A Discourse Analysis and How Queer, White Educators Can Bring Anticolonial Feminism to Their Practice

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: Queer Approaches to Pedagogy and Curriculum

Abstract

Using an anticolonial feminist theoretical framework, I conduct a critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 2001) of the document, GSAs and QSAs in Alberta schools: A guide for teachers (ATA, 2015). I examine the language used throughout the document to uncover the ways in which the resource for teachers (re)produces white settler colonial ideology and discourse. Through this framework and methodology, I discuss how the document does this through: reaffirming a colonial binary gender system, superficial goals of inclusion, superficial goals of safe spaces, and ignoring constitutive subjectivities. This paper also creates a conversation about four ways in which we can do better as queer white activists and educators through an anticolonial feminist framework.

Author

• Shawna Carroll, Okayama University