Entangled Resistance: Understanding How Chinese Rural Students Counter Symbolic Violence through Narratives

• In Event: Literacies and Identity Negotiation Across Diverse Rural Spaces

Abstract

Focusing on storytelling by six “successful” Chinese rural students, this paper investigates resistance to school meritocracy’s symbolic violence. Challenging binary views, the study reveals resistance as entangled navigation within dominant narratives, manifested in their storytelling of their life, school, and literacy. Findings contribute to a non-binary understanding of resistance, highlighting embodied and affective perspective in understanding counter-storying.

Author

• Xuanya Zhou, University of Florida