Haunting Whiteness in Teaching: Ghostly Residue of the Palimpsest School Space

• In Event: Critical Posthuman and Postfoundational Methodological Configurations

Abstract

This article attends to the hauntings of atmospheric whiteness in teaching spaces, drawing from a nine-month case study with two secondary teachers at one school site. Situated in theories of hauntology and affective atmospheres, I pursue the ghostly imprints on a school space which was once a synagogue. The palimpsest doorway and strange school spaces hold the ghostly residue of Jewish assimilation into whiteness and what that shapeshift leaves in its wake: the leftovers materialized as ill-fitting and punishing vestiges for Black and Brown students and their teachers by proxy. Attending to the layers of the palimpsest school spaces becomes a way to work against the “rubbing clean” of atmospheric whiteness, casting itself as innocent, neutral, and just the atmosphere.

Author

• Maddie Neufeld, Teachers College, Columbia University