“Descriptive Adequacy” and the Overdetermination of Blackness: A Dilemma and Meditation in Language Education Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium interrogates a vital dilemma in language education research. The overdetermination of Black speaker/person-hood manifesting in the figure of the dead, dying, or silent/silenced Black body militates against the unreflexive use of theories, methodologies, and analytical styles devised in anti-Black epistemes to represent anti-Blackness. However, it is imperative to both denaturalize anti-Black representations in education research and to refuse to ignore or disavow anti-Black violences embedded in educational institutions, which prima facie requires their representation. This symposium addresses this dilemma from numerous angles, hoping to instigate transgressive thinking and research-teaching praxes that militate against the dilemma.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 3: Languages, Literacies, and Representations

Chair

• Justin L. Pannell, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Information or Implication? Understanding How Social-Equity Frameworks Reproduce Anti-Black Representations in Language Education Research - Malik Stevenson, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Deceiving Archives: The Reconfiguration of Anti-Black Representations in Education Research - Justin L. Pannell, University of Pennsylvania

• Black Mothers as Bad Teachers: Intersectional Raciolinguistic Erasure in Teacher Preparation Curricula - Tasha Austin, University at Buffalo - SUNY

Discussant

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania