Are We Who We Say We Are? An Affective Critique of Language in Multicultural Education

• In Event: Frameworks and Tools for Critical Discourse in Teacher Education

Abstract

Language is often a litmus test of whether racism or anti-racism is happening, including in the major field addressing racialized inequality in education: multicultural education. Multicultural education’s identity is its connection to racialized peoples’ struggles for an equitable education. In this field, the connection of ‘true multicultural education’ to anti-racism struggles is made real and verifiable through language-based practices like typologizing weaker and stronger approaches. I assemble an affect-based critique of this practice from the writings of Sara Ahmed, Clare Hemmings and Robyn Wiegman, problematizing the notion that ‘we are who we say we are.’ Everyday institutional doings in the name of anti-racism may be actually – in the Deleuzian sense – unrelated to ‘the struggle’ despite using the same language.

Author

• Lee Airton, OISE/University of Toronto