Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sharing a conversation
I asked Long about the possibility of beginning this blog b/c I thought it would be a great way to share a conversation about what we're going to be doing in Minneapolis. If you are all willing, this could be an informal place to share thoughts, make comments, and encourage one another on this exciting journey, as well as simply get to know one another better before we meet for the first time. This is just a start; feel free to add to, subtract from, or otherwise modify. I did re-read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and sure enough, was as overwhelmed and in awe as I was the first time I read it.
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Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteJust in case you did not get the proposal earlier, I have pasted it below:
Mad as Hell? Creating a dialogical space of literacy on identity politics: Organizing for Social Justice
The literacy of identity politics has enabled all progressive people to enter into spaces of the revolutionary words. These genres of reading the world have given rise to an epistemology that has painted our realities with words of emancipation. Yet, their struggle is still immense and its logic challenged and neglected by innumerable progressive people who inhabit spaces across the political spectrum.
As Paulo Freire delineated in the now famous or infamous phrase “reading the word and the world;” any approach to literacy has to take into consideration of the materiality of the cultural and political climate that is embedded in the materiology that is economically specific and is propounded by the localized voices. That is, personal readings of identity have to be contextualized for its social content to tie the individual enunciatory act to a language of solidarity. Absent of the enunciatory act, literacy of identity become empty rhetoric of social conformity where spaces of political tyranny may reside. Omission of the solidarity, the literacy of identity come mired in a vernacular of despair where hopelessness becomes a space of inaction and permanency and not a tool of analysis for economy of transformation.
Contemporarily, our political economy is in a worsening state of uncertainty. Our ideologies need to be reexamined and possibly reconstructed. If we can take our cues from perhaps another paradigm shift in capitalism’s philosophical repair, we can force it to take into consideration of a reconstruction of a redefinition of a postcolonialism that is more re-presentational (lived experiences), not representative (proxied life), that can be effusive of an emancipator language of a praxis that is sedimented in Freire’s axiom: Reading the word and the world!
The literacy of identity politics has enabled all progressive people to enter into spaces of the Freirean revolutionary words: Reading the word and the world!
The panel will speak about the personal literacies, or the enunciatory words, of identity that can be used to promote the creation of spaces where the revolutionary words can reside.
Questions
1. What is identity politics?
2. What are the literacies of identity?
3. How can literacies of identity become revolutionary?
If the politics of identity is a post-colonial pedagogy, then how can we use it to teach all people about a reconstruction of a social reality where women are seen as revolutionaries?
Other questions and thoughts generated from the dialogue
• How is colonization defined?
CAN WE ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS AS INDIVIDUALS AND AS A GROUP?
I am so glad you started a blog! I think this will help us organize our panel and thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI am grading papers and ending the semester now. I plan to dig into this on Wed. this week.
Thanks,
Elizabeth
I'm not sure that I can answer these questions Long - at least I don't think I have a good handle on the "identities of politics." I look forward to the input from others.
ReplyDeleteMy best friend, Dr. Dymaneke Mitchell, did a lot of work on identity in her dissertation in 2007.
ReplyDeleteAll of the following is from her work there. I think her work will be so helpful for us to consider.
According to Alston et al. (19996),
literature on racial identity began
appearing in the early 1970's and
concentrated almost exclusively in
counseling psychology and psychotherapy
journals. It was hoped that if
practitioners could understand the process
by which the Black client "becomes" Black,
they would be more sensitive to the racial
issues confronting the client in therapy.
Numerous researchers explored and continue
to explore this concept with several
perspectives. (p. 12)
Early identity development originated and were used mainly in scientifically oriented disciplines. This resulted in a medicalization of racialized identity development models, which supported scientifically "objective" scholarship and research concerning African Americans (Foucault, 1977). Thus, their work universalized and reified race as "inferior," something to be "civilized" (Foucault, 1973, 1977).
There is a wide variety of literature concerning identity development (Alston et al., 1996; Lee & Wicker, 2006; Myrick, 2002; Torres et al., 2003; Weigert & Gecas, 2005). However, most of this literature has been reconceptualized (Alston et al, 1996; Lee & Wicker, 2006; Toores et al., 2003). Up until the 1970s, the literature is derived mainly from studies on White males. *Erikson's (1964) theories here
ReplyDeleteErikson defined "identity" as "the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly" (p. 42). His concepts have been universally applied to women and people of color or non-whites (Lee & Wicker, 2006; Weigert & Gecas, 2005). However, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, concepts of identity development associated with racialized identities began to emerge. Atkinson, Morton, and Sue (1979) were instrumental in creating a minority identity development model.
Does this help???? I posted in two posts because I was worried about the word count limit.
I can work on the literature review about identity if that helps the panel. Let me know what you want me to do hear, and I will do it. Also, I can tie that to "conscientization" too.
ReplyDeleteI am excited about the panel and conference!!!