Curriculum and the Possibility of Conversation: The Tensions Between Pinar and Spivak

• In Event: 58.083 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 58.083-14 - People of Curriculum: Gloria Ladson-Billings, William Pinar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Jessica Benjamin

Abstract

William Pinar and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak both explore notions of conversation, voice, identity, and curriculum. While Pinar (2009) encourages complicated conversation as a curricular tool, Spivak (1988/1994) questions whether humanist grammar prevents the subaltern from speaking. By exploring Pinar’s attempt at complicated conversation through Spivak’s critical questioning of whether the dominated can speak outside Western humanist grammar, this paper pushes the notions of complicated conversation and subaltern speaking to their limits in order to dwell in the tension. In doing so, Pinar and Spivak’s understandings of curriculum and identity construction are placed in dialogue to explore the similarities and differences in their arguments.

Author

• Megan Snider Bailey, The University of Alabama