I really like the questions Juanita and Mike are raising. There is a link
of course to Carol Lee's article in MCA as well, and I hope we'll get
around to discussing more of those issues as well.
On the pedagogy issue, I think there is a persistent tension, and maybe an
underlying contradiction, between enculturation objectives in the sense of
what amounts to cultural reproduction (by recruiting new members to the
culture) vs. empowerment objectives, which seem to me to go beyond
enculturation/reproduction only to the extent that they provide tools for
radical critique and change in the culture (and necessarily also then in
the social-political structures).
Too often we justify reproduction on the grounds that the tools it gives
are also useful for critique and change, but somehow it does not seem to
work out that way very often, does it? So I suspect that just giving the
tools is not enough. We also need to engage students affectively in some
rage for change (which is dangerous, but how could it not be if the aim is
radical change?), and we need to model HOW the tools can be used for
relevant critique ... which we usually do not do. We model standard modes
of academic critique, which are clever, but not particularly dangerous.
This does have a connection to the issues of cultural difference/diversity.
What enculturation/reproduction aims at, the "target culture" (it should be
a "target" all right, but in quite a different sense!), is NOT in fact the
whole of the host society's culture, but only the dominant subculture, so
that it's effects are normalizing, rather than centrifugal. If we in fact
provided students with the viewpoints of ALL fractions of society, they
would most likely have a set of tools that would be as useful for thinking
and performing radical change as for choosing to be "successful" in the
dominant subculture's terms.
So what is of value, in relation to agendas for change, is precisely the
contrasts, conflicts, and contradictions among subcultural views. This of
course includes views characteristic of different ethnic groups. If we
educate students only WITHIN any one culture or subculture, the result is
reproduction. (By the way I don't believe in STATIC reproduction; all
social reproduction also includes provision for minimal changes that do not
alter fundamental social-political structures, ideological assumptions,
etc.) If we present all the different cultures as one big happy family, we
are both telling a lie and evading the generative power of conflict and
contradiction. If we want genuinely critical thinking and impetus to
radical change, we have to help the students confront the contradictions
and conflicts in such a way as to both undermine their primary
enculturations in their own subcultures (by class, gender, etc. as well as
ethnic traditions) and then help them find ways to use the whole system of
conflicting subcultures as a resource to imagine and strategize for change.
I entirely agree that it is reproductionist, and not a little ethnocentric
(or hegemonic), to compare all other cultures/subcultures to the dominant
one. It also gets us nowhere in terms of understanding the total system of
subcultures. On the other hand, merely examining variation and
characteristics WITHIN single subcultures is not, I think, going to lead
anywhere except to reproduction. Maybe assisting the reproduction of the
subaltern cultures is morally superior to assisting that of the dominant
culture, but the result is still going to be the same system of relations
among the cultures.
Obviously I don't think a progressive future means all the different
cultures reproducing themselves and living in harmony. I think that "ideal"
is the current misdirection generated out of dominant interests. What is
needed is something like a grand generalization of the post-colonialist
insight often associated with Edward Said (may his spirit have some reason
to rest in peace, eventually!): each of the constituent cultures of the
global system (as of our national system, to the extent there is still such
a thing separately) defines itself through its relations to the others,
real and imaginary. (Of course there are power differences which mediate
the asymmetrical relations in this system.) Each is corrupted by its
"intercourse" (forgive me St. Sigmund!) with the others (and the
non-dominant ones particularly by the dominant one, but the dominant one
not just within itself, but also by what it becomes in the process of
trying to dominate the others).
Reproduction is a powerful social process (really the emergent outcome of a
nexus of historically mutually supporting processes). It does not need any
help from us. The most radical efforts we make to thwart it will be lucky
to have any significant effect at all. But we can try ...
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor
University of Michigan
School of Education
610 East University
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Tel. 734-763-9276
Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
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