Ch. 6 of Prof. Pennycook's CALx

Chapter 6 The Politics of Difference


One aspect of the Other is what makes the self by being different from it. Said's argument in Orientalism is a demonstration of the process.

A person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self (see self (psychology), self (philosophy), and self-concept) and other phenomena and cultural units. It has been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. For example, Edward Said's book Orientalism demonstrates how this was done by western societies --particularly England and France -- to 'other' those people in the 'Orient' who they wanted to control. The concept of 'otherness' is also integral to the understanding of identities, as people construct roles for themselves in relation to an 'other' as part of a fluid process of action-reaction that is not necessarily related with subjugation or stigmatization. Othering is imperative to nation-building, where practices of inclusion and exclusion can form and sustain boundaries and national identities. Othering helps distinguish between home and away, or known and unknown. It often involves the demonization and dehumanization of groups, which further justifies attempts to civilize and exploit these 'inferior' others.

Apparently we have to overcome this type of conception of the Other which is just the negation of us. We need to treat the Other as a human being (Who wants to be treated otherwise?). 

Let us briefly review Levinas for the ethics of the Other for that purpose.

（Japanese readers may be interested in my short article of Levinas)

http://yanaseyosuke.blogspot.com/2008/09/blog-post_7592.html


Below is what Wikipedia says about Levinas:

His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy." For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Levinas called "ontology"). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas

The New York Times Obituary summarizes Levinas's philosophy and ethics as follows:

Like Husserl and Heidegger, Dr. Levinas rejected philosophy's traditional preoccupation with metaphysical questions about being and epistemological questions about how we know. And like them, he rejected attempts at grand abstract systems of explanation.

He later came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, after the German philosopher's accommodation to Nazism. In commenting on a discussion of forgiveness in the Talmud, he wrote: "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."

Dr. Levinas's alternative to traditional approaches was a philosophy that made personal ethical responsibility to others the starting point and primary focus for philosophy, rather than a secondary reflection that followed explorations of the nature of existence and the validity of knowledge.

"Ethics precedes ontology" (the study of being) is a phrase often used to sum up his stance. Instead of the thinking "I" epitomized in "I think, therefore I am" -- the phrase with which Rene Descartes launched much of modern philosophy -- Dr. Levinas began with an ethical "I." For him, even the self is possible only with its recognition of "the Other," a recognition that carries responsibility toward what is irreducibly different.

Knowledge, for Dr. Levinas must be preceded by an ethical relationship. It is a line of thought similar to Martin Buber's idea of "I and thou," but with the emphasis on a relationship of respect and responsibility for the other person rather than a relationship of mutuality and dialogue.
http://home.pacbell.net/atterton/levinas/Obituary.htm

Here is a description from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Levinas's descriptions show that ‘in the beginning was the human relation’. The primacy of relation explains why it is that human beings are interested in the questions of ethics at all. But for that reason, Levinas has made interpretative choices. To situate first philosophy in the face-to-face encounter is to choose to begin philosophy not with the world, not with God, but with what will be argued to be the prime condition for human communication. For this reason, Levinas's first philosophy starts from an interpretive phenomenology. Like Husserl's, his first philosophy sets aside empirical prejudices about subjects and objects. Like Husserl's phenomenology, it strips away accumulated layers of conceptualization, in order to reveal experience as it comes to light. For Levinas, intersubjective experience, as it comes to light, proves ‘ethical’ in the simple sense that an ‘I’ discovers its own particularity when it is singled out by the gaze of the other. This gaze is interrogative and imperative. It says “do not kill me.” It also implores the ‘I’, who eludes it only with difficulty, although this request may have actually no discursive content. This command and supplication occurs because human faces impact us as affective moments or, what Levinas calls ‘interruptions’. The face of the other is firstly expressiveness. It could be compared to a force.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

6.1 DIFFERENCE, IDENTITY, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING


SLA: the learner as a "one-dimensional acquisition device." Full of a "mechanistic metpahor, as a sort of language learning machine (eg. input, output, information processing)

Identities as merely "learner variables."

Language as a "fixed object to be acquired rather than as a semiotic system full of variations and struggles."

Pennycook (2001, p. 143)



Applied Linguistics (Volume 14, Number 3, 1993) is a special issue on the perspectives on theory construction in SLA.

ALAN BERETTA
"As God said, and I think, rightly.."' Perspectives on Theory Construction in SLA: An Introduction
Applied Linguistics 1993 14: 221-224


MICHAEL H. LONG
Assessment Strategies for Second Language Acquisition Theories
Applied Linguistics 1993 14: 225-249


ALAN BERETTA and GRAHAM CROOKES
Cognitive and Social Determinants of Discovery in SLA
Applied Linguistics 1993 14: 250-275


KEVIN R. GREGG
Taking Explanation Seriously; or, Let a Couple of Flowers Bloom
Applied Linguistics 1993 14: 276-294


JOHN H. SCHUMANN
Some Problems with Falsification: An Illustration from SLA Research
Applied Linguistics 1993 14: 295-306

http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol14/issue3/index.dtl

In 1996, Lantolf published a review article on the theoretical status of SLA studies.


SLA Theory Building: "Letting All the Flowers Bloom!"
James P. Lantolf
Language Learning
Volume 46 Issue 4, Pages 713 - 749

ABSTRACT
This article presents a postmodernist critical analysis of the SLA theory building-literature as primarily represented in the writings of Beretta, Crookes, Eubank, Gregg, Long, and to some extent Schumann. I argue that there is no foundational reason to grant privileged status to the modernist view of SLA theory these scholars espouse. Scientific theories are metaphorical constructs that are elevated to theoretical status because they are "taken seriously" by their developers. All of which argues against cutting off any would-be SLA theory before it has the opportunity to be taken seriously (i.e., to bloom).
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119205283/abstract

Modern Language Journal (Volume 91 Issue 5 , Pages 733 - 942 (December 2007)) contains several important papers on the epistemological issues of SLA.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118484764/issue


Among them is a Republication from The Modern Language Journal, 81, 1997, 285.300.

On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
The Modern Language Journal
Volume 91 Issue 5, Pages 757 - 772

ABSTRACT
This article argues for a reconceptualization of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research that would enlarge the ontological and empirical parameters of the field. We claim that methodologies, theories, and foci within SLA reflect an imbalance between cognitive and mentalistic orientations, and social and contextual orientations to language, the former orientation being unquestionably in the ascendancy. This has resulted in a skewed perspective on discourse and communication, which conceives of the foreign language speaker as a deficient communicator struggling to overcome an underdeveloped L2 competence, striving to reach the "target" competence of an idealized native speaker (NS). We contend that SLA research requires a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use, an increased "emic" (i.e., participant-relevant) sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and the broadening of the traditional SLA data base. With such changes in place, the field of SLA has the capacity to become a theoretically and methodologically richer, more robust enterprise, better able to explicate the processes of second or foreign language (S/FL) acquisition, and better situated to engage with and contribute to research commonly perceived to reside outside its boundaries.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118484767/abstract

There is a new article by Firth and Wagner as well.

Second/Foreign Language Learning as a Social Accomplishment: Elaborations on a Reconceptualized SLA
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
The Modern Language Journal
Volume 91 Issue 5, Pages 800 - 819

ABSTRACT
In this article, we begin by delineating the background to and motivations behind Firth and Wagner (1997), wherein we called for a reconceptualization of second language acquisition (SLA) research. We then outline and comment upon some of our critics' reactions to the article. Next we review and discuss the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological impact the article has had on the SLA field. Thereafter, we reengage and develop some of the themes raised but left undeveloped in the 1997 article. These themes cluster around the notions of and interrelationships between language use, language learning, and language acquisition. Although we devote space to forwarding the position that the dichotomy of language use and acquisition cannot defensibly be maintained (and in this we take up a contrary position to that held in mainstream SLA), our treatment of the issues is essentially methodological. We focus on describing a variety of aspects of learning-in-action, captured in transcripts of recordings of naturally occurring foreign, second, or other language interactions. Through transcript analyses, we explore the possibilities of describing learning-in-action devoid of cognitivistic notions of language and learning. In so doing, we advance moves to formulate and establish a reconceptualized SLA.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118484770/abstract

Below is the table of contents of the issue.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Modern Language Journal
Volume 91 Issue 5 , Pages 733 - 942 (December 2007)


Presenting the Focus Issue  

Presenting the Focus Issue (p 733-734) 

SALLY SIELOFF MAGNAN 

Second Language Acquisition Reconceptualized? 

The Impact of Firth and Wagner (1997) Second Language Acquisition Reconceptualized? 

The Impact of Firth and Wagner (1997) (p 735-756) 

BARBARA A. LAFFORD 

Firth & Wagner (1997) On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research (p 757-772) 

ALAN FIRTH, JOHANNES WAGNER 

The Cognitive Social Debate Reflecting on the Cognitive?Social Debate in Second Language Acquisition (p 773-787) 

DIANE LARSEN-FREEMAN 

Firth and Wagner (1997): New Ideas or a New Articulation? (p 788-799)

 SUSAN M. GASS, JUNKYU LEE, ROBIN ROOTS 

The Cognitive-Social Debate Second/Foreign Language Learning as a Social Accomplishment: Elaborations on a Reconceptualized SLA (p 800-819) 

ALAN FIRTH, JOHANNES WAGNER 

Perspectives on a Reconceptualized SLA: Theoretical Perspectives "New" Mainstream SLA Theory: Expanded and Enriched (p 820-836) 

MERRILL SWAIN, PING DETERS 

Sociolinguistic Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Research?1997?2007 (p 837-848) 

ELAINE TARONE 

New Research Directions Border Crossings? Exploring the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition, Conversation Analysis, and Foreign Language Pedagogy (p 849-862) 

JUNKO MORI 

The Rise of Identity in SLA Research, Post Firth and Wagner (1997) (p 863-876)

 DAVID BLOCK 

Implications for Praxis Extending Firth and Wagner's (1997) Ontological Perspective to L2 Classroom Praxis and Teacher Education (p 877-892) 

JAMES P. LANTOLF, KAREN E. JOHNSON

 Research "Fitting" Practice: Firth and Wagner, Classroom Language Teaching, and Language Teacher Education (p 893-906) 

DONALD FREEMAN 

The Future is Now: The Global Multilingual Reality Three Fundamental Concepts in Second Language Acquisition and Their Relevance in Multilingual Contexts (p 907-922) 

CLAIRE KRAMSCH, ANNE WHITESIDE 

Lingua Franca English, Multilingual Communities, and Language Acquisition (p 923-939) 

SURESH CANAGARAJAH

 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118484764/issue

Please read my blog article on Firth and Wagner's papers.
http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.jp/2012/04/three-mlj-articles-by-firth-and-wagner.html




6.1.1 Identity and Subjectivity

Shallow and static notions of difference and identity in TESOL.


Sack questions the seemingly innocent labeling of students by an English language teacher.

The Rhetorical Construction of Multilingual Students
Author: Spack, Ruth
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 4, Winter 1997 , pp. 765-774(10)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tesol/tq/1997/00000031/00000004/art00005

Students are remarkably diverse, and thus no one label can accurately capture their heterogeneity. Yet that does not stop teachers and researchers from labeling. It may be that we use labels such as ESL even if they do not match students’ profiles to provide us with a shared shorthand by which we can talk about learners. But even if our reasons are well intentioned, we need to consider that, in the process of labeling students, we put ourselves in the powerful position of rhetorically constructing their identities, a potentially hazardous enterprise. At worst, a label may imply that we sanction an ethnocentric stance. At the very least, it can lead us to stigmatize, to generalize, and to make inaccurate predictions about what students are likely to do as a result of their language or cultural background. Even if we cannot eliminate all problematic terms, we can interrogate the casual and seemingly innocent ways in which we use them.

Susser argues that he has found "Orientalism" in Japanese ESL/EFL discourse.

JALT JournalIssue 20.01; May 1998
EFL's Othering of Japan: Orientalism in English Language Teaching
Bernard Susser, Doshisha Women's Junior College
http://www.jalt-publications.org/jj/articles/1998/05/index


Kubota (1999) concurs.

Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT
Author: Kubota, Ryuko
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Volume 33, Number 1, Spring 1999 , pp. 9-35(27)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tesol/tq/1999/00000033/00000001/art00002

Abstract:
Some of the recent applied linguistics literature on teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students has presented pedagogical arguments by drawing on cultural differences between ESL students and the target academic community. In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East and the West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representations such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on critical thinking and self-expression to depict Japanese culture. This article takes Japanese culture as an example and attempts to critique these taken-for-granted cultural labels. The article argues (a) that the essentialized cultural labels found in the applied linguistics literature parallel the constructed Other in colonial discourse; (b) that cultural uniqueness is also appropriated by the Other itself as seen in the discourse of nihonjinron (theories on the Japanese), which represents cultural nationalism and a struggle for power against Westernization; and (c) that emerging research is generating new knowledge on educational practices in Japanese schools and a new understanding of concepts in cultural contexts, challenging the essentialized notion of Japanese culture. Finally, this article offers another way of understanding cultural differences from a perspective of critical multiculturalism and presents a perspective of critical literacy that supports both cultural pluralism and critical acquisition of the dominant language for social transformation.

Volume 31, Number 3, Autumn 1997 of TESOL Quarterly, as the editor says, is devoted to examining the relationship between language and social identity, and it explores how language learning and teaching are affected by such factors as gender, race, class, and ethnicity.


Here is its table of contents of the issue.

Volume 31, Number 3, Autumn 1997 of TESOL Quarterly
Editor's Note
pp. 405-405(1)
Author: McKay, Sandra

In This Issue
pp. 405-408(4)
Author: Norton, Bonny

Language, Identity, and the Ownership of English
pp. 409-429(21)
Author: Norton, Bonny

Identity and Intonation: Linking Dynamic Processes in an ESL Classroom
pp. 431-450(20)
Author: Morgan, Brian

The Negotiation of Teachers' Sociocultural Identities and Practices in Postsecondary EFL Classrooms
pp. 451-486(36)
Authors: Duff, Patricia A.; Uchida, Yuko

Voices, Discourse, and Transition: In Search of New Categories in EAP
pp. 487-511(25)
Author: Thesen, Lucia

Language Socialization Practices and Cultural Identity: Case Studies of Mexican-Descent Families in California and Texas
pp. 513-541(29)
Authors: Schecter, Sandra R.; Bayley, Robert

The Idealised Native Speaker, Reified Ethnicities, and Classroom Realities
pp. 543-560(18)
Authors: Leung, Constant; Harris, Roxy; Rampton, Ben

Theorizing Social Identity
What Do We Mean by Social Identity? Competing Frameworks, Competing Discourses
pp. 561-567(7)
Author: McNamara, Tim

Social Identity and Language: Theoretical and Methodological Issues
pp. 567-576(10)
Authors: Hansen, Jette G.; Liu, Jun

The Identity of the Nonnative ESL Teacher
On the Power and Status of Nonnative ESL Teachers
pp. 577-580(4)
Author: Tang, Cecilia

Race and the Identity of the Nonnative ESL Teacher
pp. 580-583(4)
Author: Amin, Nuzhat

English Is My Native Language . . . or So I Believe
pp. 585-593(9)
Author: Nero, Shondel J.

Language and Cultural Identity: A Study of Hmong Students at the Postsecondary Level
pp. 593-603(11)
Author: Bosher, Susan

Multiple Perceptions: Social Identity in a Multilingual Elementary Classroom
pp. 603-611(9)
Author: Hunter, Judy

Communities of Resistance: A Case Study of Two Feminist English Classes in Japan
pp. 612-622(11)
Author: McMahill, Cheiron

Identity Formation for Mixed-Heritage Adults and Implications for Educators
pp. 622-631(10)
Authors: Pao, Dana L.; Wong, Shelley D.; Teuben-Rowe, Sharon

Reconstructing the Professional Identity of Foreign-Trained Teachers in Ontario Schools
pp. 632-639(8)
Authors: Mawhinney, Hanne; Xu, Fengying

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: An African Vision of Linguistic and Cultural Pluralism
pp. 641-645(5)
Author: MacPherson, Sonia

Taking Back the Future: Identity Construction, Power, and Critical Pedagogy
pp. 645-650(6)
Author: Starfield, Sue

The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics
pp. 650-651(2)
Author: Maher, John C.

Crosswords: Language, Education and Ethnicity in French Ontario
pp. 652-653(2)
Author: Roberts, Celia

Social Justice and Language Policy in Education: The Canadian Research
pp. 653-654(2)
Author: Burton, Jill

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tesol/tq/1997/00000031/00000003

Duff and Uchida (1997) succinctly summarizes the emerging feature of sociocultural identities and ideologies.
The Negotiation of Teachers' Sociocultural Identities and Practices in Postsecondary EFL Classrooms
Authors: Duff, Patricia A.; Uchida, Yuko
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 3, Autumn 1997 , pp. 451-486(36)

But sociocultural identities and ideologies are not static, deterministic constructs that EFL teachers and students bring to the classroom and then take away unchanged at the end of a lesson or course (Kramsch, 1993a). Nor are they simply dictated by membership in a larger social, cultural, or linguistic group, the way many scholars approach the topic of language and social identity (e.g., Edwards, 1985; Giles & Byrne, 1982;
Gumperz, 1982; see Heath & McLaughlin, 1993; Ochs, 1993; Roberts, Davies, & Jupp, 1992). Rather, in educational practice as in other facets of social life, identities and beliefs are co-constructed, negotiated, and
transformed on an ongoing basis by means of language (Hall, 1995; He, 1995; Kramsch, 1993a; Lather, 1991; Ochs, 1993; Peirce, 1995). For this reason, applied linguists increasingly conceptualize identity as “a process of continual emerging and becoming” (He, 1995, p. 216), a socialconstructivist orientation that “captures the ebbs and tides of identity construction over interactional time, over historical time, and even over developmental time. . . . [It] allows us to examine the building of multiple, yet perfectly compatible identities.identities that are subtle and perhaps have no label, blended identities, even blurred identities” (Ochs, 1993, p. 298).
Duff and Uchida (1997, p. 452)

Volume 33, Number 3, Autumn 1999 of TESOL Quarterly is a special issue on Critical Approaches to TESOL.

The table of contents is here.

Volume 33, Number 3, Autumn 1999 of TESOL Quarterly
Editor's Note
pp. 325-328(4)
Author: Chapelle, Carol A.

Introduction: Critical Approaches to TESOL
pp. 329-348(20)
Author: Pennycook, Alastair

Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning
pp. 349-369(21)
Author: Ibrahim, Awad El Karim M.

Sexual Identities in ESL: Queer Theory and Classroom Inquiry
pp. 371-391(21)
Author: Nelson, Cynthia

Doing-English-Lessons in the Reproduction or Transformation of Social Worlds?
pp. 393-412(20)
Author: Lin, Angel M.Y.

Revisiting the Colonial in the Postcolonial: Critical Praxis for Nonnative-English-Speaking Teachers in a TESOL Program
pp. 413-431(19)
Authors: Brutt-Griffler, Janina; Samimy, Keiko K.

Critical Pedagogy in ELT: Images of Brazilian Teachers of English
pp. 433-452(20)
Authors: Cox, Maria Ines Pagliarini; de Assis-Peterson, Ana Antonia

Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis
pp. 453-484(32)
Author: Kumaravadivelu, B.

Popular Research and Social Transformation: A Community-Based Approach to Critical Pedagogy
pp. 485-500(16)
Author: Rivera, Klaudia M.

Participatory Education as a Critical Framework for an Immigrant Women's ESL Class
pp. 501-513(13)
Author: Frye, Dana

Between Discourse and Practice: Immigrant Rights, Curriculum Development, and ESL Teacher Education
pp. 513-528(16)
Author: Ullman, Char

Critical Literacy: Challenges and Questions for ESL Classrooms
pp. 528-544(17)
Authors: Hammond, Jennifer; Macken-Horarik, Mary

Debates in SLA Studies: Redefining Classroom SLA as an Institutional Phenomenon
pp. 544-557(14)
Author: Gebhard, Meg

Putting Critical Pedagogy in Its Place: A Personal Account
pp. 557-565(9)
Author: Johnston, Bill

Possibilities for Feminism in ESL Education and Research
pp. 566-573(8)
Author: Mackie, Ardiss

Thinking Critically, Thinking Dialogically
pp. 573-580(8)
Author: Benesch, Sarah

Critical Discourse Analysis: Discourse Acquisition and Discourse Practices
pp. 581-595(15)
Author: Price, Steve

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tesol/tq/1999/00000033/00000003

The contention of Price's article is expressed in the last two paragraphs of the paper:

I have argued that acquiring discourse is not a matter of mastering defining characteristics of a discourse, for these characteristics only become such when constructed by a metadiscourse. It is therefore the act of construction itself that is crucial, and this act is contingent on ongoing social and interpersonal processes and is not explicable solely in terms of individual mastery of linguistic and social conventions. These conventions
are always open to change and to different interpretations. Meanings are sustained not by intrinsic properties over which mastery can be obtained but by extrinsic social processes that produce what a discourse becomes. Such apparent intrinsic and stable features of discourses are not empirical givens but discursive products of processes of the selection, privileging, and marginalisation of elements.

In this view, the acquisition of discourse does not entail solely the acquisition of determinate features of discourse but rather entails an exploration of the heterogeneous forces at work in producing meanings. This exploration, of course, is what critical approaches have in many respects advocated. However, such critical reflection is not only a means to social ends but is also crucial to the process of engagement with and
hence acquisition of discourse. Such critical reflection does not simply serve subject interests; it reformulates them. Critical reflection is a matter not of challenging conventions, for instance,9 but of engaging with the processes that sustain such conventions and simultaneously providing for the possibility of their transformation. Such engagement, in which subjects themselves are reconstructed, becomes less a matter of
being for or against certain practices and more a matter of creating them anew, of participating in constitutive practices.

(Price, 1999, p. 595)

Critical Discourse Analysis: Discourse Acquisition and Discourse Practices
pp. 581-595(15)
Author: Price, Steve
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tesol/tq/1999/00000033/00000003/art00017

"Engagement with particular languages and cultures must also be about identity formation. Identities or subjectivities are constantly being produced in the positions people take up in discourse." (Pennycook, 2001, p. 150)





6.2 LANGUAGE, GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND DIFFERENCE

6.2.1 Dominance and Difference

Three views of Gender and Power

Dominance: Men have power; women lack power.

Difference: Men and women are socialized separately.

Performativity: Gender and sex are not given categories, and they interrelate with other forms of power
⇒People perform gendered identities through language
⇒Show how genders are performed, not essential, parts of identities

(adapted from Table 6.1 in Pennycook (2001, p. 152)

Crossley (2005, p. 208) explains the concept of performativity as follows:

Deriving from the work of Judith Butler (especially 1990), in the context of her attempt to rethink certain central aspects of feminist theory, this concept grows out of a critique of substantive understandings of gender as a property that one either has or is. But suggests, alternatively, that gender is something one 'does', that it is a social structure which, like all social structures, must be repeatedly 'performed' in order for it to exist.

Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory SAGE Publications

Here is an important remark by Butler herself.

It is important to distinguish performance from performativity: the former presumes a subject, but the latter contests the very notion of a subject. (1994: 33)

Butler, J [with Osborne, P. and Segal, L.] 'Gender as performance: an interview with Judith Butler', Radical Philosophy 67: 32-9.

"The notion of cultural politics, the idea that different ideas, beliefs, visions of the world, and so on are in competition with each other, suggests that culture is always produced in relation to power." (Pennycook 2001, p. 153)



6.2.2 Performing Gender Through Language


Judith Butler (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Routledge

"Gender proves to be performative -- tha is constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed." (p. 25)

Gender is "the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being." (p. 33)

See also the entry of "Queer Theory" in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory



6.3 DEALING WITH DIFFERENCE: INCLUSIVITY, ISSUES, AND ENGAGEMENT


Inclusivity: to include and represent people of different background in our texts, classroom possibilities, and researches.

Issues: to discuss overtly

Engagement: difference is not just another social issue, but a way of thinking, a way of teaching, and a way of learning.


6.3.1 Toward Engaged Research

Four elements of Engaged Research (as a critical applied linguistics research): Difference; Participation; Power; Change.



6.4 CONCLUSION: EMBODIED DIFFERENCES

Foucault: body as a more useful location to study power than ideology

Bourdieu: habitus and embodied cultural capital

For the concept of habitus, see
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/cultural_studies/bourdieu.html#Habitus


Threadgold (1997) Feminist Poetics: Poiesis, Performance, Histories Routledge

A social order is "both imbricated in language, textuality and semiossi and is corporeal, spatial, temporal, institutional, conflictual, and marked by sexual, racial and other differences" (p. 101)

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