Bullshit, Resistance, and the Justification of Unearned Privilege

• In Event: Youth Resistance Across Neoliberal Contexts

Abstract

Resistance is typically framed around the experiences of youth experiencing oppression within institutions and through “intersecting” systems of domination (Weis & Fine, 2000). Resistance among those who benefit the most from current institutional arrangements, like students attending elite schools, has rarely been considered in how resistance is theorized. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether and how students at an elite boarding school in the United States “resist” the educational schemes that define their educational experience.

The analysis presented in this paper draws from theories that take account of the ways in which youth resistance, on the one hand, can be interpreted as a manifestation of their keen social analysis, while on the other, can have the effect of producing the very social hierarchies they appear to challenge (Willis, 1977). In this case, the analysis points to how elite students appear to both undermine the premises of their elite education while at the same learning to become elite.

The paper draws on data collected through a two-year ethnographic study that examined the process by which students at one elite boarding school internalize elite status and convince themselves that they deserve the privileges of an elite education. The research involved two years of participant observation, a survey, and narrative interviews with 36 participants, and focus groups. This paper draws specifically on interviews and focus group data.

The paper illustrates the role of what the students at this elite boarding school describe as “bullshit” as both a form of resistance as well as a key lesson in the process of becoming elite while disguising the appearance of unearned privilege. Drawing on a close analysis of the narrative interview data, the paper will draw an connection between bullshit and what Paul Willis’ (1977) lads describe as “having a laff.” For Willis, “having a laff” is both about resistance through “the space won from the school and its rules,” and about “the shaping development of particular cultural skills” (p. 29). While the laff is a way to command the informal, bullshit is a way to succeed everywhere; it is about learning to rule. This analysis offers a deeper understanding of the role that learning to appear “at ease” with privilege plays in the constitution of elite subjectivity. It expands on Cookson and Persell’s (1985) insight that becoming elite involves appearing as if the social, academic, and cultural accruements of being elite come easy to those who enact them.

The findings of the analysis presented in this paper put into question the legitimacy of the entire ideological apparatus on which elite schools are premised and on which the privilege of the select few who can receive such an education is justified. Internalizing elite status requires the confirmation that one has earned the right to become elite. In this sense, bullshit is not just about the maintenance, but also about the obfuscation of the role that privilege plays in the schooling of elites.

Author

• Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, OISE/University of Toronto