Critical Research Methodologies for Education: Becomingswith, Activisms, and Persistences That Challenge the Patriarchal Capitalocene

• In Event: Surviving and Countering Patriarchal Whitelash: Public Education and Resistance Research by "Nasty Women"

Abstract

The 2016 election in the United States reminded us that intersecting oppressions and injustices are alive and well in societies broadly (whether locally or globally) and educational practices specifically. Critical scholars and public activists in a range of fields and from diverse ethnic, gender, and racial locations have inquired into and challenged these power plays and hegemonic assemblages for years (Bordo, 2017b, and for example from Sojourner Truth to Kimberle Crenshaw on intersectionality, 1989). There exists multiple literatures and forms of public and community activisms and resistance historically confronting patriarchy, racism, misogyny, and the destruction imposed through various forms of injustice and oppression. Yet, this research and multiple performances of public activism have not always been followed by transformations toward a more just world (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009). Further, critical researchers face accusations of academic elitism (Latour, 2004) and activists are often accused of playing identity politics (Lilla, 2016), just to name examples of the forms of disqualification used to discredit and silence. Finally, while current theoretical perspectives offer opportunities for recognizing the privileged role of “human beings” in the literal construction of injustice, damage, and destruction (e.g. the anthropocene), blaming “human beings” universally (e.g. women; people of color; those labeled as poor, with disabilities, non-English speaking) is problematic. This imposition of a universal human culpability denies the ultimate and continued intersecting, rhyzomatic, and intertwined roles of patriarchy (von Werlhof, 2007; Learner, 1986) and capitalism (the capitalocene, Moore, 2016, 2015) in the origins, continuation, and reinscriptions of sexism, racism, specisism, environmental destruction, and all manner of injustice. As we are aware, these power inequities are played out in all aspects of public education, ranging from privatization to curriculum to beliefs in evaluation, and on and on. To support public education that provides equal access and opportunity for all, education researchers must engage with these issues broadly.
My biases here are that our tendencies have been to oversimplify the complexities and underlying structures of power, in our critiques and actions. Additionally, we have not attended to (or learned from) actual possibilities for becomingswith (Haraway, 2015, I have added the multiple) our diverse historical and academic companions, those who have already demonstrated the entangled, committed work necessary for the development of solidarities that can lead to a more just world. From within this perspective, I begin the exploration of the following: (a) How do we make present the historical scholarship, actions, and struggles of those who have come before? How do we “becomewith” all manner of diversity? (b) How can we use emergent perspectives that acknowledge human becomingswith the more than human to challenge sexism, racism, and other forms of social injustice that continue to harm and destroy? and (c) What must all this mean for education? In addition to a theoretical paper that addresses these questions (orally presented in an extremely short version), the audience will be assigned roles in the reading of a “protest script” performance as the major portion of the presentation.

Author

• Gaile S. Cannella, Independent Researcher