Grounded in Love: Pedagogy and the Differential Consciousness

• In Event: What’s Love Got to Do With It? Shifting Womanist Pedagogies and Praxes

Abstract

I was raised and educated in an environment that taught me that my actions must be grounded in love and kindness, and as such I have attempted to embody this in my relations with others, including in the classroom. However, my experience as a TA for multicultural education at a PWI has tried my resolve to teach with/through love. In this racially polarized context in which we examine systems of oppression and privilege and in which students are challenged to identify themselves within those systems, I endure soul wounds (Leyva, 2003) in response to students’ dismissal of and opposition to the marginalized Other. The pain left me angry and unable (unwilling?) to facilitate the class from a place of love. My inability (unwillingness?) to foster love resulted in a classroom space rife with unproductive tension. It also resulted in my own self feeling emotionally and spiritually exhausted and disconnected. I required a new way to be in the classroom, which led me to Chela Sandoval’s (2000) theory of differential consciousness.

According to Sandoval, differential consciousness “is the expression of the new subject position…it permits functioning within, yet beyond, the demands of dominant ideology” (p. 44). As a pedagogical strategy I understand differential consciousness as a calling for a new subjectivity that utilizes power to shift and transfigure the classroom space and the teacher-student relationship in an effort to “generate[s] grounds for making coalitions with decolonizing movements for emancipation in global affinities and associations” (p. 45). A differential consciousness requires la concienca de la mestiza situated within interstitial spaces that create subjectivities of “transformation and relocation” (p. 61), la facultdad to look beyond that which is observable, and the “outsider/within” position that moves us according to our ethical commitment (p. 61). Together, these can create a pedagogical strategy governed by an understanding of the self and students that goes beyond the binary oppressor/oppressed. Still, what does/can this look like in the classroom and where does love fit?

In the following presentation I work from Sandoval’s theory of differential consciousness and love “as a set of practices and procedures that can transit all citizen-subjects” (p. 140) to identify specific components of a creative, transformative, and relationship-centered pedagogical approach in a racially polarized context. Using the works of critical educators of color, I identify various concepts that challenge me to reimagine my self, my students, and our ways of relating to each other—a flexibility required by the differential consciousness. They also challenge me to reimagine the possibilities of the classroom as one that makes capable the building of bridges, through the grounding of a love that exists beyond the control of governance (Sandoval, 2000). While I find it very challenging to say that I love my students, Sandoval’s discussion of love reminds me that the sources of love need not be present in the classroom when I teach (p. 142), and as such a make more possible teaching with/through love.

Author

• Cindy Ochoa Fierros, University of Utah