(Re)Imagining Transformational Resistance: Seeds of Resistance and Pedagogical Ruptures

• In Event: 47.046 - (Re)Visiting and (Re)Imagining Youth (Transformational) Resistance

Abstract

In this paper, the authors (re) visit Solorzano & Delgado-Bernal’s 2001 Urban Education article Examining Transformational Resistance Through a Critical Race and LatCrit Theory Framework Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context. Returning to this article published almost two decades ago, the authors put the construct of transformational resistance in conversation with other works on youth resistance (Morris, 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2011; Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Ginwright, 2010; Quijada, Cahill, & Bradley, 2011) to (re)visit and (re)imagine student oppositional behaviors, particularly those which students enact as a mechanism for surviving conditions and institutions at odds with their humanity.

The authors begin by pointing to the ways that scholars have expanded upon, complicated, and developed transformational resistance. In doing so, the authors extend an understanding of resistance that sees the possibility (seeds) for transformation across the four quadrants laid out by Solorzano & Delgado-Bernal (2001). They then draw upon empirical examples to offer theoretical and pedagogical contributions (ruptures) for nurturing all forms of resistance towards transformation. In line with the original manuscript's goal of pushing scholarship that viewed youth resistance narrowly and through deficit paradigms, this paper seeks to continue the conversation and to honor the dangerous dignity (Tuck & Yang, 2011) and potential for transformational resistance embedded in the oppositional behaviors of Students of Color.

In the midst of pervasive trauma and criminalization of Students of Color, it is imperative that social justice educators be able to see beyond damage centered narratives (Tuck, 2009). This requires a pedagogical and epistemological shift in how we conceptualize, respond to, and cultivate resistance in the classroom. This paper serves as a catalyst for a much needed conversation around how educators can begin to grow transformational resistance in their classrooms across the K-16 spectrum.

Authors

• Sharim Hannegan-Martinez, University of Kentucky

• Sylvia Mendoza, Palomar College

• Dolores Delgado Bernal, California State University - Los Angeles

• Daniel Gilbert Solorzano, University of California - Los Angeles