Diversity Issues & Resistant Students
stephanie spina (sspina who-is-at email.gc.cuny.edu)
Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:25:01 -0400 (EDT)
I must take issue with Mary Bryson s assessment of McLaren, Giroux, and
Apple.
But perhaps I should first identify myself with an assortment of labels so
I can be put in the appropriate boxes. I am a heterosexual woman from a
working class family and am completing a Ph.D. in social psychology with a
concentration in cultural studies. (aha! red flag! a grad student!) Would
your impression of me change if I added that I am overage, overweight, and
overwrought? Or that I have a Harvard degree with a 4.0 average? Or that
I have been separated for two years? Or that I am of Puerto Rican and
Italian heritage? (Maternal and paternal lineage, respectively, since I
am frequently asked and it apprears to matter to so many.) Did your
opinion of me change as you read each part of the description? Be honest.
There is a point to this exercise.
Mary_s comments suggest that political insight is directly linked to
sexual, racial, and class origins. Truly, a dangerous notion. Gender and
racial experience, for example, do not guarantee political or theoretical
insight. They have to be worked for and, yes, they may show up in white
men such as Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Apple, or others who contribute
greatly to this list including Jay Lemke and other erudite white male
participants in xmca discussions. Maybe we should dismiss them as well as
Vygotsky, Freud, Marx, Gramsci, etc., all white men.
To dispense with their work because they are white and publish books is
essentialist at best. If an author_s work resonates in the public sphere,
it may be because they have something to say. As for Giroux,
appropriating the work of women of color, that is absurd. Appropriating
means using someone_s ideas and not giving them credit for it. This is
certainly not the case in Giroux_s use of bell hooks, chandra mohanty, and
others. Nor does it acknowledge that many of these same feminists have
been published in books edited by Giroux. So much for critical mediation.
Work by Giroux and McLaren is central to any discourse on diversity.
These are scholars who have taken risks for their beliefs. It cost Giroux
his job at Boston University in the 80s. It forced McLaren to leave
Canada in 1985 to find work.
Mary_s argument about Ellsworth is also somewhat sensationalist. Ellsworth
is the one who fired off an article steeped in military like binarisms.
Mary says Giroux tried to bury her, but his response was measured compared
to Ellsworth_s offensive attack.
The students at the University of British Columbia who voted that Peter
McLaren be named Noted Scholar this summer obviously also disagree with
Mary Bryson_s assessment of Peter McLaren. Mary obviously hasn't read
McLaren in the last several years. His work complements Giroux in some
ways, certainly, but both are original, and unique and there is nothing
like either stylistically or politically in the field. True, both write
about Whiteness (as do many others) but each conceptualizes it
differently. (See the Giroux article in the previous issue of the Harvard
Ed Review and compare it to McLaren s work on the topic, for example.)
Their focus is also in different areas. McLaren concentrates more on
global capitalism while Giroux writes more in depth on youth and cultural
studies, especially media. McLaren_s work is highly regarded and
published a great deal in Mexico, Brasil, Argentina, and many other
countries, as evidenced in the well meaning comments from Joao. McLaren_s
new book, _Revolutionary Multiculturalism_, is strongly supported by
scholars and activists of color. All of his work, including that on the
abolition of whiteness, should be judged on its own merits. The issue
should be a fair assessment based on the work by Apple, Giroux, McLaren,
et. al., not an assessment based on the fairness of their skin or their
sexual physiology or orientation.
Stephanie Urso Spina
City University of New York
sspina who-is-at email.gc.cuny.edu