Thursday January 7 th 2016 Seminal World Literature

Thursday January 7 th 2016 Seminal World Literature John Keenan John. keenan@newman. ac. uk

By definition, the thinker is neither entirely outside of the situation in question nor entirely enmeshed within it without recourse or options. [. . . ] Thinking is the form given to that motion of detachment, reflection and reproblematization. (Rabinow and Rose, 2009, The Essential Foucault : Introduction, 14)

[Thought] is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and to question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem. (Foucault Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 117)

problematisation critical dialogue voice

Curriculum subject Seminal world literature, written in English

introduction 1. Establish that the English National Curriculum used to have ‘other cultures’ in it but it stopped in 2010 2. Establish that this is in spite of the figures about an increasingly multicultural society 3. Look at the nature of what has replaced it: seminal world literature 4. Problematise – what is culture/race? 5. (Later today) add in the dominant cultural force today

National Curriculum 1988 Education Reform Act The National Curriculum was designed to fulfil four main purposes: 1. to ensure that every child, irrespective of social background, culture, race, gender, differences in ability and disabilities received the same education entitlement 2. to set down standards against which every child’s progress could be measured 3. to ensure continuity between one school and the next 4. to establish an education system that could be clearly understood by all http: //www. educationengland. org. uk/documents/pdfs/2009 -CSFC-national-curriculum. pdf http: //www. student-support. co. uk/parents-carers/what-is-the-national-curriculum/

3. 2 f texts that enable pupils to appreciate the qualities and distinctiveness of texts from different cultures and traditions 1. 3 Key Concept, Cultural Understanding https: //www. books. rm. com/media/53867/RM-Books-KS 3 -New-English-Curriculum. pdf

1999 Macpherson Report "National curriculum aimed at valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism, " http: //www. theguardian. com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/29/gove-history-curriculum-more-equality

2011 Census 20% of people in England Wales identify themselves as being other than ‘White British’ Black and minority ethnic (BME) children make up 23. 2% of state-run secondary schools 27. 6% of those at primary level. / http: //www. racecard. org. uk/education/whose-history-whose-story-is-our-school-history-curriculum-fit-for-purpose

Total number of pupils whose first language is other than English 1997 -2010 1, 000 900, 000 800, 000 700, 000 600, 000 500, 000 400, 000 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total number of pupils whose first language is other than. . . Source: NALDEC website 2012 http: //www. naldic. org. uk/research-and-information/eal-statistics 2010 2011

EAL Good Practice Engagement with pupils’ social, cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic background and traditions (Bourne, J. & Flewitt, R. 2002)

White Paper 2010 http: //www. independent. co. uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-praises-rigorous-engaging-and-tough-national-curriculum-following-michael-goves-8694758. html

White Paper 2010 We are in a global race H G Wells History is a race between education and catastrophe http: //www. independent. co. uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-praises-rigorous-engaging-and-tough-national-curriculum-following-michael-goves-8694758. html

KS 4 a series of “whole texts in detail”, including two complete plays by Shakespeare. They must also read: • Romantic poetry by such poets as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats; • A 19 th century novel • Poetry of the First World War • A selection of British fiction, poetry or drama since 1918 • Seminal world literature, written in English http: //www. thefreedictionary. com/seminal

KS 4 read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through: • reading a wide range of high-quality, challenging, classic literature and extended literary non-fiction, such as essays, reviews and journalism. This writing should include whole texts. The range will include: • at least one play by Shakespeare works from the 19 th, 20 th and 21 st centuries poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry • re-reading literature and other writing as a basis for making comparisons • choosing and reading books independently for challenge, interest and • enjoyment.

Seminal http: //www. thefreedictionary. com/seminal Written in English How the colonies have mastered the mother language

Response to critiques

http: //filestore. aqa. org. uk/resources/eng lish/specifications/AQA-8702 -SP-2015 V 1 -1. PDF According to OCR, pupils will be able to choose from modern texts such as Anita and Me by Meera Syal, Animal Farm by George Orwell, An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley and DNA by Dennis Kelly. For the first time, it also includes Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born British novelist. OCR’s selection of 19 th century prose includes Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, War of the Worlds by HG Wells, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Pupils must choose one Shakespeare play from Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing

January 2006, Gordon Brown ‘liberty, fairness and responsibility’ ‘British tolerance, the British belief in liberty and the British sense of fair play’ https: //www. gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3 80595/SMSC_Guidance_Maintained_Schools. pdf Let us examine how Britain lives up to these definitions of its core values. Historically, there is nothing much to substantiate Mr Brown’s claims. When children were taken from the workhouses and marched up to the Lancashire factories in the mid-19 th century, was that ‘liberty’? Or when children on the streets were picked up and shipped out to the colonies as cheap labour? Or when political activists in Britain were exiled and those in the colonies jailed? …just how many millions of enslaved Africans did Britain transport across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans? http: //www. irr. org. uk/news/teaching-black-history-the-struggle-continues

Voice We should have a national curriculum which values and includes literature from all cultures.

‘race matters because teachers bring to the classroom interpretations of students and their communities, and their location within a hierarchical society, that are informed heavily by assumptions about race and ethnicity’ Sleeter, 2005: 243 How White Teachers Construct Race chapter 16 of Race, Identity and Representation in Education (2 nd edition) Cameron mccarthy, warren crichlow, greg dimitriadis and nadine dolby, nw york: routledge

The problems of race Labelling

clothes food taboo gender roles culture family attitudes beliefs

Identities are never unified and in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions Stuart Hall

A paradox confronts anyone who tries to understand the perplexing and persistent phenomena of ‘race and racism in Europe today. On the one hand, in genetic terms, the physical or biological differences between groups defined as ‘races’ have been shown to be trivial. No persuasive empirical case has been made for ascribing common psychological, intellectual or moral capacities or characteristics to individuals on the basis of skin colour or physiognomy. Certainly, no good ethical case has been made to justify differential or inequitable treatment on such arbitrary grounds. And yet, on the other hand, it is all too clear that racism still remains a widespread, and possibly intensifying, fact of many people’s lives. Reiterating that ‘there is no such thing as “race”’ offers only the frail reassurance that there shouldn’t be a problem. It cannot deal with the problems that do exist, because it fails to see them for that they are. Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005

One of the most telling strands in the antiracist critique of multiculturalism in the 1970 s and 1980 s, for example, was that it suffered from an overemphasis on culture. We would give that a slightly different gloss: multiculturalism certainly as it was translated into educational and political practice, often conflated the questions of culture with a particular understanding of ethnicity. The positive achievement of this tradition was that it allowed difference communities and their claims over their members to be acknowledged and valued with a new, official respect. Its drawback was that a multicultural celebration of diversity tended to reproduce the ‘saris, samosas and steel bands syndrome’. That is, by focusing on the superficial manifestations of culture, multiculturalism failed to address the continuing hierarchies of power and legitimacy that still existed among these different centres of cultural authority. By exoticising them, it even colluded in their further disenfranchisement. Despite its apparent relativism, in practice, it defined alternative centres of cultural authority primarily in terms of the difference from the norm of English culture, not in their uniqueness and their discontinuities. Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005

Mixed heritage pupils Demographic data reveal that mixed heritage pupils are the largest growing minority ethnic group across England as a whole. The 168, 901 mixed heritage pupils make up 2. 5% of the national school age population with large regional variations. 22, 327 or 7. 3% of Inner London school children are classified as mixed heritage. The largest group nationally are those of White/Black Caribbean background who number 60, 635 and make up 0. 9% of the school age population. The analysis of performance data for mixed heritage pupils shows that the attainment of White/Black Caribbean pupils is below average, the attainment of White/Black African pupils is similar to average in primary schools and slightly below average in secondary schools, and the attainment of White/Asian pupils is above average. Part of the reason for these differences appears to be associated with differences in relative levels of deprivation, as measured by the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals. The proportion of White/Black Caribbean and White/Black African pupils eligible for free school meals is around twice the national average. For White/Asian pupils, the proportion is closer to the national average. However, this is not the full picture. When differences in free school meal eligibility are controlled for by comparing the performance of pupils not eligible for free school meals, White/Asian pupils still perform above average as do White/Black African girls. In contrast, White/Black Caribbean pupils and White/Black African boys in secondary schools underachieve. The case study research suggested that like their Black Caribbean peers, White/Black Caribbean pupils’ achievement in school is negatively affected by low socio-economic status, low teacher expectations and behavioural issues related to peer group pressure. However, these take on a specific form for White/Black Caribbean pupils. In the case of this group, low teacher expectations are linked to stereotypical views of the negative effects of fragmented homes and identity confusion on account of their mixed heritage. These can interact with low academic aspirations on the part of some White/Black Caribbean pupils linked to peer group pressure in a mutually reinforcing downward cycle. Peer group pressures are exacerbated by name-calling and forms of exclusion by both White and Black peers related once again to their mixed heritage. These two barriers can lead to the adoption of extreme, rebellious behaviour by White/Black Caribbean pupils. There are factors operating in schools and LEAs that affect the broader educational needs of all mixed heritage pupils (White/Black Caribbean, White/Black African and White/Asian) i. e. needs relating to having their identities recognised and understood in the curriculum as part of the overall diversity of society and to be protected from racist abuse. These factors include the ‘invisibility’ at the level of LEA and school policy of mixed heritage pupils including the lack of a common terminology to describe them and their absence from policies relating to race equality; the failure to monitor and set targets for mixed heritage pupils; and, the absence of mixed heritage identities from the curriculum and in the role models present in schools. Whereas these factors may not serve as a barrier to achievement for all mixed heritage pupils, they form part of a climate in which schools are unable to effectively respond to the barriers to achievement facing White/Black Caribbean pupils noted above. Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005

1. 2. 3. 4. Identified the subject Considered the situation through researched facts Official sources Experts Voice – dialogue …theory

The Discourse of Neoliberalism

Michel Foucault THE POSITIONS TO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED

class age group ethnicity gender Labelled Stereotyped

When we accept the given discourse, we stereotype ourselves

interpellation Louis Althusser

The neoliberal discourse

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A discursive framework A paradigm “stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” Kuhn 1970 cited in Aldoory 2005: 669

‘The discursive formation is not therefore a developing totality, with its own dynamism or inertia, carrying with it, in an unformulated discourse, what it does not say, what it has not yet said, or what contradicts it at that moment; it is not a rich, difficult germination, it is a distribution of gaps, voids, absences, limits, divisions’ Gilbert 2013

Discourses are ‘governed by analyzable rules’ Foucault 1972 cited in Leitch 2007: 264

Discourses inform: What can be said Who can speak The positions from which they can speak Leitch 2007: 264

Neoliberal Discourse Other cultural discourses Keynesian Communism Feudalism Modernism Capitalism Tribal

Neoliberalism ‘What is private is necessarily good and what is public is necessarily bad’ Apple 2000: 59

Hegemony becomes unquestionable

Hegemonic truths of neoliberalism Freedom Equality Fairness Choice

The End of History Fukuyama

‘what is most strikingly novel about neoliberal theory is its commitment to certain kinds of highly individualistic egalitarianism, promoting programs aimed at widening property ownership and distribution and securing equality of access to the competitive labour market for members of disadvantaged social groups, irrespective of their class or ethnic background’ Gilbert 2013

‘Put simply, neoliberalism, from the moment of its inception, advocates a programme of deliberate intervention by government in order to encourage particular types of entrepreneurial, competitive and commercial behaviour in its citizens, ultimately arguing for the management of populations with the aim of cultivating the type of individualistic, competitive, acquisitive and entrepreneurial behaviour which the liberal tradition has historically assumed to be the natural condition of civilised humanity, undistorted by government intervention. This is the key difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism: the former presumes that, left to their own devices, humans will naturally tend to behave in the desired fashion. By contrast the latter assumes that they must be compelled to do so by a benign but frequently directive state. This, according to neoliberals, is partly because a certain habitual tendency towards collectivism, if left unchecked, will lead commercial producers, workers, service-providers, managers and government officials to act only in their selfish corporate interests. ’ Gilbert 2013

Adam Curtis The Trap https: //freedocumentaries. org/documentary/bbc-the-trap-what-happened-to-our-dream-of-freedom-f-kyou-buddy-episode-1#watch-film 47 mins http: //freedocumentaries. org/documentary/bbc-the-trap-what-happened-to-our-dream-of-freedom-thelonely-robot-episode-2

Fear of collectivism Fear of beliefs not connected to capital Fear of inequality

‘The group that is best able to “fix” meaning and articulate it for its own interests is the group best able to maintain and reproduce relations of power. ’ Aldoory 2005: 676

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology • https: //youtu. be/DBOINEXp 0 B 8

problematise

Ideology is not imposed on ourselves…we enjoy our ideology. To step out of our ideology, it hurts… Zizek

‘Hegemony is a process that results in leaks and fissures and blokes such as Goodson sometimes fall through the cracks if they are lucky or if…their resistance is put into the service of their own empowerment rather than made complicitous with their own oppression’ (in Goodson 1992: viii)) Culture is always a struggle and ‘in process’ (Hall 1988).

Power ‘The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power. The university hierarchy is only the most visible…and least dangerous form of this phenomenon. One has to be really naïve to imagine that the effects of power linked to knowledge have their culmination in university hierarchies. Diffused, entrenched and dangerous, they operate in other places than in the person of the old professor’ Foucault 1980 cited in Leitch 2007: 265

Garner 2010 405 -9

‘We know that we don’t like neoliberalism, didn’t vote for it, and object in principle to its exigencies: but we recognise also that unless we comply with it, primarily in our workplaces and in our labour-market behaviour, then we will be punished (primarily by being denied the main consolation for participation in neoliberal culture: access to a wide range of consumer goods), and will be unlikely to find ourselves inhabiting a radically different social terrain. This paradox is made bearable by a crucial feature of neoliberal ideology itself: the insistent belief that it is our private, personal beliefs and behaviours which define our ‘true’ selves, whereas our public behaviour can be tolerated precisely to the extent that it is not invested with any emotional significance. ’ Gilbert 2013: 13