Troubling School Discourses on Race and Gender: A Self-Study

• In Event: 61.068 - MTCC Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 61.068-6 - Critical Feminism in Education: Discourses and Dialogue

Abstract

This self-study is a poststructural analysis of critical incidents from my teaching experiences. I answer the question of how power relations both constrain and open up possibilities for disrupting oppressive knowledge within the everyday minutiae of school. Drawing on Foucault, I offer power/knowledge readings of salient recurring moments with racialized and white students to show how discourses of whiteness, femininity, and color blindness make it difficult, but not impossible, to trouble oppressive school knowledge that maintains gender and racial inequities. I demonstrate that while disrupting oppressive discourses is not a straightforward process, that everyday interactions are opportunities for producing more equitable school subjectivities.

Author

• Amanda Michelle Gebhard, University of Regina