Guess Who's Coming to the Policy Table? A Critical Feminist Poststructural Theory Analysis of Research With Youth of Color

• In Event: 52.034 - Doing Critical Policy Analysis in Education

Abstract

While feminist policy theory and analysis and specifically poststructural analysis have often been discussed as occurring in the abstract, far removed from hands-on policy work, this paper demonstrates what happens when the critical feminist policy analyst engages practitioners and sits at the policy table. Utilizing experiences from their individual research projects, which focus on African American youth access to education, the authors argue for the necessity of a critical feminist poststructural lens in order to interpret in-place discourses and practices and recognize places for interruptions and change. In educational systems that have been determined to be “racially hostile” to Black youth (Love, in press) and the reproduction of research that seemingly has no positive effect, the authors take up the crisis of education for Black youth in the U.S. Specifically, the authors utilize women of color (Lorde, 1984; Dillard, 2000, 2007) and queer of color critiques (Ferguson, 2003; Muñoz, 1999) alongside feminist poststructural theory (Author, 2000, 2003a, 2003b) in order to witness how Black youth are made disposable subjects in U.S. schools, educational research, and policy arenas. Further, while we engage these issues as they are expressed in our research, we also turn the lens back on ourselves as women scholars-mentors-mothers-educators who engage in this work and the implications of taking critical feminist poststructural stances both professionally and personally.

Authors

• Wanda Pillow, University of Utah

• Terah Talei Venzant Chambers, Michigan State University