Locating the Postcolonial in Popular Cultural Texts (Conference Presentation) (original) (raw)

Reading Practices, Postcolonial Literature, and Cultural Mediation in the Classroom

2012

's compact and comprehensive text, Reading Practices, Postcolonial Literature, and Cultural Mediation in the Classroom, provides readers, educators, researchers, policy makers, and educational administrators valuable insights into how difference in race, ethnicity, tradition, language, gender, class, and power can be negotiated through the integration of postcolonial discourse and literature into English Language Arts classrooms. This book contains an extensive and enlightening collection of participant responses, collaborative analyses, evocative interpretations, and provocative challenges arising from the five research studies. Each study is unique in its research question(s), participant demographics, choice of literature and methodological approaches. Collectively, the inquiries seek to engage participants in an interrogation of, or at least a greater attentiveness to, the "legacies of colonialism" (p. 71). The studies were conducted in secondary or post-secondary schools in the province of Alberta with the intent that "through an engagement with the texts, readers in our studies were connected with contemporary concerns in Canadian society" (p. 71). A definition, a clarification, a specific critique, and a conceptual working space underpin the theoretical framework and research design of this book. What Johnston and Mangat refer to as postcolonial literature is defined; how postcolonial literature differs from multicultural texts is clarified; the myth of multiculturalism as a solution to differing ethnocultural tensions is critiqued; and Homi Bhabha's concept of "Third Space" (Bhabha, 1994, p. 34) provide collaborative research settings where difference can be mediated and negotiated. The authors explain that "postcolonial literatures attempt to challenge the dominant literary and cultural discourses of the West and critique the discursive and material legacies of colonization" (pp. x-xi). They argue that multicultural texts simply present or represent an understanding of "plurality and diversity" (pp. x-xi) and seldom, if ever disturb, critique or replace the literary canon of "the tried and true" (p. 49) texts most often relied on in English Language Arts classrooms. According to Johnston and Mangat's analysis, multiculturalism has largely been experimental and highly unsuccessful in most places that embraced its seemingly egalitarian credo because "changes have largely been ideological rather than structural and schools continue to function largely as assimilationist agencies" (p. ix). To study how difference is culturally mediated through postcolonial literature in the classroom, the authors implemented Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" as a conceptual venue for their research. Homi K. Bhabha, from Harvard University, is one of the foremost theorists in contemporary postcolonial studies and it is his proposed Third Space that Johnston and Mangat embrace as the contextual milieu in which each of their studies are conducted. "For Bhabha, this is an brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

Interrogating Eurocentric Ideologies -Colonial Conundrums and Teaching Selves Pondering on Lessons Learned in Canada's Indigenous Classrooms

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