Cruel Optimism: Neoliberal Fantasies of Educational Inclusion at the Intersections of Disability and Race

• In Event: 31.063 - "Whose Truth(s)?" Advancing DisCrit Solidarity in Research and Practice to Disrupt Educational Inequities

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
In the so-called post-truth era, emotions are often exploited to steer individuals and groups towards thoughts and feelings that are not in their best interest. This paper explores this issue through the experiences of Black and Latnix parents of students with disabilities in the education market place. I draw from Berlant’s (2011) notion of cruel optimism to analyze parents’ attachment to neoliberal fantasies of educational inclusion for their children with disabilities and their desire for a charter school education.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
I situate parents’ thinking, emotions, and actions within the historical and continuing impact of neoliberalism in contemporary life (Harvey, 2005) and its relationship to oppression at the intersections of disability and race (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013). I draw from Berlant’s (2011) concept of cruel optimism to explain the relationship of Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities and their desire for a charter school education despite charter schools’ rigorous and ableist practices. Cruel optimism, Berlant (2011) explains, is the relation of attachment to the promise of an object whose realization is impossible, a fantasy, or possible and toxic. Drawing from DisCrit solidarity approach (Annamma & Morrison, 2018), I theorize parents’ attachment to a charter school education as a contradictory form of resistance to the historical disinvestment in low-income communities of color.

Methods
I used analytical tools from grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) to analyze open-ended interviews with 24 Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities who experienced conflict with a charter school, and six lawyers that provided legal services to these parents. I also analyzed charter school artifacts (e.g., handbooks, websites, and brochures).

Results
I present the results in three interrelated acts. Act I, titled All Attachments are Optimistic, examines why parents are attached to the idea of a charter school education despite their knowledge about the schools rigorous and inflexible practices. Act II, titled Attrition of the Fantasy, examines what happened when parents and their children with disabilities experience charter schools’ disabling practices that separated those students who could be disciplined to become neoliberal subjects from those who were disposable. Act III is titled Bargaining Fantasies examines how parents make affective bargains about the costliness of their attachments to keep proximity to the object, i.e., a charter school education. Half of the parents interviewed legally fought and resisted to stay in the charter schools despite the schools’ disabling practices. Over time, parents’ attachment to the object resulted in significant material and health consequences for both parents and students.

Significance
Examining moments of cruel optimism force us to interrogate notions of flourishing and whether the survival fantasies that individuals invest their emotions in are the problem in the first place. They take us to examine the paradox of the “good life” that wears the subjects and at the same time finds the possibilities within as a form of resistance.

Author

• Federico R. Waitoller, University of Illinois at Chicago