(Re)Imagining the (Re)Set: Re(f)using Systemizations Within the Psychic Space of the Classroom

• In Event: Refusing Curriculum Systemizations: Immeasurable Difference, Indeterminacies, and Multiplicities

Abstract

Since the early 19th century, knowledges have been disciplined (Foucault, 2010) and homogenized within Higher Education. This process of homogenization is due to the historical and socio-cultural discourses that have constructed the university as an extension of the State Apparatus and as a modern-day “arm of the settler state” (Grande, 2018). In order to “reset” as Ladson-Billings (2021) suggests scholars, activists, educators and researchers need to (re)think the material, linguistic and psychic space of the university as a space steeped in the socio-cultural and historical discourses of Eurocentric patriarchy which indoctrinates teachers and students and places them in unconscious subjection. This paper interrogates the temporal power of psychic whiteness which materially, psychologically and psychically institutionalizes and controls subjects through the discursive function of naming. It proposes that a “reset” requires an analysis of the tensions between discourses of the university and the” multiplicities and fluidities of difference among non-unitary iterations of cultures, identities and subjectivities” that construct the very systemic injustices that educational discourse seeks to eradicate.
Theoretical frame/Modes of Inquiry
Through the lens of poststructural theory, I utilize Connellan’s (2013) theory of the psychic space of white and Butler’s (1997) discussion of psychic power to interrogate the university setting as a space of contradiction and conformity that contains and restrains the subject. Through a method of Foucauldian-inspired “mappings” of various “histories” and trajectories, I examine the continuities and discontinuities of historical discourses that indoctrinate bodies and place the subject in unconscious subjection. In doing so my intention is to critique objectified measurements meant to rethink, reconfigure, and reimagine systems that continue to essentialize the multiplicity of subjectivities and experiences and reify social justice as a “one-size-fits-all” approach without consideration for the historical discourses that constructed the university as “…like an industry… professors [are] as trustees… (original emphasis)” (Derrida, 1980 in which knowledge production echoes the white psychic power.
Scholarly Significance
In seeking to “reset” and “reimagine” teaching, research and curriculum post-COVID this paper addresses the discourses which normalize equity and inclusiveness as systemic goals of education without taking into account the discourses which institutionalize and subjugate the subject in multiple ways. The paper highlights the psychic space of the university campus as space in which institutional discourses continue to materially and psychically indoctrinate teachers and students in multiples ways as a form of containment and restraint, albeit through language meant to create the ideals of antiracism and freedom. Instead, the paper proposes that until a decolonization of the campus space occurs through an analysis of the discourses which inflect bodies, historical discourses of colonization, control, standardization and conformity will persist.

Author

• Joyce Maxwell, Union County College