hop and spoke Black-stylized English. On one afternoon, these younger girls, while behind the scenes preparing for an African dance performance scheduled as part of the Black History Month celebration and also while wearing the Islamic hijab (veil), were rapping to a recording of the African American rapper Cool J.<br /><br />Hip-Hop cultural expressions, as performed (Butler, 1999) and enacted by continental male and female African students at MV, have three distinctive but interlocking features. Hip-Hop can be described as a way of dress, walk, and talk. Hip-hop dress is eloquently described by Rose (1991: 277) in talking about a New York City summer party. Picture this: “Thousands of young Black folks milled around waiting to get into the large arena. The big rap summer tour was in town, and it was a prime night for one to show one's stuff.” Rose then describes what I see as Hip-Hop dress at MV: “Folks were dressed in the latest “fly gear”: bicycle shorts, high-top sneakers, chunk jewelry, baggy pants, and polka-dotted tops. The hair styles were a fashion show in themselves: high fade designs, dread, corkscrews, and braids.” Hip-Hop walk, on the other hand, usually involves moving the hands simultaneously with the head and the rest of the body as one is walking or talking. The talk is what generally referred to as “Black English” or “Black talk” (Smitherman, 2000), which I refer to as Black-stylized English (Ibrahim, 1999).<br /><br />Since continental African students have limited or no contact with African Americans, their source for “Black” (read African American) linguistic and cultural practices is Black popular culture, specifically rap music; referred to in some circles as “urban music” (Walcott, 2000; Powell, 1991). Hence continental African students tend to “pick up” expressions and ways of talking and rapping that encompass stylistic and lexical features and not grammatical ones. For example, African students use expressions such as “yo yo” [appellation to pay attention], “whassup,” “whadap,” “wadap” [what is up/what is happening], “homeboy,” and “homie” [my cool friend]. In so doing, they are stylistically and lexically allying themselves with and translating what they conceive as “Black linguistic practice.”<br /><br />This translation/imitation/citation/enactment is expressed in and through students’ speech, is a performance of Black-stylized English (BSE). BSE is Black English (BE) with style; it is a subcategory. BE is what some have referred to as Black talk (Smitherman, 2000), which has its own structure, syntax and grammar. BSE, on the other hand, refers to ways of speaking that do not depend on a full mastery of the language (Ibrahim, 1999). It banks more on ritual expressions such whassup, whadap, etc., which are more an expression of politics, moments of identification with Hip-Hop cultural identity and a desire for it than they are of language per se. They become the youth way of saying: “I too am Black,” and “I too desire Blackness.”<br /><br />For continental African youth, significantly, these lexical expressions are new linguistic and cultural practices they learn, take up or “enter.” Adopting Hip-Hop, making it a mattering map influences not only their identity formation but also how they position themselves and how they are positioned by others (Foucault, 1977). This is because when continental African students chose African American cultural and linguistic practices, they in fact chose an identification with a language and historical memory as well as a political and social stance.<br /><br />I asked students in all of my interviews with African students, “Où est-ce que vous avez appris votre anglais?” (Where did you learn English?). “Télévision,” they unanimously responded. However, within this télévision, there is a particular representation that seems to interpellate African youth identity and identification: Black popular culture. I asked Najat (14, F, Djibouti), for example, about the last movie she had seen:<br /><br />Najat: I don’t know, I saw Waiting to Exhale and I saw what else I saw, I saw Swimmer, and I saw Jumanji; so wicked, all the movies. I went to Waiting to Exhale wid my boyfriend and I was like “men are rude” [laughs].<br />Awad: Oh believe me I know I know.<br />Najat: And den he [her boyfriend] was like “no, women are rude.” I was like we’re like fighting you know and joking around. I was like, and de whole time like [laughs], and den when de woman burns the car, I was like, “go girls!” You know and all the women are like “go girl1” you know? And den de men like khhh. I am like, “I’m gonna go get me a popcorn” [laughs]. (individual interview, English)<br /><br />Two issues are of particular interest in Najat’s example. The first is the influence of Black English in using de, den, dat, and wicked instead of the, then, that, and really really good, respectively. The second is embedded in this notion: Youths do not read, relate to and identify with texts disembodiedly. That is, their agency and subjectivities bear witness and influence their reading of the text. For example, two subjectivities influenced Najat’s reading of Waiting to Exhale were her race and gender identities. It is the Black/woman in burning her husband’s car that interpellates Najat.<br /><br />This interpellation or hailing, using Althusseur’s (1971) terms, or moments of identification, using my own, point to the process of identification. This is a subconscious process which takes place over a period of time and it functions by internalizing that which is meaningful to us, hence determining our mattering maps, that which deserves our desires and investment. Omer (18, M, Ethiopia) expresses the different ways in which African youth enter, so to speak, this process of identification when he contends:<br /><br />Black Canadian youths are influenced by the Afro-Americans. You watch for hours, you listen to Black music, you watch Black comedy, Master T., the Rap City, there you will see singers who dress in particular ways. You see, so. (individual interview, French)<br /><br />For Omer and all the students I spoke to, their identification with Black popular culture is in large measures connected to their inability to relate to dominant groups and their cultural capital. As a result, Black popular culture emerges as a site of identification. Exploring this contention, Mukhi (19, M, Djibouti) contends:<br /><br />We identify ourselves more with the Blacks of America. But, this is normal… We can’t, since we live in Canada, we can’t identify ourselves with Whites or country music you know [laughs]. We are going to identify ourselves on the contrary with people of our colour, who have our lifestyle you know. (group interview, French).<br /><br />The impact of these moments of identification was felt not only in the identity formation processes, but also in the course of second language learning. Here, rap was a significant site. And the fact that rap language was more spread in the boys’ narratives raises the question of the role of gender in the process of identification and learning. The following are two of the many occasions on which students articulated their identification with and desire for Black America through the re/citation of rap linguistic styles.<br /><br />Sam: One two, one two, mic check. A’ait [alright], a’ait, a’ait.<br />Juma: This is the rapper, you know what ’m meaning? You know wha ’m saying?<br />Sam: Mic mic mic; mic check. A’ait you wonna test it? Ah, I’ve the microphone you know; a’ait.<br />Sam: [laughs] I don’t rap man, c’mon give me a break. [laughs] Yo! A’ait a’ait you know, we just about to finish de tape and all dat. Respect to my main man [pointing to me]. So, you know, you know wha ’m mean, ’m just represen’in Q7. One love to Q7 you know wha ’m mean and all my friends back to Q7… Stop the tapin’ boy!<br />Jamal: Kim Juma, live! Put the lights on. Wordap. [Students talking in Somali] Peace out, wardap, where de book. Jamal ’am outta here.<br />Shapir: Yo, this is Shapir. I am trying to say peace to all my Niggaz, all my bitches from a background that everybody in the house. So, yo, chill out and this is how we gonna kick it. Bye and with that pie. All right, peace yo.<br />Sam: A’ait this is Sam represen’in AQA […] where it’s born, represen’in you know wha ’m mean? I wonna say whassup to all my Niggaz, you know, peace and one love. You know wha ’m mean, Q7 represen’in foreva. Peace! [Rap music]<br />Jamal: [as a DJ] Crank it man, coming up. [rap music] (group interview, English)<br />Of interest in these excerpts is the use of Black-stylized English (BSE), especially the language of rap: “Respect for my main man,” “represen’in Q7,” “ kick the free style,” “peace out, wardap,” “’am outta here,” “I am trying to say peace to all my Niggaz, all my bitches,” “so, yo chill out and this is how we gonna kick it,” “I wonna say whassup to all my Niggaz,” “peace and one love.” As important, when Shapir deploys terms like “Niggaz” and “bithces,” he is first reappropriating the word Nigger, an appellation common in rap and Hip-Hop culture which is invoked without its traditional racist connotation; and, secondly however, he is using the sexist language that exists in rap (Ibrahim, 1999). This language has been challenged by female rappers and was critiqued by male and female students (Ibrahim, 2000a, p. 126).<br /><br />Clearly, the boys were investing in Black popular culture, especially rap, as both a site of desire and of language learning. Depending on their age, on the other hand, the girls were either fully investing in rap and Hip-Hop like the boys or being postmodernly eclectic. In spite of this, I detected the following three features of Black English (BE) in both the older and the younger girls’ speech: 1) the absence of the auxiliary be (19 occasions, e.g., “they so cool,” “I just laughing” as opposed to they are so cool and I am just laughing); 2) BE negative concord (4 occasions, e.g., “all he [the teacher] cares about is his daughter you know. If somebody just dies or if I decide to shoot somebody you know, he is not doing nothing [italics added]”; the expression would be considered incorrect in standard English because of the double negative); and 3) the distributive be (4 occasions, e.g. “I be saying dis dat you know?” or “He be like ‘Oh, elle va être bien’ [she’s going to be fine]”). These BE markers are, first, expressions of the influence of Black Talk on the girls’ speech and, second, performances of the girls’ identity location and desire. The girls had no illusion on where they saw themselves mirrored and where to invest. Amani (16, F, Somalia) contends:<br /><br />We have to wonder why we try to really follow the model of the Americans who are Blacks? Because when you search for yourself, search for identification, you search for someone who reflects you, with whom you have something in common. (group interview, French)<br /><br />In a group interview, I asked Mukhi, in English, “But do you think that that [listening to rap] influences how you [African youths] speak?” He responded, “How we dress, how we speak, how we behave.” Supporting both Mukhi and Amani, Hassan (17, M, Djibouti) argued:<br /><br />Yes yes, African students are influenced by rap and hip-hop because they want to, yes, they are influenced probably a bit more because it is the desire to belong maybe.<br />Awad: Belong to what?<br />Hassan: To a group, belong to a society, to have a model/fashion [he used the term un modèle]; you know, the desire to mark oneself, the desire to make, how do I say it? To be part of a rap society, you see. It is like getting into rock and roll or heavy metal. (individual interview, French)<br /><br />In the same interview, Hassan found it unrealistic to expect to see Blackness allied with rock and roll or heavy metal, as they are socially constructed as White music. Similarly, he argued that African youths would have every reason to invest in basketball – constructed as a Black sport – but not hockey, for example. Clearly, one invests where one sees oneself mirrored, and African students had no doubt where their investment lied: an investment that is considerably influenced by who they are or what they have become.<br /><br />In a racially conscious society, Hall (1991) argues, being Black means one is expected to be Black, act Black, and so be the Other. Becoming Black, on the other hand, I have shown, was a significant cartography not only in how African students were positioned in and outside the school, but also in how they saw, formed and performed their identities, subjectivities, investments and desires (see also Yon, 2000). This politics of positionality – how one is imagined, constructed and represented and the impacts of these on how one sees oneself, I contended, was directly implicated in students’ political, linguistic and cultural choices. The effects of this politics are eloquently delineated in Fanon’s Black skin/White mask. Fanon (1967,p. 116) shows how the gaze of the Other fixes him in an identity: “When people like me, they tell me it is in spite of my colour. When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my colour. Either way, I am locked into the infernal circle.” Again, when the child pulls her finger and points at him exclaiming “Look momma, a Black man,” Fanon writes, “I was fixed in that gaze” – the gaze of Otherness (Hall, 1991). This example is probably too descriptive causing one to cast a doubt on the subtle and the almost completely unconscious experience within which identities are formed and performed, which in turn make certain maps matter.<br /><br />Taking up, identifying with, enacting, imitating or citing Hip-Hop and rap means learning the cultural as well as linguistic practices that are introduced to continental African students through Black popular culture. They enter representational discourses of Blackness and Hip-Hop by learning a new style of dress and new ways of walking and of talking. Hence, students enter a “null curriculum,” with which they do identify; a curriculum that at least partially reflects their own subjectivities; a curriculum that influences who they are and the future they desire.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">This is not a Conclusion: Affect and the Pedagogy of Hip-Hop</span><br /><br />Hiphopness – the dynamic and constant sense of being alive in a hip hop, rap conscious, reality based world – is actually where many young black people are today. As we enter [the 21st Century], it becomes even more important to realize that significant changes are taking place in the rapidly growing hip hop world. To stand back, wack crack style is to succumb to the inertia of the past. And yet, to become a participant in this highly fluid, ritualized space is to exercise an act of freedom that may very well change your constitutive being (Spady, 1993, p. 96).<br /><br />The issues at stake in this paper are as follow. First, there seems to be two contradictory “texts” – tendencies, if you like – in education today. They are best described by Greene (1997, p. 64), “one has to do with shaping malleable young people to serve the needs of technology in a postindusturial society; the other has to do with educating young people to grow and to become different, to find their individual voices, and to participate in a community in the making.” The pedagogy of Hip-Hop I am proposing, which is a pedagogy of affective, oscillates towards the latter, emphasizing a “politics of choice.” Here the cartography of African students’ null curriculum would be the starting point, if not the base, for a critical inclusive curriculum. A curriculum that, 1) deconstructs “culture” as static category, with hierarchical arrangements, undermining the multiplicity of cultural identity, difference and community (Yon, 2000); 2) sees students’ lives as providing the basis for reconceptualizing history as dynamic cultural and social productions; 3) notes that what might constitute reality for students may not be the teacher’s reality; 4) draws on students’ creative use of Black stylized English; 5) investigates Black popular cultural forms as part of hybrid diasporic cultural expressions that draw on a plurality of Black histories and politics; and 6) sees gender differences of identity enactments or a global understanding of them as part of a critical inclusive curriculum (hence, they need serious engagement and deconstruction).<br /><br />Second, we know that students do not come to classrooms as generic disembodied individuals. On the contrary, racial and gender identities formed outside the classroom are crucial in the learning processes. Specifically, I showed and pointed to the fact that, Black popular culture, defined as a “null curriculum,” is and can be on-and-off-school site where learning can and indeed does take place. If this is so, the notion of learning and worthwhile knowledge then needs to be reproblematized and broadened to include a variety of forms. Accordingly, learning may mean learning and appropriating hybrid cultural and linguistic practices that are not valued by the hegemonic dominant culture or outside the “main text.” Significantly however, this raises the question: Why do African youth, for example, choose linguistic and cultural forms that are marginalized by the dominant group’s narratives and cultures? The answer lies in part in what might be called the “politics of ethnic absolutism of Blackness,” that is, how students are positioned by hegemonic discourses as “Blacks.”<br /><br />Third, this positionality needs to be deconstructed and new formulations that link on-and-off-school identities to classroom praxis need to be articulated and seriously engaged (see also Diamond and Mullen, 1999; Morgan-Fleming, 1999). Here, there is an urgent need for a praxis that links “formal” education/learning with the popular, “informal.” If those “who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word” are ever to speak it, Paulo Freire (1993, p. 69) argued, their world has to be linked to their word. Here, I am suggesting rap to be incorporated in classrooms, particularly English classrooms and especially English as a Second Language (ESL). There, rap can be studied as a genre, style and content, or it can be used simply to expose students to different linguistic variations and accents.<br /><br />Fourth, rap and Black popular culture in general can create spaces where not only women and gender issues are brought to the forefront, but also racial, class, ability, and other forms of oppressions. Elsewhere (Ibrahim, 2002), I cited the multiple times in which students expressed their dissatisfaction with the “main text.” One female student, it was her fifth year in the school, complained about doing the same language arts exercise for four consecutive years with the same teacher. When I asked her, as part of a group interview, whether she would like to study Hip-Hop/rap, the whole group applauded and answered, “Bien sûr! Ce serait bien agréable, très bon” [Of course! It would be really great, really good]. For these young people, rap as an aesthetic and oral narrative could be a curriculum that brings their concerns about sexuality, racism, sexism, and homophobia to the center. Also as a space for knowledge production, rap can be envisioned as a borderland which creates a language of critique that goes hand in hand with a language of possibility and hope (Anzaldua, 1987; hooks, 1994; Giroux, 1994; Simon, 1992).<br /><br />Fifth and finally, proposing Black popular culture as a curriculum site is not an end in itself. I see it as either a starting point from which one moves into the “main text” or as a “text” used within the borders of the “main text.” This proposition is also a call to centralize and engage marginalized subjectivities, their voices, and their ways of being and learning. It is a proposition which entails, first, a legitimization of a form of knowledge otherwise perceived as illegitimate and, second, a disruption to the one-dimensional representation of Blackness, a hybrid category which is de facto multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic (Ibrahim, 2000a). It is also a proposition where rap and Hip-Hop can constitute sites of possibilities and hope. A hope that those who do not see themselves represented in the curriculum, those who can not relate to the curriculum, those who are wittingly or unwittingly kept silent, may find a subject matter they can relate to and identify with; a subject matter that brings their experience to the forefront so it can be valued and not uncritically engaged. A hope that educators will not stuck in the notion that they do not know much about Hip-Hop, and hence it is better kept dormant. A hope that they will engage the different mattering maps where students invest their identities, learning, and desires. In the case of African youth, one must ask, whose identity are we assuming if we do not engage Hip-Hop and rap in our classroom activities? “By ignoring the cultural and social forms that are authorized by youth and simultaneously empower or disempower them,” Giroux and Simon (1989a, p. 3) argue, “educators risk complicitly silencing and negating their students.”<br /><br />This is unwittingly accomplished by refusing to recognize the importance of those sites and social practices outside of school that actively shape student experiences and through which students often define and construct their sense of identity, politics, and culture. (Giroux and Simon, 1989a, p. 3)<br /><br />The issue at stake, then, is not only to motivate and empower students but, more importantly, to enable them to locate themselves in time and history and at the same time critically interrogate the adequacy of that location.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">References</span><br />Althusser, L. 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The Postmodern Education: Arts-Based Inquiries and Teacher Development. New York: Peter Lang.<br />Dimitriadis, G. and McCarthy, C. (2001). Reading the Postcolonial: From Baldwin to Basquiat and Beyond. New York and London: Teachers College Press.<br />Eisner, E. and Powell, P. (2002). Art in Science? Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 131-159.<br />Eisner, E. (1979). The Educational Imagination On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs.. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.<br />Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin White Mask. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.<br />Foucault, M. (1977). Language, Counter-memory, Practice. Translated by D. Bouchard and S. Simon. New York: Cornell University Press.<br />Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.<br />Gilroy, P. (1997). Diaspora, Utopia and the Critique of Capitalism. In Gelder, K. and Thornton, S. (Eds.). The Subcultures Reader. New York: Routledge, pp.340-349.<br />Giroux, H. (2000). Stealing Innocence: Youth, Corporate Power, and the Politics of Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press.<br />Giroux, H. (1994). Living Dangerously: Identity Politics and the New Cultural Racism. In Giroux, H. and McLaren, P. (Eds.) Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 29-55.<br />Giroux, H. and Simon, R. (1989a). Schooling, Popular Culture, and a Pedagogy of Possibility. In Giroux, H. and Simon, R. (Eds.) Popular Culture, Schooling, and Everyday Life. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc. pp. 219-235<br />Giroux, H. and Simon, R. (1989b). Popular Culture as a Pedagogy of pleasure and meaning. In Giroux, H. and Simon, R. (Eds.) Popular Culture, Schooling, and Everyday Life. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc. pp. 1-29.<br />Goldberg, M. (1997). Arts and Learning: An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings. New York: Longman.<br />Greene, M. (1997). 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New York: Routledge.<br />hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2003). Black-in-English: Black English as a Symbolic Site of Identification. In G. Smitherman, S. Makoni, and A. Ball (Eds). Black Linguistics: Language, Society and Politics in Africa and the Americas. London: Routledge, pp. 110-123.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2002). “Hey, ain’t I Black too?”: Rap and Hip-Hop as Sites of Learning and Investment. Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, March 28-April 1st.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2000a). “Hey, ain’t I Black too?” The Politics of Becoming Black. In R. Walcott (Ed.) Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. Toronto: Insomniac Press, pp. 109-136.<br />Ibrahim, A. (2000b). Trans-re-framing identity: Race, language, culture, and the politics of translation. trans/forms: Insurgent Voices in Education Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 120- 135.<br />Ibrahim, A. (1999). Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-hop, Race, Gender, Identity and the Politics of ESL Learning, TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 349-369.<br />Ibrahim, A. (1998). “Hey, Whassup Homeboy?”; Becoming Black: Race, Language, Culture, and the Politics of Identity; African Students in a Franco-Ontarian High School. Unpublished Doctoral thesis, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.<br />Kelley, J. (1998). Under the Gaze: Learning to be Black in White Society. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.<br />Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia University Press.<br />Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits. London: Tavistock.<br />Morgan-Fleming, B. (1999). Teaching as Performance: Connections between Folklore and Education, Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 273-291.<br />Nieto, S. (2000). Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. USA: Longman Publishers.<br />Nietzsche, F. (1977). A Nietzsche Reader. New York: Penguin Classics.<br />Powell, C. (1991). Rap Music: An Education with a beat from the street, Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 245-259.<br />Quinn, T. and Kahne, J. (2001). Wide Awake to the World: The Arts and Urban Schools – Conflicts and Contributions of an After-School Program. Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 11-32.<br />Rose, T. (1991). Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990. Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 276-290.<br />Simon, R. I. (1992). Teaching Against the Grain: Texts for a Pedagogy of Possibility. New York: Bergin & Garvey.<br />Simon, R. and Dippo, D. (1986). On Critical Ethnography Work, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 195-202.<br />Smedley, A. (1999). Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Oxford: Westview Press.<br />Smitherman, G. (2000). Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.<br />Spady, J. (1993). ‘I ma put my thing down’: Afro-American Expressive Culture and the Hip-Hop Community. TYANABA Revue de la Société d’Anthropologie. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 93-98.<br />Walcott, R. (2000). By way of a Brief Introduction – Insubordination: A Demand for a Different Canada. In Walcott, R. (Ed.) Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. Toronto: Insomniac Press, pp. 7-10.<br />West, C. (1993). Race Matters. Boston: Beacon Press.<br />Williams, R. (1979). Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review. London: New Left Books.<br />Yon, D. (2000). Elusive Culture: Schooling, Race, and Identity in Global Times. New York: State University of New York Press.<br /><br />Awad Ibrahim is Assistant Professor at the Department of Educational Foundations and Inquiry, Faculty of Education, Bowling Green State Univesity, Ohio. He teaches and publishes in the areas of antiracism and critical multiculturalism, applied socio-linguistics, cultural studies, critical pedagogy and educational foundation. He is interested both in exploring the connections between race, language and culture and the politics of identity, and in film and popular music studies, especially Hip-Hop and rap. E-mail: ibraham@bgnet.bgsu.edu.<br /><br />Notes:Dr. Awad Ibrahim, aka Dr. Drehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10515385836343957505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8641929049805692777.post-35955791830585174012007-11-20T14:33:00.000-05:002007-11-21T10:28:04.498-05:00Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span><br /></div>This paper is about the impact of becoming Black on ESL learning, that is, the interrelation between identity and learning. It contends that a group of French-speaking immigrant and refugee continental African youths who are attending an urban Franco-Ontarian high school in South Western Ontario, Canada, enters a social imaginary – a discursive space in which they are already imagined, constructed, and thus treated as Blacks by hegemonic discourses and groups. This imaginary is directly implicated in whom they identify with (Black America) which in turn, influences what and how they linguistically and culturally learn. They learn Black stylized English, which they access in hip hop culture and rap lyrical and linguistic styles. This critical ethnography, conducted within an interdisciplinary framework, shows that ESL is neither neutral nor without its politics and pedagogy of desire and investment.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Paper</span><br /></div><br />“[T]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of color-line”, asserted W. E. Du Bois (1903, p. 13). If this be so, what are the implications of t/his prophetic statement as far as second language learning/acquisition (SLA) is implicated? In this fin de siècle, where identity formation is increasingly mediated by technological mediums, who learns what and how? How do our differently raced, gendered, sexualized, abled, and classed social identities enter the process of learning a second language? In a postcolonial era when postcolonial subjects are constituting part of the Metropolitan ‘centers’, what is the ‘critical pedagogy’ required in order not to repeat the colonial history embedded in the classroom relationship between white teachers and students of color? Finally, at a time when the North American blackness is governed by how it is negatively located in a race conscious society, what does it mean for a Black ESL learner to ‘take up’ and acquire Black English as a Second Language (BESL)? In other words, what symbolic, cultural, pedagogical, and identity investment would a learner have in locating oneself politically and racially at the ‘margin’ of representation?<br />This paper is an attempt, a will to an answer. Conceptually, it is located at the borderline between two indistinguishable, and perhaps never separable, categories of ‘critical discourses’: race and gender. The paper addresses the process of becoming Black, where race is as vital as gender, and articulates a political and pedagogical research framework which puts at its center the social being as embodied subjectivities which are embedded in and performed through language, culture, history, and memory (Dei, 1996; Essed, 1991; Gilroy, 1987; Ibrahim, 1998; Rampton, 1995; Giroux and Simon, 1989). As an identity configuration, ‘becoming Black’ is deployed to talk about the subject formation project which is produced in, and simultaneously is produced by the process of language learning, namely learning Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Put more concretely, becoming Black meant, as it will be seen, learning BESL, yet the very process of BESL learning produced the epiphenomenon of ‘becoming Black’. To become, I have argued elsewhere (Ibrahim, 1998), is historical. Indeed, it is history and how we experience it that govern our identity, memory, ways of being, becoming, and learning (see also Foucault, 1979, pp. 170-184). To address, therefore, questions of pedagogy in this context, is necessarily to attend to and be concerned with the linkages between the Self, identity, desire and the English(es) that our students invest in.<br /><br />This paper is part of a larger ethnographic study (Ibrahim, 1998). It made use of the above ‘critical’ frames and the newly developed methodological approach ‘ethnography of performance.’ The latter argues that social beings perform (Butler, 1990), at least in part, their subjectivities, identities, and desires in and through ‘complex semiological languages.’ These comprise anything that does not have verbal utterance ability, mute, yet ready to speak: the body, modes of dress, architecture, photography, etc. (see Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Barthes, 1967/1983).The research took place in an urban French-language high school in South Western Ontario, Canada, which I will refer to as Marie-Victorin (M.V.), and it looks at the lives of a group of continental francophone African youths and their social identity formation. Besides their youth and refugee status, their gendered and raced experience is vital in their ‘moments of identification’: i.e., where and how they see themselves reflected in the mirror of their society (see also Bhabha, 1994). Put otherwise, once in North America, I contend, these youths are faced with a ‘social imaginary’ (Anderson, 1983) where they are already ‘Blacks.’ This social imaginary is directly implicated in how and whom they identify with, which in turn influences what they linguistically and culturally learn, as well as how. What they learn, I demonstrate, is ‘Black stylized English’ which they access in and through Black popular culture. They learn by taking up and re-positing the rap linguistic and musical genre and, in different ways, acquiring and re-articulating hip hop cultural identity.<br /><br />Black stylized English (BSE) is Black English (BE) with ‘style’; it is a subcategory. BE is what Smitherman (1994) refers to as ‘Black talk,’ which has its own grammar and syntax (see Labov, 1972). BSE, on the other hand, refers to ways of speaking that do not depend on a full mastery of the language. It banks more on ritual expressions (see Rampton, 1995, for the idea of ‘rituality’) such as ‘whassup,’ ‘whadap,’ ‘whassup my Nigger,’ ‘yo, yo homeboy,’ which are performed habitually and recurrently in rap. The rituals are more an expression of politics, moments of identification, and desire than they are of language or mastering the language per se. It is a way of saying ‘I too am Black’ or ‘I too desire and identify with blackness.’<br />By Black popular culture, on the other hand, I am referring to films, newspapers, magazines, and more importantly music such as rap, reggae, pop, and rhythm and blues (R&B). The term hip hop refers to the overall naming apparatus which comprises everything from music (especially rap), to clothing choice, attitudes, language, and an approach to culture and cultural artifacts, positing and collaging them in an unsentimental fashion (Walcott, 1995, p. 5). More skeletally, I use hip hop to describe a way of dress, walk, and talk. The dress refers to the myriad shades and shapes of the latest “fly gear”: high-top sneakers, bicycle shorts, chunk jewelry, baggy pants, and polka-dotted tops (Rose, 1991, p. 277). The hair styles are as well part of this fashion. These include high fade designs, dread, corkscrews, and braids (ibid.). The walk usually means moving the hands’ fingers simultaneously with the head and the rest of the body as one is walking. The talk, however, is the BSE that I refer to above. By patterning these behaviors, significantly, African youths enter the realm of becoming Black. Hence, this paper is about this process of becoming and how it is implicated in BSE learning.<br /><br />In this process, the interlocking question of identification and desire is of particular interest. It asks the following: Who do we as social subjects living within a social space desire to be or to become? And who do we identify with and what repercussions does our identification have on how and what we learn? This question has already been dealt with in semiology (Gottdiener, 1995; Barthes, 1967/1983; Eco, 1976), psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1988; Kristeva, 1974), and cultural studies (Grossberg et al., 1992; Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 1990; Mercer, 1994). I am yet to see it raised, let alone incorporated seriously, in ESL and applied linguistic research. For instance, in her study, Lynn Goldstein (1987) focused on the linguistic features of Black English as they were found in the speech of a group of Puerto Rican youths in New York City. However, she did not address the issue of what it means for a Puerto Rican youth to learn Black English? What investment does s/he have in doing so? And what roles, if any, do race, desire and identification have in the process of learning? Instead, Goldstein offers a very meticulous syntactico-morphological analysis. It is not a question of either/or, but I strongly believe that it would be more fruitful for ESL pedagogy, and the nature of SLA would be better understood if both were located within a socio-cultural context. Language, Bourdieu (1991) argues, is no longer and never was just an instrument of communication. It is also where power is formed and performed based on race, gender, sexuality, and class social identity. My work differs from Goldstein’s study in that it moves toward a more cultural, political, and stylistic analysis.<br />In what follows, I discuss the methodology, the site, and the subject of my research. This will be intersected with a discussion of the research’s guiding propositions, contentions, and questions, with a look at how the ‘I’, the researcher, is implicated in the research and the questions he is asking. ‘I’ then offer examples of African youths’ speech where BSE can be detected, to demonstrate the interplay between subject formation, identification, and BESL learning. I will also offer students’ reflections and narratives on the impact of ‘identification’ on becoming Black. Centralizing their everyday experience of identity, I hereafter conclude with some ‘critical pedagogical’ (Pennycook, 1994; Peirce, 1989; Corson, 1997) and didactic propositions on the connections between investment, subjectivity, and ESL learning. Beginning with the premise that ESL learning is locality, I ask the following: if local identity is the site where we as teachers and researchers should start our praxis and research formulations (Rampton, 1995; Peirce 1997; Morgan, 1997), then I would contend that any pedagogical input that does not link the political, the cultural, and the social with identity and, in turn, with the process of ESL learning, is likely to fail.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">RESEARCH(ER) SITE, SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGY, AND QUESTIONS</span><br /><br />Between January and June 1996, I conducted a ‘critical ethnographic research project’ at Marie-Victorin (M. V.), a small Franco-Ontarian intermediate and high school (grades 7-13). M.V. has a school population of approximately 389 students from a different ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds. Although it is a French-language school, the language spoken by students in the school corridors and hallways is predominately English; Arabic, Somali, and Farsi are also spoken at other times. The school has 27 teachers, all of whom are white. The school archives show that up until the beginning of the 1990s, students were also almost all white, except for a few students of African (read ‘Blacks’) and Middle Eastern descent.<br /><br />For a period of over six months, I attended classes at M.V., talked to students, and observed curricular and extra-curricular activities two or three times per week. Because of previous involvement in another project in the same school for almost two years, at the time of this research I was well acquainted with M.V. and its population, especially its African students, with whom I was able to develop a good communicative relationship.<br /><br />Being the only Black adult beside the Black counselor, and being a displaced subject, a refugee, and an African myself had given me a certain familiarity with the students’ experiences. I was able to connect with different age and gender groups through a range of activities, initially ‘hanging out’ with the students, and later playing basketball, volleyball and soccer with various groups. I was also approached by these students for both guidance and academic help. Because of my deep involvement in the student culture, at times my status as researcher was forgotten, and the line between the students and myself became blurred; clearly, there was a space of comfort, a safe space which allowed us to open up, speak and engage freely. This research was as much about the youths themselves and their narration of their experiences as it was about my own; in most cases, the language itself was unnecessary in order to understand the plight of the youths and their daily encounters, both within M.V. and outside its walls.<br /><br />Significantly, at the time of this research, the percentage of the students at M.V. (or their parents) who were born outside Canada made up 70 percent of the entire school population. Continental Africans constituted the majority within that figure, and indeed within M.V.’s population in general, although their numbers did fluctuate slightly from year to year. However, with the exception of one temporary Black counselor, there was not one teacher or administrator of color at the school. Despite this, the school continues to emphasize the theme of unity within this multicultural and multi-ethnoracial population. The slogan which the school advertises, for instance, is "Unité dans la diversité" [Unity in diversity]. This discourse of unity, however, remains at the level of abstraction and it has little material bearing on the students’ lives; it is the Frenchness of the school that seems to be the capital of its promotion. That is, the French language, especially in Canada, represents an extremely important ‘symbolic capital’ which, according to Bourdieu (1991), can be the key for accessing ‘material capitals’ -- jobs, business, etc. Given their postcolonial educational history, African youths, in the majority, do in fact come to Franco-Ontarian schools already possessing a highly valued symbolic capital: <span style="font-style: italic;">le français parisien</span>.<br /><br />My research subjects encompass these youths and part of a growing continental francophone African population in Franco-Ontarian schools to which I refer as Black Franco-Ontarians. Their number started to exponentially grow since the beginning of the 1990s. Their histories vary, first, in their length of sojourn in Canada which extends from one or two to 5 or 6 years; secondly, their legal status (some are immigrants, but the majority are refugees) and, thirdly, their gender, class, age, linguistic, and national background. They come from places as diverse as Djibouti, Somalia, Senegal, Republic of Congo (previously Zaïre), South Africa, Gabon, and Togo. With no exception, all of the African students in M.V. are at least trilingual: English, French, and mother tongue or first language, with various (postcolonial) histories of language learning and degrees of fluency in each language.<br /><br />On my return to M.V. in January of 1996 to conduct my research, I spent the first month undirectedly talking to and hanging out with different gender and age groups of African youths; this was of course with their permission as well as their parents’ and the school administration’s. During this month, I attended classes, played basketball, volleyball, and indoor soccer, and generally hung out with the students. After having spent a month getting to know the students in this way, I then chose 16 students for extensive ethnographic observation: 10 boys and 6 girls. I followed them in and outside classroom and in and outside the school. I interviewed all 16. Of the 10 boys, six were Somali speakers (from Somalia and Djibouti), one Ethiopian, two Senegalese, and one from Togo. Their ages ranged from 16-20. The 6 girls, on the other hand, were all Somali speakers (also from Somalia and Djibouti), aged from 14 to 18 years.<br /><br />I conducted individual interviews as well as two focus-group interviews, one with the boys and one with the girls. They were all conducted in the school grounds, with the exception of the boys’ focus group interview which took place in one of the students’ residence. Students were given the option to conduct the interviews in the language of their choice: some were in English, but the majority were in French. I translated these into English. The only Black counselor and the former Black teacher were also interviewed. The interviews were closely transcribed and analyzed. School documents and archives were consulted and I occasionally videotaped cultural and sport activities; on two occasions, tape recorders were given to students to capture those ‘natural’ interactions among themselves (Rampton, 1995).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">RESEARCH CONTENTIONS</span><br /><br />My central working contention is that, once in North America, continental African youths enter a social imaginary, a discursive space, a representation where they are ‘already’ constructed, imagined, positioned, and thus are to be treated by the hegemonic discourses and dominant groups, respectively, as ‘Blacks.’ Here, I am addressing the white (racist) everyday communicative state of mind: “Oh, they all look like Blacks to me!”. It is a positionality offered to continental African youths through net-like praxis in exceedingly complex and mostly subconscious ways, a positionality which does not, and is unwilling to, acknowledge students' ethnic, language, national, and cultural identity difference. This net-like praxis is brilliantly summed up when Fanon writes about himself as a Black Antillais coming to the metropolis of Paris. "I am given no chance", he posits, "I am overdetermined from without... And already I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed. Having adjusted their microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my reality" (1967, p. 116; my italics).<br /><br />In other words, continental African youths find themselves in a racially conscious society which, wittingly or unwittingly and through fused social mechanisms such as racisms and representations, asks them to racially fit somewhere. To fit somewhere signifies ‘choosing’ or becoming aware of one’s own being, which is partially reflected in one’s language practice. Choosing is a question of agency; that is, by virtue of being a subject, one possesses a room to maneuver one’s own desires and choices. My point put otherwise is that although a social subject may count her/his desires and choices as hers/his, these choices are disciplined (Foucault, 1979) by the social conditions under which the subject lives. For example, to be Black in a racially conscious society like the Euro-Canadian and American society signifies one is expected to be Black, act Black and so be the Other, the marginalized (Hall, 1991; hooks, 1992). Under such disciplinary social conditions, as I will show, continental African youths express their moments of identification in relation to African Americans and African American cultures and languages. They are thus to become ‘Blacks’. Taking up rap/hip hop and speaking BSE is by no means a coincidence. On the contrary, these are articulations of the youths’ desire to belong to a location, politics, memory, history, and hence representation.<br /><br />Being is being distinguished here from becoming. The former is an accumulative memory, an experience, and an apprehension upon which one interacts with the world around her/him, whereas the latter is the process of building this apprehension, this memory. For example, as a continental, I was not ‘Black’ in Africa, though I had other adjectives that used to bricolage my identity, such as tall, Sudanese, basketball player, etc. However, as a refugee in North America, my perception of self was altered in direct response to the social processes of racism and the historical representation of blackness whereby the antecedent signifiers became secondary to my blackness, and I retranslated my self: I became Black.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">BECOMING TRI/MULTILINGUAL: SITES/SIDES OF ESL LEARNING</span><br /><br />For most francophone African youths, coming to a Canadian English speaking metropolis, such as Vancouver or Winnipeg, is a decision taken by their parents who themselves are bound by circumstances of having relatives in that city. I inquired why an English speaking city might be considered as a place of sojourn as opposed to Quebec which is a French speaking province:<br />Hassan : First of all, we had relatives who were here. Yes, secondly, because there is French and English. It is more the relative question because you know when you go to a new country, there is a tendency to go towards the people you know. Because you don’t want to adventure in the unknown; and you can’t have, you also want to get help, all the help possible to succeed better.<br /><br />In this context where English is the medium of everyday interaction, African youths are compelled or expected to speak (in) English if they are to be understood, if they are to be able to perform simple daily functions like negotiating public transport and buying groceries. In the following excerpt, Aziza renarrates (in French) and remembers her early days when her English speech competence was limited:<br /><br />If I want to go to the boutique, I have to speak to the guy (Monsieur) in English because he doesn’t speak French. If I go to the shop to buy clothes, I have to speak in English, you see. It is something that you have to; you have to force yourself. In the early days, I used to go with my sister because my sister spoke English. So, I always took her with me. Then, I had to go by myself because she was not always going to be by my side. I had to speak, I had to learn to speak English so I can help myself and I can you know, I can deal with anything you see. So, in other words, you are obliged, it is something you can’t escape from. Because the society is anglophone, the country is anglophone, the services are in English, you see, that’s why.<br />For the youths, the ‘inescapability’ of interacting in English translates into a will to rapidly learn English. Popular culture, especially television, friendship, and peer interactive pressure are three mechanisms that hasten the speed of learning. The peer pressure was felt more-so in African students’ early days in the school when they were denigrated for not speaking English. Franco-Ontarian students, Heller (1994, 1992) explains, use English in their everyday interaction, especially outside classrooms. This means that if African students want to participate in school public spaces as well as in-and-outside classroom activities, they are left with no option but to learn English. Once it is learned, English becomes as much a medium of communication as it is a source of pride:<br /><br />Asma : If you don’t speak English, like in my grade 7, "Oh, she doesn’t speak! Oh, we are sorry, you can explain to her, she doesn’t understand English la petite . Can you?" They think that we are really stupid, that we are retarded (sic), that we don’t understand the language. Now I know English, I speak it all the time. I show them that I understand English (laughs), I show them that I do English. Oh, I got it, it gives me great pleasure.<br /><br />Asma is addressing, first, the condescending teacher’s manner of speech when the latter realized that Asma did not speak English. Undoubtedly, this leads to more pressure on Asma and African students in general to learn English. Secondly, her narrative addresses the threshold desire of a teenager who wants to fully participate in dominant markets and public spaces. This full participation was obstructed by an inability to speak English which is the way to deploy and organize friendships. Yet, the deployment of friendship, and even learning English, is influenced by the popular imaginary, popular representation, popular culture: television. I asked students in all of the interviews "Où est-ce que vous avez appris votre anglais?" [From where did you learn your English?]. "Télévision," they unanimously responded. However, within this ‘télévision,’ there is a particular representation that seems to interpellate (Althusseur, 1971) African youths’ identity and identification: Black popular culture. Since African youths have a very limited number of African American friends and have limited daily contact with them, they access Black cultural identities and Black linguistic practice in and through Black popular culture, especially rap music video-clips, television programs and Black cinematic representations. Responding to my query about the last movies she saw, Najat cited (in English):<br /><br />Najat: I don’t know, I saw Waiting to Exhale and I saw what else I saw, I saw Swimmer, and I saw Jumanji; so wicked, all the movies. I went to Waiting to Exhale wid my boyfriend and I was like ‘men are rude’ (laughs).<br />Awad: Oh believe me I know I know.<br />Najat: And den he [her boyfriend] was like ‘no women are rude’. I was like we’re like fighting you know and joking around. I was like and de whole time like (laughs), and den when de woman burns the car, I was like "go girl!". You know and all the women are like "go girl!" you know? And den de men like khhh. I’m like "I’m gonna go get me a pop corn" (laughs).<br />Najat’s example is illustrative because, besides showing the influence of Black English in using ‘de,’ ‘den,’ ‘dat,’ and ‘wicked’ as opposed to, respectively, ‘the,’ ‘then,’ ‘that,’ and ‘really really good,’ it articulates the notion that youths have agency and social subjectivities which they bring to the reading of the text. These subjectivities, importantly, are embedded in history, culture, and memory. Two performed subjectivities that influence Najat’s reading of Waiting to Exhale are, precisely, her race and gender identities. Respectively, it is with blackness, embodied in a female body, that Najat identified; it is the Black/woman in burning her husband’s car and clothes that interpellates Najat.<br /><br />In a different context, another example that demonstrates the impact of Black popular culture on African students’ lives and identities is a moment videotaped just before the focus-group interview with the boys. Picture this: Electric Circus, a local T.V. music and dance program that plays mostly Black music (rap/hip hop, reggae, soul and R&B) had just started. Silence!, one boy requested in French. Attentively, the boys started to listen to the music and watch the different fashions that the youngsters on T.V. were putting on. Codeswitched conversations in French, English, and Somali occurred after the show. They were largely observations on what was the best music, the best dance, and the ‘cutest girl.’ Rap/hip hop dress were obviously the top two of ‘the best’ music and dress.<br /><br />The moments of identification in the above examples are significant in that they point to the process of identity formation which is implicated in turn in the linguistic norm to be learned. The Western hegemonic representations of blackness, Hall (1990) shows, are negative and tend to work alongside historical and subconscious memories which facilitate their interpretations by members of the dominant groups. Once African youths encounter these negative representations, they look for Black cultural and representational forms as sites for positive identity formation and identification (Kelly, 1998). It is rather crucial to see identification working over a period of time and at the subconscious level. Omer in the following excerpt from an individual interview addresses the myriad ways in which African youths are influenced by ‘Black’ representations.<br /><br />Black Canadian youths are influenced by the Afro-Americans. You watch for hours, you listen to Black music, you watch Black comedy, Mr. T., the Rap City, there you will see singers who dress in particular ways. You see, so.<br />Again, in my focus group interview with the boys, Mukhi explored the contention of identification by arguing that:<br /><br />We identify ourselves more with the Blacks of America. But, this is normal, this is genetic. We can’t, since we live in Canada, we can’t identify ourselves with Whites or country music you know (laughs). We are going to identify ourselves on the contrary with people of our color, who have our life style you know.<br />Mukhi evokes biology and genetic connection as a way of relating to Black America, and his identification with it is clearly stated. For Mukhi and all the students I spoke to, this is certainly connected to their inability to relate to dominant groups, the public spaces they occupy, and their cultural forms and norms. Alternatively, Black popular culture emerges as a site not only for identification, but also as a space for language learning. In the following section, I point to how rap is an influential site for language learning. However, since rap linguistic performance was more prevalent in the boys’ narratives than in the girls’, I will raise the question of gender in the process of identification and learning.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">‘A’AIT [aayet], Q7 IN THE HOUSE!’</span><br /><br />On many occasions, the boys performed - that is, linguistic as well as bodily performance - typical gangster rap language and style, including name calling. What follows are just two of the many occasions where students articulated their identification with Black America through citation of rap linguistic styles. These examples occurred in English during my focus-group interview with the boys:<br /><br />1) Sam: One two, one two, mic check. A’ait, a’ait, a’ait.<br />Juma: This is the rapper, you know wha ‘m meaning? You know wha ‘m saying?<br />Sam: Mic mic mic; mic check. A’ait you wonna test it? Ah, I’ve the microphone you know; a’ait.<br /><br />2) Sam: (laughs) I don’t rap man, c’mon give me a break. (laughs) Yo! A’ait a’ait you know, we just about to finish de tape and all dat. Respect to my main man [Sam was pointing towards me]. So, you know, you know wha ‘m mean, ‘m just represen’in Q7. One love to Q7 you know wha ‘m mean and all my friends back to Q7... Stop the tapin boy!<br />Jamal : Kim Juma, live! Put the lights on. Wordap. [Students are talking in Somali.] Peace out, wardap, where de book. Jamal ‘am outa here.<br />Shapir : Yo, this is Shapir. I am trying to say peace to all my Niggers, all my bitches from a background that everybody in the house. So, yo, chill out and this is how we gonna kick it. Bye and with that pie. All right, peace yo.<br />Sam: A’ait this is Sam represen’in AQA [...] where it’s born, represen’in you know wha ‘m mean? I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers, you know, peace and one love. You know wha ‘m mean, Q7 represen’in for ever. Peace! [Rap music.]<br />Jamal [as a DJ]: Crank it man, coming up [rap music].<br />Of interest in these excerpts is the use of Black stylized English, particularly the language of rap: ‘Respect for my main man,’ ‘represen’in Q7,’ ‘kick the free style,’ ‘peace out, wardap,’ ‘‘am outa here,’ ‘I am trying to say peace to all my Niggers, all my bitches,’ ‘so, yo chill out,’ ‘and this is how we gonna kick it,’ ‘peace and one love,’ ‘I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers’. On the other hand, when Shapir offers ‘peace to all’ his ‘Niggers,’ all his ‘bitches,’ he is firstly re-appropriating the word Nigger as an appellation which is common in rap/hip hop culture. That is, although no consensus, it is common that a friend, especially young people, calls another Black friend ‘Nigger,’ without its heavy traditional use as a racist slur. Secondly, however, Shapir is using the sexist language that might exist in rap (Rose, 1991). These forms of sexism have been challenged by female rappers like Queen Latifa and Salt ‘n Pepper. They were also critiqued by fellow female and male students. For example, in my interview with the girls, Samira, a 16 year old girl from Djibouti, expressed her dismay at the sexist language found in some rap circles. She cited (in French): "OK, hip hop, yes I know that everyone likes hip hop. They dress in a certain way, no? The songs go well. But, they are really really, they have expressions like ‘fuck’, ‘bitches’ etc. Sorry, but there is representation." Here, Samira is addressing the larger societal impact which these expressions might have on how the Black female body is related to and perceived, which in turn influences how it is represented in, but also outside, rap/hip hop culture. Hassan as well expressed his disapproval of this abused/abusive language: "occasionally, rap has an inappropriate language for the life in which we live, a world of violence and all that."<br /><br />In rap style, one starts his/her performance by ‘checking the mic’: ‘One two, one two, check mic check.’ Then, the rapper either cites an already composed lyric or otherwise ‘kicks a free style.’ Spontaneity is what rap is all about. In general, the rapper begins the public performance by introducing her/himself with her/his true or made-up name - ‘yo this is Shapir’ - and thanks her/his ‘main man,’ her/his best friend, who often introduces her/him to the public. Specific to gangster rap, one does not only represent oneself, but a web of geo-physical and metaphorical spaces and collectivities which are demarcated by people and territorial spaces: ‘represen’in Q7,’ ‘a’ait, this is Sam represen’in AQA.’ At the end of the performance when the citation or the free style is completed, again one thanks her/his ‘main man’ and ‘gives peace out’ or ‘shad out’ (shout out) to his/her people. The boys are clearly influenced by rap lyrics, syntax and morphology (in their broader semiological sense) and, in particular, gangster rap. In learning ESL in general and BSE in particular through music, Jamal used significant strategies. These include listening, reading and repeating. For example, Jamal was listening to the tunes/lyrics while simultaneously reading and following the written text. Acting as a DJ, he then repeated with the performer not only words and expressions, but also accents.<br /><br />The girls, on the other hand, had an ambivalent relationship to rap, depending on their age, although they used the same strategies as Jamal in learning English through music. For example, during the picnic organized by a mixed group of males and females to which I was invited, females were listening to the musical tunes and at the same time following the written text and reciting it (complete with accents) along with the singer. The girls’ choice of music (including Whitney Houston and Toni Braxton) differed in that it was softer, and was concerned mostly with romantic themes.<br /><br />For the most part, the older females (16 to 18 years old) tended to be more eclectic in how they related to hip hop and rap. Their eclecticism was evident in how they dressed and in what language they learned. Their dress was either elegant middle class, or partially hip hop, or traditional; and their learned language was what M. Nourbese Philip (1991) called in her novel Harriet’s Daughter "plain Canadian English." The younger females (12-14 years), on the other hand, were more similar to the boys. They dressed hip hop style and performed the BSE.<br />In spite of their ambivalent relation vis-à-vis rap and hip hop, I was able to detect the following three features of Black English (BE) in the girls’ speech, across age: 1) the absence of the auxiliary "be," 2) BE negative concord, and 3) the distributive "be" (for BE features, see Labov, 1972; Goldstein, 1987). The first feature, identified on nineteen occasions, is when a girl cites "they so cool," "I just laughing" as opposed to ‘they are so cool,’ ‘I am just laughing.’ I noticed the second feature on four occasions. This is when a female contends "... all he [the teacher] cares about is his daughter you know. If somebody just dies or if I decide to shoot somebody you know, he is not doing nothing" (italics added). This female would have been corrected in standard English for having a double negative. The third feature which I also observed on four occasions is when a female utters "I be saying dis dat you know?" or "He be like ‘Oh, elle va être bien’ ..." These BE markers are expressions of the influence of Black talk in the females’ speech and simultaneously performances of their identity location and desire, which they undoubtedly ally with blackness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PERFORMING ACTS OF DESIRE</span><br /><br />Rap and hip hop have been identified as influential sites in African students’ processes of becoming Black, which in turn impacts on what they learned and how. Their narratives, moreover, show that youths are quite cognizant of their identification with blackness and the impact of race on their choices. In my focus-group interview with the boys, by way of illustration, I had this conversation in English with Sam and Mukhi, in which Mukhi reflected on the impact of rap (as just one among so many other Black popular cultural forms) on his life and other lives around him:<br /><br />Awad: But do you listen to rap for example? I noticed that there are a number of students who listen to rap eh? Is ...<br />Sam: It is not just us who listen to rap, everybody listens to rap. It is new.<br />Awad: But do you think that that influences how you speak, how ...<br />Mukhi: How we dress, how we speak, how we behave [bold added].<br />These linguistic behavioral patterns and dress codes that Mukhi is addressing are accessed and learned by African youths through Black popular culture. They do not, as I already noted, ask for mastery and fluency. Indeed, they are performative acts of desire and identification. As Amani contended in my focus-group interview with the girls:<br />We have to wonder why we try to really follow the model of the Americans who are Blacks? Because when you search for yourself, search for identification, you search for someone who reflects you, with whom you have something in common [italics added].<br />Again, in my individual interview with Hassan, he lends support to Amani by arguing that:<br />Hassan: Yes yes, African students are influenced by rap and hip hop because they want to, yes they are influenced probably a bit more because it is the desire to belong may be.<br />Awad: Belong to what?<br />Hassan: To a group, belong to a society, to have a model/fashion [un model]; you know, the desire to mark oneself, the desire to make, how do I say it? To be part of a rap society, you see. It is like getting into rock and roll or heavy metal.<br /><br />Hence, one invests in where one sees oneself mirrored. Such an investment includes linguistic as well as cultural behavioral patterns. Hassan, in an individual interview, would find it an unrealistic expectation to see blackness allied with Rock and Roll or Heavy Metal as they are socially constructed as ‘white’ musics. On the other hand, he would emphatically argue that African youths would have every reason to invest in basketball - constructed as ‘Black’ sport - and not hockey, for example.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">BY WAY OF CONCLUDING: IDENTITY, DISCIPLINE, AND PEDAGOGY </span><br /><br />Analogously, African youths’ desire to invest (Peirce, 1997), particularly the boys, in basketball is no different from their desire to learn Black English as a Second Language. Learning is hence neither aimless nor neutral nor is it without the politics of identity. As I have shown, to learn a second language can have a marginalized linguistic norm as a target, depending on who is learning what, why and how. This raises the questions: Why would youths choose the margin as a target? What is their investment and politics in doing so? And what role, if any, do race, gender (sexuality) and class social differences play in their choices? In other words, if youths do come to our classrooms as embodied subjectivities, which are embedded in history and memory (Dei, 1996), should we as pedagogues not couple their word with their world (Freire, 1970/1993)?<br /><br />Clearly, this is an interdisciplinary paper. It may have raised more questions than it has satisfyingly answered them. However, it is meant to ask new questions that link identity, pedagogy, politics, investment, desire and the process of ESL learning. It borrows greatly from cultural studies. In it, I discussed how a group of continental African youths were becoming Blacks, which meant learning BESL. Becoming Black, I have argued, was an identity signifier produced by and producing the very process of BESL. To become Black is to become an ethnographer who translates and looks around him/her in an effort to understand what it means to be Black in Canada, for example. In doing so, African youths were/are interpellated by Black popular cultural forms, rap and hip hop, as sites of identification. Gender however was/is as important as race in what was/is being chosen, translated, by whom, and how.<br />Choosing the ‘margin,’ it should be emphasized, is an investment act, an expression of desire, and simultaneously a deliberate counter hegemonic undertaking. Choosing especially rap cannot not be read as an act of resistance. Historically, rap is formed as a ‘voice’ to voicelessness and performed as a ‘prophetic language’ that addresses the silence/d/ness. It explores the hopes and the human, political, historical, and cultural experience of the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Gilroy, 1993); and as Jamal argues (in French), "Black Americans created rap to express themselves; how do I say it? their ideas, their problems, [and] if we could integrate ourselves into it, it is because rappers speak about or they have the same problems we have." Such may include human degradation, police brutality, and everyday racisms (Essed, 1991; Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992).<br /><br />If learning, I conclude, is an identity engagement, a fulfillment of personal needs and desires (of being), an investment in what is yet to come, any proposed ESL pedagogy, research, or praxis that fails to culminate in these, will quite obviously not involve the youths. It is therefore bound to be unsuccessful, if not plainly damaging. Identity, as it is re-pre-configured here, governs what ESL learners acquire and how. What is linguistically learned is not, and should not be, dissociable from the political, the social, and the cultural. Hence, to learn is to invest into something (e.g., BESL); something which has a personal or a particular significance to who one is or what one has become. Since language is never neutral, learning it then can’t and shouldn’t be either. If this is so, then it is necessary that we as teachers, first, identify the different sites where our students invest their identities and desires and, second, develop curriculum materials that would engage our students’ raced, classed, gendered, sexualized, and abled identities.<br /><br />In conclusion, therefore, I want to identify and propose rap/hip hop (and Black popular culture in general) as curriculum sites where learning can and does take place and where identities are invested. In the language of anti-racism education (Dei, 1996; hooks, 1994), this proposition is, on the one hand, a call to centralize and engage our marginalized subjects, their voices, and their ways of being and learning and, on the other, a revisit to this question: In the case of African youths, whose language and identity are we teaching/assuming in the classroom if we do not engage rap/hip hop? That is, whose knowledge is being valorized and legitimated and thus assumed to be worth of study and whose knowledge and identity are left in the corridors and the hallways of our schools? To identify rap/hip hop as curriculum sites in this context then is to legitimize otherwise ‘illegitimate’ forms of knowledge. As Bourdieu (1991) shows, wittingly or unwittingly, schools sanction certain identities and accept their linguistic norm by nothing more than assuming them to be the norm; we should be reminded that these identities are raced, classed, sexualized, and gendered.<br /><br />However, since rap and hip hop are also historical and social productions, they are as much sites of critique as they are of hope. As we have seen, rap/hip hop are not immune to, for example, sexism (and homophobia, see also Rose, 1991). They can not, therefore, and should not be readily consumed; they are to be critically framed, studied, and engaged with. To be able to do so, however, teachers need to first be in tune with popular culture, since T.V., music, newspapers, etc. are increasingly the sources where our students learn their English and not the classroom. Second, in cases of infamiliarity with popular culture, I believe, teachers should not fear to engage the Freireian notion of dialecticism, where our students can become our teachers. In practical terms, this might mean planning activities where our students will share with us and the rest of the class what is rap and hip hop and what they represent to them.<br />On the other hand, rap/hip hop are also sites of hope and possibilities: A hope that all learners (from dominant groups or otherwise) can be introduced to, and be able to see, different possibilities and multiple ways of speaking, of being, and of learning. In the case of African students, in particular, rap/hip hop are sites of identification and investment. To introduce them in the classroom, in Paulo Freire’s words (1970/1993), is to hope to link their world, identities, and desires with their word. To put it more broadly, may be the time has come to put to rest that schizophrenic split which minority students live through between their identities and the school curriculum, and their identities and the classroom pedagogies, subjects and materials.<br /><br /><br />* The author would like to deeply thank Loreli Buenaventura for her comments and feedback; as well as the editor and the TESOL Quarterly anonymous reviewers. The author graduated from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and teaches presently at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, 145, Jean-Jacques Lussier St., P.O. Box 450, Stn. A. Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5 Canada; email: ibrahim@uottawa.ca. He is interested and teaches in the areas of Anti-racism, cultural studies, sociology of race and ethnicity, and sociology of language.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">REFERENCES</span><br />Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and Philosophy. London: New Left Books.<br />Anderson, B. (1983). 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