Palimpsest as Spatial Methodology: Mapping Student Dis-location in Educational Contexts

• In Event: 18.040 - The Role of Mapping Methodologies to Disrupt Neoliberalism and Injustices at the Intersections of Ableism and Racism

Abstract

Objectives:
In this paper I expand the usage of the metaphor of the “palimpsest” to deploy it as a methodological practice to enact a critical race spatial analysis of dis-placement of (disabled) students of color via exclusionary practices (e.g., in-school suspensions, expulsions) and into segregated spaces (e.g., special education, alternative schools, youth prisons).

Theoretical Frameworks:
The metaphor of the palimpsest appears in disciplines from literary theory, architecture, urban geography, media studies to technology, showing evidence of its metaphoric prowess and possibility (Powell, 2008). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a palimpsest is defined as “a parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed out to make place for the second.” Especially significant is that the original writing of the palimpsest is always imperfectly erased and as such can be accessed, providing a partial and yet complex layered reading of the text. More generally, it could be argued that a palimpsest captures “ such serial, imperfect, synchronic and diachronic erasures and writings… each of them partly erased to make room for…. [a] multilayered structure that emphasizes the coexistence of multiple visions and impacts of different cultures” (Ciuta, 2016; p, 32). Dillon (2005) argues that the goal of a palimpsestous analysis is “not to describe ‘the way things really were’ … [but] rather, to offer an account of how an explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one” (Spivak qtd in Dillon (2005; p. 255).
What I have offered here to explain the palimpsest is mostly located within a textual analysis. However, I am deploying the palimpsest as a methodological tool to map the neoliberal spatial displacements of (disabled) students of color in US public schools via the utilization of a critical race spatial analysis (Velez & Solarzano, 2017). Critical race spatial analysis foregrounds the normativity accorded to ‘white’ landscapes (white supremacy) and therefore requires “reopening a view of past landscapes where the terms of today’s normalization were laid down.”

Methodology:
To explain how the palimpsest serves as an analytical tool within critical race spatial analysis, I am drawing on two narratives: a) the suspension of a black (disabled) boy from a first grade classroom; and b) the tragic suicide of a middle school black girl within a U.S. Southern school district. Both narratives serve as palimpsests because the stories of these two students are erased in the discourse (there is no official record), their erased/dislocated lives already superimposed by the “normative” practices of schooling. To enact a palimpsestous spatial analysis, I will describe the discourses that erase (disabled) students of color when (dis)located from the classroom/school and neoliberal discourses that refuse these erasures.

Findings/Significance
To enable a palimpsestous spatial analysis, it is necessary to invoke a DisCrit analysis that refuses the erasure of either race and/or disability when explaining how such dis-locations and discourses that justify them are normalized. The significance of this study lies in foregrounding spatial practices that have been erased because of the neoliberal, carceral practices of schooling.

Author

• Nirmala Erevelles, The University of Alabama