Identity, Diversity and Teaching for Social Justice

Reihe XI Série XIPädagogikPédagogie

Vol./Band 934

Series XIEducation

PETER LANGBern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt a. M. · New York · Oxford · Wien

European University StudiesEuropäische Hochschulschriften

Publications Universitaires Européennes

Identity, Diversity and Teachingfor Social Justice

Juliet Christine Perumal

PETER LANGBern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt a. M. · New York · Oxford · Wien

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ISSN 0531-7398ISBN 978-3-03910-872-5

US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8047-9

This book is dedicated to the memory of my brother, Jasper Perumal, who – during his brief life

taught me more about love and life and laughter through his sparkling wit, and keen sense of justice

than several books combined. Through his absent presence I can attest that angels do indeed, breathe.

Acknowledgements

It is virtually impossible to undertake a study of any magnitude without the cooperation and assistance of people who are not only generous with their time, but who also make the conscious decision of laying on the line deeply personal vestiges of themselves. I am greatly indebted to the five distinguished women who availed their personal and professional narratives for this study; I feel honoured that you allowed me access into your busy lives. I hope that this study has in some measure done justice to the richness of your persons.

I convey heartfelt thanks to my supervisor, Professor Yael Shalem, for reading with refreshing insight and fine-grained critical astuteness the various drafts of the study. Your sophisticated theoretical mind and dis-dain for mediocrity have been instructive and inspiring.

Once in a lifetime, some of us have the rare privilege of being touched by a true blue colleague and supporter. For me such a person came in form of Professor Shirley Pendlebury, former Head of the Wits School of Education. I have often marveled at the blessing of having you in my life. Thanks for believing in me and pointing me in the direction of important resources, and for taking such a keen interest in my work and well-being.

I owe sincere gratitude to my colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand: Professors Maropeng Modiba, Michael Cross, Brahm Fleish, and Ray Basson, who availed themselves, despite exacting schedules, as critical readers or casual commentators. I also express heartfelt gratitude to Professor Gaudelupe Valdes of Stanford University, USA for sponsoring my research logistical requirements while I was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and Jan Esterhuyse at the University of Cape Town, South Africa for being an inspiring and humane mentor and academic.

I thank my friends and students, both near and far, those whom I love and those I have lost along the way – thanks for the encouragement, for listening patiently, politely and with palpable enthusiasm while I

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perfected the art of complaint about the woes and worries of academic research.

I express special thanks to Marcel Weder and Valérie Eggenberg of Peter Lang for the support which they have rendered in realising this publication and to Ingo Porada and Andrew Graham for technical and editorial support.

Finally, I record my enduring gratitude to my family: mom Sharon, dad Stephen, sisters Joy Wright and Jeanette David, and brother Jesse Perumal, and their respective families, who have remained the bedrock of my scholarly and personal (mis)ad/ventures. Ironically, at the end of a study that has relied on narrative research to tell personal and professional stories, I am left with the question:

Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be? The sweet love story that is older than the sea The simple truth about the love you bring to me Where do I start?

Like a summer rain that cools the pavement with a patent leather shine You’ve stayed in my life and made the living fine You’ve filled my heart with very special things With angel songs, with wild imaginings You’ve filled my soul with so much love That anywhere I go I’m never lonely.

How long does it last? Can love be measured by the hours in a day? I have no answers now but this much I can say I know I’ll need you till the stars all burn away And you’ll be there.1

Indeed, where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be?

1 Lai, F. & Sigman, C. (1971). Lyrics of ‘Where do I begin’ from the Paramount

Film: Love Story.

Table of Contents

Foreword.................................................................................................XI

Portraiture in Shards .................................................................................1

Chapter Outline.........................................................................................7

Chapter One: Overview ..........................................................................11

Contextual Overview ..........................................................................11

Methodological Overview ..................................................................14

Ethical Considerations ........................................................................26

Chapter Two: Knowing the Ledge on Which We Stand: Assembling a Theoretical Toolkit...........................................................29

Section 1: Exploring Conceptions of Identity.....................................30

Section 2: Feminist Pedagogy: a counter-hegemonic discourse .............................................................................................41

Section 3: Multilingualism, Language and Gender ............................46

Exploring Webs of Personal and Professional Feminist Identities .................................................................................................59

Chapter Three: The Personal as Political and Potentially Pedagogical.............................................................................................61

Section 1: Mini Portraits of Participants’ Public Collective Identities ............................................................................63

Section 2: Cross-analysis of Public Collective Identities and Pedagogic Potentialities ...............................................................94

Chapter Four: Identity as Ideology: Trajectories of Feminist Identity Construction ............................................................................113

Movements and Patterns in Coming to Feminist Consciousness...................................................................................115

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Chapter Five: Exploring the Complexities of Feminist Teacher Identity ....................................................................................173

Section 1: Authority versus Nurturance............................................174

Language as Symbolic Order............................................................177

Teacher as Bounteous Mother ..........................................................179

Familial and Friendship Practices, Caricatures and Condescension ..................................................................................182

Section 2: Authority as Authorship ..................................................193

Perspectives on Teacher-Student Personal in the Feminist Classroom ..........................................................................196

Exemplar of Teacher-Student Self-disclosure ..................................213

Pursuing critical analysis and the politics of assessment..................217

Section 3: Authority as Power ..........................................................229

Pedagogy is the enactment of power relations..................................232

Bodies are the objects of pedagogical power relations .....................242

The kind of knowledge produced in pedagogy interacts with its site........................................................................................277

Pedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques of power..........................................................................297

Chapter Six: Endnotes: insights, hindsights, oversights .......................333

Section 1: Theoretical Reflective Synthesis: insights, hindsights, oversights .......................................................................334

Section 2: Methodological Reflective Synthesis ..............................358

References............................................................................................. 373

Foreword

As higher education goes global the number of women working in this sector has steadily increased, even though their representation still re-mains at levels of middle management and senior lecturer. In her book, Juliet Perumal explores this very timely and challenging topic and treats it with conviction and passion. The case study of the work of feminist English language educators in post Apartheid South Africa and Southern Africa provides rich insights into the complexity and multi-layered meanings attached to women’s academic work. Specifically, Perumal asks: who is the feminist teacher, what does it mean to be a feminist teacher in a multilingual English language classroom, how does the feminist teacher teach, and why does the feminist teacher consider it important to teach what she does?

This narrative research is a beautiful investigation into the relation-ship between the autobiographies of five feminist tertiary educators, their professional identities and pedagogical practices. The analysis shows the specific ways in which each woman had to endure experiences of mar-ginalisation and silencing. Perumal’s incisive analysis of the women’s conception of knowledge, learning and teaching foregrounds difference – in terms of language philosophies, conception of teacher authority, approaches to the curriculum and to texts and more broadly in their view of academic citizenship. In terms of voicing the difference, Perumal shows great sensitivity to context by situating the educators’ narratives (on language, knowledge) in the historical and cultural contexts of the institution, and within feminist pedagogical approaches. This allows for an astute analysis of patterns of consistency and discrepancy in the iden-tity of each woman, and shows empathy for the educator’s voice. In so doing it helps to unfold the power of theory to recognise and understand discrepancies and tensions between theory and practice. By creating a rich multidimensional portrait of each of the feminist women’s lives – there are no ‘straw’ caricatures in this study – this book engages the complexity of these women’s lives, as well as the contradictions, ten-sions, and ambivalences inherent in their work. Equally, commendable is

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the way Perumal avoids the trap of essentialising the experiences of these women by reading off ascribed identities. In particular, she teases out the ambivalent relations negotiated by these women in terms of their positioning within attachment to ethnic, class, religious and other ‘imagined communities.’ As the student population attending higher education institutions has radically changed over the last few decades, teachers/academic workers have had to negotiate the following difficult questions: what knowledge should be taught, who should it be taught to, who should teach this knowledge, how should it be taught, and how should it be evaluated? Perumal deals with these difficult questions by drawing on realist theories rather than turning to the relativist traditions of some social constructivists. In so doing Perumal manages to spell out a complex theory of knowledge production, dissemination and con-sumption within the higher education sector. This is cutting edge re-search and highly relevant beyond the localized context of Southern Africa.

In my estimation the book makes a big contribution to feminist study of the making of the woman intellectual; how she comes to con-sciousness about her gendered agenda and how her consciousness is im-plemented in her classes.

Yael Shalem University of the Witwatersrand

Portraiture in Shards

I see through a glass darkly …

Recent scholarship among South African researchers working in the tra-dition of narrative research shows a growing trend towards employing technologies of self-disclosure in an attempt to indicate researcher posi-tionality. This slant in qualitative research can be traced to calls to con-front white-sheeted Klansman-type research procedures that mask the identity and ideologies of the researcher. Although my study draws on autobiographical writing as a principal data source, I resist authoring my detailed autobiography in this introductory piece. Instead, I provide the tentative declaration that as a social actor who is still under construction, I am – at the time of undertaking this research – a heterosexual, middle-class, third generation South African woman of Indian descent, schooled in charismatic Christian ideological extravagances, and committed to a politics that is respectful of non-discriminatory forms of social justice.

Hailing from a home background that showed no disturbing espou-sals either in its gendered expectations of behaviour or division of la-bour, the overt and covert impulses of patriarchal culture were not immediately apparent to me. Mum and dad working together outside home, operating a small informal business (which many would be for-given for thinking was a special wing of the Salvation Army), would – on returning home in the evenings – continue their partnership, cooking, cleaning and scouring, not discriminating or differentiating between gender-prescribed roles or responsibilities. Having been left to our own devices for most of our early years, our big brother Jesse played the role of nurturer, ensuring that we had tea and sandwiches when we got home from school in the afternoon. In this regard, unlike some of the partici-pants in my study for whom the label ‘feminist/feminism’ only provided a vocabulary to articulate their nagging suspicion of patriarchal oppression, I came to feminist consciousness quite late in my academic pursuits, largely through the medium of reading, and experiencing the injustices that are committed against women in the work place. Growing

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up in a racially divided South Africa, however, meant for me that the social disparities and prejudices in terms of colour, language, and geo-graphical Apartheid, although they were paraded as natural, did not correlate with the philosophy of love, unity and respect for humanity that my parents and pastors preached with peerless ardour. The oft-quoted biblical scripture, ‘For God so loved that He gave …’ (despite coming under fire for its He-man portrayal of the godhead), carried the essential message of glocalised ‘brotherly’ caring and sharing, which transcended race, colour, creed or culture. This, coupled with the injunction to ‘love my neighbour as myself,’ often took on the form of giving alms to the indigent in my neighbourhood. Thus, I have recollections of being steeped in humanitarian activism, largely by virtue of us enjoying com-paratively more privileged economic capital than most of our neighbours. I recall that this was rendered more possible at sometimes than others, largely to our family vacillating between lower and middle-class strata at different periods during my growing up.

In addition, the ontological in-between-ness of my South African Indian lineage meant that I fluctuated between spaces of privilege and disprivilege. While to a lesser extent it subjected me to various tiers of marginalisation, it also bestowed on me the dubious ‘privileges’ which are associated with colonialism: I speak English as a first language, which gives me a linguistic capital that is regarded as powerful and is much sought after; I have had the privilege of tertiary education; and largely western strands of thinking have shaped my feminist conscious-ness.

Given the Eurocentric bias of Christianity, as it was, and continues to be propagated in South Africa, meant that despite living in ethnically heterogeneous Indian communities, my family experienced a cultural dislocation from the rites, rituals, and Indian vernacular languages of our community – a case of the ‘insider without’. This was attributable to the fact that Christians constitute a numeric minority in most South African Indian communities. As ours was an English-only medium household, I often browsed through the tomes of English, male-authored theological commentaries that my father spent untold hours pouring over. The high-light of my week as a twelve-year-old, however, was our Friday after-noon visit to the supermarket, where I was guaranteed that mum would buy me pastries and two Harlequin/Gothic novels. I would read these at breakneck speed through the week, so that I could get more pastry and

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paperbacks on our visit to the supermarket the following week. I had compiled a sizeable collection, until one day mum picked up a book from my collection, read through a few pages and promptly asked me to give all of them away. The sultry tales of passionate romance was something no child should be exposed to, was her considered, non-too liberal opinion. That saw the end of my Harlequin/Gothic collection. However, there was no love or romance lost between mum and me, and I often joined her singing harmoniously in the eclectic pop, rock, R&B, and gospel music of British and American origin that found their way into our home. From dad I inherited a passion for reading and from mum a passion for music. This engendered in me a deep love for poetry and prose, which – I believe – gave me an unfair advantage over my age-mates at school. Two years later I entered into a less than platonic friend-ship with a boy two years my senior, and being the industrious student that he was, he took it upon himself to give me an early start to the literary classics (Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters), which were his prescribed texts. The package came com-plete with annotated notes, and in-person commentaries on the thematic emplotments in the text, with special elucidation on the tragedy of unre-quited love and the sheer bliss of mutual surrender (a novel way to win a girl’s heart! Small wonder that he was a straight ‘A’ student). The Euro-centric curricula (especially the English literary ‘classic’), which are saturated in biblical scriptural images, also meant that I developed a cultural and linguistic capital similar to that which South African Christian National Education was engineered to transmit. In this regard, I think that my home-school socialisation, would easily find empirical evidence in support of sociologist Basil Bernstein’s (1996) much cited and equally criticised theorising regarding the notion of elaborate codes.

Given the harmonious gender relations of mutual caring and consideration that prevailed in my home, where lingering conversations around the dinner table provided a place for freedom of expression, the discourse on feminism or gender discrimination was irrelevant to my experiential realities. In retrospect I realise that being a beneficiary of horizontally privileged gender relations, and a safe home environment, insulated and blinded me, and made me oblivious of the dehumanisation of others at the hands of patriarchy. With the odd exception, I naïvely assumed that my sheltered and protected lifestyle was normative. I attributed the episodes of weekend domestic violence in the neighbour-

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hood to substance abuse, and did not identify its link to unequal gender relations, in spite of the fact that the casualties were invariably the women and children. Now I recall with a flush of embarrassment my disassociation from feminism, preferring rather to be remembered as a humanitarian activist. The image of Lady Godivas burning their bras in public protest against patriarchal oppression proved a trifle excessive, even for me, given my charismatic Christian background. Apart from it being a waste of good lingerie (I quipped), the entire enterprise violated my socialised perception of the essence of femininity. So with my femi-ninity safely intact, like a dutiful daughter I studied the long-received wisdom of the fathers and armed with my identity papers ventured into the education profession resolute to make teaching a subversive activity. Nothing in the campus crusades of the 1980s prepared me for the roller-coaster emotional ride that my entrance into the labour market would present me with. It was here where I personally encountered the potency of patriarchal oppression. Sharing the disillusionment and frustration of those female educators who did not aid and abet patriarchal precepts and postures, it was as a teacher of English that I experienced the full impact of being a victim of gender discrimination. Management structures which, more often than not, were occupied predominantly by men who were given to exaggerated power performances; pedagogical apparatuses and rituals that excluded, trivialised, stereotyped or denigrated female realities, all served to marginalise the female school population, perpetu-ate gender binarism and ensure our continued subordination. Assailed by such stultifying practices, it was only upon quieter reflection, heightened enquiry into gender concerns and critical maturation that the feminist light sensitised me to the pervasiveness of patriarchal deception.

In tracing my theoretical and ideological affiliations, I recall flirting with humanism, being seduced by the playful ambiguities and uncertain-ties of postmodernism and at the stage of conducting this study embraced the more expansive insights that post-paradigmatic knowledgescapes offer. Post-paradigmatic thinking draws eclectically from the broad spectrum of the knowledge kaleidoscope and has confirmed for me the permeability, mutability and interconnectivity of knowledge systems.

Acutely aware of the partiality of my interpretative and analytic per-spectives, I offer this brief bio-profile to serve both as an excuse and an explanation for the interpretative quietude or excesses that have dis/coloured the lenses through which the research process, in its con-

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ceptualisation, implementation and analysis has unfurled. In this regard, I align myself with Sara-Lawrence-Lightfoot (1997:85) in acknowledging the omnipresence of the researcher’s sense and sensibilities in crafting and choreographing the research process and product. The pervasiveness of researcher voice, presence and positionality is poignantly captured in the following excerpt, in which Lawrence-Lightfoot contends:

… the voice of the researcher is everywhere: in the assumptions, preoccupations, and framework she brings to the inquiry; in the questions she asks; in the data she gathers; in the choices of stories she tells; in the language, cadence, and rhythm of her narrative. Voice is the echoing of the self … her eyes, her ears, her insights, her style, her aesthetic. Voice is omnipresent and … reflects more about the artist than about the subject. The portraitist’s voice then is everywhere-overarching and undergirding the text, framing the piece, naming the metaphors, and echoing through central themes. But her voice is also a premeditated one, restrained, disciplined, and carefully controlled. Her voice never shadows the actor’s voices though sometimes is heard in duet, in harmony and counterpoint.

Chapter Outline

Chapter One provides a contextual overview of the study. It explains my rationale for conducting the study; it sketches the methodological processes, procedures and protocol that shaped the study; and it reflects on the ethical considerations that I had to navigate.

Chapter Two presents an overview of the salient debates that were central to the study. In this regard, it explores discourses on identity politics, feminist pedagogy as a counter-hegemonic to mainstream peda-gogy; multilingualism, language and gender. The insights that emerged from these debates served as theoretical scaffolding for the collection, production and analysis of the data.

Taking the view that the personal is political and potentially peda-gogical, Chapter Three provides a cursory commentary on the partici-pants’ childhood and early adulthood, with the intention of exploring the potential a retrospective gaze of their identity formation has in terms of how they frame interpersonal relations with students and colleagues, and the enactment of their teaching identities. Chapter Four tracks the tra-jectories of the participants’ coming to feminist consciousness, with a special focus on their adoption of project identities which they enact through their theorising and teaching of English from a feminist per-spective.

Given the educators’ subscription and investment in narratives of emancipation that subvert social injustices and repressive domination, Chapter Five explores, at length, the complexities of feminist teacher identity in relation to the themes of difference, dialogue, and epistemolo-gies of experience, all of which invariably encompass the overarching theme of feminist teacher authority. Acknowledging the slippery terrain of teacher and student identity dynamics, the study differentiates three ways in which authority is generally conceived of in feminist pedagogy, viz. authority versus nurturance, authority as authorship and authority as power. In discussing the authority versus nurturance, I argue for un-hinging the female teacher from traditional associations of her with care-giver and intellectualised mammy. Urging for recognition of the woman

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teacher as female but non-maternal, I argue for a recontextualised and reconceptualised understanding of the female teacher – one that fore-grounds her capability of offering critical intellectual nurturance. In ex-ploring the delineation authority as authorship, which entails the mutual sharing of teacher-student personal experience in relation to broader public and academic discourses, I caution against the potential for per-sonal epistemology to circulate within the realm of the familiar, narcissistic and sentimental, in the absence of meaningful critical and contextual pedagogic and educative relevance. In this regard, I suggest the consideration of two pertinent questions: namely: i) is there a shared assumption that the personal is good and the impersonal bad? and ii) Given that other discourses of the personal are operating in the feminist classroom, which personal, exactly, are we referring to when we seek to validate the epistemology of experience? I argue that the pedagogic and educative worth of both teachers and students’ personal disclosures need to be subject to critical, analytical, and productive reflection to assess their value as knowledge.

Critiquing enclaves of feminist pedagogical scholarship that suggest divesting the classroom of teacher authority as a way of rendering it more democratic, the discussion on authority as power agitates for an unmasking of the inevitable pedagogic and educative authority that the feminist teacher wields in the classroom. Through empirical evidence, it illustrates variants of teacher authority that operate in the classroom and supports Gore’s (2002) proposition to develop a theory of pedagogy and power by acknowledging that:

pedagogy is the enactment of power relations between teacher, stu-dent and other significant partners; bodies are the objects of pedagogical power relations, and in peda-gogy, different differences matter; the kind of knowledge produced in pedagogy interacts with the institutional site and the techniques of power which are employed there; andpedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques of power.

Chapter Six concludes with a theoretical and methodological reflec-tive synthesis. The theoretical synthesis presents the central lines of ar-gument that emerged from the issues which were investigated. The

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methodological reflective synthesis presents the participants’ comments on the validity of the study and the value that accrued to them by virtue of participating in the study.

Chapter One

Overview

Contextual Overview

This book – Identity, Diversity and Teaching for Social Justice – is based on research which I undertook towards my doctoral studies. My interest in issues of identity, diversity, language studies and social justice can be traced to my career as an English language teacher. Having taught Eng-lish at previously disadvantaged secondary and tertiary educational in-stitutions in both Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa, I found that English language education in Apartheid South Africa faithfully perpetuated colonial agendas that favoured both androcentric and Euro-centric traditions. Emerging from this socio-political background, my desire to engage in a study that would explore how (if at all) feminist sensibilities could reconceptualise English language teaching within de-mographically diverse contexts was driven by a three-fold rationale:

Firstly, in the climate of redress, post-Apartheid South Africa has pledged an unequivocal commitment to the promotion of a unitary, non-sexist, non-racist education system that is premised on the tenets of mul-tilingualism and multiculturalism. From my engagement with the socio-linguistic discourse through the lens of postmodern feminism (see Perumal 1997) I felt that exploring the intersection between feminist pedagogy and multilingual philosophies offered the potential to trans-form democratic hopes into happenings. The discourse privileges a wide-angled lens that is sensitive to issues related to race, class, gender, age, and other significant variables that configure sociolinguistic identity con-struction.

Second, the feminist discourse has for a long-time endured scathing attacks for being removed from the experiential realities of those in whose name it justifies its existence (Tong 1989). This study would, thus, confront this critique by engaging feminist educators in a critical

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reflection on the theoretical foundations that undergird their enactment of feminist tenets in multilingual classrooms by challenging them to re-flect and examine how (if at all) the values, aspirations and convictions which they have espoused and professed in theory have been manifested or translated at chalk-face.

Third, the intersection of feminist pedagogy and multilingual educa-tion is an under-researched area. There is a growing body of literature within the international community that examines feminist pedagogy and multilingual education as discrete disciplines. This study endeavours to contribute to this under-researched area by:

(i) combining two important concerns in South African education, i.e., the promotion of an education system respectful of gender equity and multilingual sensitivities; and

(ii) documenting the voices of Southern African feminist educators. The body of available literature proliferates with the voices of Western feminist educators. The teaching and learning experiences of African feminist educators is conspicuous by its absence.

In an attempt to add the voices of African feminist educators to the narrative field and to address the critique that feminist discourses have generally been couched in theoretical abstraction, this study engaged five feminist lecturers who teach English at five demographically diverse universities in Southern Africa. It aimed to identify the socio-economic, geo-political, historico-cultural variables that shape their identities, and subsequently inform their language teaching philosophies, and ideolo-gies. Through teacher narratives the study explored:

(i) the complexity of sociolinguistic, and feminist identity construction in multilingual seascapes; and by extension;

(ii) how feminist educators’ interpretation and enactment of their per-sonal world-view informs their language teaching in terms of whatthey teach, how they teach, and why they teach what they do.

The relationship between English teaching and feminism is not an easy one to tease out. While the discourses on feminism and multilingualism share the common interest and social vision of inclusivity and egalitari-anism, my experience as an educator has shown that English language

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teaching from a feminist perspective embeds the following tensions: feminist pedagogy is an oppositional discourse that occupies a marginal status in relation to mainstream pedagogy; on the other hand, English enjoys premium status – it is seen as a gateway to upward social mobil-ity. In multilingual contexts, such as South Africa, the acquisition of English is much sought after because of its instrumental value. This is especially so among students who come from marginalised/disprivileged communities whose native languages have been devalorised, and deni-grated. The feminist English language teacher is thus placed in the deli-cate position of:

negotiating her/his own status in relation to the inherent hierarchical power dynamic that characterises teacher-student relationships; and negotiating a relationship whose delicacy is further accentuated if his/her students come from marginalised race, class, and language communities.

English teaching occurs within stratified institutions where structural distinctions are always drawn between teachers and the taught. Feminism depends upon identifying oppression through the sharing of women’s experience, and it thus turns the personal into the political. English teachers may encourage personal expression, through the accommoda-tion of student personal voice and experience as pedagogic content and strategy, but how and where that translates into political action is not very clear. Different things happen to the category ‘personal’ in the con-text of the class and within broader social structures. Given these kinds of contradictions, it is perhaps not surprising that English language classes have seldom looked like consciousness-raising groups, even when gender issues are being most strenuously addressed.

Furthermore, it may be argued that feminism is already represented in the English classroom in the form of anti-sexist strategies. However, an important distinction that needs to be made is that anti-sexism is not synonymous with feminism. It remains one particular strand in feminist thinking, one that – in the context of English language teaching – has been appropriated to fit existing approaches rather than constitute a challenge to them. For example, many English Departments have re-viewed the kinds of literature they offer in courses. There has been a sustained effort to feminise the English curriculum by including texts

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authored by females, and books with female central characters. While anti-sexism has been appropriated within existing approaches in English teaching, it leaves intact many of the existing assumptions that English teachers already make, about their students, the English language, and English curricula material. Feminism has much to offer to English teaching because it raises questions not just about course content, but also about pedagogical practices and relationships. By examining who teaches what, why and how, and the pedagogical and epistemological power differentials which they engender, educators who teach English language from a feminist perspective are provoked to interrogate the taken-for-granted practices, procedures and pedagogic patterns that pre-vail in their classes.

Methodological Overview

Overview of the Participants and their Institutional Location

Cumulatively, the study from which this book emanates is based on the principal participants’ autobiographical essays, twenty four hours of lecture observations and fourteen hours of interviews with five feminist educators (who were the principal participants) and three team teachers who were teaching at five Southern African universities during the time of my conducting the research.

The following research subjects aged between thirty and sixty years (who were solicited through purposive sampling) agreed to participate in the study (their actual names have been substituted with pseudonyms; however, the rest of the biographical details are authentic). The partici-pants matched the criteria of purposive sampling in terms of the aims of the study because their engagement in English language teaching is:

informed by feminist theoretical and methodological insights; and they represent a group that has been discriminated against formally on the basis of their gender, and/or race.

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Carol, a White female in her fifties was employed at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) at the time of the study. The University of the Western Cape was established in 1959 by an Act of Parliament as an ethnic college for ‘Coloured’ students. In its infancy, it was run by aca-demics who supported racial separation and who saw their role as ‘white guardians’ of their ‘Coloured wards’. The first expression of student frustration with the conservative administration came in 1970, when stu-dents burnt their ties in protest against the university’s formal dress code. In 1982, the university adopted a new mission statement in which it for-mally rejected the Apartheid ideology on which it had been founded and committed itself to non-racialism and the development of the Third World communities. It also adopted an open policy to make it more accessible to disadvantaged students. (http://www.uwc.ac.za)

Carol was off sick and awaiting confirmation for being boarded during the course of the study. I was thus unable to observe any of her lectures. However, in both her autobiographical essay and the interview she spoke at length about UWC. She reflected, in particular, on her teaching of the Masters in English course: Topics in Gender and Cul-tural Studies. This course focussed on the gendering of language in sport (the lack of finances channelled towards women in sport; the predomi-nant televising and media coverage of male sport; media representation of male sports, and how these are linked to general attitudes towards men and women and the relative privilege of men over women).

Jennifer, a White female in her forties, lectures at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Several South African universities have their roots in UNISA. When these universities and colleges became autono-mous in the 1940s, UNISA stood at the crossroads. The need for extra tuition for students who studied independently became clear. For the most part, these students could not attend conventional residential uni-versities for a number of reasons, including personal circumstances, occupational obligations, etc., and most were older than the average stu-dent entering university for the first time. Taking as its motto, hope through difficulties’ the idea of distance teaching was born. UNISA is one of eleven distance education universities in the world. The university has examination centres in many countries, and some of its students are prison inmates. (http://www.unisa.ac.za)

Jennifer invited me to her Contemporary Women’s Writing English Honours Course. Jennifer and Lisa (two White females), and John

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(a White male) co-taught this course. Given that UNISA is a distance education university, students attend short periods of intensive contact sessions. Approximately ten students attended the one-day Honours seminar that I observed. The class comprised nine females (one Black and seven White) and one (Black) male student. Their ages ranged between twenty five and twenty nine years. Discussion revolved around the questions: why gender needs to be deconstructed; what does it mean to deconstruct gender, and how does one go about doing so?

Vijay lectures at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW). UDW was established at the height of political repression forty years ago. The Apartheid legislation of the day designated universities along ethnic and racial grounds. UDW was compelled to admit only students of Indian origin, of whom the majority trace their forbears to the indentured la-bourers who were shipped to the sugar cane fields of Natal by the British colonial authorities. Politically progressive sections of the Indian community boycotted the university in line with the Congress Alliance’s policy of shunning Apartheid structures. The late 1960s witnessed a change in the boycott strategy in favour of the ‘education under protest’ campaign, which was designed to transform apartheid institutions into ‘sites of struggle’. Drawing ideological impetus from the emerging Black Consciousness Movement, in 1971, the original college was granted aca-demic independence and became a fully-fledged university. The univer-sity gained a reputation for being the bedrock of radical student activism, and it became a rallying point for activist politics. During the periods of virtual martial law in the 1980s, the increasingly authoritarian posture of the Apartheid state was confirmed with the establishment of military bases on the campus. In spite of these constraints, faculty and staff ener-getically engaged in national policy debates about the form of the post-Apartheid dispensation. A change in the Education Act, and pressure from students and faculty, resulted in a more open policy on student ad-missions in terms of race, language and ethnic origin. (http://www.udw.ac.za)

Having myself been an undergraduate student at the University of Durban-Westville, it was with a sense of nostalgia that I returned to attend the Language and Power Course which Vijay (a third generation South African of Indian descent) was teaching to third year Bachelor of Arts students. Posters announcing the death of young students, inter-spersed with HIV/AIDS pamphlets, and posters announcing AIDS

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Awareness Week, greeted me as I walked down the corridors. For the duration of my lecture observations, the class was involved in discussions around preparing for the HIV/AIDS Assignment. Committed to developing the intellectual in a post-colonial society, Vijay had built into the course a component which required students to conduct ethno-graphic research. Charged with a strong sociolinguistic sensitivity, the HIV/AIDS Assignment aimed at involving students in the upliftment and positive transformation of their societies. The course comprised thirteen Black students (six males and seven females) and four Indian females. Their ages ranged between nineteen and twenty four years.

Phumzile was a lecturer in the Department of English at the Univer-sity of the Free State (UOFS). The university was established as a Whites-only institution in 1904. In the beginning, the medium of in-struction changed several times from English to Afrikaans and again to English. In 1993, the university changed to a system of parallel medium of instruction, and all classes are currently presented in Afrikaans and English. Today, the university has a multicultural student body, with students from abroad and from other South African provinces. The uni-versity has introduced programmes to facilitate access to first-generation university students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds. Since 1991, the university has been involved in the development of partner-ships with historically disadvantaged communities, the private sector and the government of the Free State. (Publicity Brochure 2001: The Univer-sity of the Orange Free State).

Phumzile invited me to observe lectures in the following courses which are related to English for Specific Purposes. These English lan-guage courses are meant to teach students reading, writing and analytical skills): REN 108: a language course designed for law students; EBE 122: a language course designed for business students; ENG 225: a predomi-nantly literature-based course, which Phumzile co-taught with other staff in the Department of English; and ENG 702: a Masters course on Afri-can Literature which dealt predominantly with slave and women’s writings. Phumzile taught to predominantly White, Afrikaner students who were aged between nineteen and forty six years.

Thembi lectures in the Department of English at the University of Botswana (UB). The history of UB is entwined in British colonial and church politics. In 1964, as a result of an agreement between the High Commission Territories and the Oblate of Mary Immaculate of Pius XII

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Catholic University, the university college became the product of the desire for an institution of higher learning for African men and women. Its degrees were endorsed by UNISA. Financial difficulties, which were the consequence of expansion and of racial restrictions on student resi-dence that were required by UNISA precipitated negotiations in 1962 to transform the university college into a fully-fledged university. In 1963, the new university, with Ford Foundation and British Government funds, purchased the assets for an indemnity of half of its value, in exchange for guarantees of a continuing Catholic presence. The University of Botswana was established on 1 July 1982 by an Act of Parliament. (Uni-versity of Botswana 2001/2002 University Calendar: pp. 10–11).

I observed a three-hour lecture session titled: Gender Issues in Afri-can Literature that Thembi and Molly, two Botswana nationals, co-taught to third year Bachelor of Arts students at UB. Using various criti-cal and literary theories as analytical tools, students were encouraged to assess the roles that literary characters assumed, with a view to examining the writers’ changing perceptions of their own societies in regard to gender relations and the attendant issues of domination, oppression and exploitation. This racially homogeneous English lan-guage class comprised fifteen Black students (four females and eleven males).

Researching participants from South Africa and Botswana high-lighted at least one significant historical similarity – both countries had experienced the debilitating impact of British colonialism. South Africa suffered the added insult of racial Apartheid. However, the feminist edu-cators, from both countries, emphasised that national preoccupations of social redress seemed invariably to neglect the scourge of patriarchal oppression. Thus, as teachers who teach English from a feminist per-spective, these educators employed their teaching space to conscientise their students about discriminatory gender and sociolinguistic practices. In so doing, they attempted to teach students that language and gender constructions are powerful conduits for the transmission of cultural values and attitudes. As socio-cultural constructs, discriminatory lin-guistic and gender practices can be deconstructed and reconstructed to institute a just social order.

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Methodological Perspective

The study was guided by the theoretical underpinnings that inform femi-nist research methodologies. While feminist research methodology in itself is not a unitary concept, it is identifiable by its preference for qualitative research strategies and processes.2 In critiquing the restrictive standards of traditional social science research, which have hitherto de-humanised and depersonalised both the researcher and the researched, feminist research methodologies wish to acknowledge the subjective, emotional and biographic factors that shape the researcher and the re-searched. In so doing, they attempt to democratise the research process through the establishment of non-hierarchical, dialogic, mutually educa-tive encounters between the researcher and the researched. Some of the recurrent themes that inform feminist research methodologies include the motifs of reflexivity, voice, difference and power dynamics.

In elaborating on the concept voice, it has been argued that educa-tional research based on quantitative measurement, variables, experi-mentation and operations usually encode the ‘voices’ of its research subjects into statistical data, mathematical relations or other abstract pa-rameters. Thus, the voices from the research field become ‘disembodied’ and sanitised when presented in reports, articles and books (Schratz 1993:1). Translated into the context of feminist research, the word ‘voices’ signals the need for researchers to redistribute the research field by investigating and representing the social reality of women and other historically misrepresented/underrepresented groups.

Feminist researchers generally study the relatively powerless or voiceless (Perumal et al. 2002; Bozzoli 1991). However, Buss (1985) contends that these are not necessarily the most vulnerable people. She urges that more feminist biographical work be done among people who are literate and highly educated, but whose experiences have remained hidden. Studying the lives of literate and highly educated women, femi-nist research does not give voice to the voiceless, but it allows different voices to emerge. As with Buss’ (ibid.) study, the relevance of the con-cept voice for my study sensitised me to the fact that the profiles of the five feminist tertiary educators in my sample did not constitute a

2 See Reinharz (1992) for an extended discussion of ten themes that are identifiable

in feminist research methodologies.

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marginalised group in the normative sense. This owes primarily to their educational accomplishments and their subsequent social positionality, which renders them comparatively less ‘voiceless’ in the traditional sense. However, because they are subject to primary and secondary in-stances of discrimination and marginalisation within the academic community, their experiences and voices are often silenced/ignored in tertiary institutions. Apart from survey-type audits (see, for example, CSD Audit 1997) confirming that women constitute a numeric minority in academia; they also suffer marginalisation in academic establishments that have perennially been the province of male domination. In addition, the research participants represent a group that has not only been dis-criminated against because of their gender and/or race, but by a complex interplay of other social configurations. This second tier of marginalisa-tion becomes apparent when subjectivity is understood as multiply con-stituted in terms of class, ethnicity, language, ability, sexual identity, age, etc. It is important to note, however, that a dialectical tension emerges when feminist scholars occupy dual membership as part of oppressed women in general, and as part of a privileged class of academics in par-ticular. At the methodological level, this dialectical tension intensifies the awareness of the double consciousness that arises from being a member of an oppressed group (women) and a privileged group (scholars).

The politics of difference is also a key concept which many feminist researchers address in their discussion of research methodologies. Their concern is not restricted to interrogating the difference between genders, but also the politics of diversity among women. Women of colour, in particular, are resisting the universalising tendencies of feminist theorising. Such resistance, according to Lather (1991:27) has grown not out of a desire for theory but out of a need for survival. Feminists such as Lorde (1984); hooks (1982); Lugones & Spelman (1992) contend that in adopting one hegemonic paradigm, feminist researchers tend to ignore or neglect those writings and theorisings that fall outside that ambit. They argue that no feminist today can innocently represent all women so the position from which any feminist speaks must be continually interro-gated, and relocated as circumstances change. This means that researchers need to take cognisance of the gendered, contextual and positional diversity of research participants and researchers where

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multiple fissures across race, class, ability, sexual identity, age, etc. are analysed (Canon, Higginbotham & Leung 1991; Reinharz 1992:4).

Acutely aware of the power dynamics that characterise social rela-tions, feminist research methodologies express a commitment to confronting power differentials through the establishment of non-hierarchical researcher-researched relations (Reinharz 1992; Neuman 1997). Power differentials manifest themselves in various guises throughout the research process. Researchers establish their status of power at the very inception of the study when they define the criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of research subjects. Their status of power prevails throughout the process of sample and data selection, analysis, interpretation, and representation. In attempting to confront the power researchers have to exploit research participants as objects of scrutiny and manipulation, feminist researchers encourage research processes into which research participants can enter as active subjects. However, de-spite the emancipatory intent, this still poses ongoing contradictions. The act of analysing the data, summarising another’s life and linking the in-dividual to processes outside his/her immediate social world, for example, is an act of objectification, and demonstrates researchers’ power in data representation and interpretation. Notwithstanding this fact, there is a need for feminist research methodologies to deal with the issues of objectivity in educational research and the relationship between the researcher and the researched, so as not to transform those researched into objects of scrutiny and manipulation.

Although feminist research elaborates at length about the power re-searchers wield over subjects, Measor & Sikes (1992:221) draw attention to the fact that research participants are not pathologically powerless. A symbolic interactionist research perspective reminds us that research participants wield power over what they choose to disclose about them-selves, their experiences, about not participating in certain aspects of the research, and about how much time they will invest in the study. This tenuous power balance captures the dynamics of researcher-researched relationships.

An issue that is central to the discourse on feminist research methodologies is its stress on reflexivity, which involves a process of self-awareness and self-consciousness, of ‘researching’ one’s own posi-tion in the research process, in order to reflect the researcher’s interac-tion with the process. Reay (1996:59–60) describes reflexivity as “a

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continual consideration of the ways in which the researcher’s own social identity and values affect the data gathered and the picture of the social world produced.” Feminist researchers have stressed the importance of locating themselves within their research. By recognising who researchers are in terms of their race, class and sexuality, Reinharz (1979:240) believes that we can avoid self-obscuring methodologies because the reflexive stance exploits self-awareness as a source of per-sonal insight and discovery. The self can be used in research not only as an observer, but also as a receiver and receptacle of experience. Essen-tially, reflexivity compels a revelation of self, with its frailties, passions, shortcomings and biases.

The insights that emerge from an exploration of the tenets of femi-nist methodologies highlighted several issues that I needed to attend to in my study. These included:

attempting to democratise the research by negotiating the methodological moves and mechanics of the research process; accommodating flexibility and non-uniformity in the use of research techniques;keeping the research participants informed about developments in the research process after I had left the research field; being sensitive to the participants’ voices in relation to their social realities beyond the teaching/learning interface; attending to the differences among the research participants in terms of race, sexual orientation, age, feminist and pedagogical ideologies, and being guided by these in my critical interpretations; and striving for empathetic connections with my research participants, and being sensitive so as not to exploit the research participants by using them merely as objects of research.

Data Production Processes

Drawing on the theoretical positions that shape feminist research methodologies, I employed narrative research to investigate the critical questions I identified for the study. The study drew from a suite of data sources, which comprised autobiographical essays, lecture observations, interviews and questionnaires to students. The suitability of using narra-

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tive research to understand the complexity of sociolinguistic identity construction in multilingual and multicultural seascapes is confirmed by Lieblich et al. (1998:2–5) who contend that narrative research may be used for comparison among groups to learn about a social phenomenon or historical period, or to explore a personality. They point out that in many studies the narrative is used to represent the character or lifestyle of subgroups in society (defined by their gender, race, religion, etc.) whose social, cultural or ethnic perspectives have been discriminated against resulting in their narratives remaining unexpressed and their voices unheard.

In doing narrative research, the researcher’s purpose is to create a written record of the research participant’s life from his/her perspective in his/her own words. Long (1987) stresses the value of this perspective for the social sciences as follows:

Feminist scholarship … has made it clear that third person accounts and ‘generic’ sociology have not, in fact, told us anything about women’s experiences. First per-son accounts are required to understand the subjectivity of a social group that is ‘muted,’ excised from history, ‘invisible’ in the official records of their culture.

In attempting to excavate the sociolinguistic and feminist identity con-structions of the participants, I presented them with a series of questions to guide in the writing of their autobiographical essays. The following questions were presented to them:

What influences from childhood and early family life have shaped your personal, political, and intellectual development? What influence has your age, class, culture, race, religion, ethnicity, and linguistic background had on your identity formation? What programmes, activities, and consciousness-raising groups have provided the initial impetus for the development of your feminist and multilingual interests? How has you identification with feminist and multilingual ideologies affected your interpersonal relationships with family, friends and academic-institutional colleagues? What theories/theorists influence(d) your thinking about feminism and multilingual teaching? What are your personal theories regarding feminist and multilingual teaching and learning?

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What are the defining characteristics that inform the feminist ideolo-gies/language teaching philosophies to which you subscribe? What impact did feminism have on your view of yourself, and how does this affect your conceptualisation of multilingual teaching? Have you written any academic or mainstream articles/papers that capture your theoretical/philosophical world-view on feminism and/or language teaching?

The autobiographical essays have been published at the following URL: www.geocities.com/perumaljuliet/feminist_educator_narratives_doc.

The autobiographical essay, which served as the primary data source for this study, is not without its methodological shortcomings. Taylor (1991, in Roos, 1994) suggests that in an autobiography, the author en-deavours to present her life as directly, naturally and realistically as possible.

While generic definitions of autobiography describe it simply as the writing of one’s own story, it is clearly more complex. The autobiogra-phy cannot be accepted in terms of the classical representational mirror theory, preoccupied with the romance of the real that aims to portray a unified and coherent social actor. Stanley (1992) maintains that: “both biography and autobiography lay claim to facticity, yet both are by na-ture artful enterprises which select, shape and produce a very unnatural product.”

This perspective echoes the postmodernist critique of autobiography which contends that there is no Truth, no Reality, no one ‘true’ way to connect the object world and the spoken or written wor(l)d, instead only lots of interpretations, all of which are equally possible. Roos (1994) further contends that this raises important questions about the way soci-ety, culture and history infiltrate the process of writing an autobiography. The simple original project ‘I want to write/tell my life’ is seriously dis-credited under the postmodernist gaze. According to this perspective, there is no life to tell, there is no I telling the life; and even if there were, there would be so many intervening factors that the resulting story would have nothing to do with the actual intent.

Evidently, autobiographies are very subjective versions of some-thing that may be very far from the truth, or may change several times during the person’s lifetime. However, Roos (ibid.) proposes that autobi-ographies be treated essentially as reality – and truth oriented narratives,

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where the truth is seen from a unique, concrete view point – that of the author. Although postmodernism has alerted us that it is impossible to write an autobiography in the ordinary sense – all aspects of the process are problematic … story, self, life, etc. – people go on writing their life stories under the assumption that there is a life outside, that they are de-scribing it, that their selves are contiguous, not contingent, and that there is a causal narrative connecting the different events. This is also true in the domain of education.

In spite of the difficulties which are experienced by biographical and autobiographical enquiry as a research methodology, a link has been established in the minds of teachers and researchers between the telling of stories and the exploration and development of personal and professional voice and identity.

The study also drew on data gathered from lecture observations. Essentially, the observations were concerned with seeing how theory manifests itself, if at all, in the practical context of the English language, multilingual university classroom. My interest was tied to these questions: Who teaches What, Why, and How? In addition, through the lecture observations, I hoped to gain insights into how, if at all, the peda-gogic relationship in the feminist classroom was redefined, given the emphasis that feminist discourses place on power relations in terms of teacher-student dialectics, and the construction and deconstruction of knowledge systems. Although the participants’ students did not consti-tute a primary unit of analysis, their voice, as it emerged from their con-tribution to classroom discussions formed an important part of the study.

The study also drew on the conventions of the semi-structured inter-view. Interviews, which were either conducted in the participants’ homes or at the institutions where they taught, served to discuss and clarify issues, experiences, etc. that emerged from the autobiographical essays and lecture observations. It also sought to elicit information regarding: the purpose and nature of the specific courses which participants were teaching at the time of the research; reflections on the thinking that in-formed curriculum design and teaching styles; and consensual and con-flicting student interactions; language and gender ideologies and their manifestation in the classroom, etc.

Acknowledging that there is no definitive approach to qualitative data analysis, the study drew discursively from a combination of qualita-tive analytical approaches and assembled an analytical toolkit that com-prised principles of content analysis, discourse analysis and grounded

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theory. Through permutations of theory-theory, theory-data and data-data interplay, the study created a dialectic referential circle to enhance multi-perspectival analysis and inter-relational understanding of the feminist teacher’s epistemological stances and her epistemological la-bour.

Ethical Considerations

Guided by the principles of qualitative feminist research methodologies, I attempted, as far as was possible, to democratise the research process through the establishment of dialogic relations between the participants and myself. Earlier on in the study, to remain true to the spirit of rendering the research process mutually consultative and collaborative, I had returned the lecture and interview transcripts to the participants so that they could check the accuracy of the data representation. In the final stage of the research, I returned the analysis chapters to the participants for their review and verification, and to solicit their comments about how they had experienced the research process. This approach is consistent with Measor & Sikes’ (1992:217) suggestion that respondent validation forms a crucial feature of data representation and interpretation, espe-cially in qualitative type research, which is purportedly more subjective, partial and dynamic in its interpretational nature. The respondent valida-tion process often helps to verify whether the researcher has misunder-stood and/or misrepresented the respondents, and it gives the participants an opportunity to correct erroneously interpreted data. Further, Measor & Sikes (1992:212) and Lieblich et al. (1998) also caution that the accuracy and consistency of the stories which people tell, and the nature of the researcher’s interpretation, are two issues commonly addressed in dis-cussions on qualitative research methodologies. The significance of these discussions is linked to the autobiographical and biographical accounts, which comprised two important data sources for the study. Methodologi-cally and ethically, these data sources constituted shared knowledge, rooted in the intersubjectivity of the five research participants and myself and the intertextuality of their autobiographies and biographies. I antici-pated that the resultant fusion of subjectivity and textuality could raise

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tensions both for the correlation and consistency between researcher-researched authorial voices. Thus, as a way of addressing possible mis-interpretations and interpretational variance, I elected to return the ana-lysed text to the participants.

The participants, generally expressed appreciation for engaging them in the respondent validation process. Carol, Phumzile and Thembi identified a few instances in the text where they felt my analysis was inconsistent with their narrative intentionality. Their refutational analysis required that I:

correct factual inaccuracies; change variation in language/expression that impacted on the light in which they were presented; provide clarification and elaboration of their ideological stances; correct my interpretational inferences; and provide additional information for clarification purposes.

Comments which the participants made regarding their impressions of the research process related to the value of having forged warm, empa-thetic, respectful, trusting, transparent and sensitive interpersonal rela-tions. I was constantly guided by the imperative to remain honest, open and sensitive to my participants. Aware that their participation in the study was at my request, I endeavoured not to hurt, embarrass or violate them either in my representation or in my analytical commentaries. Thus, there were instances when I deliberately toned down critical/cutting analysis, given that the rationale for the study was not to be judgemental or condemnatory, but to acquire a deeper understanding of the nuances of feminist pedagogical practice in demographically diverse English lan-guage classes.

Chapter Two

Knowing the Ledge on Which We Stand: Assembling a Theoretical Toolkit

All knowledge is to know the ledge you stand on half way between earth and sky where the clouds slide form and dissolve around you a way of moving in the fluid surely not as a man who walks in water where swimming would better do or as Christ did walking upon it to teach them the stupidity of rigid category

bpNichol (in Relke 1994)

Introduction

In this chapter I present an overview of literature on identity politics, feminist pedagogy, multilingualism and the feminist critique of lan-guage. These broad areas provided the theoretical scaffolding for the study and provided a point of entry into investigating how these dis-courses give substance to dealing with teacher and student identities in demographically diverse contexts. Feminist discourses are characterised by both theoretical diversity and commonalities. Despite the non-unitari-ness of feminist discourses, the debates emanating from them provide partial and tentative resolutions to the issues that face women in patriar-chal and capitalist societies. Accepting that much of the diversity

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characterising the fissures in feminist discourses spring from women’s various social positionalities, as they relate to race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, language, etc., the chapter explores conceptions of identity in relation to the history and scope of identity politics by linking its emer-gence to wide ranging political activism and theorising, which are aimed at eradicating the disenfranchisement of women and other marginalised social groups.

Section 1: Exploring Conceptions of Identity

Feminist pedagogies are keenly concerned with difference and diversity, especially as they relate to understanding the social, political and cultural positionalities of teachers and students. Increasingly as educational in-stitutions become demographically diverse, it is important to understand that in the teaching/learning encounter, knowledge construction and in-terpretation are subject to, and are mediated by participants’ different ideologies and affinities. Given that this study explored feminist identity construction, the ensuing discussion attempts to locate processes of identity formation within the debates which inform the politics of difference. To this end, the discussion investigates the history and scope of identity politics and explores how identity politics is being framed among feminist scholars.

Derrida and other post-structuralists have problematised identity by arguing that identity: presupposes differences; involves the suppression of difference; and entails an endless process of deferral meaning. Post-structuralism has therefore contributed to the complication of identity politics by introducing what is sometimes termed a politics of difference,which aims to decentre or subvert, rather than to conquer or assert. It does this by seeking to reclaim a stigmatised identity, to revalue the de-valued pole of a dichotomised hierarchy, such as White/Black, male/female, First World/Third World, etc. Before, the question of iden-tity evolved into the question of difference; however, there was a prior history.

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Gergen (1995) argues that although the laden phrase ‘identity poli-tics’ has served many different purposes, it has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorising founded in the shared experiences of injustice to members of certain social groups. Rather than organising solely around ideology or party affiliation, identity politics typically concerns the liberation of a specific constituency that is mar-ginalised within its larger context. Such marginalised groups generate a self-designated identity (group consciousness) that is instantiated by the individual identities of its constituents; for example, Afro-Americans, physically challenged, etc., who are politically marked as individuals. Politics and personal being are virtually inseparable. This inseparability is derived largely from the ‘natural’ conditions of its members who lay claim to certain inalienable rights, such as equal opportunities, equal treatment, freedom to practice, participation in democratic governance, etc.

History and Scope of Identity Politics

The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of large-scale political movements such as Black Civil Rights in the United States, second wave feminism, etc. These movements were rooted in claims about the injustices done to particular social groups. These social movements addressed questions about the nature, origin and futures of the identities being defended (Heyes 2002). Young (1990) observes that identity politics as a mode of organising is closely connected to the idea that some social groups are oppressed; that is, one’s identity as a woman or as a Chinese South African, for example, makes one particularly vul-nerable to violence, exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness and cultural imperialism (including stereotyping, erasure, or appropriation of one’s group identity). Identity politics starts from analyses of oppression and makes various recommendations for the reclaiming, re-description, or transformation of previously stigmatised accounts of group member-ship. Rather than accept the negative scripts offered by a dominant cul-ture about one’s inferiority, one transforms one’s sense of self and community – often through consciousness-raising. The scope of political movements that may be described as dealing with identity politics is wide-ranging: the examples in the literature are predominantly of

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struggles within Western capitalist democracies, but indigenous rights movements worldwide, nationalist projects, demands for regional self-determination, etc. employ similar arguments. There is no defining criterion that distinguishes a political struggle into an example of ‘iden-tity politics’ instead, the term serves as an umbrella for a broad spectrum of political projects from different social locations that have hitherto been neglected, erased or suppressed (Heyes 2002).

Since the twentieth century heyday of the well known political movements that made identity politics so visible, a plethora of academic literature has emerged. Although identity politics draws on intellectual precursors from Mary Wollstonecraft to Franz Fanon (writers who have actually used this specific phrase), the discourse has gained prominence in the last fifteen years. Barely had intellectuals started to systematically outline and defend the philosophical underpinnings of identity politics, then they simultaneously began to deconstruct it. The notion of identity has become indispensable to contemporary political discourse, at the same time arousing troubling implications for models of the self, politi-cal inclusiveness, and possibilities for solidarity and resistance. Under-lying many of the pragmatic debates about the merits of identity politics are philosophical questions about the nature of subjectivity and the Self. Taking on discourses that recognise multiple selves, Calhoun (1994) asks which self are we addressing when we enter into discussions on subjec-tivity and multiple selves?

Identity politics in the twenty first century points to the continuing intellectual crisis surrounding the discourse, while – paradoxically – it also confirms its importance to contemporary political philosophy and practice. For philosophers it is perhaps more important that the concept of identity itself appears to be in a period of rapid evolution. Changing technologies are impacting profoundly on our philosophical understandings of who we are. We are capable of changing our bodies in ways that change our identities dramatically, for example, through sex change or cosmetic surgeries, with immediate consequences for the kinds of identities that are constructed. Attempts to decode human genetics and potentially shape the genetic make-up of future persons, to clone human beings, or to xeno-transplant animal organs, etc. all raise deep philoso-phical questions about ‘the kind of thing a person is,’ and support Sandiland’s (2000) question – whether identity politics is too limited in that it is too person-centred?

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Feminism and Identity Politics

Women have been subjected to male subordination and oppression in varying degrees and societies since pre-capitalistic times, through long-standing historico-structural arrangements that have initiated, supported, legitimated and consolidated our subjugation. Thus, the question of identity politics, which is committed to agitating for marginalised rights, has also been taken up with rigour within feminist discourses. Feminist theories and perspectives attempt to describe women’s oppression, ex-plain its causes and consequences, and strategise towards women’s liberation (Agger 1993:57; Farganis 1994:102–103).

Bucholtz (1999:4) observes that early varieties of feminism either finessed the question by assuming the universality of the experience of middle-class, White Western heterosexual women, or reduced it to an essentialist principle by taking the difference between men and women as axiomatic. It appears that those ‘classic’ feminist perspectives were allied to the belief that some notion of the identity of ‘woman’ was re-quired to propel political action within the feminist movement. Feminist identity politics has subsequently recognised the shortcomings in theo-retical discourses that had constituted themselves upon a principle of unity, based on what was perceived as the shared oppression of all women at the hands of patriarchal societies. The recognition of such shortcomings has resulted in a proliferation of oppositional feminist dis-courses, which have unearthed various other interlocking systems of oppression. Johnson-Roullier (1997) points out that this has fore-grounded the notion of multiple oppressions in place of the traditional conception of oppression as operating in terms of a simple binary: man/woman, and has introduced other binary oppositions unexplored in the early days of Second Wave feminism. Such binaries include White woman/woman of colour, rich/poor, heterosexuality/homosexuality, Jew/Gentile, and all of the permutations of female and sexual identity that are interrelated. These oppositional feminisms not only demand to be heard, but they also challenge retrospective feminist scholarship. They challenge its truth claims and its ability to speak for all women, at least in the form of a generalised normative notion of ‘woman.’ Tanesini (1997) cautions that engagement with normative discourses entails making explicit the fact that claims about ‘women’ are always claims about what some individuals ought to be like, rather than about what

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they are like. She advises that one should be incredulous about identity politics when it is used from a narrow perspective to prescribe how others should be. In short, Tanesini adds her voice to a proliferation of voices in feminist discourses which highlight the oppressive conse-quences of assuming a fixed identity.

Many, although certainly not all, feminist theories identify their approach as essentially Marxist, radical, socialist, or postmodern (Banks 1981:8; Tong 1989:1; Watkins et al. 1992:120–121; Forster 1984:2; Firestone 1979:38–43). As feminism diversifies, other feminisms con-tinue to emerge; for example, Christian feminism, humanist feminism (Farganis 1994:105), Muslim feminism, eco-feminism, etc. (Weiner 1994:66–67). These different strands in feminist thinking have resulted in theoretical and methodological wranglings. Radical feminists criticise Marxist and socialist feminists for their innocence over patriarchy. So-cialists accuse Marxists of being too economistic, and radicals for being too subjective (Thompson 1983:12). Feminists of colour accuse all three of being racist, and lesbian feminists point out to women who are not lesbians the oppressive nature of compulsive heterosexuality. Prevailing trends point to the emergence of new feminisms which are more reflec-tive of the different cultural, psychological and material concerns of new generations of women.

As many critics now attest, feminist theory is currently experiencing a crisis of identity, one that not only threatens the very foundations of feminism as it has been articulated to date, but also its continued exis-tence. The voices of ‘other’ feminists, such as women of colour, Jewish, the physically challenged, have introduced the notion of ‘feminisms’ rather than simply ‘feminism.’ Among the daunting challenges facing contemporary feminism is the pressure to reconcile diversity and difference with integration and commonality. Each feminist strand, how-ever, provides a partial and tentative resolution to the woman question(s) by offering a fresh perspective with its own methodological merits and de-merits; but these attempts to find integration and agreement, to establish one paradigmatic feminist standpoint that is representative of how women experience the world have not escaped unchallenged. According to Tong (1989) postmodern feminists consider the whole en-terprise as:

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… yet another instantiation of phallocentric thought … . It is typical of male thinking to seek the one, true feminist story of reality. For postmodern feminists such a synthesis is neither feasible nor desirable. It is not feasible because women’s experiences differ across class, racial, and cultural lines. It is undesirable because the One and the True are philosophical myths that have been employed to bring into submission the differences that best describe the human condition.

It is this suspicion of mainstream feminism and its innocent collusion with patriarchal and modernist tenets that has precipitated the reactionary paradigmatic slide into the postmodern feminist moment. A defining characteristic of the postmodern feminist conversation is its strong commitment to recognising and celebrating difference. Castells (1997:200) also takes a more optimistic view of the fragmentation. He observes:

Increasingly the feminist movement is being fragmented in a multiplicity of femi-nist identities. This is not the source of weakness but of strength in a society characterised by flexible networks and variable alliances in the dynamics of social conflicts and power struggles. These identities are self-constructed, even if they of-ten use ethnicity, and sometimes nationality, as boundary making. Black feminism, Mexican American feminism, Japanese feminism, black lesbian feminism, or terri-torial/ethnic self-definitions, are but examples of endless possibilities of self-de-fined identities through which women see themselves in movement. So doing they oppose the standardisation of feminism, which they see as a new form of cultural domination, not alien to the patriarchal logic of overimposing officialdom to actual diversity of women’s experiences.

The net effect of oppositional feminist concerns has resulted in a demand for a transformation of feminist knowledge. This concern has been re-formulated in that, where previous scholarship has acknowledged that identity was, in fact, a problem, currently the disagreement lies in how to characterise the kind of problem that identity is. This shift of focus is illustrated in two insightful books in feminist theory, namely, Anzaldúa’s Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras and Butler’s GenderTrouble.

Bucholtz (1999:4) notes that despite considerable theoretical differences, most contemporary feminist scholars agree that identity is far less static than was previously thought. In offering one perspective that is aligned to this line of thinking, Anzaldúa (1990:xvi) writes:

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Making faces’ is my metaphor for constructing one’s identity … . In our self-reflec-tivity and in our active participation with the issues that confront us, whether it be through writing, front-line activism, or individual self-development, we are also un-covering the inter-faces, the very spaces and places where our multiple-surfaced, colored, racially gendered bodies intersect and interconnect.

Describing the kind of problem that identity is, Butler (1990:146–147) offers the following formulation:

Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as natural, so these surfaces can become the site of a dissonant and denaturalised performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself … . As the effects of a subtle and politically enforced performativity, gender is an ‘act,’ as it were, that is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic exhibitions of ‘the natural’ that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally phantasmatic status.

Both Anzaldúa and Butler view identity as a construct; however, they differ in the role that they assign to the body. For Anzaldúa, gender and other aspects of identity are inextricably interconnected, so that bodies are not simply racial and gendered but racially gendered. Butler, on the other hand, views the body as the stage on which gender is performed, where elements of the self, rather than being uncovered, as Anzaldúa proposes, are projected and made to seem natural at some times and un-natural at others.

Some scholars (for example, Houston 1997; Lorde 1984) implicitly align themselves with Anzaldúa and with the multiplicity of selves that are available to speakers, as well as the multiplicity of identities within what is often seen as a monolithic social category. Other scholars align themselves with Butler (for example, Fuss 1989; Epstein 1993). They focus on the hegemonic cultural and sociolinguistic forces which influence identity production. Still others (hooks 1984; Eagleton 1998) combine the two paradigms by underscoring the interaction between fluid identities and rigid social structures. They conceive of identity as a practice rather than a category, an actively constructed performance rather than a pre-existing role.

In expressing concern over the fragmentation of feminist politics, Benhabib (in Houston 1997) fears that with a shift to the politics of identity/difference, feminist theory is now in danger of “being unable to develop a voice to address the difficult issues of conflicting and com-peting identity claims.” According to Benhabib, the difficulties of iden-

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tity/difference politics derive ultimately from the fungibility3 of identity, which runs the risk of rendering certain identity categories replaceable and substitutable. Benhabib cites the Canadian example, where – during the 1985 Constitutional Talks – the premiers of the provinces literally bargained with each other about granting equal rights to women, pro-vided that Aboriginal claims were left out of the equation. Basing her arguments in such material circumstances, Benhabib believes that there is a need to avoid a “mindless empiricist celebration of all pluralities.” Benhabib suggests that feminist theory must develop a concept of nor-mative agency that is robust enough to say something significant and provide guiding principles which individuals could subscribe to. Her suggestion emanates from a desire for a politically effective feminism that has enough sense of a common direction or a shared vision, so that we can avoid “being caught by a tribalism within or without.”

While acknowledging the legitimacy of Benhabib’s fear, Houston (1997) suggests that we must be careful in how we interpret this call for principles that would make choices amongst our identities. In fact, she not only cautions against the impetus to order our identities, but regards

3 In providing insight into how the fungibility of globalisation and by extension

identity operates, Hall (2000) writes that the notion that identity could be told as two histories, one over here, and one over there, never having spoken to one another, never having anything to do with one another, Hall illustrates the fungibility of globalisation as follows:

People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically, we have been there for centuries. I was coming home. I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea. I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that rotted generations of English children’s teeth. There are thousands of others beside me that are, you know, the cup of tea itself. Because they don’t grow it in Lancashire, you know. Not a single tea plantation exists within the United Kingdom. This is the symbolisation of English identity. I mean, what does anybody in the world know about the English person except that they can’t get through the day without a cup of tea? Where does it come from? Ceylon/Sri Lanka, India? That is the outside history of the English. There is no English history without that other history. The notion that identity has to do with people that look the same, feel the same, callthemselves the same is nonsense. As a process, as a narrative, as a discourse, it is always told from the position of the Other.

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some attempts at ordering identities as undesirable for the same reason as Audre Lorde. Lorde (in Houston 1997) writes:

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out one aspect of myself and pre-sent this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of myself. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves.

Houston (1997) believes that we can achieve Benhabib’s proposal by separating the ways in which power holders use identity politics to di-vide and conquer from the ways in which people struggle to define and empower themselves. She declares:

There is no reason why it has to follow that once I recognise multiplicitous facets of myself, or alternative identities, I must feel fragmented, or conflicted. Or, more to the point, if I do feel conflicted, fragmented, there is no reason why I need necessarily regard that as a bad thing rather than as something to work with. … . I think we need micro-narratives that tell the story of interlocking oppressions. … first and foremost, it is a principle of non-exclusion. No identity can be excluded.

In recognising the interaction between fluid identities and fluid social structures, Houston (1997) concedes that our identities are permeable with the lives of others of the past and of the future, and this involves asking these questions: What is the moral content of [my] cultural iden-tity? and What are the political consequences of this moral content and cultural identity?

Concurring with the intersection between moral aspiration and iden-tity, Calhoun (1994:30) believes that:

… our identities are always rooted in part in ideals and moral aspirations that we cannot fully realise. There is therefore a tension within us which can be both the lo-cus of personal struggle and the source of an identity politics that aims not simply at the legitimation of falsely essentially categorical identities but at living up to deeper social and moral values. Claims to the priority or dominance of large collective identities, therefore, are not only the material of manipulations, but sources of heroism and self-sacrifice that are as hard to understand in the conventional terms of social theory as in popular ideologies of purely individual self-fulfilment.

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It is evident from the foregoing discussion that debates in feminist theo-ries relate to whether feminists should replicate traditional ways of ‘doing power’ by invoking a single, unified identity for women to mobilise around or whether feminisms need to engage counter-hege-monic theoretical arguments, so as not to reproduce the structures of exclusion and power/knowledge relations which have previously served to position women in negative and powerless ways.

As a way of addressing both Benhabib’s and Houston’s contentions while also ensuring that a politics of identity is framed in moral content, some scholars suggest the building of strategic coalitions to challenge oppressive regimes. Young (1990) argues that our preoccupation with the ideal of community is informed by a notion of consensus that fore-closes the possibility for coalition because it insists upon seamless corre-spondence within and between the constituents of the ideal community. The discourse of consensus is a reductive means by which to fulfil the desire for social wholeness. Unlike consensus discourses, coalition-building challenges us to understand and acknowledge that we occupy many often contradictory subject positions, which may not be easily reconciled. Coalition-building addresses the ways in which identities, affiliations and desires are dynamically produced in the multiple, inter-secting, and often competing narratives of the personal, political and social. This notion of coalition-building suggests that by reconfiguring difference as something that includes an interrogation of one’s own sub-jectivity, a coalition approach acknowledges the points of resistance that arise when social actors are faced with contradictions that they often find threatening to who they are.

Fisk (1993) also argues that as members of society, each of us be-longs to multiple communities, because of our various groupings by age, gender, race, class, etc. Each community is a place where individuals or groups should be able to summon the necessary support and solidarity to enter into negotiation with and/or contest dominant groups in more public spaces and at the same time be able to ensure that other differences are not suppressed, subsumed or obscured in the process. Coalition-building is not tantamount to blind solidarity. Individuals must coalesce around some notion of principled solidarity – a unity based on certain shared values and visions.

Brah (1991:175) contends that coalitions are possible through a politics of identification as opposed to a politics of identity. However,

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this politics of identification is only meaningful if it is based on under-standings of the material and ideological basis of all oppressions in their global manifestations – their interconnectedness as well as the specificity of each oppression.

While a shared understanding of oppression and a commitment to principles of social justice and equality enable people to build coalitions, Reagon (in Sasaki 2002) emphasises the importance of keeping our prin-ciples intact as we embark on coalition-building. She advises that “the thing that must survive is not just the record of your practice, but the principles that are the basis of your practice.” Combating oppressive ideologies is a struggle for the future and not just a struggle for individual survival. This is why the principles on which a politics of coalition are based are more important than our specific actions.

Weiler (1991:470) considers the importance of the politics of coali-tion work in education by drawing attention to the significance of a poli-tics of coalition for a pedagogy of difference and dialogue. In addressing difference, dialogue and conflict in the classroom context, she signals the need to build coalitions around common goals, rather than around a de-nial of differences. Weiler argues that, in an approach to education in which differences are acknowledged, the minimum grounds for solidar-ity are a shared belief in the value of learning in the company of others. This common interest in learning, even when individual purposes for learning may be irreconcilably diverse, might provide sufficient com-patibility for working together, while ensuring that differences are kept in the foreground. How educators move from the paradigm of consensus to a more complex notion of coalition is a question that is at the centre of pedagogical praxis. Such praxis may invite conflict within and among members of the community. By providing an alternative conceptual model in which to examine difference as both an external and internal operation of identity formation, a pedagogy of coalition disrupts the con-sensus model, which insists upon an integrated, non-conflicted sense of wholeness. It is not consensus that is important, but the common/shared context of struggle, because we are all implicated in one way or the other in various interlocking systems of oppression. Of equal importance is the knowledge that we are not isolated, and the experience of working with others against common oppression strengthens the challenge against oppression.

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Synthesis

The various strands in feminist thinking give credence to post-struc-turalist conceptions of identity as presupposing difference. However, as a result of the tendency to view difference as deficit, discourses on identity politics have attempted to reclaim those groups in society (among them women, ethnic minorities, etc.) who have been devalued and denied in-alienable democratic and human rights. Despite the emancipatory im-pulse of identity politics, it has been criticised for mobilising the struggle for social transformation by essentialising single categories of identity, for example, by agitating for women’s rights, without acknowledging that the category ‘woman’ is not unitary. The arguments for a recogni-tion, for example, that women constitute a diverse group, whose subjec-tivities are further defined by internal sub-divisions and inter and intra dialogicality, have highlighted a crisis in the negotiation of multiple subjectivities and have shown up the inherent fragmentation of a desirable and feasible project of social redress. In this regard, rather than seeking social cohesion through consensus politics which invariably mask differences and diversity among social actors, some scholars are proposing the formation of strategic alliances/coalitions. Such alli-ances/coalitions congregate for specific projects and disband after accomplishing the specified aims.

Section 2: Feminist Pedagogy: a counter-hegemonic discourse

Etymologically, the term pedagogy refers to the science of teaching chil-dren. While this construction is based on who is taught, most commonly pedagogy is used interchangeably with teaching or instruction, referring with varying degrees of specificity to the act or process of teaching (Gore 1993:3). However, the term pedagogy, like any other term, has no single meaning in and of itself. According to Lusted (1986:2–3) peda-gogy as a concept:

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… draws attention to the process through which knowledge is produced.Pedagogy addresses the ‘how’ questions involved not only in the transmission or reproduction of knowledge but also in its production. Indeed, it enables us to ques-tion the validity of separating these activities so easily by asking under what condi-tions and through what means we ‘come to know’. How one teaches … becomes inseparable from what is being taught and, crucially, how one learns.

Proceeding from the fluidity and variety of meaning regarding pedagogy, I have tailored the concept to explore the identity of the feminist teacher and how her identification with feminist and multilingual sensibilities informs what she teaches, how she teaches, and why she chooses to im-part the kind of knowledge that she does. I have thus linked notions of feminist pedagogy to constellations of political and theoretical identifi-cations. The attachment of the term pedagogy to particular socio-political approaches has resulted in the emergence of, inter alia, progressive pedagogy, socialist pedagogy, and radical pedagogy (which includes in its ambit feminist and critical pedagogies). These approaches have their roots in particular political and theoretical movements, and they are variously constructed as oppositional to mainstream/traditional schooling practices and theories. Radical, progressive and socialist approaches fo-cus on pedagogy as constitutive of power relations.

One such strand of critical work has concerned itself with the development of theories that explore the power dynamics in pedagogical relationships, and is discernible in the writings of Freire 1973; Giroux 1988; McLaren 1998; Shor 1980; and Simon 1987. This school of thought has focused on pedagogy as possibility, and has been concerned with developing a discourse of critical pedagogy that is sensitive to, inter alia, class and race variables and their concomitant power dynamics. In elucidating the composition of a pedagogy of possibility, Simon (1992) adds that it must include the ability to interrogate both social forms and their possible transformations, and be compatible with these three founding principles:

securing human diversity; securing compassionate justice; and securing the renewal of life.

In spite of the differences within and between the discourses of critical and feminist pedagogies, an examination of their central claims reveals a

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shared concern for democratic schools and societies. Both pedagogical discourses emphasise:

teachers’ authority and the contradictions inherent in the notion of authority for emancipation; student experience and voice; and self and social empowerment toward achieving broader social trans-formation.

Feminist educational critics, influenced by postmodernism and cultural identity theories of difference, want to retain the vision of social justice and transformation that underpin critical liberatory pedagogies, but find that their claims to universal truths and assumptions of a collective ex-perience of oppression do not adequately address the realities of their tension-filled classrooms, where the force of sexism, patriarchal struc-tures and the power of race, sexual preference, physical ability and age continue to divide teachers from students and students from each other. This perspective accounts for the increasing attention within feminist pedagogy to addressing questions of power and authority, and negotiating and validating student diversity as it relates to the variables that configure social identity. In discussing these central concerns, femi-nist pedagogy broadly explores the role and authority of the teacher, the politics of difference and the validation of personal experience as a le-gitimate source of knowledge.

While recognising the importance of socio-political and economic difference, some scholars – who include, among others, Lewis 1990; Maher 1985; Morgan 1987; Schniedewind 1985; Mumford 1985 – have argued that schooling is administratively and procedurally patriarchal. They agitate for the articulation and practice of a feminist pedagogy that extends the recognition of hierarchical power enclaves to include gen-dered power imbalances which are prevalent in the discourses on schooling.

While the available body of literature identifies a range of feminist styles of teaching in the classroom (for example, Maher & Tetreault 1994; Ropers-Huilman 1997) feminist pedagogy is better understood as a political standpoint and personal practice that seeks to transform relations of domination and oppression, rather than simply as a set of instructional strategies. Feminist teachers who are committed to creating

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education that would be empowering for students, especially women, have attempted to promote more egalitarian classrooms which are responsive to difference(s) of identity, location, history, and experience. Transforming relations of power in the classroom has been manifested in pedagogies that are generally described as participatory, experiential and non-hierarchical, and focus on concepts such as ‘student voice,’ ‘critical thinking’ and ‘dialogue’. These forms of pedagogy engender a new un-derstanding of the nature of knowledge in teaching and learning.

There are multiple definitions and descriptions of feminist peda-gogy, but most include these two elements:

its proponents are feminists; and its adherents believe that educational institutions have perennially been the province of male domination, thus they are vital sites where feminist practices can effect positive transformation in girls and women’s lives, by taking up the struggle against sexism, racism, classism, and other discriminatory practices.

Cohee et al. (1998:6) confirm this description by identifying the following tenets as being prominent in feminist pedagogy:

it evolves from feminist social practice and is therefore oriented toward social transformation, consciousness-raising, and social ac-tivism; it emphasises the development of epistemological frameworks that stress both the subjective and communal reality of knowing. It asks whose interests are served by knowledge and requires knowers and learners to be accountable for the uses of knowledge; it is concerned for female students, both inside and outside the class-room, and is committed to improving their lives; it addresses race, class and gender as crucial categories for analysing experience and institutions. It also explores the complex and fre-quently ignored interactions of these categories; and it addresses the undeniable force of sexism in society by exploring issues of sexuality with students, and aiding them in discovering a language with which to discuss sexualities.

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Central Tenets in Feminist Pedagogy

The issue of ‘authority’ is central to the discourse of feminist pedagogy. The preoccupation with the issue of authority is linked to the promotion of self and social empowerment with a view to effecting broader social transformation and the erasure of multiple forms of oppression. Con-ceding that traditional teacher-student relations have been hierarchical, potentially oppressive, and authoritarian, the discourse on feminist peda-gogy recasts the role of the teacher as joint learner with students. While rejecting teacher authoritarianism, feminist pedagogy posits that the teacher’s authority emanates from the fact that s/he holds authority by virtue of greater knowledge and experience (Maher & Tetreault 1994; Woodbridge 1994:146–147). Feminist pedagogues also address the different forms of power which are wielded by teachers by virtue of their race, class, gender, and the historical and institutional contexts in which they work (Ellsworth 1992). According to Gore (1993:68–69) authority in the construction of feminist pedagogy is addressed in at least three ways, namely:

authority versus nurturance

Within patriarchal society the notion of woman is laden with the tra-ditional functions of caregiver and nurturer. By definition, to nurture embodies the actions of feeding and protecting, supporting and en-couraging, bringing up, and educating. Therefore, to nurture essen-tially encompasses some of a teacher’s basic functions. Nurturance pedagogy finds parallels with maternal, holistic, and empathetic teaching.

authority as authorship

Pagano argues (1990:99) that feminist educators can approach ques-tions of authority by focusing on authorship. She suggests that authority as authorship involves sharing stories based on particular attachments to the world and to each other. She postulates that femi-nist educators might consider teaching as an enactment of a

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narrative in which authority refers to the power to represent and challenge versions of reality – a power that both teacher and students can exercise.

authority as power

Although not all writers of feminist pedagogy use the same termi-nology in their writings about authority, invariably the concerns which they discuss seem to support the view that the authority the feminist teacher seeks is authority with, not authority over his/her students; it is a form of authority that is not authoritarian, but based in caring and reciprocal relationships.

I explore these variants of authority more extensively in Chapter Five.

Section 3: Multilingualism, Language and Gender

Language Policies in South Africa

Language policies affect a wide range of language-related issues from the variety to be used on street signs to major constitutional questions of rights and powers. Language education is the key to understanding many aspects of social organisation, including the structure of the labour force, ethnic and linguistic conflict, and the allocation of economic resources. Since education in much of the world is subject to explicit policy deci-sions by governmental bodies, the impact of the policy approach to solving language problems is starkly visible in language education. Per-haps the most visible demonstration of the effects of language policies is evident in South Africa, where due to Apartheid legislation – the lin-guistic reality of multilingualism was for many years not officially acknowledged. The linguistic reality that was acknowledged, and which determined language practice in South Africa’s institutions (education, administration, business, media), was the colonial bilingualism of English/Afrikaans and later Afrikaans/English. English/Afrikaans bilin-

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gualism dominated the period from 1795 to 1948, during which the British ruled South Africa; this was followed by Afrikaans/English bilin-gualism from 1948 to1994, when the Afrikaners had the reins of government.

Linguicism has had oppressive effects on the majority of South Africans, who – in most cases – found themselves disadvantaged by their lack of proficiency in the languages of power, English and Afrikaans. Although the Bantu Education Act of 1953, in accordance with the recommendation of UNESCO and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), advocated mother-tongue tuition in initial education (grades 1–4) following which learners were required to choose either Afrikaans or English as a language of learning, it is generally known that there was vehement protest against it due to the association of Afrikaans with the Apartheid policy of the National Party. Thus, the majority of Black learners opted for English as the medium of instruction (Verhoef 1998:185–186; Kloss 1978; Desai 1992). Mawasha (1996) claims that English became a symbol of empowerment, which indicated the educa-tional, economic, political, and social liberation of Black individuals and communities. This perception of English as the gateway to attaining self-sufficiency and worthiness probably alienated Black people from their indigenous languages and cultures.

With the de-legitimisation of Apartheid, and the subsequent birth of democracy in 1994, South Africa has officially become a multilingual state. To celebrate multilingualism as a linguistic reality, South Africa has adopted a multilingual language policy, which has been enshrined in its new constitution. The policy accords official recognition to eleven languages (English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, TshiVenda, siSwati, isiNdebele, Northern Sesotho, Southern Sotho, isiXhosa, Tswana, and Xitsonga).

Engendering a multilingual attitude creates spaces for people to be rightfully different and to receive recognition for their full humanity. Webb (1998:143–144) maintains that the spirit of multilingualism is characterised by a specific set of values and norms, which include:

an acceptance of multilingualism as a national resource; a conscious rejection of linguistic and cultural imperialism; an acceptance of the equal value of all languages and a respect for their speakers;

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an understanding of people’s sensitivity about the socio-psychologi-cal meaning of their languages; an acceptance of language rights as inalienable; a willingness to respond to others in the language with which they feel most familiar; an understanding of the difficulties that people have in acquiring and using a foreign language; an accommodation (especially by educators) of people using ‘interlanguages’ (thus also an acceptance of the legitimacy of local standards); and an ability to handle cross-cultural communication.

The antithesis of the spirit of multilingualism is a colonial attitude, which engenders the belief that some languages are better or more effective than others – an attitude that is typical of communities which are domi-nated by a single language.

Official language planning initiatives in post-Apartheid South Africa reflect a concerted effort to ensure a language dispensation that meets the expectations of all stakeholders. The interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 200 of 1993) the establishment of The Pan South African Language Board, and Language Task Group, and the final Con-stitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996) are but some of the initiatives which have aimed at affording official status to the eleven languages, thus promoting multilingualism as an asset for nation-building and democracy. Akinnaso (1989:139) claims that such a policy is driven by an ideological orientation known as the language-as-a-re-source-model, which sees all languages as potential national resources and respects linguistic and cultural diversity.

Notwithstanding these official measures, it appears that the pursuit of multilingualism in South Africa may be at risk because of the clear tendency towards monolingualism. Despite speech communities’ posi-tive attitudes towards multilingualism, preference is given to English. Language planners have suggested that English is likely to be the lingua franca in South Africa during the transition period (Luckett 1995:77). However, according to Verhoef (1998:183) there appears to be an inter-nal tension between symbolic and functional multilingualism; that is, South African speech communities seem to appreciate the symbolic value of multilingualism, but not its functional value.

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It is important to note that the multilingual language policy in South Africa is not implemented in a social or historical vacuum. It is under-pinned by a number of ideological undercurrents. Thus, the language policy for education has to be sensitive to the language attitudes of South Africans. According to Luckett (1995:74) the following dominant every-day attitudes and beliefs in regard to our languages are observable:

First, most South African speakers of the African languages believe that they have been denied proper access to English, yet it is proficiency in English which unlocks the doors of learning and upward socio-eco-nomic mobility. Embedded in the conceptualisation of language-as-problem, Young (1995:64) contends that speakers of indigenous South African languages forsake their first languages, because they perceive English as being the language of power, upward social mobility, access to learning, employment, and an improved quality of life. African lan-guages are devalued because of the popular belief that they are not suitable for functions such as further education, science, technology, business, law and government. Although a large majority of South Afri-cans are bi- or multilingual, African languages are used only in certain contexts such as the home, the street, religion, sport and local culture; they are most often used to express solidarity and social equality. In contrast, English is used for writing, print, and higher education. Thus, a person’s status is often measured by his/her proficiency in English.

In critiquing this view of the status of English, Tollefson (1991:84–85) maintains that the spread of English, and of English Second Lan-guage (ESL) teaching, is linked to modernisation theory, in that, English is seen as a tool for the process of modernisation; and monolingualism (preferably English) is seen as a practical advantage for modern social organisation. Although there is widespread belief that English is a useful tool to facilitate modernisation, it neglects to connect the spread of English with inequality and exploitation. Critics of modernisation theory argue that underdevelopment in some societies is a result of development in others; that is, differences in development emanate from relationships of inequality and exploitation.

According to Luckett (1995:74) a second dominant belief among South African speakers of the African languages is the notion that the best way to gain proficiency in English is to learn English for as long as possible, and the sooner the better. This runs counter to Second Lan-guage Acquisition (SLA) research, which supports the view that the

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more proficient students are in their first language, the more proficient they will be in their second language (Versveld 1995:26). An important question needs to be addressed in this context: If prolonged exposure to English is sufficient for mastery, why do so many students fail to achieve the proficiency in English which is necessary for academic success? According to Diaz-Rico & Weed (1995:40) some clues to this perplexity can be traced beyond the language itself to the socio-cultural context in which learning occurs, and it is related to the status and validity which educational institutions afford to students’ languages, cultures and modes of cognition.

Sociolinguistic Theories and Pedagogy

The gap between sociolinguistic theory and educational practice points to the fact that linguists and educationists themselves carry the prejudices of particular social, ideological, cultural and geographical backgrounds. Who teaches what to whom, why and how affect curricular decisions which become fraught with political allegiances thus confirming the non-neutrality of language pedagogy.

In recent times, educational reformers have proposed ways of using the educational system to reduce inequality, change discriminatory values and attitudes, and alleviate social problems. An increasing num-ber of language theorists and practitioners argue that it is essential to address the personal, cultural, and political implications of language teaching if students are to learn. Important questions to be addressed in this regard relate to how the methods used for language teaching affect power relationships and student-teacher trust. Do students see the methods as helping them to meet their own needs, or does the pedagogy require that they function outside, or in opposition to, that which is im-portant to them?

A quick glance at the history of English language teaching philoso-phies and methodologies, unfortunately, shows that it has been preoccu-pied with grammatical correctness which is based on normative standards. This preoccupation has discouraged language variability in favour of linguistic purity; it has encouraged the memorisation of grammatical rules, and has persisted in the prescription of select texts that celebrate classical Western traditions. Agnihotri (1995:4–5) ob-

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serves that sociological positivism, psychological behaviourism, and linguistic structuralism all demand that oral fluency, accuracy, and a native-like control of the language be learnt. Within these language teaching and learning paradigms, students are increasingly viewed as empty receptacles who can be programmed by the environment to learn the appropriate linguistic codes. Language is construed as a set of struc-tures and the learning process is conceived as largely linear and additive.

The pressures of global trade and marketing have only succeeded in worsening the situation in that language learning is becoming increasingly instrumental with the focus on acquiring certain skills. In critiquing this trend, Fairclough (1992:6) cautions that:

… a language education focussed upon training in language skills without a critical component, would seem to be failing in its responsibility to learners. People cannot be effective citizens in a democratic society if their education cuts them off from critical consciousness of key elements within their physical or social environment. If we are committed to education establishing resources for citizenship, critical awareness practices of one’s speech community is an entitlement.

In this regard, the notion of communicative competence, which was first proposed by Hymes (1970) has provided great impetus to those linguists, and educators frustrated by the preoccupation with grammatical compe-tence alone. Current theories influenced by Hymes have thus moved away from the merely linguistic components of a language to the more inclusive realm of language, which is concerned with its use in social, political, and psychological domains. Also responding to the narrow focus on grammatical competence, advocates of the Whole Language Approach (see, for example, McLaughlin 1996:131–149) maintain that language is learned not from drills and worksheets, but from the active process of seeking meaning, which occurs when language is used for specific purposes. Agnihotri (1995:3) observes that languages are learnt best when the focus is not on language learning. In fact, most children in multilingual societies learn several languages simultaneously precisely because their focus is not on language, but on the messages contained therein. In order for language learning to be successful, the situation needs to be informal; the learner should be free from anxiety; the teacher should essentially be a friend, observer and facilitator; and most of the learning process should be centred on meaningful tasks and peer group interactions. This reconceptualisation of the teacher-student relationship

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resonates with the non-hierarchical and dialogical relationship that has become a defining characteristic of feminist pedagogies.

While sharing the ideological stance of Communicative Competence and Whole Language learning, the discourse on Critical Language Awareness (Fairclough 1992) extends the debate by making students conscious of the ways in which language is used in the domination, sub-jugation, and denigration of peoples whose language, culture, gender, race, etc. do not enjoy social prestige and power. Mancus (1994:78) suggests that one way to empower students through critical language awareness is to consider the nature of language as revealed in the social and political history of various languages. By examining language-re-lated issues of class, culture and domination, students are better able to understand the potential for political and personal conflict which lan-guage and literacy learning creates for all those whose language heritage enjoys preferential status. When the study of language pedagogy is applied across the curriculum, what emerges is a personal discovery, a reconstruction of the nature of language, an interrogation and decon-struction of taken-for-granted linguistic traditions, and the construction of important principles for working effectively and respectfully with diverse populations.

Carter (1994:21) maintains that the more we reflect on language and on the discourses of society which produce language and views of lan-guage, the stronger our own frameworks become for analysing, supporting and developing our students’ language and literacy. It requires a constant recognition that language varies and changes, with reference to its place in education.

In drawing attention to the shortcomings of modern English lan-guage teaching methods and materials, (which include, primarily, Communicative Competence, Whole Language Learning and Critical Language Awareness), Tollefson (1991:99–100) maintains that despite the widespread belief that these language approaches empower students, they actually reinforce unequal power relationships in two ways, namely, through: the paradoxical situations in which students and teachers are placed; and the distorted manner in which students’ lives are depicted. In elaborating on these paradoxical situations, Clarke & Silberstein (1988 in Tollefson 1991:99–100) explore the rise of pragmatic paradoxes in modern ESL teaching. They postulate that a pragmatic paradox occurs when three conditions are present:

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individuals in a significant relationship have unequal power; an injunction is issued that cannot be ignored, obeyed, or violated; andthe situation cannot be resolved through discussion.

When these conditions hold, individuals are in double binds in which it is impossible to act, although action is required. When students are told to take control of the classroom, for instance, they know that the teacher is in charge, and therefore they do not have the power to truly take con-trol of the classroom. Yet, because the teacher is in charge, the students must obey the command to take control.

The distorted manner in which students’ lives are depicted is evident in many teaching practices which place them in paradoxical circum-stances on a regular basis. For example, methodologies that claim that the best class is one that most resembles ‘real life,’ and instructors re-quire students to discuss intensely personal topics and experiences, even though the students may feel that the classroom is an inappropriate place for such discussion. However, because the teacher has the power, stu-dents may feel ‘unfree’ to refuse to participate, as they would be in a ‘real’ discussion outside the classroom. These pragmatic paradoxes highlight the issues of teacher authority, student voice, and disclosure of personal experience, which are also underlying tenets of feminist peda-gogies.

Another aspect of the ideological nature of English Second Lan-guage (ESL) classrooms is the depiction of reality that is implicit in classroom practices, textbooks, and other curricula materials. In surveying the hidden curriculum in ESL, Auerbach & Burgess (1985 in Tollefson 1991) and Auerbach (1986 in Tollefson 1991) found that most texts ignore the economic, political, and social problems that underlie students’ educational needs. For instance, lessons on housing emphasize the tenant’s (i.e., the student’s) responsibility to pay rent, but ignore the landlord’s responsibility to maintain health and safety standards. More generally, many ESL classes assume that personal discussions in ESL classes can sufficiently empower students to resolve their major eco-nomic and social problems. The emphasis on communicative and hu-manistic teaching methods creates the illusion that there are simple solutions to educational questions and that education can resolve major social problems which are rooted in economic inequality. Teachers work

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within institutions in which they have little power, while they seek solu-tions for problems over which they have little control. This optimism is grounded in the neo-classical assumption that problems and solutions are located in individual students rather than in historical and structural forces which are largely beyond their control.

Synthesis

The literature review on SLA and ESL highlights the need to reconcep-tualise English language teaching and learning so that its role and status in multilingual classrooms is sensitive to differences in student variables as well as to the social, historical and political contexts in which learning occurs. Coupled with this need for a reconceptualisation of English lan-guage teaching is the need to understand that languages are not mono-lithic. They are social constructions that can be subjected to de-construction, re-construction and co-construction. This perspective sup-ports Janks’ (1993:iii) contention that language should be used to challenge the status quo. Janks also urges that by refusing to consent and by working collaboratively, people can effect positive linguistic trans-formation. Since transformation cannot be achieved by language aware-ness alone, we – as language users – need to focus on the political dimension of meaning: the ways in which dominant meanings are main-tained, challenged and changed. An example, of such a challenge against the taken-for-grantedness of language is evident in the feminist critique of languages.

Given the divisive history of language policies in South Africa, and despite current democratic language policies that promote multilingualism, the escalating preference for English as a medium of instruction, locates English in a paradoxical role. English has to divest itself of its association with colonialism and slavery and reinvent itself as a language of socio-economic liberation. In this regard, Carrington (1988 in Bryan 1994; Cele 2000) asserts that it is possible for societies to learn an a-cultural English for their purposes – be they academic, financial or otherwise – and still maintain their own separate cultures. This requires uncoupling English from its colonial past, and infusing indigenous sensi-bilities in the teaching and learning of English in multilingual class-rooms. This entrusts language professionals with the responsibility to

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explore the ideological foundations of their theories and practices to en-sure that they expose the non-neutrality of language. It also requires them to be sensitive to the cultural and linguistic diversity in their class-rooms.

The Feminist Critique of Language

Linguistic communication is crucial to the organisation of human socie-ties, and people with an interest in the workings of any society must con-cern themselves with its languages. Feminists are deeply interested in the workings of their societies, since in order to fight their oppression – they must first understand it. Much feminist effort is directed, therefore, at re-analysing society as a patriarchal system, in which language as a patriar-chal construct has been crucial in maintaining male supremacy, and at ensuring that women remain borrowers of man-made language.

Supporting the argument that language is itself a social system which is subject to cultural and historical variability, feminist writers are employing deconstructionist techniques to analyse phallogocentrism by appropriating the post-structuralist terms of language and differance.The term language is used to mean not just ‘words’ or a set of grammati-cal rules, but – rather – a meaning-constituting system without a basic or ultimate correspondence to the world. The concept of differance accepts that any unitary concept contains repressed or negated material that is in opposition to another term. Derrida (in Lewis 1995:27) developed the concept differance to explain how social identities are defined through the binary logic of language. Unlike ‘difference,’ which refers to the distinction between identities, differance captures the way identities are always measured against each other so that they can never be explained in isolation: man, for example, means something only when seen in rela-tion to woman. Opposition rests on metaphors and cross-references which serve to encode or establish hierarchical dichotomies.

In combining these concerns, feminists have developed a ‘critique of language.’ The feminist critique of language is really a ‘shorthand,’ by virtue of its fragmentary and constantly fluctuating ethos. Although critics of research on language and sex portray generic pronouns as the entire issue, the critique is in fact more sweeping. Studies of society and power, in recent years, have increasingly focused on how language re-

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flects and reproduces socio-cultural values, thereby confirming that it is culture, and not an independent world of objects, that is encoded in lan-guage (Dickens & Fontana 1994:8; Chaika 1994:357). This critique has led feminists, generally, to concur that the study of language is important both for considering how gender hierarchies and identities are main-tained and for strategising challenges against patriarchal hegemony.

In addressing these challenges, scholars fall into two main groups. The first group concerns itself with historical and social change and ar-gues that the ‘theft of language’ is part of women’s relative powerless-ness. Thus, women have been encouraged to rework and subvert traditional forms in order to create women-centred language and meaning. Such pragmatic and empirical approaches, which are attentive to daily linguistic usage, dominate thinking about gender in the United States (Jordan & Weedon 1995:200). The second group assumes the existence of a naturally different female/feminine language. In drawing close ties between symbolic structure and experience, the voices of cer-tain American feminists harmonise with those of French feminists such as Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray and Wittig, who regard language both as ‘critical restraint and release.’ Although there are crucial differences among French feminists, they share an intellectual and political tradition that is anchored in existentialism, Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-structuralism. Arguing that women’s oppression/repression is embedded in phallogocentrism and that our perceptions of the real are but a mani-festation of the male-constituted symbolic order, they are determined to inscribe women’s experiences in language and thought, not through al-tering specific usages, such as sexist pronouns (which the French see as minor repairs), but through relating language to the unconscious and to the body.

Cameron (1990:3) notes that from such diverse perceptual perspec-tives, feminist writers on the subject of language return to the exploration of these three major themes:

behavioural differences in language, (their relation to male domi-nance and female culture);the silencing and exclusion of women from language, (which also raises the question of finding an authentic female voice); and naming or representation, (in which the meaning of gender is con-structed and contested).

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These perspectives are explored in greater detail in Chapter Four.

Synthesis

What was previously accepted with passive reverentiality in our linguistic usage has become the terrain for the negotiation of meaning. This consciousness-raising process towards developing critical language awareness is aimed at confronting disempowering linguistic practices that have nurtured gender discrimination. Such awareness is the first step towards self and social emancipation because it encourages us to interro-gate the apparently monolithic authority of phallogocentrism thereby debunking time-honoured myths about gender naturalisation. When lan-guage users recognise the highly fluid nature of linguistic categories and begin to engage collectively in using language in a consciously critical, sensitive and confident way, we will contribute to the continuing struggle against phallogocentrism. Such an empowerment enables us to reconceptualise rather than just add in women’s meanings to a patriar-chal world and language.

Exploring Webs of Personal and Professional Feminist Identities

What’s the matter with her? She’s a Jew who likes goys a lesbian who likes men And she mixes with Blacks

Doesn’t she know anything about loyalty to her own? (She’s always been a fake)

How are we to trust her with our fears our secrets (our bigotry)?

She’s merging too much Can’t keep track of her or define her can’t see where the hell she IS

She’s stepping over the line you know stepping out of line getting dangerous OUT OF CONTROL

We can’t let her be seen She’ll poison our children’s minds Destroy our foundations And sow seeds of discontent among us Among us AMONG US

Seeds of Discontent Hammar (in Kitson 1994)

Chapter Three

The Personal as Political and Potentially Pedagogical

To say ‘I am not what I was’ and I was not what I am locates identity on the move. Identity acts. It acts in relation to skin, to blood, and to heart, and the process of finding this relationship is itself an act of identity. But it is not final. The identity network, figured through the body as ‘skin blood heart’ offers a dynamic model of self-representation. How do I know myself and how am I known by others? By skin? By blood? Do I know myself by heart?

Gilmore (1994:238)

Introduction

The importance of exploring teachers’ biographical backgrounds ema-nates from the observation that teacher identity is too often treated as an unproblematic and unitary monolith. It is usually naturalised in some apriori way as a consequence of pedagogical skills that is acquired through experience. This static model of teacher representation deper-sonalises the teacher as a social actor and masks the complex processes of ideological becoming that characterise the ongoing project of identity formation. Narrative studies of the lives of teachers have become an im-portant research genre for exploring the rich nuances of teacher identity formation. Distinguishing principles that emerge from narrative studies of teachers’ lives include, inter alia, acknowledging that:

a narrative approach ensures the recognition of teachers’ back-grounds and experiences as important for an understanding of their personal and pedagogic philosophies;

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who teaches what, why and how are significant issues for understanding the relationship between teachers’ latent identities and cultures;a biographical approach also sensitises us to the relationships between the everyday realities of teaching in relation to teachers’ ages, generation, social status, family backgrounds, etc.

Since all identities are constructed, the real questions are how, from what, by whom, and for what are they constructed? The construction of identities uses building materials from history, geography, biology, pro-ductive and reproductive institutions, collective memory and personal fantasies, and from power apparatuses and religious revelations. Somers & Gibson (1994) contend that public narratives, however local or grand, micro or macro, are attached to cultural and institutional formations which are larger than the single individual and include narratives of one’s family, workplace, church, government, nation, etc. Individuals, social groups and societies process all these materials, and rearrange their meaning according to social determinations and cultural projects that are rooted in their social structure, and in their space/time frame-work. Since narratives embed identities in time and spatial relationships, this means that temporal and spatial frameworks affect activities, con-sciousness and beliefs, and are in turn, affected by them.

Calhoun (1994:28) contends that identities are often personal and political projects in which we participate, empowered to greater or lesser extents by resources of experience and ability, culture and social organi-sations. It is within these socio-cultural networks that we are able to identify permutations of Castells’ (1997) delineation of legitimising identity/centripetal identity (which tends toward the authoritative norm), resistance identity/centrifugal identity (which may emerge through a process of conscientisation in reaction against the authoritative norm), and project identity, which attempts to transform social structures based on personal convictions and beliefs.

In the following discussion I examine the collective public narra-tives of the five participants. I do not entertain expansive coverage of either their feminist teacher or their academic identities; instead, I focus on their collective public identities in relation to the contiguous variables of family background, nationality, religion, linguistic, political, race, class and gender identity markers as a way of gaining some perspective

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on contextual, historical, and ideological influences that have impacted on their lives. Notably, the participants accord varying levels of impor-tance to different categories of their identities; for example, for some, the issue of national identity assumes more prominence than their sexual identity, and vice versa; for others their racial identity serves as the focal marker around which their autobiographical reflections pivot. Hence, in their essays they devote more attention to delineating and deconstructing the dynamics of negotiating what they deem to be important identity markers. The uneven-ness in my critical commentary owes directly to the uneven-ness in their engagement with different issues.

The discussion in this chapter is presented in two sections. In Section 1 – Mini Portraits of Participants’ Public Collective Identities –I combine a cursory summary with a descriptive analysis of each partici-pant’s public narratives, and I identify and comment on issues that the participants themselves portray as being of more significance than others. Section 2 – Cross-analysis of Public Collective Identities – pre-sents a comparative cross-analysis of salient issues that emerge among the participants’ reflections of their public narratives, and highlights themes that are likely to carry pedagogical import in their English lan-guage classrooms that are shaped by feminist sensibilities. The individual mini-portraits and cross-analysis illustrate that rather than essentialise or stereotype the experiences and expectations of the women in the study in relation to sex, gender, race, religion, age, etc., their auto-biographical accounts, do indeed, resist a priori descriptions.

Section 1: Mini Portraits of Participants’ Public Collective Identities

Carol’s Public Collective Identities4

From Carol’s account of her early socialisation there emerges a strong preoccupation with a diasporic identity. Carol was born in South Africa 4 See Perumal (2003) Enacting Feminisms in Multilingual Classrooms: exploring

shifting versions of the autobiographical I, for an earlier paper on identity politics.

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to a South African mother and an English father. The patriarchal su-premacy of her father and forefathers was valorised, and her matrilineal heritage only received legitimation through her father’s English national identity. Thus, although living in South Africa her family’s ideological umbilical cord to England remained strong. A romantic nostalgia for England and Englishness produced in young Carol a fractured diasporic identity. This resulted in an almost inevitable Mind/Body split, in that – while she was physically occupying a South African geographical spati-ality – Carol’s ideologies, attitudes and value system were shaped by a stereotypical prior script that portrayed the English as paragons of wholesome goodness. Entwined in this emplotment of the English was the image of a nation predisposed to romantic heroism, bravery and su-premacy. Carol was taught demeaning over-generalisations and negative stereotyping of other European nations’ values (or lack thereof), as is evident in her autobiographical reflection: More solid satisfaction lay … in our superiority to other ‘Europeans,’ whether Portuguese (none too clean), Italians (cowards who had run away during The War), Irish (rough, uncouth), or Afrikaners. The Afrikaners were a crude, poorly educated people who had cheated their way into power in 1948. Thedevaluing of people and phenomena which are perceived as un-English fuelled the sovereignty and supremacy of Carol’s ‘English national’ identity through what Scheff (1994:280–281) calls the reification of cultural attributes in the form of ‘myths, memories, symbols and values’ which were also accorded features of permanence. Inheriting the script of the English as being a moral, good and supreme nation from her grandmother, mother and the print literature that was imported to South Africa on the Union-Castle liners, Carol’s early socialisation gave her a sense of identity that resonates with what Gilmore (1994:67) describes as a privileged autobiographical ‘I’. A privileged autobiographical ‘I’ ob-tains its authority by virtue of membership to social groups and through participation in their hegemonic traditions, rituals and myths. Cox (2000) observes that:

… no race can develop colour prejudice merely by wishing to do so, because colour prejudice is more than [being] ethnocentric … race prejudice must be actually backed up by a show of racial excellence, secured by military might.

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Thus, for young Carol, while it was easier to claim superiority over Black South Africans, whose skin colour immediately set them apart as backward, the real conquests that bolstered the grandeur and goodness of the English was reflected when pitted against other European nations, especially Nazi Germany, whom the English had vanquished in World War 2. Inevitably, ethnocentricism produced in Carol a belief that she was English and filled her with a sense of a special destiny.

Inextricable to her sense of special identity was the chauvinisticpride she developed about the English language. Apart from attempting to model ‘correct’ BBC English – a prestigious linguistic speaking reg-ister – her denigration and devaluation of things ‘un-English’ is evident in the contempt which she displayed towards Afrikaans, a language that she describes as guttural and ugly. Carol’s negative sentiments towards Afrikaans may be traced to the Anglo-Boer rivalry that shaped South African history. The tug-of-war between the English and Afrikaner settlers for political and language supremacy was marked by Eng-lish/Afrikaans dominance from 1795 to 1948, when the British ruled South Africa, followed by Afrikaans/English bilingualism from 1948 to 1994, when the Afrikaners had the reins of government. This would ex-plain Carol’s anti-Afrikaner sentiment in the light of the idealisation of English ethnocentricism that prevailed in her home.

Carol writes: the printed form of English affected my imagination and sense of identity even more than the oral forms of home and radio.The storybooks on war, which fortified her belief that the English were a brave and noble nation given to winning conquests, also provided a tem-plate for the social expectations in regard to gendered behaviour. The active man/passive woman binary is clearly evident in Carol’s depiction of the bravery and heroism of English manhood, in contrast to English womanhood, which was modest, noble, restrained, did not assert itself but waited for its true virtue to be discovered and rewarded, by marriage to an Englishman. However, what is masked by the romantic chemistry of heterosexual relations, as portrayed in this formula, is Carol’s am-bivalence about the nature of female sexuality in relation to Christian theology. Imbibing the Dominican nuns’ Catholic theology that women’s bodies bore the seeds of shame and corruption, Carol recalls the self-doubt and shame she suffered at school due to the nagging suspicion that, as a female, she belonged to a lineage that was (dis)credited for having precipitated Original Sin and Man’s subsequent fall from divine

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grace. According to the nuns, her redemption lay in female career op-tions such as becoming a secretary, wife, mother or nun. Against the backdrop of such a model on which to experience and theorise her des-tiny, it is not surprising that Carol reproduced the typical landscape of a good woman, and opted for the secretary, marriage and child bearing and rearing plot, which – after a while – left her feeling unfulfilled and in search of more challenging life experiences.

Over the years, however, her conceptions of her own identity, as well as that of others, has been re-constructed, and she has turned a transgressive back on what may best be described as an auto-mytho-graphical (rather than an autobiographical) self. Her auto-mythographical self existed in relation to others and their perceptions and expectations of her. Carol’s initial dis-identification with her South African identity, and her attachment to English nationhood, can be seen through Scheff’s (1994:280) distinction between love and infatuation. In this regard, he writes:

To understand the treatment of attachment of members to an imagined community, it is necessary to make the distinction between two kinds of attachment – love and infatuation. These affects appear similar only on the surface. On close examination, they are quite distinct. Infatuation rejects actual knowledge of the loved ones; it is based instead on idealisation. Love, on the other hand, requires actual knowledge of the other, who is loved for both her or his good and bad traits. It might appear para-doxical that the objects for all these nationalist attachments are ‘imagined’ – anonymous, faceless fellow tagalongs. … infatuation is usually a crucial signal of pathologies in relationships and emotional expression. It signals a kind of alien-ation, called engulfment that is, giving up important parts of the self to remain loyal to the relationship or group.

The diasporic fragmentation which Carol experienced is partly the mani-festation of her struggle to identify with the constructed realities of others, which she had identified as her own. In this regard, Miller (1985:491) postulates that “to resist the very form that separates self from self, as well as self from other, is to participate in action that is critical and transforming in nature.” This is especially true for Carol. Her exposure to academic discourse and her mounting frustration at the limitations of her experience and expectations exposed her to new no-tions of citizenship, and she had to reconsider her self-definition and identity formulation. Hence, in her twenties she comes to the realisation that: … I was not nor ever would be English but was instead a South

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African. At that time, however, my South African identity was to a large extent defined in resistance to Apartheid and was based in grief at what was being done to the people of what I was now able to call ‘my coun-try’. Carol’s transgressive/converted self accepts her classificatory status as South African. This circumstance partially resolves her boundary/borderland identity, which experienced the strains of ontologi-cal in-between-ness by virtue of being a second generation, diasporic subject in South Africa. Her modified consciousness prompted her to review not only her conceptions of citizenship, but also those of woman-hood, and of the linguistic purity, pride and arrogance that are engen-dered by the English language.

As a teacher of English, Carol also underwent an important ideo-logical change in her relationship with the English language. From boasting a chauvinistic pride and preoccupation with ‘correct’ English, she was alerted to criticisms that challenged the notion that the English literary heritage could function as a potential moral force for redeeming and improving the world; on the contrary Shakespeare et al. comprised part of the oppressive paraphernalia of British imperialism. Teaching at UWC, a previously disadvantaged tertiary institution that comprises pre-dominantly non-English, disprivileged Black students sensitised her to varieties of Englishes, as well as to different cultural and religious affiliations.

In examining the tensions and contradictions that Carol recalls having experienced in her childhood and early adulthood, she appears to have had to negotiate a Mind/Body fracture in at least three distinct ways, as it applied, respectively, to her national, gender and social class identities. The first tier of Mind/Body split resulted from her political, social and ideological dislocation. This dislocatoin comes through in her recollection that as a child she was forbidden to play with Coloured and native children. The second fracture is related to her female sexuality. Her body learned to react adversely to any proximity to Blacks. Grappling with the shame and guilt that the Dominican nuns ingrained in her about the essential corruptness of human nature and the association of the female body with sexual sin provided a counterbalance to the su-periority and special destiny engendered by the notion of English nation-hood. This Mind/Body tension is a clear explication of a fragmented and contradictory self, one that privileged, authorised and legitimated Carol’s national identity while simultaneously, deauthorising, disprivileging and

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devaluing her gendered subjectivity. It highlights the incongruence between her internal and external psychosocial landscape. The third fracture that undermined Carol’s sense of special destiny was her working class economic status, which carried the shame and embarrass-ment that is associated with a lack of material wealth, eliticism and sophistication. This was also deeply engrained in her psyche, to the ex-tent that years later, when she was a first generation university student, she doubted her ability to socialise and succeed in an academic domain which she believed was the abode of a superior species of human beings,who possessed superior verbal skills, were more articulate, and whose gestures and poise were associated with more prestigious social capital.

For most of Carol’s early socialisation we see her displaying fea-tures which are consonant with Castells’ (1997) description of a legiti-mising identity, which succumbs to the authoritative norm that prevailed in her home in regard to conceptions of her national, racial, gender and religious identities. The first hints of a resistance identity become apparent when she befriends Jenny, a feminist. In her autobiographical essay, Carol foregrounds thematic emplotments that evince her English second-generation disaporic identity. Solidly linked to this emplotment are the meta-narratives of racial, cultural and linguistic supremacy, which existed in contrast to her socially disprivileged economic and gen-der identity categories.

Vijay’s Public Collective Identities

In her autobiographical essay, Vijay foregounds the various social influ-ences that impacted her third-generation, South African, diasporic iden-tity formation. She reflects at length on the rich role of story telling in her upbringing. There is a clear sense of storytelling being a family practice, and she attributes her language development to the various in-puts from her extended family. Of particular significance, as with the other participants in the study, was the insistence on correct and clear language usage, which is evident in her recollection: Mum corrected our language with great clarity and patience. She surmises that her positive attitude towards multilingualism may be traced to the story Mafutha and the Lion, which her dad had narrated with much animation, and which

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contained isiZulu words and choruses. Living in mixed race Seaview also exposed her to language diversity at an early age.

As a third generation South African, Vijay corroborates Chisanga & Kamwangamalu’s (1997) and Chick & Wade’s (1997) studies which report that English in South Africa enjoys a special status as a first lan-guage for some younger generation South African Indians.5 Hailing from an English medium home, as with her attitude towards religious rituals in Hinduism, there is no hint of linguistic sentimentality or the need for concerted efforts to preserve her fading mother tongue, Telugu.6 As an adolescent, rather than heed her mother’s injunctions to learn Telugu (a variant of Indian vernacular languages), Vijay saw greater utility in learning isiZulu, the predominant regional language in KwaZulu-Natal. At university, she studied French in order to give her access into African literature produced in Francophone Africa.

In her reflections on Indian cultural phenomena, Vijay pays homage to her grandfather who was a carpenter and her only grandparent who spoke English. His public cultural contribution included advancing his knowledge of Telegu Sanskrit and various religious texts, in the margins of which he wrote extensive commentaries. He was also involved in the founding of the Andra Maha Sabha to propagate the Telegu language and Hindu culture. While acknowledging the richness of Indian spiritual literature, yoga and meditation, it seems that Vijay, like her grandfather and parents, is/was not shackled to a ‘Root’ mentality, which she ob-serves, often prevails among diasporic peoples. She is thus critical of Indian ethnocentrism, which in her estimation is often tied up in clock bound observances and rituals, and which she diagnoses as symptomatic of cultural and ethnocentric insecurities that diasporic peoples suffer. Vijay regards cultural rituals and observances as superficialities, espe-cially when they are subscribed to or practiced in an uncritical and unin-formed way. Her critique supports at least two significant debates that inform discourses on critical multiculturalism. The first, relates to the tendency for ethnicist discourses to impose stereotypical notions of ‘common cultural need’ upon ethnic groups, in spite of their diverse so-

5 According to these writers, this is also the case with a segment of the White

population (and is a non-native language for others, e.g. the Black population). 6 Likewise, she has become progressively more aloof vis-à-vis Hinduism and its

religious rituals.

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cial aspirations and interests. Such discourses often fail to address the relationship between difference and the social relations in which they may be inscribed. This means that a group, like South African Indians, who constitute a numeric minority and who are ethnically and culturally different, is assumed to be internally homogeneous. This is patently not the case, as is evident in Vijay’s life experiences and choices. Secondly, there is a tendency within certain enclaves of multicultural discourses to romanticise culture in an uncritical and unproblematic way. Vijay dis-tances herself from such discourses by adopting a stance that acknowledges the perceived merits and demerits of Indian cultural capital. Instead, we read in Vijay’s essay of her decision to foreground and celebrate her national identity as opposed to her ethnic identity. She chooses to identify herself as Black, instead of South African Indian.

Commenting on the potential for national identity to trump all other identities, Calhoun (1994:323) observes that nationalism often emerges as the primary form of identity and as the basic medium through which people express their aspirations for a better life. Within the context of Apartheid South Africa, the use of the category ‘Black’, was and continues to be determined not so much by the nature of the referent, as by its semiotic function within different discourses. Thus, the ‘Black’ in Black Power ideology refers specifically to the historical experience of disenfranchised South Africans and it was designed to create a positive political and cultural identity amongst Blacks (African, Coloured and Indian). It is employed in a political sense when issues of racism are dis-cussed. Rassool (1995:38) confirms that:

Blackness, thus, features as a signifier of social ‘otherness’ rather than as a racially descriptive term; it represents a diversity of social experiences within the margins of society. The term ‘black’ demarcates those who are not white and who do not belong socially; it describes the position of those looking in on the real world of power within metropolitan society – and those who are allowed to participate only with permission.

As many demonstrations and campaigns show, the concept ‘Black’ was mobilised as part of a set of constitutive ideas and principles to promote collective action. This is what Hall (2000:148–149) calls imaginary po-litical re-identification and re-territorialisation, and he argues that it is difficult without it to construct a counter-politics. Hall admits to not knowing of any group or category of people of the margins who have not

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mobilised themselves socially, culturally, economically and/or politically in the last twenty to twenty five years in order to resist their exclusion and marginalisation. Thus, Vijay’s political re-identification illustrates a response to calls for principled and strategic coalitions. Arguing for strategic essentialism in identities, Brah (2000:444–445) writes:

In their need to create new political identities, dominated groups will often appeal to bonds of common [political and] cultural experience in order to mobilise their constituency. In so doing they may assert a seemingly essentialist difference. … the ‘risk’ of essentialism may be worth taking if framed from the vantage point of a dominated subject position. This will remain problematic if a challenge to one form of oppression leads to the reinforcement of another. It may be over-ambitious, but it is imperative that we do not compartmentalise oppressions, but instead formulate strategies for challenging all oppressions on the basis of an understanding of how they interconnect and articulate.

While acknowledging its value in risking strategic essentialism and coa-litions, it is important to remember that Black activism as a social movement has aimed to generate solidarity; thus one must not assume that all members of the coalition are internally homogeneous. This means that the whole social being of South African Blacks is not consti-tuted only by the experience of racism, but also by many other identifi-cations, for example, religion, language, and political affiliation, and socio-economic distinctions. Thus, a significant distinction to be made in Vijay’s identification as Black South African is her access to various socio-economic privileges that the vast majority of Black South Africans did not/still do not enjoy. The distribution of resources is an important area of contention which reconfigures the boundaries of a ‘community’ that mobilises around political identities. The substance of this distinc-tion and contention becomes evident when Vijay’s political conscious-ness is seen within the matrix of her development of race and class-consciousness.

Vijay’s development of race and class-consciousness is inextricably linked to the political climate that prevailed in Apartheid South Africa. Like most people who were disenfranchised by the Apartheid regime, her left-wing political slant illustrates the confluence of time and place on identity narratives. Her political consciousness and left-wing leanings are attributed to issues that emerge from spatial/geographical issues. Her racial consciousness grew directly out of her having experienced the

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effects of, for example, the Group Areas Act, forced land evictions, and land resettlements, all of which constituted artillery that was deployed by the Apartheid regime to racially divide and rule South Africans. Those experiences also served to engender fear, suspicion and remorse among the different race groups. This is captured in Vijay’s recollection of her mum’s impassioned resentment and fear of the Group Areas inspectors. Despite the racial segregation, she was exposed early in life to racial integration and interaction in mixed-race Seaview; and her parents in-sisted that she treat everyone with respect. This upbringing and experi-ential background shaped Vijay’s political attitudes which she articulated in speeches she delivered at school, regarding the politics of informal settlements (such as Tin Town), and also when she argued for the inclu-sion of African literature in the curriculum.

Enmeshed in the dynamics that shaped her political consciousness is the issue of socio-economic class. Vijay’s parents constantly reminded her and her siblings about the middle class privileges which they en-joyed, in comparison to their immediate and extended families, who were working class. This value system, which was encapsulated in the refrain: You kids must be grateful for the food/clothes/books you get, how many children in this country are so lucky, together with witnessing the poverty that her primary school classmates endured, accentuated Vijay’s sensitivity to class-consciousness. While it is often race and gender that serve as more overt markers of identity positionality, Vijay was able to read class deprivation from the material want of her classmates, who arrived at school without sandwiches or shoes. In the same way that she admits to lacking a vocabulary to articulate her mum’s gender discrimi-nation toward her, she also only acquired a vocabulary regarding race and class discrimination later, at university. Here, she was able to relate the lessons which her parents had taught her about material inequity to the theoretical insights forwarded in the banned literature by theorists such as Marx, Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu. This theoretical framing of Vijay’s class-consciousness may be compared to the trajectory that is discernible in the development of her feminist consciousness: a move from personal to broader social consciousness.

Vijay recalls feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable about being middle class, which is a sentiment to which Mennell (1994:182) refers as group shame and group charisma. Vijay reflects on the ambivalences which she felt about her middle class upbringing. She expresses group

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shame because schoolteachers meted out preferential treatment to chil-dren from middle class homes. This engendered in her a critical attitude towards middle class privileges, power, arrogance and stupidity. Al-though Vijay is critical of her middle class status, she is aware of the benefits and group charisma she enjoyed as it related to accessing reading material, and the expectation of a university education.

She talks at length about the centrality of work in her life and attributes it to the ethic and respect for hard work that prevailed in her immediate and extended families. In tracing the nature of female labour in her family, we note that Vijay’s great granny arrived from India as an indentured labourer to work the sugar cane fields in Kwazulu-Natal and later became involved in midwifery. Her granny did not pursue a career but had a full-time job. Vijay’s mum was the first woman in her family to have attended high school and to have eventually graduated from college as a qualified teacher.

In understanding the centrality of work in the lives of immigrant populations, Mirza’s (1995) study highlights three features:

First, it reports that the ethic of, and respect for hard work is grounded in a fundamental belief among immigrant populations that no matter who you are, if you work hard and well at school you should be rewarded in the world of work. Thus, like the second-generation Caribbean women in Mirza’s study, Vijay and her mum imbibed a strong work ethic by showing a deep commitment to education and the meri-tocratic ideal of achieving through hard work.

Second, Mirza (ibid.) points out that it is ironic that the desire for personal academic achievement and fulfilment is an educational motiva-tion which Black women pursue within educational structures that oppress them. However, instead of being demotivated and demoralised they use it strategically to aspire to academic excellence. In this regard, Vijay admits that her twelve years of schooling seemed like a prison term which she endured with great patience. Even her university educa-tion did not adequately redress social inequalities; however, despite the inequality of educational opportunities and facilities in Apartheid South Africa, Vijay’s career success is a reflection of her motivation and edu-cational achievements.

Third, as with the young women in Mirza’s study (ibid.) who did not deem their relationships with men, whether within or outside the institu-tion of marriage as inhibiting to their right to work, there is also no hint

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that Vijay had to negotiate the disapproval of the men in her family re-garding her decision to work outside the home. Vijay’s motivation for educational pursuit is expressed in her expectation of working just as her mother, aunts and grandmother had done for generations before. How-ever, despite the respect that she feels for the industry of the women in her family, she admits:

The struggles of great granny, mum and other working women and mothers influ-enced my early feeling that I could not subject myself to the stress of managing a family and a career. Observing the violence that women do to themselves as they juggle work, children, partner, extended family and community responsibilities was very instructive. At the same time, finding work that exercised my passion for inde-pendent thinking, reading, writing, teaching and problem solving has been immensely satisfying. (Essay)

A significant theme that emerges from the extract relates to sexuality, intellectuality and gendered role fulfilment. In the first instance, Vijay’s assessment of the consequences of pursuing two careers – one in the private sphere of the home and the other in the public arena – is summed up in her association of such a lifestyle with the words struggles, stress and violence. Rather than subject herself voluntarily to being torn between these two work sites, she succumbs to her passion for intellec-tual stimulation in resistance to patriarchal logic and to expectations which extol as pinnacle women’s destiny to wifedom and mothering. Within this logic, the perceived incompatibility between women’s intellectuality and sexuality, which eventuates in the Mind/Body dichotomy, essentialises women’s association with the body and with biological reproduction. Vijay’s extract raises several tensions that assail women as they wrestle with the ambiguities that surround conceptions of femininity, feminine domesticity and intellectuality.

First, these sentiments and experiences resonate with themes that Middleton (1993) explored in her study, in which she discussed the ten-sion which women feel about pursing educational meritocracy at the risk of being perceived asexual. In deciding not to manage a family, but to pursue a career outside the home, Vijay risks inviting aspersions that generally accompany deviations from social prescriptions and expecta-tions regarding gender, sexuality and femininity.

Second, pursuing her passion for independent thinking, reading,writing, teaching and problem solving, which she describes as immensely

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satisfying, has meant that she has had to negotiate other racial/ethnic stereotypes. This is evident in an incident which Vijay experienced at an academic conference. She recalls:

Having engaged very thoroughly with Livingstone’s work over several years, I remained unconvinced by the arguments that were presented and resisted them openly. During question time I found myself retorting to a particularly aggressive professor that the differences in our readings arose from our different historical subject positions and that he should not try to reinvent me (by way of getting me to change my mind). On reflection I realise that I was reacting as much to the hege-monic assumptions of conservative liberalism as to the patronage of white mascu-linity, in that I was being constructed as a misguided Indian woman who would accept the sense of a forceful argument. (Essay)

Indulging her passion for independent thinking we get a glimpse of the possible reaction which it elicits from aggressive professors, among others, who hold the stereotypical image of ‘Asian’ women as ‘submissive, subservient, ready-to-please and easy-to-get along with,’ which according to Rassool (1995:24) perhaps still remains the most captivating and enduring image of ‘Oriental’ femininity. In standing her ideological and interpretative ground, Vijay subverts the stereotypical construction of a misguided Indian woman by not acquiescing to the forceful arguments of the professor.

An overview of Vijay’s essay suggests that there are early indica-tions of her displaying characteristics consistent with a resistance iden-tity that reacts against the authoritative norm. There are several incidents in her socialisation that see her questioning and defying scripted gender, cultural and political expectations. These include: her refusal as a teen-ager to learn her fading mother tongue, Telegu; her non-participation in Hindu religious rituals and observances; and her alignment and identifi-cation with her father and with ‘male-oriented’ social activities.

In addition, her resistance identity is coupled with a strong dis-iden-tification from racial and ethnic expectations, and operates antagonisti-cally against the identity and identifications that are set up in dominant social scripts.

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Jennifer’s Collective Public Identities

In Jennifer’s reflection on the influences that have shaped her early so-cialisation, she accords a significant amount of attention to her language development and the psycho-social dynamics of speaking more than one language. Jennifer’s narrative provides insights into her sexual orienta-tion, her family’s working class status, her response to religious influ-ences and her political stance, which were shaped in Apartheid South Africa.

Jennifer’s bilingual (English/Afrikaans) language development, which followed the structure of her parents’ home languages, has con-vinced her of the value and scope that language diversity plays in cogni-tive development, flexibility and freedom of expression, with monolin-gualism producing the opposite effects. However, it is interesting that she only makes reference to English and Afrikaans, but not to her fa-ther’s Celtic language influence. Perhaps the reason for this is that in South Africa, the Celtic language does not enjoy widespread use, and has, for the most part, fallen into disuse.7 Having inherited a love for literature, an interest in the physical world, and mathematics, Jennifer credits her father for her intellectual development. She also acknowledges his role in her language learning and his preoccupation with correct pronunciation. Jennifer describes her relationship with the English language in emotive tones when she writes: I love my own lan-guage (English) with a deep and abiding passion. Words like love,abiding passion, coupled with the phrase my own language, not only point to a personal possessive relationship, but also to a deep connection to the English language. Her love and abiding passion for the English language foregrounds the difference between having an intrinsic motiva-tion for acquiring a language as opposed to having an extrinsic motiva-tion for acquiring and using a language. This difference carries peda-gogical import in the light of the overwhelming student responses which indicate the instrumental motivation that directs their decision to study English. Jennifer attributes the success in the globalisation of English to its flexibility in accommodating words from other languages, for example, French, Latin, Afrikaans, etc. In addition, English has the most

7 This has implications for other non-South African languages within the current

liberal South African language landscape.

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erratic spelling and pronunciation variations among the Englishes that exist (for example, British English, American English, South African English), which further manifests the existence of a variety of Englishes and thus renders purist notions of Standard English as poorly conceived.

Her acquisition of French, at university, allowed her an entry point into a European mindset, which confirms that language as a social con-struct transmits the cultural and social capital of a country and its people by acting as a conduit for their ‘mindset’, values and norms. While acknowledging the cognitive and creative value of being conversant in a repertoire of languages, Jennifer comments that the lack of linguistic fluency and deviation in pronunciation by non-native speakers of a lan-guage is often conflated with cognitive deficiency, which invariably breeds psycho-linguistic inferiority in speakers. This is evident in her acknowledgement:

I am aware that I do not speak my ‘other’ languages with the fluency of a first-lan-guage speaker, despite my extensive vocabulary in both, but have an English accent and often battle to find the correct idiomatic expression. I realise that speaking Afrikaans or French with an English accent stigmatises the speaker and can lead to one’s having the status of a second-class speaker, even though one’s thoughts or vocabulary may not be second-class. (Essay)

Jennifer’s use of the word battle captures the struggle and added effort which she needs to make in order to communicate in a language of which she is not a native speaker. This circumstance, again, suggests the need for pedagogic sensitivity in teaching demographically diverse classes. As a voracious reader, Jennifer has a love for all kinds of litera-ture, and she dismisses the distinction in English literature between high and low culture. She is, however, particularly critical of the formative narratives she was weaned on, which portray distressed fairy princesses in need of rescue by charming princes. Apart from critiquing the myth that a woman’s well-being can only be guaranteed by a man, the privi-leged socio-economic depiction of fairytale princesses was at odds with the harsh reality of her own working-class upbringing.

Jennifer describes her childhood household as operating in accor-dance with a conventional gendered division of labour, with her mother being associated with traditional women’s activities of nurturing and maintenance and her father with intellectual and economic concerns. As a way of introducing her critique of compulsory heteronormativity,

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Jennifer specifies that she was raised by two parents comprising one of each sex. By drawing attention to this ‘standard model’ of marriage coupling, parenting, family structure, gender role and status, she cri-tiques the taken-for-granted normalcy of heterosexual relations and expresses hope that this model of the family is losing its grip. This per-spective is significant in the light of Jennifer’s coming to terms with her own lesbian sexual orientation later in life. In critiquing the heteronor-mativity of marriage coupling, and the belief that procreation within such a union guarantees heterosexual children, Stein (1997:170) points out that: “Freud’s notion that the family provides the bedrock upon which all individual desire is patterned is no longer applicable, if it ever was” and that “a complex, diffuse array of sexual discourses shape individual subjectivity and sexual identity.”

Grappling with the dynamics of aetiology, which is the study of the explanation or causes of something, Jennifer is uncertain about what in her socialisation and personal relationships would have influenced her lesbian sexual orientation/predilection for lesbianism. However, the ab-sence of an explanation for the cause and effect does not detract from the denial, secrecy, and discomfort that she endured during the many decades during which she deferred an understanding and acceptance of her sexual orientation. According to Sedgwick (1990 in Stein 1997:167) such secrecy constitutes a medium of domination that is not reducible to other forms, because it remained largely, until recently, in social history, in denial and obfuscation. Providing some insight into the private pain that her sexual orientation wrought upon her as an adolescent girl, Jennifer describes her utter bewilderment and discomfort with boys when she writes:

My school had a ‘social’ understanding with several boys’ schools in the area, in terms of which a certain number of girls would be ‘ordered’ for a particular Satur-day evening and then thrown together in a darkened room with the same number of boys. This habit seemed utterly barbaric to me. Each girl was expected to dress attractively and provocatively and to attract some unknown boy, who was allowed to engage in light sexual activity with her (although there was no such thing as sex education at our conservative school, which simultaneously espoused virginity). I was extremely shy and would usually find myself against the wall for most of the evening, counting the minutes until I could go home. In addition, I was overweight and my mother could not afford to dress me in the height of adolescent fashion, so I felt very uncomfortable under the scrutiny of my age-mates of the opposite sex. To

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my eyes, they looked completely uninteresting, anyway: I preferred to look at the attractive girls. (Essay)

Jennifer critiques the bigotry of her school education and social practices that, on the one hand, pressured girls to dress in sexually provocative attire, while simultaneously expecting chastity of them. The rituals to which girls subjected themselves in order to be considered attractive and desirable to boys, when coupled with the social understanding that en-tailed girls being ordered for Saturday night intimacy with boys, reduced to a transactional nature the social engineering of intimate heterosexual relations. Thus, girls became the equivalents of consumable commodi-ties. Jennifer’s discomfort with this practice is further accentuated in the phrases thrown together in a darkened room and seemed utterly barbaric to me, which draw attention to her struggle to conform to compulsory heterosexuality. She describes herself as being shy and feeling uncom-fortable under the scrutiny of her age-mates of the opposite sex, and she thus testifies to her sense of not belonging to this contrived heterosexual community. Given that homosexuality ran counter to the norms and morés of the conventional Christian social circle to which she belonged, she was forced into assimilation in the same way as she was forced into participating in the Saturday night heterosexual social circle. Her sense of belonging within these social enclaves can best be described as the Outsider within. Jennifer’s identification with Tibetan Buddhism may be attributed to the fact that it is consistent with central principles in femi-nist discourses, which are also concerned with non-discriminatory gen-der relations, promotion of human equality and respect for different lifestyles.

In addition, society’s intolerance for sexual deviation, and the sub-sequent punishment and ostracisation that is meted out to those who dare to defy social norms, are captured in the story that she tells of her class-mate who was expelled from school for engaging in a lesbian relation-ship. Jennifer confides that such denials and judgements do immeasurable harm to emerging gender identities, and she gives cre-dence to Lemert’s (1994:111) description of what it means to belong to the weak-we position, which is of necessity overtly political. As in Jenni-fer’s case, experiences of the weak-we are formed in a series of prohibi-tions, punishments, taboos and penalties. In explicating the absence of

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the socially mandated positionality of the weak-we, Lemert (ibid.) con-tends:

The Self is presumed to be a moral zero-signifier – that one type of individual who is least consciously responsible for her identity. Zero-signifiers cannot be openly political. They must, therefore, forget who they are. … founded on a code of silence which entails a double prohibition: first against recognition of one’s own complexity and second, against the public legitimacy of any weak-we identity.

Apart from young Jennifer feeling conflicted by the secrecy of her les-bian sexual orientation, she also had to negotiate her lower-middle class status and the sense of economic inferiority that her mother, in particular, felt in relation to the affluent Pietermaritzburg society in which they lived. Their disprivileged financial status meant that she was unable to dress in the height of adolescent fashion. Jennifer elaborates on the geo-graphical and symbolic significance of the metaphor our home was al-ways on the wrong side of the tracks. The literal railroad that ran through the town served as a geographical boundary marker which divided the affluent areas of Pietermaritzburg from the poorer areas (a kind of class-based Apartheid among White South Africans). Symbolically, the rail-road also denoted the differences between the liberal political views of her parents and those of conservative Pietermaritzburg.

The 1960s and 1970s were significant political times in South Africa as they marked the height of Apartheid oppression for Blacks. It was also a period of banned and covert political activism against the country’s divisive racial laws. Jennifer portrays her family as non-affluent liberals who were disrespectful of Apartheid. It may also be assumed that her Irish-born father’s sensitivity and vehemence towards racial oppression emanated from the similarities between the political and economic plight of the Irish and Black groups in Britain. The difference, however, was that even though the two groups may share a similar class location, as White Europeans, the great majority of Irish are placed in a dominant position vis-à-vis Black in and through the discourses of anti-Black ra-cism.

Jennifer reflects on the political liberalism of her parents that saw her befriending and respecting those from different race groups – some-thing that was uncommon in the political and geographical space in which she grew up. While Apartheid was designed to alienate Blacks from Whites, Jennifer describes herself as also feeling alienated because

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of her identification with oppressed Blacks. In this regard, Scheff (1994:278) ponders:

… why it is that one might feel more in common with people that one doesn’t actu-ally know than with one’s neighbours, that is with persons one does know. … under what conditions does one feel closer to unknown than known persons? … what is the nature of community, and what are its variant manifestations? … what type of real community might lead some of its members to choose identification with a different community over the one in which they actually live? What types of social relationships would we expect to find in each?”

The questions that Scheff poses are significant not only in relation to belonging to residential communities, but also in relation to membership in ideological communities. In assessing her family’s alignment with ideologically and politically liberal communities, Jennifer distinguishes between an espoused political activism (which operates at a theoretical level) versus a practiced, enacted political activism that confronts and challenges the discriminatory status quo. The depiction of her parents as armchair liberals, coupled with her own sense of not doing enough to eradicate the disenfranchisement of the racially oppressed, seem to suggest that in Jennifer’s conceptualisation there existed hierarchies in the form and nature of activism against Apartheid. There is a sense that ‘active protest,’ probably in the form of political marches, and toyi-toying, signified a more visible protest, and a hierarchically more po-tent/important onslaught against Apartheid. Although her parents defied the prevailing social norms by associating with Blacks, this – in Jennifer’s estimation – did not constitute significant political protest, and she seems to accord less importance to it. Even her own involvement in the production of a radical activist student newspaper is conferred mar-ginal status within her hierarchy of protest activities. The fact that she belonged to activist student groups indicates her sense of community and solidarity with the racially oppressed, this however, does not eradicate the sense of collective guilt that she felt. Instead, she confides feeling hamstrung and silenced. While it can be argued that her involvement in the production of radical student newspapers may be seen as a channel that broke the silence and voiced her vision for social justice, evidently Jennifer feels that her non-participation in ‘active protest’ diluted her contribution to the Apartheid struggle.

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From Jennifer’s account there emerges a discernible sense that she experienced a double social removal, one linked to compulsory hetero-sexuality, and the other against Apartheid policies that were meant to privilege her. Her experience suggests that, in South Africa, the struggle against racial oppression took on greater social and personal agency in comparison to gender and sexual oppression. Jennifer had the courage to react subversively to racial oppression much earlier than she confronted the grip of heteronormativity on her life. Thus, features of a legitimating identity that are more consistent with the authoritative norm are discernible in her early enactment of her sexual script, whereas features of a resistance identity characterise her response to South African poli-tics.

Phumzile’s Collective Public Identities

In her essay, Phumzile devotes much attention to the geographical and historical contexts that she has occupied at different times in her life. She commences her essay by providing an impulse of the significance of Alice, a town in the Eastern Cape, and more specifically of the Univer-sity of Fort Hare, which she describes as being imbued with a history of educating some of Africa’s most perceptive leaders of the post-independence moment, and more significantly, of having produced Black intellectuals who were instrumental in agitating for an end to Apartheid. It is within the geographical space of the University of Fort Hare, where her father taught that she was exposed to childhood experiences that both connected and disconnected her from the life situation and outlook of the majority of Blacks who lived under the Apartheid regime. Her disconnection from the experiences of the majority of Black South Afri-cans came in the form of the ‘legal’ possibility of living among neighbours who were at different times Sibanyoni, Khoali, Naidoo and Cloete. These surnames signify the multiracial demographics of the aca-demic and administrative staff that lived together on the University of Fort Hare campus. In the light of the Group Areas Act, which segregated South Africans on the basis of racial difference, this was an unusual arrangement, which elsewhere in the country was outlawed at the time. This demographic diversity meant that Phumzile was surrounded by differences in language, cultures, race, etc. Her connection to other

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Blacks in South Africa came in the form of the ongoing political activisms on the campus – an experience that would have been similar to the realities of Blacks in the wider South African context. Her connec-tion to the political activism assumed both symbolic and real manifesta-tions: symbolic in the form of the images of Black fists painted on the … two male residences on Fort Hare’s east campus, and real through the auditory, as in the shouts of Black Power and the adult conversations [which] addressed the Apartheid policies of the day, as well as the tactile through the stinging sensation of teargas which was often used in police raids. This political climate of fear and intimidation for the Apartheid police and their unwanted and unwelcome presence on the campus also connected Phumzile to the Apartheid atrocities and realities that those opposed to the regime experienced elsewhere in the country. It was against this political backdrop that Phumzile learnt the differentiation between voiced and willed silence, between that which should/could be verbalised and that which needed to remain silent. The palpable political energy that marked her childhood is perhaps best reflected in her recollection that one of the first English phrases which she learnt as a child was the revolutionary slogan Black Power.

Having lived in a demographically diverse environment meant that Phumzile was exposed early in life to multilingualism and multiculturalism. While pointing out that such difference and diversity was a taken-for-granted reality during her childhood, it was only later that Phumzile became aware of the tensions that surround it as an un-problematic category. She is thus, critical of multicultural proponents who advance theories of colour blindness because in purporting to be blind to race, they misrecognise that social identity is a complex configu-ration of gender, class, sexuality, etc. (see Vally & Dalamba 1999).

In reflecting on her religious identity, Phumzile mentions that her family were Catholic several generations over on both sides; yet, she never attended Catholic school. When she did attend Catholic mass, which was conducted in English, it was the use of language that alerted her to patriarchal bias, as it manifested itself in the prominent and domi-nant roles which men occupy in Christian theology. Thus, it was reli-gious discourse that alerted her to the role of languages in servicing patriarchy.

In commenting on the dialectics of nationality, race and class, Phumzile points out: my privilege was never of the sort that I was shel-

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tered from the realities which accompanied being born Black in Apart-heid South Africa … even as middle class Black children we could not claim the kind of protection or safety from the political reality of the country. Here she contends that socio-economic privilege does not necessarily redeem or protect one from political disenfranchisement. In describing her socio-economic status, Phumzile draws attention to the heterogeneity that characterises all races, Blacks included. There are several instances throughout her essay when she refers to the socio-eco-nomic privileges she enjoyed. For example, she states: My early world was, to the extent that there are a small number of Black academics in South Africa even now, an exceptional childhood. Since my parents were able to provide for all my financial needs and wants, it was clearly one of privilege. The difference with regard to her socialisation is a rare and privileged experience of being Black, and is attributed to the fact that her family was middle-class, with both her parents being professional. This family background conferred upon her a socio-economic privilege that differed from the cultural, economic, social and symbolic capital which most South African Blacks experienced. Phumzile’s experience thus challenges the essentialist Black identity that is portrayed in much art and culture and which stereotypically depicts, as universal, urban working-class township experience.

In defiance of Apartheid educational policy which stipulated that Black children should only commence school at the age of eight, Phumzile recalls that she started school at the age of five. Opting for an earlier than usual start to her schooling was met with pride and enthusiasm by her parents who actively encouraged and supported her education. Her father marvelled at her pronunciation of English words when she read to him from the Sunday newspaper, and her mother en-gendered in her a love for reading by buying her books from the Lovedale Press and College Bookstore. As with the other participants in the study, her socio-economic status endowed upon her the privilege of education; however, unlike the other participants, Phumzile’s recollec-tions of her schooling are saturated with descriptors which highlight the benefits and esteem that accrued from her privileged socio-economic positionality. For example, she writes:

I went to Inanda Seminary, a prestigious Black girls’ private school. Inanda had history, prestige, authority and education of the highest quality. The tradition was

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that ‘Inanda girls shine’: upon leaving the school, Inanda girls were to excel in all fields. On Inanda Day old girls … would arrive in all their glory to testify that they continued to shine where they were. Inanda girls were expected to be outstanding, and given the fees, also mainly middle class. … and [it was] the same at All Saints Seminary where the fees where exceptionally high. (Essay)

Her socio-economic privilege and pursuit of academic excellence, about which Phumzile writes in her autobiographical essay, are indeed a rare distinction, especially in the context of Apartheid South Africa, where political agendas aimed to keep Blacks in servitude and confine them to being hewers of wood and bearers of water. However, in spite of the prestige and privilege that have characterised her schooling, Phumzile did not escape curricula that reproduced discriminatory gender and sexual stereotyping. First, curricula options that differentiated subjects according to gender meant that boys were offered ‘masculine’ specific subjects, like gardening, and girls were confined to ‘feminine’ specific subjects, like sewing. Second, there were suggestions that elevated boys’ mental prowess over that of girls, which was manifestly not consistent with the fact that the overachievers were from both sexes. Third, the so-cial prescriptions that endorsed compulsory heterosexuality rendered ambivalent and complex sexual relations between males and females as is evident in Phumzile’s recollection: Inanda doctrine was also ex-tremely moralistic, and we were warned ad nauseam about boys as the enemy out to get us intoxicated and pregnant. Phumzile critiques the variant of femininity that she, as a Black South African teenager, was expected to pattern her life upon. She writes: I am hesitant to romanti-cise my time there, especially given the Victorian morals which domi-nated notions of gender decorum. In a footnote Phumzile gestures at the possible origins of the Victorian morals that the school modelled itself upon; she refers to historical fragments which attest that Inanda Semi-nary was apparently founded by a Victorian pioneer, with the aim of providing suitably educated wives for outstanding Black men that Adams and Ohlange Colleges would produce in colonial times. The sense emerging from this social educational arrangement suggests that the de-cision to educate/prepare girls for anticipated/projected roles as suitable wives to educated Black men was not a decision that was made by the school girls themselves, but it had been made by the school management. This circumstance is in contrast to Middleton’s (1993) research, in which the ‘girls’ in her study voluntarily pursued educational meritocracy in

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disregard or defiance of ideological climates that associated intellectuality with asexuality. Unlike the girls at Inanda Seminary, Middleton’s participants risked being caricatured as asexual, in the hope that educational meritocracy would render them attractive and viable candidates as wives to brilliant professional men.

An allied issue that emerges from the pursuit of academic excellence is related to the ambivalences and contradictions which such ambition engendered in relation to conceptions of female gender-appropriate be-haviour. Phumzile reflects on this aspect as follows:

I recognise that a school which teaches you as a Black girl in Apartheid South Africa to value your thoughts, opinions and to know that you are destined for great-ness is revolutionary. Inanda Seminary was regimented in the establishment’s effort to turn ‘unruly’ teenagers into ladies. … When I left Inanda for good … I no longer wanted any connection to a school I was experiencing as suffocating. Some of the aspects I deal with … were undoubtedly patriarchal. (Essay)

Phumzile praises Inanda Seminary for inculcating in her the quest for academic excellence and independent thinking; however, as is supported in Unterhalter’s (1999) study there is a stark tension between developing intellectual astuteness and independence among girls, while simultane-ously circumscribing codes of feminine/ladylike behaviour that conform to patriarchal docility and subservience. It is this contradiction which Phumzile describes as suffocating. Of equal important is that despite the patriarchal climate that pervaded the school, it produced many of the most outspoken public feminists in South Africa. This fact foregrounds the distinction between school socialisation theories of reproduction and production (see Weiler 1988). Reproduction theories posit a determinate correspondence between what schools teach and what students learn, and production theories credit teachers and students with agentic capacities to challenge, change, and produce new knowledges. By not reproducing school education, which taught them to conform to patriarchy, these Inanda graduates have come to identify with feminist/woman struggles, and in doing so they confirm that knowledge is contested ground which is open to active resistance.

The expectation of female subservience is an experience that Phumzile encountered as a university student, when her coalition with fellow progressive Black male comrades against social discrimination

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left her feeling betrayed at their hostile reaction to a publication of sexual harassment policy. Reflecting on this experience, Phumzile writes:

The message communicated to me, was, they do want you to be political, to be ac-tive, to be everything, but they still need a complement of women who are subser-vient. Madikizela was to later identify this tendency exhibited by some Black men at UCT thus: What does a Black male chauvinist do to rally support from fellow Blacks, including women, against a Black woman seen as a threat – ‘to the nation’? He invokes the notion of ‘we-ness.’ He casts himself into the role of custodian of culture. (Essay)

Supporting the caution that in celebrating culture one needs to beware of its patriarchal bias, the above extract also signals that the hostile re-sponse of Phumzile’s Black male comrades is similar to the experiences of women who had rallied with men in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Her Black male comrades welcomed the support of their female comrades, but resisted, and ceased to be supportive, when women’s issues needed to be championed. This experience bears out Brah’s (2000:443) observation that Black women have been dominated patriarchally in different ways by men of different ‘colours.’

Phumzile devotes a substantial part of her essay to reflections on the different sites of her education, and the ideologies and epistemological impulses that have characterised them. In reflecting on her undergraduate degree, Phumzile identifies a few courses which gave her glimpses of marginalised social experiences. For the most part, she critiques her un-dergraduate studies for the lies which it propagated about her; she was sometimes angered by its omissions and brevity on issues of race, history and gender. As an academic who currently teaches English, Phumzile endeavours to redistribute the narrative field by including in her litera-ture courses non-canonical texts. Her teaching against the canonical lit-erary grain is illustrative of the general tide of resistance that has characterised her identity formation. Several times in her essay Phumzile uses words like rebelled, resisted, illegal, and secret; they thus point to a strong resistance identity. Her identity formation was framed in resis-tance to Apartheid policies, which saw her legally defying residential laws, school age admission policy stipulations, engaging discussion on politically banned topics, and harbouring political insurgents in her fam-ily home.

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Thembi’s Collective Public Identities

Thembi was born in rural Botswana in the 1940s. Her parents, who were both teachers by profession, encouraged the intellectual development of their children and placed a high premium on both their formal and in-formal education. This was at odds in a community that was predisposed to cattle rearing, where greater value was attributed to physical labour. Thembi alludes to the Mind/Body distinction that prevailed in such so-cieties when she writes: I was fortunate to have parents who understood that holding a book in your lap instead of running after cattle was not a sign of laziness, but an indication that though one’s hands were still,one’s mind was engaged in some type of work. Herein lies an interesting inversion of the Mind/Body split. It appears that whereas in most western capitalist societies, greater value is endowed upon the Mind (and its association with the book), in a rural context, such as the one which Thembi describes, it would have been associated with laziness, while manual labour, as in running after cattle, held greater value.

Early in her language development, Thembi became aware of the distinctions between ‘standard English’ pronunciation and prescriptive language conventions, and of the possibility of first language interference in learning English, the target language. Thembi recalls that her parents were insistent on teaching them the distinctions of proper Setswana and English grammatical forms. She writes: These lessons were very important because living in what was then rural Botswana issues of English pronunciation or Setswana ‘heavy’ accent were bound to affect either our learning of English as a second language or our use of Setswana as our mother tongue. Hence, her father painstakingly taught the ‘correct’ pronunciation, for example, father – not fada, mother – not mada, power – not pawa, zebra – not sebra.

In addressing the issue of social class, Thembi describes their posi-tionality as undeniably privileged. She admits that her privileged eco-nomic status attracted prominent people to her home, but this did not distance them from the less privileged in her community – rather it gave them a platform from which to reach out to the economically disadvan-taged. She highlights the social and symbolic capital that accrued to her from being economically privileged when she writes: … distinguished people surrounded my parents. Guests to our home included doctors,ministers of religion, teachers, nurses, and people who would later be

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members of the cabinet once Botswana became independent. This gave us a sense of pride but it was also humbling to see my parents give so much to their community, and be held in such high esteem. The spin-offs from the economic privileges which Thembi and her family enjoyed resonate with Bourdieu’s (1986) conceptualisation of the link between class statuses and social and symbolic capital. Social capital relates to resources which are gained via relationships and/or connections with significant others; this, in turn, generates symbolic capital and thus translates into prestige and honour that is associated with the acquisition of other forms of capital which are recognised as legitimate within main-stream society.

The portrayal of her parents suggests a strong Mind/Heart synergy. The strength of Mind comes through in her descriptions of her father, who – in spite of his frail health – boasted a strong and creative mind and excelled as a writer and editor. His contribution to cultural and intellec-tual phenomena is reflected in Thembi’s adult recognition of his distin-guished career as the author of the first monolingual Setswana Dictionary. Thembi’s descriptions of her mother are a blend of essen-tialist attributes that have come to frame stereotypes about women, while simultaneously defying them. The essentialist woman stereotype is re-flected in her mother’s benevolence and kind-heartedness towards theeconomically disadvantaged; her ‘womanly virtue’ is further captured in phrases that illuminate her forthrightness, frankness and incredibly big heart, sense of truth and integrity, and her being a rock to lean on. These descriptors echo the refrains which are associated with images of the bounteous, nurturing, self-sacrificing mother. In the same breath, Thembi credits her mother with having an entrepreneurial spirit in running the village shop, which is a rare distinction for a Black woman who – according to Thembi was ample proof that a woman could have a career and family, though in those days it didn’t quite seem like she was “having it all.” Her struggle did not have the glamour of self-sufficiency women could cling to in the 21st century … .

The sense that emerges from Thembi’s essay is that in spite of the awe and admiration that she has for her mother’s entrepreneurial acu-men, indomitable spirit, and benevolent disposition, she is however,more fascinated by her fathers and husband’s accomplishments. The following extracts draw a comparison among her father, her mother, her husband and herself:

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I was indeed my father’s child. I had obviously internalised his interests and values … I hungered for increased knowledge and I resigned from the Bank to enroll for a BA … . My … majors … were English and African languages (my father’s majors as well). ………………………………………………………………………………………..I could immediately discern parallels if not similarities: … my husband, like my father, was a university graduate. My husband, like my father, had specialised in English. My husband’s first teaching post, like my father’s was at Moeng College. And for my part, like my mother who was a mere teacher’s certificate holder, I was a mere school leaver; like my mother who had done housewifery, I too had been trained as such (though informally) by her. The lessons I got from my mother, a domestic science person, would be useful in my own ‘domestic’ sphere. In fact when I married, my mother had compiled a cookbook for me and provided samples of ‘Daily menu’ for my use as the new and inexperienced wife … . (Essay) (empha-sis added)

These extracts highlight Thembi’s strong identification with her father and – it may be assumed – with her husband, whom she describes as sharing parallels if not similarities with her father. In the essay, descrip-tions of her father’s life and times receive her commendation, as is evi-dent in such excerpts as the enormity of his contribution; a distinguished career, and Thembi proceeds to write: I am awed by the presence I had around me. Twice in the extract, Thembi uses the word mere in relation to her and her mother’s accomplishments. This may be read as Thembi’s attempt to highlight the prevailing discriminatory social practices that invariably diminished women’s accomplishments. Thus, her mother’s unpublished compilation of a cookbook, for example, which provided ‘Daily Menu’ samples, seems not to carry the same social status as that of her father’s publications. A possible explanation for the devaluing of female gendering may be traced to the limited scope that is scripted in the life expectations and aspirations of young girls in a patriarchal soci-ety, in that their life expectations and aspirations are solidly tied to femi-ninity and heterosexuality, and are consummated within the marriage union. Hence, upon completion of Form V, Thembi admits: I cherished the freedom from both my colonial and parental rule. What was para-mount in my mind then, at the age of nineteen, was a marriage certificate and a family of my own.

For Botswana-born Thembi, the follies of Apartheid did not impact her directly. Belonging to a dominant ethnic majority sheltered her from experiencing the discrimination that is generally associated with racial

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and/or ethnic otherness. Exuding an aura of self-confidence, and heightened esteem in relation to her individual and collective categorical identities of gender, nationality, generation and family background, Thembi writes: As a Motswana woman in the sixties, seventies and eighties it was good to feel pride in my husband, my parents, my country and myself. From within this cocooned psycho-social space, she learned from her father how to resist the debilitating impact of colonial domina-tion on Botswana. Boasting pride in her nationality and traditional cul-ture, she illustrates Calhoun’s (1994:321) contention that nationalisms are shaped in different international contexts and from different domestic experiences, with many emerging in response to histories of direct colo-nialism, which may absorb an entire culture, claiming everything from language and literature to political practices. Thembi points to the agenda of colonialism in Botswana to engender self-hatred and self-doubt among Batswana nationals by undermining their physical, cogni-tive and spiritual constitution. She writes: Colonial Botswana, like all colonial countries was gripped in a mentality that denied our ability, our intellect, our beauty as a people, and thus instilled in us a lack of pride in our traditional culture. On the contrary, my father was one of those few Batswana who fought hard to promote the Setswana culture.

As a counterpose to such a brand of colonialism, Thembi recalled the need to take pride in one’s country and honour its culture and tradi-tions. This is an expected response to external domination that threatens to annihilate the essence of a people. However, contemporary debates in the area of critical multiculturalism (see Kincheloe et al. 1998) argue that, whereas the empowering aspects of culture need to be affirmed and validated, it is equally important to examine how culture is also a terrain on which women’s oppression is produced and reproduced. Brah (2000:437) argues that:

… instead of sifting out the specificities of particular oppressions, identifying their similarities or connections with other oppressions, and building a politics of soli-darity, some women are beginning to differentiate these specificities into hierar-chies of oppression.

In this regard, not just colonialism, but the oppressive features of patriar-chal Setswana culture also need to be interrogated within the continuum of dominations. Hence, Thembi mentions that – although in her younger days she was sensitive to colonial domination, control, restriction, and

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oppression with regard to the subjection of the less privileged persons to permanent servitude – she was only much later able to draw parallels between national colonialism and sexual colonialism.

Her early encounters with ‘foreigners’ inspired in Thembi a fascina-tion with Otherness outside the boundaries of Botswana. Intrigued by expatriates returning to Botswana, and her acquaintance with foreign friends and relatives, stimulated in Thembi a desire to experience life in a broader context; her early fascination and romanticisation of multicul-turalism is reflected in the following extract:

Botswana was opening its doors to expatriates and I formed friendships with indi-viduals from all over the African continent and overseas. But the bonds we formed were often instant. This embrace of foreign influences through my parents’ foreign friends and acquaintances, through my ‘foreign’ husband, his relatives and friends, through former schoolmates who had pursued further education at universities out-side Botswana, made me curious and made me want to experience life in a broader context. I also learnt that interest in other people’s culture frees you to learn and ex-perience them without the clouds of stigma and prejudice looming over one’s head. (Essay)

There are several critical points that emerge from Thembi’s initial fasci-nation, and subsequent first-hand experiences, with the exotic Other.

First, a small number of expatriates in Botswana would have re-turned from countries and cultures (notably Britain), which were in fact the coloniser, whereas some other expatriates returned from African countries that were the colonised. If indeed the imposition of the colo-niser’s political, economic and cultural domination had originally driven them out of Botswana, it would be strange that they returned as expatri-ates from colonising/and other colonised countries with alluring tales of colonial culture. While it is prudent to remain cautious about over-gener-alising the experiences of all immigrant/exiled Batswana in foreign countries, this is an important point from which to deconstruct the con-tradictions that emerge from Thembi’s fascination with the Other, and to examine them in relation to her experiences of racism in Canada and South Africa.

Second, Thembi’s description of feeling free to experience other people’s cultures without the clouds of stigma and prejudice looming over one’s head serves as a stark reminder that many African countries (South Africa is a classic example) had also experienced the grip of co-

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lonialism. In addition, the sixties to the eighties marked a period of se-vere Apartheid oppression during which time Black South Africans were also denied their ability, intellect, beauty, and were also instilled with a lack of pride in their traditional culture(s).

Third, as a Botswana national, Thembi belonged to an ethnic major-ity for whom being Black did not signify deficit stigmatisation. That her race was in fact offensive, a plague and less than only became a reality when she visited (foreign lands like) Apartheid South Africa, and later, when she took up a Masters scholarship in Canada. She recalls that in Canada, being the only Black female in the English literature class, at a predominantly White institution, immediately marked her as deficit Other, and her confidence and self-esteem dissipated. She felt alone,became silent and withdrawn, and she grew intolerant of herself for con-firming the misconceptions about the inferiority and incapability of Blacks. When Thembi did psyche herself out of her self-effacing re-sponse to being in a predominantly White university, rather than be-coming complicit in her own silencing and marginalisation, she began to remedy the misconception about Black cognitive deficit. By working hard to prove her worth, she topped her class. Her professor’s response to her essay on Shakespeare’s King Lear is equally interesting as it is amusing. Thembi recalls: My white professor said (as an aside) that he had scrutinised my paper. He had read and re-read it over and over again. First, he did so out of disbelief and several times thereafter, out of sheer enjoyment. The disbelief which her professor expressed brings to mind the experience of one of the participants in Mirza’s (1995) study titled: Black Women in Higher Education: Defining a Space/Finding a Place, in which a participant reports that: ‘her new school in Brixton was visibly shocked when she passed the entrance test with ease. In fact they made her sit the test twice to make sure that she was not cheating’. Both Thembi’s experience and Mirza’s study confirm Mennell’s (1994:182) observation that:

The process of stigmatisation is a very common element in domination within … highly unequal power balances, and it is remarkable how across many varied cases the content of the stigmatisation remains the same. The outsiders are always dirty, morally unreliable, lazy, [intellectually deficit], among other things.

Thembi’s racial experiences provide an insightful indication of the com-plex life histories and the multi-levelled interaction of hegemonic dis-

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courses through which racialised and gendered subjectivities are structured within societies. They confirm that ‘racialised ethnic’ meanings vary within different social contexts: thus, while Thembi’s race and skin colour did not signify deficit in her home country, Botswana, the hierarchical racial structures in Canada and South Africa conferred upon her skin colour and cognitive abilities a diminished value. This observation suggests that racial stereotypes change, depending on the socio-historical and geographical contexts in which people are situated, and this, in turn, influences their social experience in terms of the relative value and meanings that are attached to particular social groups within that society. It also suggests that we need to analyse the processes which construct us as ‘White female,’ ‘Black female,’ ‘White male,’ ‘Black male,’ etc. We need to examine how and why the meanings of these words change from plain descriptions to hierarchically organised categories under different economic, political and social cir-cumstances.

In reviewing the thematic plotlines of Thembi’s autobiographical re-flections, we note that she, like Carol, displayed a tendency to abiding by the prescriptions of the authoritative norm. Opting in the first instance for the legitimising identity scripts of marriage and mothering, it was only later, out of a sense of frustration, that Thembi’s resistance identity surfaces in relation socio-cultural norms.

Section 2: Cross-analysis of Public Collective Identities and Pedagogic Potentialities

In Section 1, I have provided a descriptive commentary on selected as-pects of the participants’ collective public identities, as they developed in accordance with or in defiance of family, education and broader social influences. That descriptive commentary highlighted that each partici-pant’s narrative references generalities and specificities which are con-tingent upon conditions that prevail within broader social circumstances. In this section, I focus on a cross-analysis of the five participants’ family influences, educational experiences and nuclear episodes that shed light

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on the formation and conceptions of their national, ethnic, cultural, reli-gious, language and class identities. I identify salient issues that have emerged between and among the essays, in accordance with the degree of importance which the participants have attached to them. The differences and similarities in the participants’ recollections are analysed to illustrate that, in spite of belonging to the category ‘woman,’ their varying experiences confirm the non-essentiality of the category, and – by extension – no claims are made that any individual identity marker, be it race, class, ethnicity, etc., is internally homogeneous. The cross-analysis of the participants’ narratives confirms that narratives embed identities in time and space frameworks; it also supports the contention that place-based identities provide organising themes for particular narratives. The relevance of this contention becomes apparent when it is viewed in relation to the political transition from Apartheid to democracy in South Africa and from colonialism to independence in Botswana. It confirms the political and contextual contingency of all identities. The impact of political and contextual situated-ness is reflected in the per-sonal experiences of the participants and serves as a useful trope for epistemological and pedagogical engagement. In addition, a retrospec-tive gaze at the participants’ formative conceptions of their nationality, cultures, language, sexualities, etc. gesture towards: first, how they frame interpersonal relations with students and colleagues, and second, the educative issues of nationality and citizenship, multiculturalism and multilingualism, gender and sexualities that they probe with their stu-dents.

Political and Cultural Identities

A cross-analysis of the participants’ engagement with their national, po-litical, racial, ethnic and cultural identities suggests that, notwithstanding the age and geographical differences among them, the South African participants’ reflections are framed largely within the political, socio-economic and ideological climate that shaped Apartheid South Africa. Although she was not directly affected by the indecencies of Apartheid, Botswana-born Thembi is familiar with its effects from her visits to South Africa, as she is with the equally debilitating effects of

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colonialism, remnants of which also flourished in Apartheid South Africa.

In their autobiographical essays, Phumzile and Jennifer do not problematise their national identities, but Carol, Vijay and Thembi re-flect on their national identities. Carol and Vijay, in particular, single out their diasporic identity for discussion. However, they each attach different significances to the importance which diasporic identity plays in their national identification. Carol’s early socialisation shows a clear romanticisation and idealisation with an English ‘root’ identity. Born in South Africa in 1944, she recalls that her home was charged with stories of English heroism and sacrifice. Thus, while basking in the glow of English supremacy which had entrenched itself from 1795 to 1948, the political reality during the time of Carol’s growing up was that: The Afrikaner … a crude, poorly educated people [who] had cheated their way into power in 1948, and whose language she despised, held the reins of political power in South Africa. For much of her life, Carol, like many diasporic English, lived under Afrikaner Apartheid rule. It would cer-tainly have been bruising to her English root ego to identify herself as South African while living under Afrikaner White domination. Instead, holding on dearly to the cultural appendages and paraphernalia of Englishdom, it was more comforting and dignified for Carol to grow up in the belief that she was not South African, but English. By disassoci-ating herself from the crude, poorly educated cheats that were ruling South Africa, the option was for her to identify with her Englishness. It was only in her early twenties that Carol embraced, and subsequently accepted her South African national identity. Reflecting on the experi-ence, Carol writes: … at that time, however, my South African identity was to a large extent defined in resistance to Apartheid and was based in grief at what was being done to the people of what I was now able to call “my country”. Thus, while Carol initially refused her classificatory South African citizenship, a privilege which accrued to her automatically by virtue of her being a member of the White minority, it was upon being conscientised to the disenfranchisement of the majority of ‘native’ South Africans, and the need to mobilise against Apartheid, that she was brought to the acceptance of her South African identity. It was also only much later, as a teacher of English, that she was able to see the similari-ties between the oppressiveness of Apartheid and English linguistic and cultural colonialism, and began to actively distance herself from it by

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becoming more attentive to cultural scripts that are concerned with Afri-can and marginalised diasporic realties.

In contrast, Vijay denounced her Indian ‘root’ identity at an early age, and embraced a South African Black identity. While acknowledging the value of the Indian spiritual literary works, Vijay recalls being intolerant of an Indo-centricism reified by diasporic peoples, who out of a fear of cultural erosion tend to romanticise socio-cultural practices and rituals, which ostensibly fragment (South African) national unity. Vijay’s strong embrace of her South African identity is clarified more poignantly in her interview when she points out: I find the signifier upon an Indian in this country narrowing and diminishing, and in many ways does not carry the strengths that I think are part of identity. It’s minority. It is less than. It’s insular, separate. Vijay confirms that the numeric minority of the Indian population in South Africa has played a significant part in defining its minority status in the country. Thus, for Vijay, defining her national identity from this weak political bargaining platform, all in the name of ethnic loyalty, would have been tantamount to supporting the divisive policies on which Afrikaner nationalism was founded. Loyalty to culture, tradition and race group cohesion was exactly what Apartheid policies appealed to as a way of entrenching insular, separatist and fac-tionalising values. Vijay’s strong identification with her South African identity was a direct challenge to the political disenfranchisement that South African Indians, and other Blacks experienced when – in the 1970s and 1980s it was an article of faith for [her] to be South African.In comparing Carol’s and Vijay’s responses and engagement with their diasporic identities, and their embrace of South African identities, two distinctly different pictures emerge. With her root identity grounded in power and prestige, Carol – to whom citizenship would have accrued automatically – spurned a South African nationality, because she associ-ated it with Afrikaner crudity and native African backwardness. On the other hand, hailing from a colonised India, Vijay’s grandparents, who had been lured to South Africa with the promise of a better life, found themselves politically disenfranchised in their adopted land and had to fight to be recognised as human and South African. Through identifica-tion with the struggle of people, Carol – like Vijay – saw the need to mobilise against dismantling Apartheid, and she embraced her South African national identity. However, after the shedding of much blood, sweat and tears, which heralded the advent of the democracy that secured

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full citizenship to all South Africans, both Carol and Vijay define them-selves not only in relation to South Africa, but as part of the global community. Carol writes: … the basis of my identity became linked to South African, indeed global phenomena and experiences. Vijay writes: … thinking about ourselves as world citizens is important if we are to tackle our serious environmental, political and health problems,particularly as globalisation assails so many of us. Currently, Carol and Vijay tend towards defining themselves as global citizens.

For Thembi, who belongs to a race and ethnic majority in Botswana, the signification of her national identity developed in response to British colonial domination, which served as an impetus for her to value what the colonisers devalued. This conception of her identity engendered in her a sense of national pride. The sense of pride and belonging to which Thembi refers is discernible earlier in Vijay’s socialisation, and later in Carol’s, i.e. upon her self-acceptance and identification as a South Afri-can national.

In commenting on the nature of national identification, Rex (1996) observes that sharing a way of life with other members of one’s nation serves to make attachment to the nation an emotional, moral and sacred matter. To some extent the emotional, moral and sacred attachment to nation-building is evident in appeals for reconciliation which have come to constitute an important educative objective in a newly democratised South Africa as well as in post-colonial Botswana. Despite the different circumstances under which Carol, Vijay and Thembi embraced their national identities, their experiences give credence to Bailey’s (1984) suggestion that education must lead students beyond the present and the particular by providing skills of analysis which make them not just criti-cal, but also comfortable with their own national identities. Education should also equip students with the ability to transcend “incestuous ties of clan and soil” so that they can see themselves as citizens of the global community. Furthermore, education carries the burden of impressing upon students that understanding and accepting one’s national citizen-ship is not linked just to rights that accrue from being citizens, but also to the responsibility of ensuring the preservation of democratic citizenship.

Arguably, the notion of national identity encompasses the dialectics of one’s political leanings, which – by extension – impacts on a wide range of identity variables, including race, ethnicity, language, religion, gender, class, etc. In the first instance, the four South African partici-

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pants invariably frame their political identities and experiences around their racial identities. In the light of the legacy of race-based Apartheid in South Africa, this is not unusual. Goldberg (2000) observes that South Africans:

… define themselves, in the first instance, as members of a population group … that population group/race/nationality are first order interpretations, categorisations or characteristics in terms of which one is perceived … and these assumptions are so deeply entrenched in South African state ideology as to be unquestioned.

Confirming Goldberg’s observation, Carol, Vijay, Jennifer and Phumzile devote substantial attention to the dynamics of race, racialisation and racism in their essays. A cornerstone of Apartheid was the segregation of people on the basis of skin colour. The participants reflect upon experi-ences of living in mixed-race communities prior to the enforcement of segregationist legislation and of subsequently living in racially segre-gated communities. In the case of Carol, who was raised in an environ-ment that prided itself on its English nationality and race identity, we note that she was subject to explicit injunctions to disassociate from the Black and Coloured children in her neighbourhood, and these injunctions reinforced prejudiced and negative stereotyping of Black South Africans. Her association with, and her befriending of Blacks came much later. In spite of racially segregationist policies, Jennifer, Phumzile and Vijay report having either lived or associated with multiracial and multilingual friends or neighbours. In addition, for all three, the policy of racial seg-regation evoked a common reference to the Apartheid police and Group Area inspectors, who became synonymous with brutality, fear and dis-like among those who were ideologically opposed to Apartheid. Jennifer’s critique of her parents’ and her personal response to Apartheid provides an interesting typology of the hierarchies of political protest and activism. Her account suggests a distinction between espoused political activism, in the form of, for example, armchair liberalism, and active, manifest political activism. Jennifer’s involvement in the publication of radical student newspapers, Vijay’s speeches that critiqued informal settlements and her motivation for the inclusion of African literature in the curriculum, Phumzile’s family harbouring political activists in their home and her defying Apartheid educational policy by attending school at an earlier age than that legislated for Black children, apart from sig-nalling features of resistance identities, also signify the different forms

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that (manifest) political activism assumed in South Africa. Furthermore, these instances of activism and resistance also highlight interesting points for debates around consciousness-raising, ideological identifica-tion, principled solidarity, coalition-building and identity formation.

The discussion around Apartheid and race politics flags two points of pedagogic importance. First, the temporal and spatial dynamics of race need to be taken into consideration, since variation in time and space contingencies frame racial experiences quite differently. As Thembi’s different experiences of race in Botswana, South Africa, and Canada show, the developments of concepts, such as the process of ra-cialisation, and responses to race are defined by contextual and political specificities. Exploring the concept of race in relation to skin colour, we note that in Botswana, where she belongs to an ethnic majority, Thembi’s black skin was not marked as deficit or offensive; it was only in Apartheid South Africa, and upon attending a predominantly White university in Canada, where it set her apart for prejudicial treatment. That her race was received differently in Botswana than in South Africa and Canada illustrates the inherent contradictions and contextual dy-namics on race, as lines of inclusion and exclusion are continually drawn and redrawn around skin colour. Thembi’s racial experiences in Botswana, South Africa and Canada confirm that racial conceptions can change over time and space and are not a trans-historical essence. In this regard, Frankenberg (2000:454) notes that race is a complexly con-structed product of local, regional, and global relations of past and pre-sent. In addition, variables such as region, class, generation and ethnicity subdivide the terrain of experiences of race formation, interracial rela-tions and responses to race. Thus, the possible ways of experiencing race in a particular time and place are delimited by the relations of racism which prevail at that moment and in that place.

The second point relates to the Apartheid policy of racial segrega-tion that was aimed at engendering suspicion, fear and stereotyping among race groups. With democratisation and attempts at racial desegre-gation, student demographics at South African universities are rendering classes racially more diverse. Thus, confronting racial stereotypes is something that both Black and White educators and students have to negotiate. For example, Phumzile, a young, Black female educator, who teaches at a predominantly White institution, consciously chooses teaching methodologies that emphasise her pedagogic authority, so as

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not to re-enact servant-master relations in her class. Given that in South Africa, servitude was/is the common station of Black women in White households, Phumzile actively disassociates herself from being framed by her White students as their servant through the epistemological and methodological choices which she makes. Carol – an older White woman who teaches at a predominantly Black institution – downplays her ‘teacherly’ authority, so as not to be construed by her students as prudish, arrogant and overbearing. Vijay – a young ‘Indian’ woman who exalts her Black South African identity and teaches predominantly Black and Indian students – finds herself having to counter perceptions of paying more attention to the Black students and neglecting her Indian students. The overarching point which emerges is that teaching to ra-cially integrated classes requires sensitivity that acknowledges and addresses the misconceptions, fears, racial expectations which have been propagated by Apartheid.

This observation also suggests that attention needs to be given to the way contradictions, and boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, emerge around other signifiers such as socio-economic class. In reflecting on their class positionality, we note that participants experience what may be regarded as a combination of group charisma and/or group shame. Thembi, Vijay and Phumzile – the three Black participants in the study – admit to enjoying middle class privileges, which was/is not necessarily the norm for other Blacks. The group charisma that emanated from middle class privilege is particularly evident in their expectation of fur-ther education. Thembi and Phumzile reflect on the social and symbolic capital that was derived from their possession of economic capital. However, for Vijay, while acknowledging the privileges of her middle-class background, she felt ashamed that her middle-class positionality engendered a class-based Apartheid. Jennifer and Carol – the two White participants in the study – reflect on the embarrassment and shame which they felt about belonging to socio-economic disprivileged backgrounds. Carol confides that her otherwise superior race and idealised ‘English national’ status was only diminished by those who were economically more privileged. Jennifer describes her family as being on the wrong side of the tracks by virtue of their working-class status. Neither Jennifer nor Carol comment on how their class positionality impacted on their mate-rial educational provisioning, but both reflect on their class status in re-lation to their purchasing of clothes (Carol and her siblings grew up on

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hand-me-downs, and Jennifer was unable to dress in the height of ado-lescent fashion). However, Carol reflects on the social and intellectual inferiority that she felt by virtue of perceiving those who belonged to a more privileged class status as a superior species of human beings.

In this study, there is a distinct variation in the socio-economic statuses between the Black and the White participants, with the Black participants reporting economic privilege and the White participants re-porting economic disadvantage. While the participants do not represent the wider socio-economic realities of all South Africans in Apartheid South Africa, the privileges of middle-class Blacks must be understood in relative terms. The middle-class status of the Black participants in comparison to the disprivilege of working-class Whites did not emanate from a similar economic base. This was especially so in a racially differentiated labour market which was characterised by job reservation policies. It does, however confirm Connolly’s (1997) observation that it is reductive to pathologise all racially marginalised groups as being eco-nomically disadvantaged, and vice versa. Writing specifically about the perceived universalised privileges of Whiteness, he advises:

An important point to remember is that all White individuals do not have absolute privilege any more than all male individuals have absolute privilege. Rather, indi-viduals whose ascribed characteristics include Whiteness (or maleness) will find the benefits of that ascription accruing to them.

Connolly’s advice suggests that class positionality is complicated by ascribed status membership, specified by gender, race and ethnicity. The important points for pedagogic consideration of class status relate first to the fact that class positionality, unlike race, is not immediately noticeable so the discursive salience of class is almost minimal and can go by largely unattended in classroom relations. The main divisions of social class have typically been associated with the possession of financial capital, which generally sees people becoming members of social enti-ties/groups and thereby accruing social capital that impacts their life-styles, value-commitments, norms, attitudes and political behavioural linkages. In understanding class dynamics, educators need to be cogni-sant of the variances between their own economic and cultural capitals, and that of their students. In this regard, several important points of pedagogic significance need to be considered. Irrespective of the diverse socio-economic backgrounds the participants in my study emanated

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from, Ozga & Lawn (1988) argue that educators occupy middle-class positionalities. First, given that the enterprise of education is largely based on middle-class values, students from lower and working-class backgrounds have to negotiate entrance into an educational space that they are not entirely familiar with. Corroborating this view, Carol, for example, reflects on the fears that are associated with her class positionality which she had to overcome. She writes:

There was another hurdle besides that of timidity and guilt related to gendered con-ditioning: this was the fear instilled by my working-class background. Nobody in either my mother or father’s families had at that time “been to university,” and I believed that those who studied at university were of a superior species of human being from me. I knew that I was therefore bound to fail. I was extremely frightened of taking this step, yet I had to try. In the years of studying that followed, class as well as gender would contribute to my not viewing myself, despite gaining consistent ‘firsts’ for essays and examinations, as worthy of aiming at an academic career. (Essay)

The class-related fears of inadequacy and self-doubt that students may have about their ability to succeed, is linked to the fact that education is a middle class enterprise. As such education invariably socialises students into middle-class norms, and part of the teacher’s project is to develop ways of teaching students to analyse these norms in relation to their own position in society by, for example, alerting them to the way in which class privileges create hierarchical social relations, and privileges certain value systems, while denigrating, disprivileging and oppressing others (Carol refers to her belief that those who attended university were of a superior species of human being). Second, given the middle-class norms that prevail in educational institutions, students who come equipped with middle-class cultural capital are likely to be advantaged, and students without that cultural capital are disadvantaged by virtue of their unfa-miliarity with the cultural codes of middle-class education (which is essentially why Carol feared that she would not meet the standards and fail in her studies). In this regard, Briskin (2002) notes that when stu-dents are expected to be critical learners, participate fully in discussions, and be responsible for their learning, those who come already equipped with the power culture of the classroom are advantaged, and those who are not yet steeped in that power culture are disadvantaged. When teachers make the naïve assumption that they can share power, they re-

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produce the hierarchy of the classroom rather than challenge it, because power is shared with those who can already claim power for themselves. Third, certain students – by virtue of coming from disadvantaged back-grounds – believe that they literally cannot ‘afford’ to fail in their aca-demic studies and subscribe to a culture of entitlement without meeting the demands that higher education entails. Finally, Carol highlights another important class-related issue regarding the critique that is levelled against feminism for being preoccupied with the concerns of middle-class women. She contends that this distortion of feminist history needs to be explored with students, so that they can be educated about the involvement of feminist activism, alongside the working class … especially women’s groups who have often worked along with the trade union movements. While being sensitive to these variances, predomi-nantly middle-class educator positionalities have to be negotiated. It is also an issue that Vijay refers to in relation to her teaching of, especially Black male students. She says:

Teaching men (especially Black men – either African or Indian or Coloured) about feminism, and teaching feminism to a class which included them, made me ques-tion the construction of masculinity, and how men are oppressed by that within pa-triarchy. It became evident to me in a very real way that in class I couldn’t just stand there as a powerful middle-class feminist and go on against men who have suffered much more than I have. (Interview)

Although in the extract Vijay refers specifically to being sensitive to the symbolic violence to which men have been subjected to by virtue of their race, it is however, her powerful middle-class status that causes her to temper her engagement with men in the feminist class. Taking into con-sideration her own privileged class identity; she is aware that Black male students may be sceptical of the relevance of feminism to their lives. Their scepticism may emanate from the dissonance between their socio-economic class and cultural realities in relation to their middle- class, female educator.

The cross-analysis of the participants’ public collective identities highlights that all participants in the study testify to the support and en-couragement which they have received from either their families or their friends in regard to their education. Support came in the form of parents, and in some cases members of extended families, who played an active role in teaching them to read or in socialising them into different forms

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of oral and print literacies. In the case of Phumzile, Vijay and Thembi, their parents’ professional backgrounds socialised them into academic work, and provided role models for their own pursuit of intellectual ac-tivities. From their accounts we see the transference/inheritance of posi-tive influences and support for learning in their home environments. While Jennifer does not single out family or friends who would have supported her academic pursuits, Carol recalls: thro\ugh the influence of my new friend … . I would extend the boundaries … to find out more about the world, to discover and explore areas of knowledge, and to do this in a structured, guided way, through tertiary studies.

In addition to the moral support that they have received from family and/or friends, the participants refer to their personal commitment and pursuit of educational excellence through hard work. The significance of this commitment emerges when seen in the current context of the massi-fication of higher education, which has opened its doors to many stu-dents who are first generation university entrants. In post-Apartheid South Africa, many students who enrol to study English at university come from home contexts where literacy levels among parents are low or non-existent, and where they may receive neither moral nor financial support from their families towards their education. Carol refers in her essay, specifically, to the additional emotional and pedagogic labour that she, as female faculty, has to render to her students, many of whom hail from disadvantaged backgrounds. The participants also refer to the ten-dency for students to recreate familial or friendship relations with their female university teachers.

Another significant motif that emerges from the cross-analysis is that all the participants foregrounded the prominence of male influence in their personal lives as well as in broader society. Jennifer, Vijay and Thembi highlight and afford greater importance to the roles which their fathers played in their intellectual development; hence their strong iden-tification with their fathers’ worlds. In Carol’s socialisation, the language and culture of her father’s English lineage received much celebration. Patriarchal initiative and influence on broader society is evident in Thembi’s recollection that – as a way of resisting colonial endeavours to deny the intellect and beauty of her people – her father fought hard to promote Setswana culture and authored the first monolingual Setswana dictionary. Vijay also credits her grandfather for being involved in the propagation of Hindu languages and religious phenomena. Importantly,

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it is the men who are associated with either the symbolic or functional guardianship/custody of cultural (re)generation. Critical points which arise from the participants’ conceptions of culture highlight two issues. First, there emerges the importance of making visible and acknowledging cultures which have been marginalised from mainstream discourses, which is what Thembi’s father and Vijay’s grandfather have attempted to do in promoting their marginalised cultures. The necessity to do so is attested to, in particular, by Phumzile and Vijay, who are critical of their school and university education for the permutations of silence, misrepresentation, and under-representation of Black and Other marginalised literary and cultural realities. The experiences of marginalised Other, for the most part, remained an evaded curriculum, and both argued for the redistribution of the narrative field to include subjugated knowledges and vernacular theories. Phumzile comments on the gaps in the curriculum, which meant that she had to personally take the initiative, in her own time, to expose herself to these marginalised, non-canonical literatures. Vijay delivered speeches at school agitating for the inclusion of African literature in the curriculum.

The important point for pedagogic consideration which emerges from the discussion of cultural regeneration is the need to negotiate the delicate balance of recognising multicultural diversity while simultane-ously being critical of patriarchal bias in, for example, cultural phenomena like prescribed texts. While the democratic Constitutions of South Africa and Botswana are respectful of multiculturalism, the par-ticipants’ personal critique and scepticism of cultural phenomena suggest that pedagogic engagement with it should be matched with equal scepti-cism. The inclusion of non-dominant cultures needs to be examined for its inherent discriminatory practices, such as androcentricism and ethno-centricism. In addition, the inclusion of marginalised texts need not be at the expense of Western or canonical texts. The inclusion of Western and canonical texts is actually useful for comparative analyses and allows for the reconceptualisation and re-examination of their status, content, and formation. Thus, pedagogical engagement with multicultural phenomena and texts should attempt to de-romanticise all cultures, so as not to risk reifying, valorising or romanticising some, while discounting and dehis-toricising others.

An allied issue is the need to interrogate cultural ideologies that are encapsulated in language, particularly ideologies which are related to

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logocentricism and linguistic imperialism. As Vijay, Phumzile, Thembi and Jennifer have grown up in either bilingual or multilingual environ-ments, they are cognisant of the value which linguistic diversity has on cognitive flexibility and creative expression. Interestingly though, the participants recall how painstakingly they were taught the conventions of ‘correct’ English grammar and pronunciations. However, while they do not discount the importance of grammatical competence, they are, as teachers of English in multilingual classrooms, aware of the psycho-so-cial challenges that have to be negotiated in terms of teaching English to students whose first language is not English and who elect to study the language for instrumental purposes. Jennifer refers to the one challenge, for example, one might be stigmatised, and given the status of a second-class speaker, for speaking Afrikaans or French with an English accent, even though one’s thoughts or vocabulary may not be second-class. In addition, Vijay points to the fact that speakers of indigenous South Afri-can languages have been alienated from their mother-tongues and have developed inferiority complexes about their languages and about them-selves in relation to the linguistic dominance and imperialism of English. In this regard, Carol – who teaches students at a predominantly multilin-gual university – also recognises the psychological stigma which stu-dents endure by being non-native speakers of a language. In her interview, Carol commented on the challenges which linguistic diversity presents for the teaching situation: … The Black students say, ‘You’re going too fast,’ and the Coloured students say they’re bored, because they’ve had a better education and they’re more fluent in English,they’re also used to hearing English … the students from the Eastern Cape have often not been taught English by a native English speaker, so their ear isn’t attuned to it, and they resist it for all sorts of principled and practical reasons. It is against the backdrop of linguistic diversity that educators need to consider the personal, cultural, and political impli-cations of language teaching. In a multilingual society, educators need to be sensitive to the differences in students’ worldviews, learning styles, verbal and non-verbal communications, and language repertoires in order to ensure that English as a target language is learnt in a way that allevi-ates situational anxiety and is sensitive to students’ psycho-linguistic dispositions. Carol argues for accepting the existence of varieties of Englishes, which includes accommodating inter-language interferences (for example, when grammatical conventions from one’s first language

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interfere with English grammatical conventions), variations in pronun-ciation, accents, idiomatic expressions, etc.

Finally, all the participants in the study reflect on the social engi-neering of gendered and sexual identities fashioned either in their home environments or within the broader social structures of the school and/or religious organisations. As a model of patriarchal structuring, they de-scribe their households as operating along gendered lines where, for the most part, their fathers were associated with economic and intellectual matters and their mothers with nurturance, domesticity or woman-ori-ented careers. Irrespective of whether the scripts for gender, sexuality and femininity were reproduced in their homes or schools, or in religious institutions, the participants report in varying degrees their socialisation into normative female sex and gender behaviours. Carol and Thembi reflect on their aspirations to wifehood and mothering. Vijay recalls the preferential treatment that her brothers received from her mother and her mother’s attempts at engendering a sense of inferiority in her for being female. Phumzile reports on the gendering of school subjects and on untruths that were circulated purporting that boys outperformed girls at school. In addition, both Carol and Phumzile report on attempts to edu-cate them into particular modes of femininity. Phumzile describes this policy as schooling in Victorian morals, which Carol describes as womanhood that is characterised by modesty, unassertiveness, passivity,and sexual morality. Jennifer critiques the restrictive script of hetero-normativity for having left her feeling isolated and alienated. Both Carol and Jennifer attribute the development of their formative conceptions of sexuality to doctrines propagated in Christian theology. As children, both Carol and Jennifer, were exposed to, and to some extent participated in, religious practices; however, they became critical of religious concep-tions of gender and sexuality. Carol reflects on the guilt and crippling doubt that the Dominican nuns engrained in her about female sexuality, and on its association with Man’s fall from grace. Jennifer, in particular, points out that sexuality is often a very controversial and contested sub-ject, because most religions are based primarily on heteronormative ex-pressions of sexuality. Regardless of whether discussions about gender, sex and sexuality emerge directly out of religious beliefs or out of other cultural ideologies, sexuality remains a critical theme in any interroga-tion of language and gender issues. Carol refers to this aspect in the following extract:

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For instance, it used to be fairly common for feminist thinkers to assume, overtly or covertly, that formal religion and feminism were incompatible, and many such thinkers are themselves probably non-believers; while feminist theology has be-come a vigorous branch of feminist studies in the ‘west’, it has never been realistic, in South Africa, because the majority of the women in this country are firm believers, and would consider it irreverent to decry faith itself. I have, however, found it useful to explore, especially with mature, postgraduate students, the sexist nature of church structures. (Essay)

Acknowledging the ardent religious climate that prevails in South Africa, Carol points to the challenge of critiquing religious teachings in relation to feminist studies. However, rather than steer clear of engaging the dia-lectics of feminism and religion, the significance for pedagogic consideration is that it has to be dealt with sensitively so as to provoke students to engage critically with theological teachings on sexuality and gender relations. A feminist critique of religion needs to proceed in a way that does not offend students or make them feel that their faith/religion is under attack.

Finally, Thembi and Jennifer highlight the androcentricity of their university education, and they allude in varying degrees to the role schooling and literary studies played, through both visible and invisible pedagogies, in shaping their conceptions of femininity, gender and sexu-ality. The shaping of femininity, gender and sexuality through visible pedagogies took the form of texts, theories, and course content that pre-sented androcentric dominance and female sub-ordinance. This hierarchy was propagated through male-authored texts and theories in which the female voice was totally absent, or in stereotypical (mis)representations of female passivity. For example, Thembi bemoans: I was taught and socialised to acquire, accept and even perhaps reflect a male-oriented perception of the world, this viewpoint impacted on my way of thinking and seeing. The lack of integration of gender issues in my previous study testifies to that.

The shaping of femininity, gender and sexuality through invisible pedagogies is clearly illustrated in Jennifer’s description of her school’s ‘social’ understanding with several boys’ schools whereby a certain number of girls were ‘ordered’ for Saturday evenings. The girls were expected to dress attractively and provocatively and were then thrown into a darkened room to engage in light sexual activity. This was a social ritual in a school that espoused virginity and did not teach sex education.

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In her recollection of this practice, Jennifer critiques the messages that were transmitted to the girls and boys (via hidden/invisible pedagogies) about female ‘commodity value’ and the double standards of upholding chastity, on the one hand, and encouraging sexual activity, on the other hand. Furthermore, much of the feminist critique of language pivots around explicit and implicit ways in which gender relations are trans-mitted through the regulation of women’s behaviour, the naming and representation of women, and the silencing of women’s voices. Differentiated life scripts that prescribe male dominance, activity and sexual virility, simultaneously prescribe submissiveness, passivity, and sexually pure roles for females. The pedagogic imperative remains edu-cating students (both males and females) about the way in which gender-appropriate behaviour is restrictive and oppressive to healthy human relations.

Thus, whether they acted in accordance or dissonance with cultural and institutional prescriptions and ascriptions, the participants attached varying degrees of significance to issues of nationality and citizenship, culture, race, language, gender, sexuality, religion and education. These public collective identity markers highlight generic issues that carry pedagogic import in the English language classroom influenced by femi-nist sensibilities.

Conclusion

The cross-analysis of the participants’ collective public identities con-firms Somers & Gibson’s (1994) contention that people make sense of what has happened and is happening to them by attempting to assemble or integrate these happenings within one or more narratives; and that people are guided to act in certain ways, and not others, on the basis of the projections, expectations, and memories that are derived from diverse social, public and cultural narratives. Focussing more pointedly on pro-jections, expectations and memories from their childhood up to their early adulthood, my discussion in this chapter has attempted to identify episodes, experiences and ideologies from the participants’ backgrounds,

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which have impacted upon, and have produced, legitimising and/or re-sistance identities in them. The discussion has also helped to highlight that identity is more meaningfully understood when it is examined as a conceptual narrativity within the matrix of time, space and relationaldimensionalities. A narrativist understanding of social action and agency accepts that identity is temporal, relational, and cultural, as well as insti-tutional, material and macro-structural. This conception of identity supports Giddens’ (in Castells 1997:10) contention that identity formation is not a distinctive trait that is possessed by the individual, but a reflexive project which is to be understood in terms of one’s biography and is attributable to both external and internal dynamics. The external dynamics of identity formation entail accepting that we belong to multiple communities because of our various groupings by age, gender, race, class, etc. Thus, defining oneself in terms of a single axis of iden-tity is reductive and potentially factionalising. Rather, a sense of oneself as located within heterogeneous discursive practices shows not only that we inhabit multiple and changing identities, but that these identities are produced and reproduced within different social relations. While under-scoring the interaction between fluid identities and often rigid social structures such a conception of self also highlights the asymmetrical power relations which multiple and changing identities are likely to pro-duce. The internal dynamics of identity formation affirm the ‘otherness’ within ourselves. By acknowledging our capacity for both internal con-flictual and consensual dialogicality, it also provides some insight into our affiliations, affinities and desires.

By investigating aspects of the collective public narratives of the participants, this chapter has attempted to show that personal identity is perhaps best understood as a project, as something that is always under construction, and that human subjects are not fixed embodiments of their cultures. Since all cultures are internally differentiated and never static, our subjectivities are formed incrementally within the range of heteroge-neous discursive practices that are available to us. Hence, a variety of subject positions emerge within a single cultural context which offer the possibility of political change as we move from one subject position to another. A shift in subject position may be accompanied by emotional and psychic ambivalences and contradictions. How and by whom different types of identities are constructed, and with what outcomes,

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urges the conceptualisation that identity be contextualised socially, historically and ideologically.

Each teacher’s experiences and cultural background, as well as the backgrounds and experiences of students are important for developing culturally relevant pedagogy. This insight is indebted to Goodson’s (1983) suggestion that we connect our studies of education with investi-gations of teachers’ personal biographies and historical backgrounds. Such a perspective on the study of education would help to reintegrate situational, biographical and historical analyses because who teaches what, to whom, and why are important political and pedagogic questions which are implicated in the statement that the personal as political is potentially pedagogical.

Chapter Four

Identity as Ideology: Trajectories of Feminist Identity Construction

Introduction

This study was premised on the understanding that there exists polyphony of feminisms which leave the notion of a transcendent, global sisterhood in disarray. Guided by this premise, in preparing the questions for both the autobiographical essays and the interviews, I did not pre-dictate or pre-empt a definition of feminism. The participants were at liberty to construct and trace the development of their feminist identity consciousness based on their individual conceptions of the concept femi-nism/feminist consciousness. Each woman therefore defined feminism for herself. Aware of the debates on identity politics, I was sensitive to the differences that existed among the research participants not only in relation to their race, culture, age, gender and language backgrounds, but also in terms of their subscription to different strands of feminist thinking. This chapter explores the cluster of experiences that led the five research participants in the study to identify themselves as feminists, by endeavouring to ascertain whether there is a discernible pattern in the development of a feminist consciousness. It highlights commonalities and differences among the participants’ experiences of coming to femi-nist consciousness by virtue of variations in individual social, political, racial, cultural and age specificities.

In responding to the questions that were posed in the semi-structured interview and the guidelines for writing the autobiographical narratives, the participants identified specific experiences, episodes and influences that led to their adoption of the label ‘feminist.’ Clark & Gaston (1995) report that Women’s Studies Programmes in the United States have de-veloped a large body of empirical research and theory that explore

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women’s multi-faceted experiences in a patriarchal society. However, Clark & Gaston argue that less is known about exactly how women em-brace the ideology and values of the Women’s Movement and choose to identify themselves as feminists. They point out that convictional iden-tity or value-aligning identity in which a woman links herself to a par-ticular body of beliefs and values is studied less often, despite the fact that this also contributes to the development of a feminist identity.

Research by Josselson (1987) and Zweig (1990), for example, show that identity issues for women are located broadly within female identity development studies. Banks (1986) studied the group of first-wave femi-nists in Britain and identified various factors that led to the development of a feminist consciousness, which included confronting the frustration with the social restrictions that are placed on women and reacting against attempts to quell their interest in socio-political change. Similarly, re-search on consciousness-raising groups, which were popular in the late 1960s and 1970s, offer important insights into a group process of identity development. Bartky (1977) examined the nature of the transformation that gives rise to a feminist consciousness, and concluded that both be-haviour and understanding are dramatically altered for these women, who – as feminists – engage and interpret their life experiences differently.

In examining the accounts of the five participants in my study, I have found that their development of a feminist consciousness was similar to findings in studies that were conducted by Bargad & Hyde (1991); Clark & Gaston (1995); and Hart (1991).

Bargad & Hyde (1991) employed the Downing-Roush model to de-sign a feminist identity development scale. Focusing on theory develop-ment, Downing & Roush (1985) have proposed a model which traces the development of a feminist identity. Their model postulates that a woman comes to recognise that she is the object of discrimination, and then she gradually begins to associate herself with like-minded women and commits herself to feminist values, thereby solidifying a feminist iden-tity. Bargad & Hyde, in turn, have used the model to argue that Women’s Studies Courses in United States institutions of higher education help women to develop a feminist consciousness.

Clark & Gaston (1995) have identified two patterns in feminist identity development. The first pattern, they argue, involves a transfor-mation of the personal world from a more traditional perspective of fe-

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male roles and identity to a feminist perspective of herself and the world. They describe the second pattern of feminist identity development as thepattern of continuity: a discovery of fit, in which they posit that while raised in accordance with traditionally scripted values, girls/women are critical of their socialisation, and resist patriarchal restric-tions/prescriptions for gendered behaviour from an early age.

Hart (1991) describes a process of developing feminist conscious-ness as having three movements. Movement One begins with the every-day experience of women; Movement Two, drawing on those experiences, proceeds outward to illuminate the nature of female oppression in society; and Movement Three, seeks to develop new the-ory to explain this oppression. The ensuing discussion draws discursively from the Bargad & Hyde; Clark & Gaston; and Hart studies to explore the movements and patterns in coming to feminist consciousness as de-scribed by the five participants in my study.

Movements and Patterns in Coming to Feminist Consciousness

Movement One: Introspective Gaze: sensing and experiencing the daili-ness of patriarchy

The initial stirrings of a feminist consciousness may be traced to internal tensions with which women wrestle in their everyday experiences. In their narrative accounts, most research participants in my study confirm Hart’s (1991) observation. They expressed either a frustration or uneasi-ness with the social restrictions that were placed upon them. Although, during this pre-feminist consciousness stage, they lacked the discourse (vocabulary, language) to name their feelings, feminist theorising attributes their psychological tensions to the taken-for-granted social arrangements that are communicated through religious, ethnic and edu-cational organs. These legitimising identity social organs prescribe cer-tain roles, behaviours, personal aspirations, etc. that women and girls are expected to fulfil in patriarchal societies. Both Thembi and Carol provide

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the following summation of their experiences of female socialisation that is based on expectations proposed by the patriarchal formula:

Thembi: As a young woman who during Botswana’s first year of Independence completed Form V and immediately married a young Black South African … . I cherished the freedom from both my colonial and parental rule. What was para-mount in my mind then … was a marriage certificate and a family of my own …

During the early years of our marriage our duties as husband and wife were dis-tinct. My husband went to school to teach, and I remained at home to cook and clean the house. I was quite satisfied with the arrangement. After all I had my marriage and would soon have babies. I never thought seriously about what the im-plications of this situation were; that because I did not have formal employment I would not be looked at in the same light as my husband; he the successful one, and I less so.

When our first baby did not come as early as we thought it would, I got bored, worried, irritable and miserable. The only solution our female family doctor recommended was that I “get out there” and do something different. (Essay)

Carol: After matriculating I spent six months at a secretarial college, became a secretary, married at 21, had a daughter at 25, and returned, aged 28, to part-time secretarial work while our three-year old daughter went to a lively, well-equipped playschool. By now I had everything that, according to my upbringing, a woman could want; yet I was unhappy and my unhappiness made me deeply anxious. I felt both mad and wicked. (Essay)

Much has been written about the public/private split that has carved as natural women’s participation in house and home maintenance, marriage and child-rearing activities. This fairytale script, which propagates the gospel that female self-actualisation and fulfilment resides in, and ema-nate from a preoccupation with domesticity, has subsequently been ex-posed as fallacious by many women who had previously believed this patriarchal myth. In the case of Thembi and Carol, this is expressed in their questioning of their existential validity. The much-celebrated quote from Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1965:13) eloquently captures the internal conflict and frustration with social restrictions that Thembi and Carol describe:

It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered … . Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children … lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even the silent question – ‘Is this all?’

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Friedan expresses the internal conflict that married women experience as they try to come to terms with their domestic roles and responsibilities. Both Thembi and Carol echo the dissatisfaction and yearning that is highlighted in the Friedan extract. Both opted for the love, marriage and children plot, and both testify to it being anti-climatic. They experienced a void that could not be filled exclusively by entering into a marriage contract.

Despite slight variations in the life experiences of Carol and Thembi prior to their entering into the social contract of marriage, both reflect on an ingrained sense of unhappiness – a lack of fulfilment. Thembi recalls:I got bored, worried, irritable and miserable, while Carol confides: By now I had everything that, according to my upbringing, a woman could want. I was unhappy and my unhappiness made me deeply anxious. Inexamining Thembi’s and Carol’s experiences, it would be reductive to attribute the psychological discomfort which they experienced exclu-sively to their discovery that happiness and personal validation is not a by-product of marriage. The unmarried participants in the study also recount experiences of dissatisfaction, unease and internal conflict. Vijay, Jennifer and Phumzile testify to experiencing internal frustrations, which resulted in their questioning the social roles and expectations that are prescribed for females in patriarchal societies. Whereas, in their narratives, neither Carol nor Thembi attribute their mounting unhappi-ness, anxieties, misery or boredom to socialisation processes that confined them to scripted gender roles and aspirations, Jennifer, Phumzile and Vijay (the ‘single’ participants) trace their unhappiness to gender differentiation, in which female experiences were undermined, misrepresented or trivialised, while males in their immediate families or wider society enjoyed preferential treatment. In this way, Jennifer, Phumzile and Vijay came to recognise that, as women, they were objects of discrimination. Vijay writes:

My feminist consciousness developed when I was quite young, out of observing that our mother over-valued my brothers and tended to undermine me and somehow never supported me when there was a clash. I thought this was just something per-sonal and fought it as such but at ten I realised that this was how our grandmother behaved, in addition to discriminating between the children of her sons and daugh-ters … . Mum’s behaviour made me resent being a girl … . Perhaps in over-reaction to mum I tended to be critical of the behaviour of other women (including my peers) and tended to prefer male friends and teachers. (Essay)

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Vijay recalls coming to feminist consciousness at an early age, largely through experiencing a distinctively gendered response from her mum. While her brothers found favour, won the worship in her mum’s eyes, were over-valued and enjoyed her support in conflict situations, Vijay describes feeling, undermined. Vijay ascribes her mother’s behaviour to a learned performance – a genealogical-patriarchal legacy that she inherited from her grandmother. This legacy engendered a self-loathing about her gender, and Vijay admits that her mother’s behaviour made her resent being a girl, and she sought male company as a way of distancing herself from the inferior female socialisation and self-image which her mother and grandmother had tried to replicate. It may be surmised that these older women were unwittingly, but nonetheless faithfully, perpetu-ating a naturalised system of behaviour and belief on which their own female socialisation was founded.

Chernin’s (1985, in Grumet 1988:26) study of mother/daughter re-lationships suggest a possible motive for a daughter’s emigration to the father’s world. Chernin explores the daughter’s identification with her mother’s experience of stasis, frustration and disappointment. She sees daughters struggling with a sense of their mother’s unrealised ambitions and unexpressed talents. So, the daughter who flees may be attempting to escape her memory of maternal domination as she simultaneously attempts to compensate her mother for her disappointments by achieving what was denied to her.

While Jennifer does not make any specific comment about personally experiencing gender discrimination in her home, she does make reference to the stereotypical gendered division of household roles and responsibilities that prevailed. She recalls:

My childhood home was thoroughly conventional in terms of gender divisions. My mother took complete responsibility for the kitchen, clothing and child-rearing … . My father … provided the household income and the intellectual input into our family interactions.

The formative narrative about gender relationships is a story about a princess that I first encountered at the age of three or four … . This story, which is an amal-gamation of a number of culturally embedded narratives and bears very little rela-tion to reality, contains a number of features that have shaped my thinking about love, romance and domestic relationships. First, there is the passivity of the heroine; second, her propensity for getting into distress; third, the need to be rescued by a man or other suitable hero … fourth, the value placed on sexual and romantic union with another person as the culmination of one’s adventures and tribulations. (Essay)

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Apart from the distinct gendering of roles in her childhood home, Jennifer’s exposure to children’s literature summarised the cultural scripts that she was expected to internalise as a norm (in terms of both gender-appropriate behaviour and compulsory heteronomativity). This is the pervasive foundational narrative, which is presented as a template for women’s destiny, and which may also account for the disillusionment that Thembi and Carol experienced upon entering the love ‘n marriage plot.

Neither Phumzile nor Jennifer relate discriminatory home front ex-periences that are similar to those of Vijay; however, both detect sexist behaviour in their external environments, manifested – for example – in everyday language usage and sexual/textual portrayal in literature, and – in the case of Phumzile – through the rituals that were performed at school.

In tracing her early suspicions of patriarchal discrimination, Phumzile attributes it to the way language as a social construct is em-ployed and deployed to socialise females differently from males. She writes:

All this time I was attending Catholic mass in English ... . Mass intrigued me as one who was brought up speaking predominantly isiXhosa, where the infamous ‘generic male’ is absent. I was very aware, as I was learning to speak English, that girls and women were never mentioned in mass. There was constant talk of men, sons of God, heirs to the Kingdom, and so forth. When women featured at all it was in very specific, named instances: they were Mary the virgin mother, Magdalene and so forth but there did not seem to exist a category which encompassed women outside of these … . This was in sharp contrast with the daily assemblies at my Protestant school, which were in isiXhosa and therefore spoken in gender-neutral language. Our teachers spent considerable time explaining the ‘generic male’ rule to our class of children who spoke isiXhosa and I found the entire exercise lacking in logic. However, the absence of a generic male and gender differentiated third person pro-nouns in many indigenous languages does not translate into an absence of sexist language and regulation of female behaviour therein ... . Various prescriptions on female behaviour meant that negative labels were used to describe girls who devi-ated. Sexism was both explicit and clandestine. We were aware of gender difference and accepted it as normal or rebelled against specific limiting manifestations of it. (Essay)

In her reference to indigenous African languages, Phumzile points out that the absence of generic male pronouns does not eradicate prescrip-tions of gender bias and stereotyping of male/female behaviour; instead

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it actually perpetuates the absence of women from social discourses and social validation. Penelope (1990:103) supports this observation. She points out that the magnanimity of the oppressiveness of sexist language is compounded when we observe how semantic violation becomes se-mantic exclusion and how semantic exclusion eventuates in social exclu-sion. Much has been written on the subject of language as a social construct and its potential to serve as a conduit for the expression of so-cial attitudes and values. In this regard, language has been critiqued for servicing the inferior socialisation and devaluation of girls and women in patriarchal societies. I explore this issue more substantively and analyti-cally in Movement Three in relation to the curriculum intervention efforts that the research participants embark on in their attempts to interrogate and expose the non-neutrality, and the sexually pejorative strains, in the English language.

Living in patriarchal societies, all five participants comment on ex-periencing the dailiness, normalcy and naturalness of gendered differen-tiation and stereotyping. All participants express the unhappiness that emanates from this social practice; however, Carol and Thembi, the two older participants, accepted the status quo as natural. Vijay, Phumzile and Jennifer, the younger participants, testify to being suspicious of this social arrangement. In spite of lacking the vocabulary to name their dissatisfaction, they nonetheless attempt to fight/rebel against it in different ways, as is evident in the words ‘fought,’ ‘reacted,’ ‘rebelled’ in the sentence fragments from Vijay’s and Phumzile’s extracts.

Through an introspective gaze these women report sensing and ex-periencing the dailiness of patriarchy. They wrestled with the psycho-logical and existential tensions in their performance of public and private female roles, responsibilities and behaviours, which elevated, valued and validated maleness above femaleness. Not only was male privilege evi-dent in sexist behaviour in their external environment, but some of them also detected it in the everyday language usage and in sexual/textual portrayal of males and females in the literature they were exposed to.

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Movement Two: Outward Gaze:naming patriarchy and coming to feminist consciousness

Movement Two in the development of a feminist identity is characterised by a trajectory that proceeds outward; that is, the internal conflict and dissatisfaction that the women experience finds parallels and makes comparisons with phenomena in the outside world. This psycho-social articulation acts as a catalyst in the illumination of the nature of oppressive female socialisation. An important distinction that is to be made at this juncture is the difference between having ‘gender con-sciousness’ and having ‘feminist consciousness.’ Hogeland (1994) ar-gues that gender consciousness refers to our self-awareness as women, and is a necessary precondition for feminist consciousness; however, they are not the same. The difference resides in the connection between gender and politics. Feminism politicises gender consciousness by lo-cating it in a systematic analysis of histories and structures of domination and privilege. For the participants, sensing the differences between male and female privilege brings them to the recognition that they are objects of discrimination, and this becomes a crucial epiphany in their initiation into feminist consciousness. In addition, the women recognise that they are not alone in their quest for emancipation from social strictures.

Given the variations in terms of when and how women come to feminist consciousness, an analysis of the interviews and the autobio-graphical narratives suggest two patterns in feminist identity develop-ment. The first pattern involves a transformation of conceptual and personal worlds from a more traditional perspective of female roles and identity to a feminist perspective of herself and the world. In this pattern of development, the women undergo a transformation that impacts both their personal and public life worlds. The second pattern can be de-scribed as the pattern of continuity: a discovery of fit; that is, the partici-pants, while raised in accordance with traditionally scripted gender roles, are critical of their socialisation. Their critique of the status quo is re-flected in permutations of self-questioning, questioning those in authority, and – often – resisting gender-based discrimination. Essentially, they display sensitivity to gender discrimination at an early age. Key experiences enable them to recognise that their beliefs and values are feminist; hence they adopt the label ‘feminist’ as an identity

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and identification marker. This is consistent with a pattern of continuity:discovery of fit rather than an experience of transformation.

With minimum variation, all the participants appear to come from households that were modelled on a patriarchal template. The patriarchal domestic hierarchy emerges through their either overt or oblique references to the gender divisions in their families. This gender division is most apparent in the gendered distribution of household and public labour, which is modelled on patriarchal norms and expectations. With the exception of Thembi’s mother, who defied both race and gender pre-scriptions in running the village store, and Jennifer’s mother, who would have assumed dual parenting roles after her father’s death, Vijay, Phumzile and Jennifer’s mothers pursued traditionally female dominated careers. (Jennifer’s mother was a librarian at a primary school and is said to have had a love for children. Vijay’s mother was a schoolteacher who earned a smaller salary than her father, who was also a teacher and Phumzile’s mother was a registered nursing sister). Emanating from pre-dominantly patriarchal backgrounds the participants, however, display two distinctly different responses to their socialisation.

The Pattern of Change:transformation of conceptual and personal worlds

For both Carol and Thembi, the two more senior women in the study, the development of a feminist consciousness follows a pattern of change trajectory. For most of their early lives, we discern conformity to a le-gitimising identity, during which time they accepted as normal the social prescriptions and regulations which are stipulated for males and females. Thus, they come to feminist consciousness much later. Having gone through the scripts of marriage, child-rearing and socially sanctioned female public careers, a cluster of episodes and emotions trigger a search for a more challenging and stimulating life. This newly perceived need precipitates the development of a feminist perspective. A central element of this developmental change pattern is entry into a new world, either by physically moving to a more liberal environment or by experiencing a conceptual change of their worldview; either way these women are dra-matically changed, and they begin to identify themselves as feminists. Carol and Thembi recount their exposure to feminism as follows:

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Carol: However, a new friend and a book, both feminist, were to change this … . Jenny would bring her three children to the local park then sit with her nose buried in the Times Literary Supplement. This is what drew me to her. Once I persuaded her to lower the TLS and listen to me, I found that, instead of condemning my un-happiness, she encouraged me to acknowledge and act upon my desires, and she lent me a book. Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique enabled me to relate my personal experience to that of other women, and to accept as valid my dissatisfac-tion with domesticity and the paid work I was doing. Through the influence of my new friend and Friedan, I would extend the boundaries of my learned definitions of femininity to include a desire … to find out more about the world, to discover and explore areas of knowledge, and to do this in a structured way through tertiary studies. (Essay)

Thembi: In Canada, my interest in literature pushed me further into exploring other course offerings such as the one titled: Sexual Colonialism. I recall that colonialism in this context was used as a metaphor for domination, control, restriction and oppression especially with regard to the subjection of the less privileged persons to permanent servitude. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm were some of the texts chosen to demonstrate the oppression of the female protagonists and ways of freeing themselves from sexual oppression … . In short, for these female characters education was a precondition for authentic fe-male autonomy.

The practical dimensions of my feminist consciousness can be traced to the 1990s when I was a participant at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). At this conference focus was on sensitising female academics to the dire consequences of placing power, decision-making and control in the hands of male academics. I am forever grateful to the ACU and also glad that my subsequent teaching of ‘Gender Issues’ (though my interest in it came late in life), eventually forced me to incorporate gender/feminist criticism in my literary studies.

The more I explored feminist theories the more my own political consciousness with regard to Botswana’s patriarchal culture was raised. (Essay)

In the case of Carol, she had gone through the motions of wifehood, motherhood and an unstimulating career as a secretary and was seeking something more challenging. She attributes her awakening to a feminist consciousness to her friend who introduced her to Friedan’s FeminineMystique, who listened sensitively and non-judgementally to her, and who encouraged her to pursue her educational aspirations. Carol em-barked on formal academic studies which strengthened her knowledge in both feminist and other academic discourses and helped her to see that she was not alone in feeling dissatisfied and unhappy at the restrictive nature of normative female socialisation.

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It was in Canada, while she was studying the course Sexual Coloni-alism, when the first whispers of feminism came to Thembi. The quest of the protagonists in Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm sensitised her to these women’s struggles to gain autonomy through education. For Botswana-born Thembi, the word co-lonialism denoted domination, control, subjugation and restrictions. Not being politicised to the wider implications of their social connotations meant that it took her longer to make the association between colonial domination and patriarchal domination. It was only after her exposure to the Masters Course on Sexual Colonialism and her participation in an academic conference, which specifically addressed patriarchal authority in academia, that the analytical dimension of feminism sensitised Thembi to the pervasive nature of institutional and cultural gender dis-crimination.

Moving both literally and metaphorically to new geographic and conceptual spaces (especially via education) awakened Carol and Thembi to the shackles of patriarchy. For both Carol and Thembi, coming to feminist consciousness entailed undergoing a transformation that impacts both their personal and public life worlds. In this pattern of change: transformation of conceptual and personal worlds, the women undergo a transformation from enacting normative female roles and identity to a feminist perspective of themselves and the world.

The Pattern of Continuity: discovery of fit

The central theme in a pattern of continuity or a discovery of fit is a strong sense of self, coupled with a sense of justice. The women in this category experience no major changes as far as their suspicion regarding gender-based differentiation is concerned; instead their views develop along a single trajectory. Much like Thembi and Carol, who admit to coming to a feminist consciousness later, Jennifer, Phumzile and Vijay were also raised in families with traditional values; however, unlike Thembi and Carol, whose coming to a feminist consciousness followed a pattern of change trajectory, Jennifer, Vijay and Phumzile display characteristics that parallel a pattern of continuity feminist identity de-velopment. They did not buy unquestioningly into the social scripts and value system that are offered for female socialisation. They either openly resisted, or wrestled internally with, the gendered status quo. For them,

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becoming feminists was a matter of adopting a belief system that matched the one which they already had. Jennifer writes:

I am a feminist … . I feel that I have ‘always’ been a feminist, just as I have always been gay. I do not know whether a feminist affiliation has to do with one’s genetic make-up or one’s socialisation (including education); but I have always been politi-cally and socially woman-identified. (Essay)

Jennifer maintains that she has always been a feminist, and it can be assumed that her continued political and social identification with women (and probably also the fact that she was reared in an all female household), strengthened her identification with women’s issues.

In contrast to Jennifer, who recalls being both politically and so-cially woman-identified, Vijay experienced a self-loathing about her gender and preferred the company and conversation of men – a sociali-sation into the boys’ club, where she could engage in discussions on world affairs and politics. In this regard, Leach (1992) observes:

Since human personal identity is essentially relational, a personal identification with one’s gender is an essential characteristic of personal identity. Men and women, define themselves in relation to different social norms learned in child-hood. Since a man or woman’s sense of self (and self-worth) is essentially connected to success or failure in meeting gender-related standards, women’s sense of self or self-worth cannot be ultimately achieved by imitating men or by adopting masculine capacities or goals. Rather, women must find collective ways to socially revalorise feminine-identified values and skills in order that women can reclaim a sense of self-worth denied by a male-dominated system.

However, for Vijay, during her unlabelled, formal pre-feminist con-sciousness, she admits to unwittingly buying into patriarchal stereotypes about the shallowness of women’s ways of being. This was in reaction to her mother’s discrimination of her. Sensing that she was the object of gender bias has provoked a critical questioning, confrontation and challenge to her mother’s interaction with her. Although it is not clear when the confrontation with her mother about the gender bias occurred, Vijay attributes her formal conscientisation and exposure to feminist discourses as follows:

When the municipal libraries in Durban were opened to all races in 1983 I came across Ms Magazine, which made a huge impression on me. I discovered a whole new discourse and began to understand that my concerns about male privilege were

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about the system of patriarchy. I began to get a better sense of the complicity of men and women with the system. My perception that things were a little compli-cated in our home, because the more obvious bearer of patriarchy was our mum, rather than our dad (who had seemed quite benign and open to being challenged), became more complex. (Essay)

Ms Magazine, a mentor, and a circle of friends, have helped Vijay to find a label and a vocabulary for her nagging suspicion that preferential treatment of men was part of a cluster of interlocking systems of oppression. The process of her naming patriarchy resonates with the following quote from Freidan’s Feminine Mystique (1965:13): “It was a demoralising problem – ‘a problem with no name’: The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of … women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered.” The problem has since been named, and Vijay has learnt that patriarchy, which is the law of the father, perpetuates male supremacy. This is a contagion that is cultivated in the political economy of unequal gender relations, which systematically disprivileges females. In elabo-rating on the nameless, yet demoralising, problem that Vijay describes, Phumzile also eloquently captures her sensing and identification of patri-archy:

It is with great difficulty that I came to understand later that this was not something that was obvious to many girls; that many women claim to only have come to femi-nism through reading … . I am also aware of many others for whom the language of feminism only helped name what had long been identified through their own expe-riential location. Thus while I was to later call myself feminist, Black feminist and womanist/post-colonial feminist, the insight into the key regulatory role of gender in society had far preceded the naming of the observation and refusal to submit to prescriptions on female behaviour … . I remember it is also here (at All Saints Catholic Seminary) that I encountered the label ‘feminist’ for the first time and started to use it to describe myself. I was not the only self-defined feminist here. (Essay)

From Jennifer, Vijay and Phumzile’s accounts of their feminist identity development, the pattern that they describe involves continuity rather than a change in their sense of Self. The participants learn/hear about feminism and adopt the label because it matches the value system they believed should be in existence.

The differentiation between the two patterns of feminist identity de-velopment is useful in understanding that different people come to femi-

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nist consciousness through different circumstances; however, what remains to be discussed is that the cliché ‘coming to feminist conscious-ness’ often masks the non-linearity of the process of feminist identity formation and the non-unitariness of the strands of feminist conscious-ness.

Still continuing the exploration into Movement Two, which is de-fined by an outward gaze, and the naming of patriarchy, I proceed to examine the various strands of feminist thinking that the participants subscribe to, and the influence which people, places, and publications have had and continue to have on the process of their coming to feminist consciousness.

Strands in Feminist Thinking

Emanating from the premise that the discourse on identity is founded on a politics which is defined by multiplicity and difference renders it re-ductive to talk about the category ‘woman.’ The different positionalities of social actors and the theoretical variations that frame feminist dis-courses give substance to this premise. In commenting on the fractured face of feminism, Spender (1983:367) explains that each feminist strand provides a partial and tentative resolution to the woman question(s) by offering a fresh perspective with its own methodological and theoretical merits and de-merits. Against this backdrop, in reading through both the interview transcripts, and the autobiographical essays, I have encoun-tered as many espousals to different feminist discourses, as there were participants. The following extracts provide a cursory overview of the various theoretical orientations and affiliations which the participants acknowledge to be subscribing to:

Thembi: Let me define myself, and then you can label me because I really don’t know; when it comes to these “post-post-post”, it comes to a point where I get so confused. Post-structuralism; post-feminism; postmodernism … the only thing I can say is, since we are talking about centering oneself, moving from the margin to the centre – that movement from the margin to the centre is a movement from a certain identity to assume another identity … maybe I’m a postmodernist? … I think it’s all about connectedness – of these ideologies, and experiences – to the extent where you cannot say they are mutually exclusive. There are different types of feminisms … so it depends on your own ideology … it’s a contested terrain. (Interview)

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Carol: My orientation is materialist rather than psychoanalytic, (thus I will focus on what social practices are in existence, as well as what fiction is saying).

In line with the requirements of informed academic work that follows on post-colonial, deconstructionist, and post-structural theories, I attempt to establish general tendencies, to work comparatively, and at the same time, establish specific characteristics. (Essay)

Vijay: From work that I’ve done in Development Studies there’s some wonderful theories related to WID (Women in Development), WAD (Women and Develop-ment), and GAD (Gender and Development). … I am more a GAD theorist than anything else. A GAD theorist is interested in gender and development ... It is diffi-cult to talk about the essence of woman-ness or male-ness and so the GAD theorists … are saying that these are not homogenous groups and they are not mutually ex-clusive. (Interview)

Jennifer: My thoughts about feminism are very eclectic … I have read and been in-fluenced by a wide range of feminist theorists. (Essay)

At one stage in my doctorate, when I was looking at nature, I was influenced by eco-feminism and bio-feminism, Mary Daly, etc. These days I am more interested in psychoanalysis. At the moment I am also interested in the representation of women’s bodies in science fiction film. (Interview)

Phumzile: Thus while I was to later call myself feminist, Black feminist and womanist/post-colonial feminist, the insight into the key regulatory role of gender in society had far preceded the naming of the observation ... . (Essay)

The extracts provide a glimpse at the expanse of feminist discourses which are espoused by the participants. These feminist discourses in-clude combinations of materialist concerns, gender and development issues, postmodernism, post-structuralist and psychoanalytical theorisings, and identification with Black/womanist ideologies. From these extracts, the following two significant points emerge:

First, Thembi and Vijay highlight the difficulty in sifting through the essentialist and non-essentialist features of feminist thinking. Thembi refers to the connectedness of these ideologies and experience; and says: … you cannot say they are mutually exclusive. Vijay too points out that both the strands in feminist thinking and the constituents whom they serve … are not mutually exclusive. Thembi and Vijay forward the shared view that feminist discourses are not mutually exclusive; they bleed into each other, challenging, changing, refuting, assimilating and winnowing wisps of ideologies, experiences and value systems, thus

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illustrating the interconnectivity of the web of feminist thought. It is this interconnectivity that makes it difficult to essentialise the various strands in feminist thought and to single out exclusively and definitively the participants’ feminist ideological leanings. For example, Jennifer admits:… my thoughts of feminism are very eclectic, and Carol, while espousing materialist leanings, comments that in her teaching she attempts to work comparatively among feminist discourses seeking out specificities (that which is particular and peculiar within a feminist strand) and coagulating general (universalistic) characteristics. Her statement shows that despite differences among the various strands of feminist thinking there are also underlying commonalities. The existence of various strands of feminist thinking does not translate into conflictual fragmentation, but to the recognition that they address different aspects of the woman question and cumulatively contribute towards agitating for women’s emancipa-tion. For Thembi, agitating for women’s emancipation takes the form of rescuing women from the marginalised fringes of society, so as to make their status, experiences and multiple identities visible in mainstream society. This perspective is evident in her comment: movement from the margin to the centre. For Carol, it is about understanding the materiality of women’s condition in literature and showing her students its relevance by focusing on what social practices are in existence. For Vijay, it is about the interconnectivity and interdependence of men and women and their joint development for holistic social renewal, thus GAD theorists’interest in gender and development. For Jennifer it is about interrogating the representation of women’s bodies in cultural media. Despite the vast fissures characterising feminist discourses, the unifying feature remains the redress agenda that is linked to social development and women’s empowerment, encapsulated in what Phumzile describes as confronting the regulatory role of gender in society.

In addition, since social transformation remains paramount, the different foci of these strands of feminist thought bring to mind Laden’s (2001) observation that it is difficult to see what divides contemporary positions in the discourse on identity politics. The vagaries and difficulty for differentiation among the strands of feminist thought are attributed largely to the proliferation of feminist discourses, and this is perhaps best articulated by a bewildered Thembi, when she says: Let me define my-self, and then you can label me because I really don’t know; when it

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comes to these “post-post-post”, it comes to a point where I get so con-fused.

The second point emerges from Phumzile’s statement: I was to later call myself feminist, Black feminist and womanist/post-colonial feminist.This statement confirms that feminist consciousness is not a static state of being; that is, as identities-in-process, it is possible for an individual to go through different feminist ideological and experiential dispensations. Phumzile recalls traversing various strands of feminist thinking, changing the label and probably expanding and reconfiguring her notions of feminist discourses. The trajectories of her ideological affiliations signal the evolution in her understanding and experiences of these vari-ous discourses. For example, in her essay, she reflects: It was at All Saints Seminary that I encountered the label ‘feminist’ for the first time and started to use it to describe myself. But, like so many women of colour before her, Phumzile also recognised the universalising/normative tendencies of mainstream feminism, and its attempt at a coherence of effect, which fails to acknowledge the multiple fissures of identity across race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Thus, like other women of colour, who have criticised feminism for its racist bias because it equated femi-nism exclusively with White, middle-class preoccupations; Phumzile too, as a Black South African teenager, experienced the disjuncture between her Black female identities in relation to the Victorian morals that dominated gender decorum at the school which she attended. This disjuncture precipitated the need for her to differentiate between femi-nism and Black feminism, and it may explain her subsequent affiliation with Black feminism as more relevant to her material and theoretical realities. Later, her embracing of Womanist ideologies appears to pro-vide her with an avenue to foster stronger relationships with both Black women and Black men, given the commitment of Womanism to the sur-vival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Mobilising with Black males, however, engendered its unique set of oppressions. Phumzile expresses her sense of betrayal when her Black male colleagues, whom she considered fellow comrades, reacted with hostility to Vice-Chancellor Mamphela Ramphele’s sexual harassment policy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Finally, Phumzile’s espousal of post-colonial discourses may be read as an attempt to redress the brevity, lies and misrepresentation of the experiences of the Other that she experienced in her undergraduate

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studies. Thus, currently as an educator she includes in a Masters Course on African Literature a component on slave narratives and writings by Africans from the eighteenth century. In the English 225 Course, she teaches writings by Southern African, Caribbean and Indian women novelists in which she deconstructs colonial representations of the Otherand the power of the colonised.

While it was largely contextual and ‘experiential’ variables that sen-sitised Phumzile to the various strands in feminist thinking and the vari-ous tiers of women’s oppression, at the hands of both men and fellow women, Jennifer attributes her exploration of different strands in femi-nism to her changing scholarly interests. For example, Jennifer’s early research interests introduced her to eco-feminisms and bio-feminisms, and her current research interests are located in psychoanalytical feminist discourses and cultural studies.

The multiplicities within feminist thinking which are evident in Phumzile’s account as well as in the other participants’ reflections is an indication of the lack of internal homogeneity of the individual and the real possibility that individuals affiliate to different social interests and ideologies. The internal heterogeneity of individuals also hints at the internal and external dialogicality that such heterogeneity engenders.

The multiplicities, fissures and fractures in the feminist discourse have, expectedly, invited criticism from anti-feminists for being a house that is divided among itself. Tong (1989:7) suggests that in order to weather the scoff and scorn of anti-feminists, contemporary feminists “need a home in which everyone has a room of her own, but one in which the walls are thin enough to permit a conversation, a community of friends in virtue, and partners in action.”

Identification with various feminist strands suggests that prevailing trends point to the emergence of new feminisms, which are more reflec-tive of the different cultural, psychological, research interests and mate-rial concerns of a new generation of women. Such a proliferation of feminisms is certain to impact and reconfigure the theoretical identifica-tions of those who are already subscribing to feminisms. McLaren & Lankshear (1993:9) suggest that:

… we must abandon the outmoded and dangerous idea that we possess, as social agents, a timeless essence or a consciousness that places us beyond historical and

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political practices. Rather, we should understand our ‘working identities’ as an effect of such practices.

What emerges in Movement Two is that, notwithstanding the different stages and variations in the initial patterns through which the develop-ment of a feminist identity passes, once the women come to feminist consciousness, they share a number of similarities in the way in which they interpret their life experiences. Thus, irrespective of the age, stage or pattern of feminist identity development, most of the research partici-pants attribute the development of their feminist consciousness to people, places and publications. This three-fold influence relates to the theory forwarded in the Downing & Roush (1985) study, which showed that once women identified and named their discrimination, they begin to associate with ‘like-minded’ women and to commit themselves to femi-nist values.

People: association with ‘like-minded’ women

In discussing the influence which association with ‘like-minded’ people has on feminist identity formation, an important qualification that has to be made at the outset is that the adjective ‘like-minded’ is employed in the sense of unifying feminists on the basis of principled and strategic coalitions which are based on shared values and visions. Association with ‘like-minded’ people’ does not suggest cognitive or social cohesion that suppresses, erases or masks differences among the women.

Feminist friendships, collaboration in networks, and involvement in activist movements have been the hallmark of feminism. Association in these networks tends to be both social and intellectual. The network of friends and colleagues, the formation of strategic coalitions, the values and ideologies they subscribe to, and their responses to socio-political phenomena suggest a complex process of feminist identity development. This observation emerges from the following extracts, which capture the various organisations and sites of resistance with which the research par-ticipants have become associated, and in which they have been involved, over the years. The extracts draw attention to the multiple tiers of oppression, ranging from class, race, gender, health, to linguistic issues on which these women have expanded their ambit of influence. Their accounts also highlight the pervasive nature of gender discrimination.

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In recounting the development of their feminist consciousness through social and intellectual networks, Carol, Phumzile, Vijay and Thembi present the following accounts:

Carol: In my mind and that of the feminists who became friends and associates – we were not all white and middle-class – the battle was always against Apartheid as well as sexism … the South African social context meant that White feminists like me could not retreat into protest only against the plight of women like me. I joined the Women’s Movement, a multi-racial grouping, who demonstrated, submitted petitions, and organised relief action (for instance, during winter floods). I partici-pated for three years in a ‘rap’ (discussion) group whose members I met through the Women’s Centre in Rondebosch, and I joined the Black Sash. Growing up in the late Forties and the Fifties, I had taken for granted the restrictions attached to race, class, and gender; now, the foundations of my childhood training were shaken to the core, my circle of friends was enlarging and changing, and the basis of my identity became linked to South African, indeed global, phenomena and experi-ences. The women I met in these groupings were often articulate, intelligent, and efficient organisers of public meetings and protests; they were also more confident and more informed about public affairs than the women I had encountered so far. For the first time, I had Black friends. Like the intellectual world I stepped into when I registered with UNISA in 1974, this world of women activists allowed me access to new areas of thinking and experience. (Essay)

Vijay: On reflection, the reason I react strongly to class-arrogance and racism against other people and myself may be the result of my experiences of gender in-equity at home and in the broader family.

I wrote UDW’s Social Redress Policy (to correct the racial, gender and class in-equities in student and staff representation) and piloted it through the union and the university structures ... . I also began the move to integrate the cleaning staff (who were subcontracted under miserable conditions) into the union, and started a literacy programme (ongoing).

There is an enormous interest in gender among students taking Sociolinguistics and this growing discipline would do well to develop the area, particularly as it is an important way of addressing issues such as civil rights, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and social movements. (Essay)

Thembi: Beijing. This is the identity this group of Batswana women had assumed. This was indeed an indication of our underlying struggle for social change. It had become obvious to those few women that though we live in contemporary times, many of the traditional structures … still hamper our lives today; hence the women’s hint at their struggle for gender equality. Having been part of this body of women connected by an invisible cord of common experience, I was more con-vinced than ever before that the female voice, individually or as part of a bigger collective, has to be heard and acknowledged. The fact that this approach embraces

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not only questions of class but also of race and gender further makes one critical of the extent to which power is constructed and constituted even in language. (Essay)

Phumzile: This was an exciting time to be at university and I participated in organi-sations, which espoused anti-racist and feminist politics … . It is at UCT where I learned to integrate my race and gender politics since the ‘everyday’ challenged my ability to keep them separate. (Essay)

The extracts highlight the role which feminist social networks and webs of friendship have played in consciousness-raising by encouraging women to establish a new covenant with themselves, thereby seeking emancipation from both internal and external oppressions, repressions and tyrannies. The participants testify to expanding the circle of their affiliations and entering into coalitions with a wide array of political and social groups which were not solely concerned with agitating for per-sonal and women’s liberation, but for wider social justice and recogni-tion.

First, Carol offers rich insight into the politics of difference. Shementions that the organisations which she joined were not all White and middle-class, but that they were multiracial groupings, and that – for the first time – she had Black friends. Given the divisiveness of Apartheid, it is understandable that Carol should draw more attention to the racial integration of the organisations; however, she also refers to forming net-works across class barriers. In doing so, she points to the existence of multiple tiers, and interlocking systems of oppression such as race, gen-der and class inequities, which Thembi, Vijay and Phumzile also men-tion in their extracts. The participants’ affiliations to various activist movements confirms the contention that essentialising identity in terms of gender, race, class, ethnicity, etc. is restrictive because the struggle for equality, although it may vary in intensity and complexity, is nonetheless the same struggle for everyone. It is thus also apparent that a failure to recognise the nature of shared oppression acts as a disciplinary function, because – in its sectarianism – it mobilises people who are like you, rather than people who share your political values. In addition, reference to the diversity in the group composition by race and class points to the nature of strategic coalitions, which does not aim to eradicate or suppress difference among group members, but acknowledges and accepts that people occupy different positionalities and multiple identities, but come together on the basis of principled solidarities.

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Second, Carol’s and Vijay’s agitating for racial and gender emanci-pation exemplifies the narrativist nature of identity, which combines studies of action and identity as they are linked to relational, spatial and temporal dimensionalities. The impact of Apartheid on temporal and spatial relations created both race and class divisions among South Afri-cans. In their respective essays, both Carol’s and Vijay’s micro-narra-tives describe the result of such social policies on them as individuals and on collective society. Carol’s retrospective gaze alerted her to the fact that: … she had taken for granted the restrictions attached to race,class, and gender … but on joining these women’s networks, the founda-tions of [her] childhood training were shaken to the core, [her] circle of friends was enlarging and changing. Vijay, too, attributes her political and social retaliation against class arrogance and racism to experiences of gender inequity at home and in her broader family. Linking the rela-tional micro-narratives of their personal experiences, either as victims of oppression or as benefactors of privilege, has served as an impetus for Carol and Vijay to now enact their identities in a way that stems the tide of further racial and class-based oppressions.

Third, we note that the nature of political and social activism assumed various forms which are linked to the moral content, ideals and aspirations of the participants’ identities and ideological affiliations. For example, for Carol, in line with her concrete materialist leanings, she participated in demonstrations and discussion groups, submitted peti-tions, and organised relief action for flood victims. In line with her GAD alignment, Vijay has written and piloted the university’s Social Redress Policy to correct the racial, gender and class inequities that affect stu-dents and staff; also, she has agitated for the unionisation of the cleaning staff and has started a literacy programme for them.

Fourth, despite the numeric leanness of women’s networks, Thembi alludes to the power which women have to enact social transformation against the pervasiveness of patriarchal oppression. Employing the fa-miliar feminist metaphor of ‘female voice,’ Thembi reiterates the call to make women’s oppression at the hands of patriarchy visible, both in one’s individual capacity and in one’s role as member of a larger collec-tive. This call is consistent with feminist attempts to provide both a place and the power for women to speak, by challenging patriarchal definitions of women and overcoming their voicelessness through naming their ex-periences of oppression. The impact and transformation at both the indi-

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vidual and broader social level is also supported by Carol, who – in reflecting on her personal transformation by virtue of joining anti-oppression social groups – testifies that she began to see herself as part of a national and international collective, as is evident in her statement: the basis of my identity became linked to South African, indeed global,phenomena and experiences. For Carol, who for most of her early years had denied her South African identity, association with feminist net-works solidified her reconceptualisation and the basis of her national identity. In addition, Carol began to conceive of her identity as linked to global phenomenon. Both Thembi’s and Carol’s sense of the interconnectivity between the individual and the collective, the national and the international, confirms Brah’s (1991) views on the nature of coalitions, which is based on a politics of identification rather than on a politics of identity. Brah writes:

We develop our first sense of community within a neighbourhood but we soon learn to see ourselves as part of many other ‘imagined’ communities – imagined in so far as we may never actually meet those people face to face, but we learn to identify with these groups, their experiences, and their struggles. These processes of politi-cal identification and formation of communities of struggle do not erase the diver-sity of human experiences rather they enable us to appreciate the particular within the universal, and the universal within the particular.

The fourth point relates to the interconnectivity between the particular and the universal, the public and the personal, by linking these to social transformation networks. In this regard, Phumzile was also able to connect her personal everyday experiences by integrating race and gen-der politics since the ‘everyday’ challenged [her] ability to keep them separate. By seeing that the personal of the everyday is fused to the po-litical, the personal automatically becomes political for Phumzile. Carol also reflects on the impact which association with her activist friends had on her in terms of her personal and public identities. When she began to associate with women who were articulate, confident and intelligent, she became more informed about public affairs. Association with other ac-tivists also provided Carol with a sound model on which to access and expand her thinking and experience.

Fifth, in describing the women activists as articulate, intelligent, and confident, Carol addresses Appiah’s (2000) critique of the shortcomings of contemporary discourses on identity politics. Appiah draws attention

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to the tendency to focus almost exclusively on broad collective catego-ries of race, class gender, etc., whereas individual identity categories like intelligence, wit, charm, confidence, etc. are ignored as socially relevant categories.

The cumulative effect of affiliation to feminism is summarised by Cherniss (1972) who studied women who were active in consciousness-raising groups and has identified their major characteristics as:

a valuing of autonomy and self-control; an orientation towards achievement; and an aspiration to high self-esteem.

For most women in the study, a pre-feminist consciousness was charac-terised by feelings of boredom, misery, lack of self-confidence, etc. Vijay says that her exposure to, and identification and involvement with, feminist discourses has been ‘reaffirming.’ This sense of ‘reaffirmation’ is significant in the light of the diminished self-esteem she experienced as a child, when – because of her mother’s over-valuing of her brothers – she felt undermined and resentful about being a girl.

In also recounting the positive impact feminist thinking has had on her concept of self, Thembi writes:

Indeed, feminism has had a fundamental change on my self-perception. I see myself as a multiplicity of identities – of being an individual, a female, a wife, a mother, an intellectual and an educator. But I also have a sense of being part of a bigger collective, part of a body of both women and men connected by an invisible umbili-cal cord of humanity. These multiple identities feed on each other constantly and their synergy pushes me towards a stronger sense of self. Much of feminism is about self-acceptance, and this has spilled to other aspects of my life. (Essay)

For Thembi, feminism has changed her perception of herself. Prior to her exposure to feminist discourses, Thembi’s understanding of herself was confined to accepting the hegemonic roles and identities of wife and mother. Now she celebrates the multiplicity of her identities that situate her on the move within the fluid spaces of public and private domains. Perhaps, most strikingly is her overwhelming sense of self-acceptance which is poignantly captured in Maya Angelou’s poem Phenomenal Woman, which Thembi offered as a piece of literature that most succinctly describes the way she sees herself. In addition, the women

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also report a critical maturation as a result of exposure, engagement and contribution to feminist discourses. As is endemic in most patriarchal societies where educational and social rites, rituals, etc., present a my-opic gaze which elevates and makes visible male theories, perspectives, etc. these women report to feeling doubly empowered in that they have a broader, multi-perspectival interpretation of social phenomena as a result of feminist influences on their lives.

The preoccupation of the research participants with socio-political transformation is glaringly evident. Ranging from engagement in grass-roots political protest activism, benevolent relief action, attending aca-demic conferences, to formulating redress policy, all these activities demonstrate their widespread participation and intervention in effecting social transformation across race, class, gender, language, civic, etc. en-claves. It supports Gilmore’s (1994:4–5) observation that:

… for many women, the community into which they are born is not ultimately, the community to which they belong. Women who join convents, who cross classes and regions, who politicise female identity, locate themselves in complex relation to their communities or homes of origin and to the communities they join.

It is perhaps in the light of affiliation and commitment to these feminist values that Castells’ (1997:8) conceptualisation of project identity be-comes meaningful. According to Castells, project identity refers to the process in which social actors, on the basis of the diverse cultural mate-rials that are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and thereby seek transformation of overall social structures. This is the case, for instance, when feminism moves out of the trenches of resistance of women’s identity and women’s rights to challenge patriarchalism as it manifests within the family, sexual rela-tions, the labour market and the entire structure of production, reproduction, etc. on which societies have been historically based.

Places: in search of a room of one’s own

Tamboukou (1999) has observed that go out, get out, be out, spread my wings, run away, leave are but some of the verbs that can frequently be traced in female teachers’ autobiographical writings, and out as a participle often accompanies these verbs of movement. Women’s self-writings present selves on the move, as women attempt to cross the

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boundaries of their family, their locality, their town or city, and – in some cases – their country. Confinement emerges as a highly frustrating theme in women’s accounts of their lives, and it has been used in femi-nist theory to describe oppression. Women’s frustration is articulated in desires of discursive, imaginary and sometimes physical escape, and in their attempts to cross both real and metaphorically imposed spatial boundaries. It is significant that many of the women in Tamboukou’s (ibid.) study refer to the role that both education through travel and geo-graphical change have played in conscientising them to the structuring of gender relations and the formation of subjectivities.

Inextricable to conceptual and ideological transformation – for the majority of the participants in my study – the first step for a new life seemed bound to distancing themselves from familiar ideological and geographical locales. Irrespective of whether these new spaces meant attending university or going abroad, the participants make reference to the role that ‘travel’ played in deepening their understanding of feminist discourses as they moved towards new/different geographical, meta-phorical or ideological places. Carol writes: Like the intellectual world I stepped into when I registered with University of South Africa in 1974,this world of women activists allowed me access to new areas of thinking and experience. Thembi refers to her study stint in Canada where she heard the first whispers of feminism. She also makes mention of the Beijing Conference, which alerted her to the global phenomenon of women’s oppression; and the Association of Commonwealth Universi-ties conference which conscientised her to institutional patriarchy. Vijay alludes to the estrangement from her immediate surrounding which she felt, and the sense of belonging that she experienced during her overseas visit. She recalls:

I was in the States for a few months in the early ninties and attended a conference towards the end of my stay. I never thought I was going to learn so much from African American women. I saw that it was African American women from the Caribbean who were teaching everybody else. Every African American woman I met was so amazing. They are just uncannily powerful. They made literature for me. They gave me a home. (Interview)

Two significant issues emerge from Vijay’s extract. The first issue re-lates to space and the exercise of power. She comments that these women were just uncannily powerful. She hints that the conference be-

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came a space for female self-assertion, and she obliquely alludes to the fact that space is fundamental in any exercise of power, especially when gender relations are structured. While there is an increasing number of analyses that are related to women’s exclusion from public spaces, little attention has been paid to the ways in which women experience lack of space (sometimes no space at all). Second, Vijay celebrates the literary and ideological genius of the Caribbean women whom she met, and with whose work she has engaged. It seems that those women gave her an ideological home. She says: They made literature for me. They gave me a home. This ‘home’ metaphorically signifies for her a space for imagina-tion and the development of her creative literary interests.

Tamboukou’s (ibid.) study, which explored women’s autobiographi-cal travel writing, echoes the sentiments of my research participants, and it further confirms that:

… travelling offered [women] possibilities of escaping their prescribed places and roles. Finding themselves in different places, far away from their home, women un-derwent rare experiences, acquired knowledges that had the possibility of trans-forming their lives, and constructed quite novel personal relations to the new and unknown world.

Publications: windows to the mind

Apart from the roles which people and places played in the development of their feminist consciousness, many of the participants attribute the attainment of their feminist and wider social conscientisation to exposure to literature and feminist publications. The intellectual association often assumed the form of reading the publications of other feminist writers and – in some cases – engaging the critique of anti-feminist scholars and feminists of varying theoretical and methodological persuasions.

In their essays, the participants reflect at length on the role which various literatures, theories and theorists have played, and continue to play, in shaping their feminist thinking. Beginning with feminist con-sciousness-raising texts like Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, to Jennifer’s fascination with science fiction, the other participants also catalogue lists of poetry and prose publications that provide them with continued intellectual stimulation, deepen their social consciousness and provokes them to activism.

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Carol and Thembi, in particular, allude to the shortcomings of their previous scholarship. In their retrospective critique of it, they believe that their doctoral studies would have been richer had they been investigated through the added lens of feminist theoretical frameworks.

To illustrate the wide-ranging texts that inform their feminist under-standings, Vijay’s comprehensive list serves as an excellent example of the varied issues that these texts typically address:

Among the theorists who have laid the ground for my thinking about feminism and multilingual teaching are Audre Lorde on the power of utterance, Carole Boyce Davies on how gender and race contribute to silencing, Trinh Minh-ha on third world representation and intellectual marginalisation, Gayatri Spivak on intellectual representation and pedagogical practices, Amina Mama on African feminism, Desiree Lewis on South African feminist intellectual practices, Obioma Nnaemeka on building gender networks to address the challenges of modernity, Judith Butler on the limitations of heterosexual constructions of gender, Chandra Talpade Mohanty on questioning the limits of White middle-class feminism, Mary Eagleton on teaching gender, Ngugi wa Thiong’o on committed writers and the limitations of writing in English, Terry Eagleton on deconstructing the power of institutionalised English studies, Noam Chomsky on the public responsibilities of intellectuals, Edward Said on challenging eurocentrism and neoliberal globalisation, and Jacques Derrida on deconstructing power. (Essay)

The list of theorists and writers illustrates the widespread influence of feminist thinking. It incorporates studies of literature, psychology, soci-ology, education, anthropology, and other disciplines, as well as publi-cations by Third World authors who have traditionally been mapped on the blindspot of mainstream scholarship. In this regard, Mansbridge (in Castells 1997:175–176) writes:

Today, feminist identities are created and reinforced when feminists get together, act together, and read what other feminists have written. Talking and acting creates street theory and gives it meaning. Reading keeps one in touch and continues to make one think.

Finally, the participants do not just turn to these texts for their personal growth, but several of them also prescribe or recommend those texts as course readings to their students. I will take up this discussion in Move-ment Three, which explores feminist educators’ theorising and teaching emancipation from social oppression.

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Movement Three: Enacting a Transformed Identity: theorising and teaching emancipation

In Movement Three of coming to feminist consciousness, the women enact an empowered and emancipated social identity. What emerges from their narratives is that, as their commitment to feminist values in-tensifies, they become more active in feminist causes, to the extent that working for justice also becomes ingrained in their careers. There is thus a consolidation of their project identities as they seek to promote the transformation of social structures through their feminist teacher identi-ties. Given also that teaching is laden with ideological values, these feminist educators use their teaching space as a forum to enact their identities as ideology. Following Laditka’s (1990) contention that, generally, “the logic of consciousness is the logic of ideological commu-nication,” they teach English literature and language from a feminist perspective and thereby promote ideologies and values that counter pa-triarchal oppression. As a multiplier effect, these feminist teachers com-pose identities as ideology for both themselves and their students by attempting to conscientise their students to prevailing discriminatory practices that characterise and constitute a world of racism, linguicism, misogyny, cultural bias, violence and a host of other social injustices. These conscientisation attempts are evident in the following extracts:

Thembi: Having gone through the traditional approach to reading literature, and now being aware of its limitations, I now try to introduce literature differently to my students. I am, clearly, more convinced than ever before that culture places different behavioural expectations on men and women, and that those expectations affect individual’s reactions to issues of gender. My teaching of Gender Issues in African Literature especially from a feminist perspective has not only been a consciousness-raising exercise for my students but has also been, for me, a continuous process of intellectual growth. (Essay)

Jennifer: While my feminist views form the foundation for all the research and teaching I do … . The clearest and most current expression of my approach is to be found in the study material that I write for the Honours course in ContemporaryWomen’s Writing (CONTEM-A), of which I am the team leader and which I helped to design. (Essay)

Both Thembi’s and Jennifer’s ideological views regarding emancipation from gender discrimination are communicated through their teaching, as

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is evident in Thembi’s attempts to conscientise her students to gender issues, whereby she simultaneously achieves personal intellectual growth. Jennifer expresses her feminist views via her teaching and publi-cation of course materials. In addition, her designing and writing of study materials illustrate how educators activate/realise their identities as invention within the teaching profession.

Given that the participants are teachers of English, they conscientise their students primarily by exposing them to the ways in which language is used in the domination, subjugation and denigration of people in general and of women in particular. While not discounting the impor-tance of teaching the linguistic components of language (grammatical rules), they focus sharply on its more inclusive realm, which is con-cerned with its use in social, political, cultural and psychological do-mains. By examining language-related issues of class, culture, power and domination, they attempt to provoke students to an understanding that language is not an asocial, apolitical, neutral or value-free construct, but a powerful conduit for sociolinguistic ideological communication. Carol and Jennifer make reference to this dimension of the nature of language in the following extracts:

Carol: This has meant … an analysis of sexism, frequently normalised and unrecognised in terminology.

Our conditioning by family, and often by teachers … can have the effect of normalising, rendering ‘innocent’, the ideological. (Essay)

Jennifer: I believe students should, above all, not regard language as value-free or transparent, but must, instead, develop sensitivity to its use in buttressing power interests (including those of race, class and gender). (Essay)

Recurring words and phrases in the extracts emphasise the need to interrupt thinking about the apparent normalcy, innocence, value-free-ness and transparency of language ideologies.

Recognising the insidious power of language, Carol identifies the role which culture, family conditioning and socialisation play in naturalising and anaesthetising people to the normalcy of language usage, to the extent that discriminatory linguistic practices masquerade as natural and go by unrecognised and unchallenged. Unmasking the way language as a cultural construct has been, and continues to be used as a vehicle to perpetuate unequal social relations, Jennifer suggests that

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language needs to be thoroughly investigated with students in order to expose and challenge the inherent sexism, racism, and classism that per-petuate the denigration and subordination of females, and marginalised Other. By making this suggestion, Jennifer articulates a declaration that all the participants in this study strive to achieve through their theorising and teaching performances, namely, that the taken-for-granted assump-tions about the innocence of language should be denaturalised.

In order to explore Movement Three, which is characterised by the enactment of a transformed identity through the theorising and teaching of emancipation from oppression, I draw on three recurrent themes that generally frame discussions on the feminist critique of language. I do so by examining the language and gender issues that the participants theo-rise and teach about in relation to:

dominance and difference: power and culture in women’s linguistic behaviour;naming and representation: a constructed and contested domain in gender relations; andfinding a voice: overcoming women’s silencing and exclusion in language.

I then extend the above thematic frame to argue that sensitivity to lan-guage and gender issues have the potential to promote sensitivity to bi-lingual and multilingual concerns. Given that both language and gender, and multilingual discourses are committed to entrenching egalitarian ideals, I extrapolate illustrative examples from the participants’ essays and interviews to explore these in relation to:

dominance and difference: power and culture in English and Otherlanguages;naming and representation: a constructed and contested domain of the Other in English Language and Literature Studies; andfinding a voice: overcoming silencing and exclusion of the Other in English Language and Literature Studies.

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Dominance and Difference: power and culture in women’s linguistic behaviour

Historians of folklinguistics have unearthed interesting findings about language and gender differences, and they purport that there appears to be a long-received perception that women and men differ significantly in their linguistic usage. The differing styles of language, particularly speech, that are used, respectively, by women and men, apart from pro-viding another perspective on women’s exclusion from some areas of language, also highlight cultural representations of the feminine (Cameron 1990:20–21). Feminists who are concerned with socialisation processes confirm that an individual’s speech reflects culturally learnt identities. Such a sociolinguistic focus has now become linked to a femi-nist critique of gendered roles and socialisation (Crawford 1995; Boois 1993; Lewis 1995:25; Coates 1986; Andersen 1988:194–196). This analysis of gendered linguistic practices has led anti-feminists to argue that, since women speak differently from men, men and women must naturally be unequal and different.

Faced with such a skewed reality, a feminist critique could respond in several ways to the criticism of gendered linguistic practice. One op-tion is to challenge the stereotypes. However, the contemporary feminist critique has accepted that stereotypes may contain a measure of truth, and it has therefore settled for the reinterpretation of what stereotypical behaviour means. This reinterpretation has assumed two distinct forms that are embodied in the dominance and difference paradigms. The dominance approach retains a traditional, negative evaluation of women’s language. Viewing women as an oppressed group, the domi-nance approach interprets linguistic differences in womens and men’s speech in terms of men’s dominance and women’s subordination, and it contends that – although females and males may use the same linguistic resources – they utilise them in different ways. Lakoff (1981:60–67) in her investigation acknowledges female linguistic inadequacies but she explains them in political and cultural terms, rather than simply as natu-ral sex differences. She maintains that: “women are forced to learn a weak, trivial, and deferential style as part of their socialisation, which is essentially training in how to be subordinate.” Lakoff regards women’s style as being indicative of their relative powerlessness in patriarchal society. However, Lakoff erroneously identifies the differences between

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mens and women’s speech as differences between mens and women’s language. One common claim is that women’s speech is more emotive, impulsive and rambling, while men’s speech is considered relatively direct, unadorned, rational and logical. By comparison, the difference approach emphasises the idea that women and men belong to different subcultures. The difference paradigm acknowledges that women use language in a different way from men, and perhaps exactly as stereotypes suggest, but it celebrates this positively. Interpreting it as an authentic manifestation of a female culture, women are now asserting that they have a different voice, psychology, and experience of love, work and the family from men. The features which are labelled trivial and differential now emerge as women-centred and supportive.

The distinction between dominance and difference relates to the erroneous tendency of equating difference with deficit, and is widely subscribed to as a rationale for the enactment of power performances in male and female interactions. The feminist critique of language argues that language, as a patriarchal construct, has been crucial in maintaining male supremacy and in ensuring the inferior social status of women and girls. In this regard, Thembi points out:

Quite often students come to the classroom already socialised to believe that ine-quality of the sexes is natural and therefore unchallengeable. Such students easily buy into theories, which legitimise male domination over females. Exposing these same students, however, to other opposing views … sensitises them to the differences between the biologically determined and the culturally constructed. (Essay)

Thembi refers to students’ conditioning and socialisation into the natu-ralness of gender inequality which results in male dominance and female subordination. The generalised allegation to which Thembi alludes re-garding the naturalness of inequality between the sexes is given sub-stance in the following extract from Carol’s essay:

Xhosa students at UWC will make the connection between words and gendered so-cial status in relation to the practice of hlonipha, a special variety of the Xhosa lan-guage that married women must use to show their deference to their husband and his family, while they are forbidden to use terms permitted to other persons. (em-phasis added)

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There are three important points that emerge from Carol’s extract. First, there is a suggestion that – while the English language has been charged for being sexist and for promoting misogynist ideologies – such dis-criminatory charges may also be laid against other ‘marginalised’ lan-guages, notably isiXhosa, in this instance. Second, Carol’s reference to the Xhosa linguistic practice of hlonipha (which means ‘respect’) is an excellent illustration of a way in which women (in this instance married Xhosa women) are forced to learn a weak, trivial and deferential linguis-tic register. This linguistic manipulation is essentially training in how to be ‘respectful,’ which – in turn – is essentially a euphemism for being, subordinate/obedient. Third, sentence fragments like married women must use and they are forbidden to use terms permitted to other personssuggest that, as with the practice of hlonipha, other linguistic practices impose imperatives that regulate, circumscribe and prescribe gender-appropriate behaviour for women. This observation illustrates the way in which language operates as a mechanism for establishing and consoli-dating the inferior sociolinguistic status of women, and it points to prac-tices that ensure women’s relative powerlessness in patriarchal societies. Carol’s interrogation of the practice of hlonipha exemplifies one way in which her teaching becomes a consciousness-raising process to alert students to discriminatory linguistic practices that are likely to be preva-lent in their societies.

Naming and Representation: a constructed and contested domain in gender relations

Scott (1994) points out language, broadly understood, matters because of the role it plays in constructing and communicating cultural practices. Language and discourses, texts and the like, construct what kind of women exist, and women themselves can use the power of discourse, language and texts to construct their own lives. Many feminist linguistic critiques have specifically concerned themselves with analysing, naming and representation conventions. They have concluded that generally our languages are sexist: they represent or name the world from a masculine perspective in accordance with stereotyped beliefs about the sexes (Cameron 1990:12; Andersen 1988:187; Ross Munro 1987). Although most contemporary linguists reject, or express scepticism about, strong determinist theses, a number of strands in the feminist critique of lan-

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guage concur that many languages act as a fortress for sexist assump-tions which are underpinned by a naturalised semantic or grammatical rule whereby male is positive and superordinate and female is negative and subordinate, and they support their argument with the observation that rules and meanings have literally been ‘man made’: women have been excluded from naming and definition, and it is insightful to under-stand how this exclusion accounts for existing sexist expressions, and also for the absence of words (lexical gaps) to describe certain feelings and ideas that are extraneous to the official man-made worldview (Mills 1991:xiii; Graddol & Swann 1989:99).

The pervasiveness of sexist language became a focal challenge for feminists in the 1970s. Feminists showed that language as a transmitter of cultural beliefs perpetuated dichotomised gender stereotypes. In this regard, interest in linguistic gendering focused mainly on vocabulary: the use of individual words to define gender roles and statuses. Of major concern was the use of the he/man generic to refer to both male and fe-male subjects. What has subsequently been dubbed ‘pronoun envy’ is actually a protest against the social and psychological exclusion of women by installing man as the official representative of human beings. Penelope (1990:xvi) argues that for centuries, prescriptive grammar has served men’s agenda for linguistic colonisation. She contends:

Like the cars and boats that men possess, English is referred to as if it were female – the ‘mother tongue’. Men will tolerate only proper women and proper English. Linguistic deviance, like social deviance, must be suppressed or forced into con-formity. Mother-tongue is seen as a damsel in distress and men must rescue her from contamination to maintain linguistic purity.

Incensed by such patriarchal persistence to propagate phallogocentric deception, feminist linguists are enthusiastic to debunk disempowering linguistic practices; hence, their preference for figurative genres such as metonymy, euphemisms and the metaphor. For example, in rejecting etymological oppression (that is, the charge that the ancient roots of or-dinary English words by themselves render those words oppressive), it traces sexism in language to metaphoric identification. Proceeding from the premise that metaphors often express attitude, there is a claim that the metaphors which are implicit in sexist language express attitudes of contempt and disdain for women. Among the more familiar categories of metaphorical identification which have been employed are animal terms

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(bitch); toy terms (doll); juvenile terms (babe, sis); food terms (tart, crumpet); as well as more explicit sexual and/or anatomical terms (An-dersen 1988:189).

Schulz (1990:134–145) provides an insightful and extensive coverage of the semantic derogation and devaluation of women, indicating that words which were originally neutral in both meaning and sex reference assume pejorative connotations when used in reference to women. For instance ‘tart’ (an affectionate person) and ‘spinster’ (a spinner) have been devalued into ‘prostitute’ and ‘old maid.’

English words typically name, define and divide the patriarchal uni-verse into two unequal, stereotypical spheres, one female and the other male (Baron 1986:38), for example, ‘waiter/waitress,’ where the first term is accorded primacy. Following the patriarchal dichotomy of sex-based task assignment, the inside of a house becomes the female realm, and the outside, the male sphere of activity. Ranking marriage as the ultimate destiny of women, patriarchal priorities diarise the nuptial ceremony as being a more important event for women than for men.

Faced with a biased and sexist lexical heritage, many feminists in the 1980s resorted to a policy of affirmative action by engaging in their own critical re-writings of feminist dictionaries and other works of vo-cabulary (Kramarae & Treichler 1990:148–158). In this area, attention has been drawn to the authoritarian and sexist nature of malestream (sic) lexicography. Lexical forms like malestream (as a substitute for main-stream), herstory (as a substitute for history) register defiance against a received androcentric lexicography. Such revisioning of ‘neutral’ words highlights the androcentricity of the written Logos and its cultural repre-sentations. This observation substantiates the view that women have had their identities and experiences defined for them.

The argument that linguistic renovation is trivial and cosmetic be-cause real feminist struggles need to be waged over material relation-ships and concrete sexist practices ignores the impact of language as a material social practice; it dilutes, for example, the role that language plays in a child’s acquisition of social identity. However, sexist language should not be dismissed as just a matter of certain words being offensive. It is better understood as occurring in a number of quite complex systems of representation which are embedded in historical traditions. The battle against sexist vocabulary must be seen as part of a broader political struggle against the subtle naturalisation of gender – entombed in

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stereotypes. Our ways of talking about things reveal attitudes and assumptions that testify to the deep-rootedness of sexism. In this regard, Jennifer maintains: There is no gender-free language … . This means that the entire literary canon has to be re-evaluated in terms of gender,as there is a long literary tradition of representing masculinity as proto-typically human. While, on the one hand, the he/man generic has succeeded in constructing an androcentric world view and has for a long time rendered women invisible or insignificant in social discourse, on the other hand, in instances where women are named, such naming is fraught with stereotypical representations that dichotomise and prescribes gen-der-appropriate behaviour. It thus becomes necessary for Carol and Jennifer, who also refer to this tendency in the following extracts, to conscientise students to how lexical gaps service the social exclusion of women. Carol writes:

I always begin a course, by examining some basic binary terms that expose the du-alistic, and sexist worldview underlying Christian culture (examples are man/woman, male/female, gender/sex, masculine/feminine), and will explore with students whether or not such binaries are present in the other cultures represented in the classroom (Muslim, Hindu, African, Christian, Buddhist). (Essay)

And Jennifer observes:

I am continually amazed at the force of the dichotomies that give men dominance over women, so that they associate themselves with the mind, rationality, insight, strength and achievement, relegating women to the denigrated spheres of the body, emotion (hysteria), the trivial, weakness and the domestic realm. (Essay)

Words like: binaries, dualistic, dichotomies are used to suggest that lan-guage has been identified as key in engendering two separate but un-equal worlds for males and females. As a way to explore the implications and repercussions of functioning in accordance with binary logic, the feminist educators in this study employ deconstructionist techniques to analyse gendered binaries in phallogocentrism. By appropriating decon-structionist sensibilities, which involve the identification of particular dualisms, they attempt to conscientise their students to how social iden-tities are defined through the binary logic of language, which encodes or establishes hierarchical dichotomies. Carol and Jennifer refer to the cul-turally determined conceptual coupling of masculine/feminine; ra-tional/emotional; mind/body; male/female, which are some of the classic

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dominant/subordinate dualisms that have been used to establish meanings which are arbitrarily related to gender or the body. Thus, for example, stringing together the corresponding sides of the binary from Carol’s and Jennifer’s extracts, results in the equation:

dominant = (masculine/male = rational/mind = in-sight/strength/achievement); subordinate = (feminine/female = emotional(hysteria)/body = trivial/weakness).

By employing deconstructionist techniques, these educators attempt to show how the marginalised/subordinate ‘side’ of the binary coupling can be reconceptualised; for example, femininity can be many different things to different people, in different contexts. Thus, rather than endorse an either/or logic, they teach that it is preferable to view social identities as operating along a continuum. In this regard, deconstruction techniques are used to sensitise students to how dualities operate as a regulatory linguistic mechanism to fix the types of people who we ought to be in relation to our gender. For example, Carol explores the concept of matrophobia with her students, and how the fear of the maternal engen-ders stereotypical portrayals of mothering in society; she also teaches varieties of Black masculinities. Having personally experienced dis-crimination around sexual orientation, Jennifer writes: I find the hetero-normativity of our society, which cannot tolerate same-sex attraction and marginal gender identities … thoroughly repugnant. Hence, in the semi-nar Heterosexuality and its Alternatives, Jennifer follows what Coffey & Delamont (2000) refer to as the ‘queering’ of the curriculum by taking into account marginalised sexualities, epistemologies, perspectives, literatures and stories.

Equally significant in Carol’s extract is her reference to the role which culture and religion play in sanctioning gendered dichotomies. By exploring with students whether binaries like man/women are present in the other cultures represented in the classroom (Muslim, Hindu, African,Christian, Buddhist), Carol recognises the often difficult task of pro-voking students to engage critically with religious and cultural teachings. The tendency to approach religious and cultural phenomena as divinely ordained and/or ancestrally sanctioned, hence closed to interrogation, calcifies binary thinking that elevates men over women, and further

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separates the good woman from the bad woman. The logic of binarism is also transmitted through narrative form and structure in literature through stereotypical gender characterisations. Carol refers to this narra-tive tendency as follows:

The study of words per se was augmented by the study of the gender implications of aspects of narrative form and structure. An example of form would be the stereotypical characterisation of female personages in fiction by male writers as either saintly Madonna or sinful vamp, of structure would be the phenomenon that the endings of stories by nineteenth-century women writers tended to postulate death as the way out of an unhappy marriage. (Essay)

Carol points to how this literary practice feeds into stereotypical portrayals of women, and she suggests that sexist language should not be dismissed as operating just at the level of vocabulary (individual words), but is better understood as occurring in a number of quite complex sys-tems of representation which are embedded in historical traditions. Jennifer also refers in her essay to the image of the passive, delicate, and moral female, which is held up as the ideal demeanour for girls and women, and which is reinforced in traditional literary portrayals. Jennifer critiques the stereotypical depiction of gender roles in children’s litera-ture, which scaffold and perpetuate socio-cultural expectations of girls and women. She identifies the following recurrent motifs which are used to depict women and girls in literature:

their passivity (which is inevitably tied to waiting for their destiny to be determined and defined by the male. Females occupy themselves in personal physical adornment activities that are intended to accrue commodity value to themselves. For example, traditional portrayal in children’s literature present girls as delicate, pretty princesses, incapable of self-care and protection); their propensity for getting into distress, and the need to be rescued by a male: this thematic emplotment of the destitute damsel proliferates in Western narratives; and the value placed on romantic union (the heterosexual love ‘n marriage happily ever after plot, on which the gendered roles of the nuclear family is founded is presented as an archetype).

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Finding a Voice:overcoming women’s silencing and exclusion in language

There is an old belief that women talk too much. English literature is saturated with characters who substantiate the stereotype of the talkative woman (Coates 1986:35; Chaika 1994:376) The flip side of the coin is the image of the silent woman – often held up as the ideal – making si-lence synonymous with obedience. The idea that silence is the desired state for women is supported by the theory of ‘muted groups’ which are proposed by the anthropologists Shirley & Edwin Ardener. Studies on the cultural links between speech and power show that some linguistic strategies and genres are decorated with greater value and authority than others (Cameron 1990:4; Gal 1991:175–177). Since women’s speech is treated so contemptuously, we find that in society’s most prestigious linguistic registers (religious ceremonial, political rhetoric, legal and scientific discourse), women’s voices are for the most part silent or – rather – silenced. It is not that women do not speak – often they are ex-plicitly prevented from speaking, either by social taboos or by customs or practices.

Struggles about gaining a women’s voice in public life, draw atten-tion to a clichéd and influential metaphor that is currently circulating in social discourse. Terms such as ‘women’s language,’ ‘voice,’ or ‘words’ are generally used not only to designate everyday talk, but also, to denote the public expression of a particular perspective on self and social life, rather than accepting patriarchal representations. It is in this broader sense that feminist historians have rediscovered women’s words. Here, ‘word’ becomes a synecdoche for ‘consciousness.’ Similarly, the terms silence and mutedness are used not only in their conventional sense as an inability or reluctance to create utterances, but also as the failure to pro-duce one’s own separate, socially significant discourse. It is particularly in the second context that feminists have strained to shatter the silence barrier and to orchestrate women’s realities. In western societies, silence is generally deplored, because it is construed as a symbol of passivity and powerlessness. Those who are denied speech cannot make their ex-periences known, and consequently cannot influence the course of their lives or of history. While severing the Gordian knot of women’s silence, and exclusion, many studies which explore the links between linguistic practices, power and gender have shown that in certain contexts, silence

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and inarticulateness are not necessarily signs of powerlessness. For example, the masculine strategy of stressing silent strength and the masking of emotions is very prevalent in western culture. Male inexpressiveness is linked to the positions of power and prestige that men are socialised to aspire to. Exuding the aura that all one’s behaviour emanates from unemotional rationality is strategic in exercising power (Gal 1991:189–196).

Apart from patriarchal endeavours to hinder, ignore and denigrate women’s speech, writing – and particularly the production of literature – subjects women to a different set of exclusions. Like most technologies, writing has been male dominated. Thus, illiteracy in global and historical terms has been crucial in silencing women and denying them opportuni-ties for creative expression (Cameron 1990:5–6; Coates 1986:28–29; Penelope 1990:xxvii). Though literacy is an obvious prerequisite for women’s writing, illiteracy has not been its only obstacle. Often women have alluded to the lack of economic independence and the practical and psychological difficulties of writing while keeping the home fires burning. Even those women who have had the time and means to write have encountered barriers and incitements to silence (Cameron 1990:6; Kaplan 1986).

Furthermore, patriarchal discourses have systematically and incessantly excluded women and their contributions from the stories of science and history. Thus, feminist historians have urged the redistribu-tion of the narrative field to recover herstories, craft new meanings to re-form social memory, and narrate women’s stories with fresh insight.

In addition, many women have also felt constrained to keep silent about specifically female experiences and concerns. Thus, the quest for an authentic ‘women’s language’ or ‘feminine writing’ has been central to feminist analyses of women’s silence. In some traditions, feminists have questioned whether it is adequate for women to speak and write as men do. They argue that a passport into literature and culture on the con-dition that we accept conventional, masculine ways of expressing our-selves is tantamount to trading in one silence for another.

Terminating the silence and oppression of women is integral to feminism; it is an achievement that can be realised by empowering women to be producers and not consumers or victims of discriminatory sociolinguistic practices. Thus, in line with their project identities and identities as ideology, the feminist educators in my study also endeavour

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to shatter women’s silence and to make their voices audible within social discourses. Their attempts at achieving this end are reflected in their course offerings. For example, Carol teaches an English Honours Course titled: Some Women Writers in Africa and a Masters course titled: Topicsin Gender and Cultural Studies. In her interview she explained that she chose to teach women writers because the voices of women are still un-der-represented in Africa; and values like democracy and human rights should include women, who constitute half the population of the world. To achieve this educative goal, Carol also employs deconstruction tech-niques: where the critic reads for gaps, silences, sub-texts, and might seek to illuminate some of the narrative ‘strategies’ which are adopted by women to ‘find a voice.’

Many women feel constrained to keep silent about specifically fe-male experiences and concerns. Thus, studies of ‘women’s voice’ have focused on ascertaining whether women have cultural conceptions of self, morality, or social reality that are different from those of the domi-nant discourse. As a way of overcoming women’s silence, Vijay was (at the time when I conducted this study) supervising a student’s research onhow rural women are dealing with the HIV/AIDS pandemic and another student’s research on how women break the silence of poverty and patri-archy to tell their life stories.

Jennifer taught an English Honours class on ContemporaryWomen’s Writing, explaining that – although in the eighteenth century – the novel was the province of woman – women were not supposed to be subversive, whereas contemporary twentieth century, American and British novels written by women have become more subversive (they have become a form of ‘writing back to patriarchy’ and patriarchal ide-ology) In addition, as a way of encouraging student voices, Jennifer uses autobiographical writing to encourage students to make their experiences audible.

In ENG 702, which is a Masters course in African Literature, Phumzile teaches a section which deals predominantly with women’s writings. Phumzile observes that often people who teach African litera-ture neglect the writings of women ... as if all these women didn’t write.Thembi encapsulates how patriarchal conditioning results in the constant self-regulation, self-censorship and self-sanctioning that have accrued from the legacy of living in a world that attempts to silence the female voice. These course offerings show some of the ways in which, through

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their curriculum intervention, the participants make the experiences of women visible, and they thus conscientise their students to in-roads that could be made to break women’s silence about their experiences.

In the preceding discussion I have explored how difference and dominance, naming and representation, and women’s voice are recurrent themes that frame debates on women’s inferior sociolinguistic status. In her essay, Jennifer suggests that language and gender education can counter discriminatory linguistic practices by:

promoting student self-actualisation; teaching students suspicion about the representations of gender that they encounter in literature (for example, use of the male generic pronoun, sentence structure, characterisation, and wider plot); developing a critical attitude towards received ideas of gender in writing;presenting students with alternative gender depictions; and encouraging students to write their own creative pieces.

In the following discussion, I argue that in the same way that sensitivity to gender issues is intended to educate students to be more responsible and critical users of language, of equal importance is sensitivity to the dominant role and status of English in bilingual and multilingual class-rooms. I argue that, if it is not used judiciously and critically, the English language can continue to engender inferior sociolinguistic complexes among students whose mother-tongue is not English.

Dominance and Difference: power and culture in English and ‘Other’ Languages

In addition to alerting students to the way in which language is used to engender male supremacy, the theme of domination and difference is also useful in exposing the hegemony of English, especially in multilin-gual and bilingual societies, such as South Africa and Botswana, respec-tively. This study investigated tertiary educators who teach English from a feminist perspective, where English is both the target language of learning as well as the medium of instruction. Such a teaching constella-tion poses the challenge of teaching English as a target language while simultaneously exposing it as a language of colonial domination and

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exploitation. For example, in reflecting on the British colonial domina-tion of Botswana, Thembi pointed out that: Colonial Botswana, like all colonial countries, was gripped in a mentality that denied our ability,our intellect, our beauty as a people, and thus instilled in us a lack of pride in our traditional culture. Thembi refers to a familiar strategy that colonising Britain used to entrench its supremacy over its conquests. Through the devaluation of indigenous cultures, traditions, languages and symbols of the colonised nation, Britain succeeded in engendering a colonial attitude by elevating its culture, language and national symbols. It is arguably in the domain of linguistic colonisation that English domi-nation continues to be most visible. This analysis is attested to by Webb (1998) who observes that linguistic domination engenders a colonial attitude, which supports the belief that some languages are better or more effective than others. As a way of illustrating how a colonial attitude has impacted on Botswana and the status of English in relation to other in-digenous languages, Thembi writes:

One could also cite the use of the English language versus that of the Setswana lan-guage in a multilingual class … . In the case of the University of Botswana, for example, African Literature written in English, and African literature written either in Setswana or other indigenous languages, are all taught in English as the language while other indigenous languages are subordinated. It is this situation that shows that English, the coloniser’s language, has become the dominant language in Botswana. It seems this historically dominant culture with its language has long determined its own status and marginalised the status of other indigenous cultures to the extent that English in Botswana is the official language while Setswana re-mains the national language … . Setswana as a language of wider communication within the country is used largely as a symbol of nationhood while other languages, spoken in Botswana, such as Kalanga and Seyeyi, etc. do not have their role appro-priately defined in the country’s national policy. The unequal and different roles that these two ‘major’ languages play in the country show that multilingualism is more symbolic than functional. (Essay)

Thembi comments on the subordinate/marginalised status of indigenous languages, such as Kalanga and Seyeyi, in relation to the domi-nant/colonising status of English. The dominance of English is so widely accepted in Botswana that it enjoys national status. In addition, English is the medium of instruction at the University of Botswana (irrespective of whether the texts which are taught are authored in indigenous lan-guages) The dominant status of English is foregrounded by Thembi’s

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emphasis that it is regarded as the language, rather than one among many other indigenous languages. The apparent resignation that English has long determined its own dominant status at the expense of subordinating indigenous languages owes to the perception that English is the gateway to attaining self-sufficiency and worthiness. Colonial devaluation of in-digenous languages has resulted in many people developing inferiority complexes about their languages and alienating them from their indige-nous languages and cultures as they aspire to an improved quality of life. The dominant status of English in relation to indigenous languages is also discernible in South Africa. Thus, the attitude among speakers of indigenous South African languages parallels Thembi’s reference to the dissonance between symbolic and functional bilingualism in Botswana. Luckett (1995) confirms that South African speech communities seem also to appreciate the symbolic value of multilingualism but not its func-tional value, because proficiency in indigenous languages does not se-cure employment and access to the global community. Speakers of African indigenous languages believe that they have been denied proper access to English; yet it is proficiency in English as the language of power which promotes upward social mobility, access to the global community, access to learning, employment, and an improved quality of life.

It is against this backdrop that the importance for educators of English to be sensitive to multilingual and bilingual issues in their de-mographically diverse classes emerges. Reflecting on her own colonial attitude about the superiority of the English language, Carol addresses the issue of linguistic imperialism and its implications for teaching the English language in multilingual classrooms. She writes:

I began to understand how ‘colonial’ my views were on the superiority of English, and of a particular version of English … it was only with my move to UWC in 1986 that I was forced, in my daily teaching practice, to alter my assumptions, especially concerning ‘correctness’. At UWC I encountered a body of students who were multilingual … . We have moved from demanding ‘correct’ grammar and spelling, to acceptance of variations of English. We have constantly identified the kinds of ‘transfers’ from other languages that occur … . How important are ‘correct’ prepo-sitions? How formal does the language of an academic essay have to be? We have had to distinguish between rules and conventions, recognising that language con-ventions are just that, a matter of what is socially acceptable, rather than a fixed rule of the language. (Essay)

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Carol highlights the importance of recognising the ‘colonial’ ideological biases that are likely to influence what, why and how educators teach. In her essay, she reflects on her early socialisation that instilled in her the belief that the English language could act as a moral force capable of redeeming the world. Acknowledging, understanding and revising her colonial attitude about the superior status of English resulted in her accepting that ‘standard English’ is a linguistic myth. This is an observa-tion which Penelope (1990:17) supports, when she points out that:

… for centuries, prescriptive grammar has served men’s agenda for ‘linguistic colonisation.’ … Like the cars and boats that men possess, English is referred to as if it were female – the ‘mother-tongue.’ Men will tolerate only proper women and proper English. Linguistic deviance, like social deviance must be suppressed or forced into conformity. Mother-tongue is seen as a damsel in distress and men must rescue her from contamination to maintain linguistic purity.

While Penelope links the maintenance of linguistic purity to androcentric agendas, Carol points to how linguistic purity is linked to cultural domi-nation and hegemony. Thus, as an educator who teaches multilingual students she has become less demanding about ‘correct’ grammar and spelling and more accommodating of transfers from different languages. She has also reconciled herself to the reality that despite attempts to pre-serve the ‘purity’ of English, the globalisation of English has resulted in variation in pronunciations, accents, spellings and expressions, and this has altered the way in which the English language is used. Thus, rather than clinging to colonial ideologies of linguistic purity and the standardi-sation of English, Carol describes her attempts at accepting its flexibility and viewing differences in her students’ use of English not as a problem that needs to be solved, but as an expression of the evolutionary nature of language, and of the existence of varieties of Englishes. Carol’s prag-matic perspective is consistent with the spirit of multilingualism, which accommodates differences in accents, pronunciations, the use of ‘inter-languages,’ and the legitimacy of local standards, etc.

In addition, the importance for teachers of English in multilingual classrooms to be sensitive to the psycho-social comfort of their students relates directly to the observation that the dominant status of English and its colonial baggage is likely to impact negatively on students’ confi-dence and self-esteem. The probability of this negative impact of English on students’ confidence and self-esteem is supported by Krashan (in Ellis

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1990:56–60) who points out that acquiring proficiency in the target lan-guage is contingent on an affective filter that is characterised by low anxiety, high self-confidence, and positive feelings about one’s status. Students adapt patterns of behaviour in the language of learning, based on the status of their own language(s) in relation to English; their own community’s views of the English language; the dialect of English which they hear and learn; and its relationship to standard English. These are issues which Vijay addresses in the following extract:

I have taught my students, since my first year of teaching, that they should get over their complexes regarding the status of their mother tongue and understand the his-tory (of colonialism and Apartheid). What I have done, since about the mid-1990s, was to encourage students to use the language in which they felt most competent to brainstorm and develop ideas. This was particularly well received by tutorial classes (and students’ independent study groups) … . So the affirmation of indige-nous languages served principally as a technique to enhance students’ capacity to ultimately produce writing in the medium of English, for assignments, tests and examinations. … My graduate students have also expressed great surprise that their mother tongue and the voices of ordinary people are being affirmed in the English Department. (Essay)

Engendering a multilingual attitude that creates spaces for people to be rightfully different and to receive recognition for their full humanity is what Vijay attempts to achieve. This objective is of particular relevance in her classes, which comprise predominantly Black and Indian students. Vijay is aware of the inferiority complexes which students are likely to carry regarding the status of their mother tongues. Sensitive to the possi-bility that the devaluation of African and Indian languages could have negative repercussions on her students’ self-identity, Vijay attempts to address the possible psychological damage of colonialism, which gener-ally engenders inferiority complexes in non-native speakers of English. By encouraging students to brainstorm and to develop ideas in the lan-guage in which they feel most competent and with which they feel most comfortable, Vijay shows sensitivity to the socio-psychological attach-ment that people may have to their languages; she shows a respect for its speakers, and an acceptance of the value of all languages. According to Akinnaso (1989:139) such an attitude demonstrates respect for linguistic and cultural diversity and accepts language-as-a-learning resource,rather than as a problem that needs to be overcome. This perspective is in stark contrast to Phumzile’s reflections about the punitive measures that

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were meted out to students in the ‘English-only’ school rule, when – in writing about Inanda Seminary – she recalls: I was ambivalent about the ways in which our lives were shaped at this institution for many years, as I was about the language rule, which meant that we were punished for speaking anything but English. The use of languages other than English in an English language classroom displays an understanding of the diffi-culties which people have in acquiring and using a foreign language. However, an important qualification that needs to be made in regard to respecting linguistic diversity in a university class where the target lan-guage is English is the instances and degree to which interlanguages, code-switching and deviation from the ‘standard’ is accommodated.

Carol makes an important distinction between language conventions and fixed language rules, and Vijay distinguishes between using non-English languages for brainstorming (oral discussion) with the ultimate aim of producing writing in English. Central to what Carol and Vijay allude to is the sense that certain aspects of English language usage need to be adhered to in order to ensure that communication is clear, coherent and logical. This is especially so given that students who register to study English as a target language would be expected to graduate out of these classes with high levels of competence in the English language.

Finally, while recognising multilingualism as a resource in linguisti-cally diverse classrooms, Vijay suggests that: … implementing multilin-gual policies in higher education institutions does not just mean pro-posing the inclusion of as many languages as possible but must address the … sexism (and other oppressions) in all of the languages. Central to Vijay’s suggestion is that multilingualism should not be viewed or im-plemented in a quantitative way. Viewing multilingualism in a quantita-tive way (i.e. knowing three or more languages) is consistent with a technical rationality as opposed to a qualitative view of multilingualism that entails accepting that people may be different racially, culturally and linguistically. Thus, while it is necessary to be sensitive to students’ di-verse linguistic repertoires, it is equally important to be critical of the inherent discriminatory elements not just in English, but in all other lan-guages that are used in the classroom.

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Naming and Representation: a constructed and contested domain of the ‘Other’ in English Language and Literature Studies

Much has already been said about the dominance of English. The su-premacy of the English language has been secured through the devalua-tion of Other languages: first, through the elevated representation of itself and its associated cultural symbols, and second, in the way in which other languages, its speakers and their realities are (mis)represented or under-represented. Thus, in ways that parallel the use of language to promote an androcentric worldview, the dominance of English has also served to present a Eurocentric (predominantly) English worldview, with its attendant stereotypes. This is a phenomenon to which Phumzile refers when she critiques her undergraduate studies both for its numeric leanness in the representation of the realities of the Other as well as the lies and misrepresentation of the Other. She writes:

In keeping with the contradictions which plague liberalism, I did not see myself in much of the undergraduate work I studied at UCT. For example, after a BA with English and History as my majors, my knowledge of literature … or feminist sub-jectivity was very limited. I was well versed in the canon, but could only read Afri-can American, Chicana, Native American, South American and Asian writing in my spare time. I had read so few texts by continental Africans within the course that I could name only a few African writers at the end of that degree. Within the UCT curriculum I often saw lies about myself, was infuriated by the suggestion that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presented only refreshing and dynamic representations of the Other. Sometimes the curriculum angered me though its omissions as well as through the brevity of the material, which did engage, race, history and gender meaningfully. (Essay)

In the light of her language learning experiences, Phumzile, as an edu-cator of English, uses her teaching space as a forum from which to re-dress the misrepresentation and under-representation of the Other. For example, in the ENG 225 Course, Phumzile teaches a literature section which specifically interrogates colonial (mis)representations of the Other. At the time of my lecture observations she was teaching the text, Journey to Ithaca. Phumzile read the following extract from Journey to Ithaca, which poignantly illustrates the denigration of the Other in colo-nial representations:

No, I did not leave India and all its superstitions and rituals to come here and sub-mit to the tribal rites of Europe. You talk of Indians as if they’re barbarians because

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they cremate the dead and toss them in the river, but what about you? You believe a baby should be dumped in a basin of water by a priest and some mumbo jumbo said over its head or it won’t go to heaven.

Drawing on this extract, as well as on other episodes from Journey to Ithaca, Phumzile covered a variety of issues which interrogated the (mis)representations of India, and how this novel in particular, could be seen in conversation with other colonialist novels, for example, Passageto India, that deconstruct travel into India. Phumzile contrasted Journeyto Ithaca to other novels which denigrate journeying towards the Orient; she also explored with her students the relationship between Europe and India, and the relationship between Europe and all Europe’s Other.Desai’s novel, in particular, problematises simplistic assumptions about India which are based on representations/colonial constructs that the European travellers would have been exposed to in their home countries, and makes the readers aware of how their travel to India exposes them to experiences that are different from their expectations and the discursive images which they had prior to their visiting India.

Finding a Voice: overcoming silencing and exclusion of the Other in English Language Studies

Accepting that the experiences of the Other has been marginalised in relation to the dominance of the English canon, attention to post-colonial discourses recognises the need to be responsible to the Other by including subjugated narratives both of women and of marginalised Other. This is a move that is consistent with the ethical responsibility to make marginalised realities visible. In the following extract, Carol refers to attempts at the institution where she teaches to redistribute the narra-tive field by including literary texts that have been marginalised by the English canon. She writes:

Post-colonial feminist practice in the English Department at UWC has been assisted by the fact that for years now we have felt free to incorporate into our courses both texts translated from other languages, e.g. Arabic, French, Xhosa, Afrikaans and texts not usually included under the term “literature”: such texts as popular forms (romances), travel writing, and diaries. … The main focus is on South Africa, its literature, autobiography, media and its popular culture, but my reading and teaching of South African fiction and autobiography is always contextualised

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within writing from Africa, and often also within the context of diasporic writing, Indian writing, as well as developments among ‘western’ feminist writers. (Essay)

Carol makes the significant point that – while English remains the target language – students’ literary experiences are not confined to literary gen-res which are produced by English authors. Studying texts that have been translated into English from various other languages helps to achieve several objectives. First, incorporating translated texts from local lan-guages, such as isiXhosa, Afrikaans, etc. exposes students to experiences which they are familiar with from their immediate social realities. Second, students are able to locate themselves not just within the South African context, but to see their location within the broader African con-tinent, as well as western contexts. In this way students are introduced to perspectives that are beyond their immediate contextual social realities, and they are made aware of cultural, political and religious convergences and divergences. One potential spin-off from exposing students to literary experiences which are translated from other languages is that it confirms Carrington’s (1988, in Bryan 1994) contention that speakers of marginalised languages can maintain their ‘cultural identity’ while they learn English. In this way English language teaching can be infused with indigenous sensibilities, and English can overcome its being associated with colonialism, domination, exploitation and slavery. Other ways in which these educators attempt to make students aware of the realities of the Other are evident, for example, in Phumzile’s ENG 702: a Masters course on African Literature in which she teaches slave narratives and writings by Africans from the eighteenth century. Through the employ-ment of deconstruction techniques, educators, like Carol and Phumzile, attempt to increase their students’ critical engagement with canonical English texts and colonial representations of the Other while they also expose them to alternative marginalised literatures.

One way in which Carol introduces her students to alternative mar-ginalised genres is by exposing them to popular forms such as romances, travel writing and diaries. Vijay had the same ends in view when she included in her Language and Power Course a component which re-quired students to conduct ethnographic research for an assignment on AIDS. Through interviews, students researched the topic ‘HIV/AIDS Prevention: an analysis of people’s awareness and attitudes.’ In moti-vating for the use of this research genre, Vijay pointed out that unfortu-

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nately, within English and Language Studies, the focus has tended to be on elite forms rather than on what ordinary people had to say. Thus, Vijay got her students to construct a research question for the AIDS Assignment that was going to accommodate listening to the voices of one’s peers, friends, people whom one knows – those whom one lives with, whose voices are not so well heard. By including marginalised genres and voices that have often been silent or silenced, these educators cumulatively stress the importance of blurring the boundaries between high and low culture. Breaking down those boundaries is important in so far as the cultural links between speech and power show that some lin-guistic strategies and genres are decorated with greater value and author-ity than others, and also because social actors who generally generate these marginalised forms have not been granted currency in mainstream discourses. Making their voices/contributions audible as socially signifi-cant discourses translates to emancipatory and empowerment work – a commitment which features high on the feminist redress agenda.

In the foregoing discussion, I have attempted to show that by making students aware of how language is used as a means to oppress women, parallels could be drawn for exploring how English language domination serves to subordinate the colonised Other. Through both explicit and implicit teaching content and methodologies, the feminist language educators attempt to conscientise students to the ways in which language can be, and has been used to divide the world into two unequal parts – one that privileges androcentric dominance and English imperi-alism and the other that marginalises women and minority languages. The links among the various tiers of social oppression, such as colonialism/Apartheid and patriarchy, are perhaps succinctly captured in the following extract from Thembi’s essay:

Interestingly, those who stubbornly cling to the belief that the roles women and men perform is biologically determined are quick to adopt a different position when parallels between racism/colonialism and sexism are drawn. … They begin to un-derstand that just as colonialism is lopsided in favour of the colonial ‘masters’ so is patriarchy slanted in favour of men. Sensitising students to these parallels and dis-tinctions between the dominant and the subordinate, the powerful and the power-less, the superior and the inferior, the major and the minor which set apart categories of people in any societies becomes crucial in any course syllabus that mainstreams gender.

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In summarising the key concerns in Movement Three, we note that it is characterised by the enactment of a transformed identity. The educators activate their project identities through their teaching and theorising to create awareness among their students about the social injustices that plague women in particular and broader society in general. Accepting the mandate that part of the feminist teacher’s responsibility is to share the energy for personal and social change, these educators attempt, through their theorising and teaching, to impress upon their students the recogni-tion of their personal oppression, as well as of the oppression of those in broader society. It is hoped that, through such recognition, students would be inspired to join forces in reducing inequality, changing dis-criminatory values and attitudes, and agitating for social justice.

Conclusion

Important points which emerge from the exploration of the three move-ments in coming to feminist consciousness include:

First, the three movements provide a useful framework for tracking processes of identity formation, affiliation to feminist ideology, and sub-sequent feminist identificatory trajectories. However, the process of coming to feminist consciousness should not be viewed in a linear way. For example, for Jennifer, Vijay and Phumzile, Movement Two does not mark the beginning of their coming to feminist consciousness, but only a point at which they find the appropriate vocabulary/language to name patriarchy. In their essays, they each testify to being suspicious about female oppression from an early age, with Phumzile and Vijay openly resisting social prescriptions for gender-appropriate behaviour. In addi-tion, there comes a point when Movement Two, which is characterised by an outward gaze and the naming of patriarchy, operates on a trajec-tory that is parallel to Movement Three. In Movement Three, the women enact a transformed identity that sees them engaging in consciousness-raising through their theorising and their teaching of emancipation from social oppression. Thus, rather than Movement Two coming to a culmi-nation, the women continue to be sensitive to new/different ways in

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which patriarchal oppression manifests itself. They continue to name patriarchy, they continue their involvement in anti-oppression social networks, and people, places and publications continue to influence them. In other words, Movement Two does not eventuate in Movement Three, but operates in tandem/concurrently with it.

Second, there is not a coherence of effect in coming to feminist con-sciousness; that is, feminist consciousness is not a static state of being. In this regard, Phumzile reflects on her espousal of different feminist ide-ologies, for example, feminism, Black feminism, Womanism/post-colo-nial feminism. These trajectories in her identification with different feminist ideologies are reflective of different experiences of oppression. Jennifer reports that her espousal of different feminist ideologies was largely a result of her changing research interests.

Third, in reviewing the exploration into the trajectories of feminist identity development, it is insightful to attend to Laplanche & Pontalis’ (in Pitt 1997:132) postulation that, in the relationship between identity and identification, the following two key formulations emerge, namely:

identification precedes identity; and identification constitutes the grounds of possibility for the emer-gence of identity.

The formulation suggests that the process of identifying with feminist knowledge produces feminist identity, which implies that engagement with feminist textual knowledge activates the possibility for the crafting of a new identification and a new sense of self and agency. In psycho-logical terms, Laplanche & Pontalis (ibid.) postulate that:

… an ego-ideal identification with feminism, in the form of a person, people, or a body of writing, suspends the ego-ideal’s existing prohibitions, [and] permits different thinking … when the ego identifies its ego-ideal with a social other, it is permeable to the wish, will or ideas of that other.

This postulation captures the crux of the discussion which was presented in Movement Two, that identification with feminism is often precipitated through exposure to, and association with people, places and publica-tions. I have argued that once the participants have recognised and acknowledged the internal and external structures of patriarchal oppression, their coming to feminist consciousness proceeded to an out-

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ward gaze, which inspired them into political action. In summarising this trajectory of events, Pitt (1997:133) maintains that there are two dis-cernible narratives which are consonant with feminist knowledge pro-duction, namely: (i) victimisation, and (ii) resistance to victimisation.

This narrative formulation is certainly applicable to the participants in my study. However, cognisance must be given to the erroneousness of the supposition that knowledge of phenomena necessarily leads to identi-fication with the phenomena and thus eventuates as an identity marker. In that regard, it is important for attention to be paid to a significant dis-tinction that occurs at this juncture, which often results in a feminist subject position being differentiated from a female subject position. This invariably produces two ambivalent categories of women: namely, (i) women and (ii) feminists. In elaborating the discussion, Pitt (ibid.:134) contends:

For radical feminism, the distinction between women and feminists is secured through the mechanism of ‘consciousness-raising’. Consciousness-raising promises to reveal the hidden truth about women’s lives and experiences and, in so doing to reinstall ontology (who women are) precisely at the moment when politics (what women want) become possible. The method of consciousness-raising, regarded as the quintessential feminist method, imagines consciousness as something to be possessed rather than as a relation to be made. Furthermore, the notion of feminist consciousness (the desired result of consciousness-raising) entails the notion of false consciousness.

While feminist discourses acknowledge that it is difficult to be a feminist in a sexist society, even more difficulties emerge when women are di-vided by whether or not they possess feminist gender consciousness as opposed to [false?] gender consciousness. This latter point relates to the presumption that knowledge or consciousness of feminist discourses by extension implies automatic identification with feminist sensibilities and results in the production of a feminist identity. Pitt suggests that “self-identity is an effect of the illusion that there exists a mimetic relationship between knowledge and identity, between what one knows and what one is.” This suggestion implies that consciousness or knowledge do not necessarily eventuate in the adoption of the label ‘feminist.’ Knowledge does not dictate or shape identity. Social actors may have exposure to feminist discourses, but this does not necessarily mean that they will automatically identify with feminist sensibilities and assume the identity

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of a feminist. Identification with feminist discourses may result in laying claim to a feminist subject position by adopting the label ‘feminist.’ There is no guarantee that identification with feminist discourses will result in the adoption of the label ‘feminist’. By extension, a decision to refuse the label does not translate to having false gender consciousness.

In an attempt to illustrate the complexity in debates on feminist identity, feminist identification, and feminist consciousness, Castells (1997:200) adds yet another dimension by introducing the controversial term, practical feminists. The term refers to the widest and deepest stream of women’s struggles in today’s world, particularly in the developing world, but also among working-class women and community organisations in industrialised countries. He argues that:

Of course all feminists are practical, in the sense that they all undermine everyday, in many different ways, the foundations of patriarchalism, be it by fighting for women’s rights or by demystifying patriarchal discourses. But it may also be that many women are feminists in practice, while not acknowledging the label or even having a clear conscious or opposing patriarchalism. Thus, the question arises: canfeminism exist without feminist consciousness? Aren’t the struggles and organisa-tions of women throughout the world, for their families (meaning, mainly, their children), their lives, their work, their shelter, their health, their dignity, feminism in practice?

While admitting that he is ambivalent on this point, Castells hints at the factionalising potential of a feminist politics that is coached in assuming the label ‘feminist’ or even claims to having feminist consciousness. hooks (1984:29) also refers to this potential for factionalisation and suggests a reconceived feminist politics that replaces the statement: ‘I am a feminist’ with ‘I advocate feminism.’ hooks argues that this alternative invites discussion and dialogue rather than tapping into people’s assumptions about what ‘a feminist’ is. hooks contends that advocating feminism defines it as ‘a movement to end sexist oppression,’ and she is critical of the tendency for feminism to be understood as an expression of one’s identity, or as a matter of one’s lifestyle. Such a construction, hooks further contends, is exclusionary and confuses the creation of ‘safe,’ ‘supportive’ feminist environments with political praxis that is aimed at eradicating sexist and other oppression from all people’s lives. In this way, hooks provides a way of responding to the ‘I’m not a femi-nist, but ...’ syndrome, because she suggests that feminist politics, rather

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than being derived from women’s gender identity, should challenge eve-ryone to participate fully in social change. Such a stance, hooks argues, does not sanction certain identities while condemning others.

Both Castells and hooks’ critique of identificatory labels that are associated with feminist consciousness and feminist identity construc-tions highlight important points for consideration. Those points are espe-cially significant given that identity constructions and perceptions influ-ence the spectrum of options and understandings which teachers and students select from in order to choreograph classroom discourses and relations. More importantly, if there is no value-neutral pedagogy, this has implications for the ways in which educators who assume the label ‘feminist’ enact their personal, political and pedagogical identities in classrooms which comprise students who emanate from diverse ideo-logical backgrounds.

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for my students

Afternoon. Across the garden, in Green Hall, someone begins playing the old piano - a spontaneous piece, amateurish and alive, full of a simple, joyful melody. The music floats among us in the classroom.

I stand in front of my students telling them about sentence fragments. I ask them to find the ten fragments in the twenty-one-sentence paragraph on page forty-five. They’ve come from all parts of the world – Iran, Micronesia, Africa, Japan, China, even Los Angeles – and they’re still eager to please me. It’s less than half way through the quarter.

They bend over their books and begin. Hamid’s lips move as he follows the tortuous labyrinth of English syntax. Yoshie sits erect, perfect in her pale make-up, legs crossed, quick pulse minutely jerking her right foot. Tony, from an island in the South Pacific, sprawls limp and relaxed in his desk.

The melody floats around and through us in the room, broken here and there, fragmented, re-started. It feels mideastern, but it could be jazz, or the blues – it could be anything from anywhere. I sit down on my desk to wait, and it hits me from nowhere – a sudden, sweet, almost painful love for my students.

‘Nevermind,’ I want to cry out. ‘It doesn’t matter about fragments. Finding them or not. Everything’s a fragment and everything’s not a fragment. Listen to the music, how fragmented how whole, how we can’t separate the music from the sun falling on its knees on all the greenness, from this moment, how this moment

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contains all the fragments of yesterday and everything we’ll ever know of tomorrow!’

Instead, I keep a coward’s silence. The music stops abruptly; they finish their work, and we go through the right answers, which is to say we separate the fragments from the whole.

Love in the Classroom Zolynas (1995)

Chapter Five

Exploring the Complexities of Feminist Teacher Identity

When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you, whether you are dark-skinned, old, disabled, female or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone with the authority of a teacher, says describe the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

Adrienne Rich (in Maher & Tetreault 1994)

Introduction

Central to the examination of the tenets of feminisms is the understanding that identities affect teaching discourses and practices in ways that we will perhaps never fully understand. Identity constructions and perceptions also influence the range of options and understandings from which teachers and students are able to choose in developing class-room discourses. The shifting terrain of both teacher and student identi-ties, and diverse epistemological reconfigurations, emphasise the need for a constant examination of the roles of teachers and students’ identi-ties in the shaping of classroom discourses.

The complexity of conceptualising the work of teachers, students and pedagogies owes largely to the fact that it is constituted by diverse socio-cultural, historical and racial intersections and interactions. This observation is consistent with Ellsworth’s acknowledgment (1989, in Ropers-Huilman 1997) of the dilemma that is inherent in relating to in-

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dividuals who are constructed in post-structuralist sensibilities. Ellsworth contends that:

… people cannot fully understand each other, but they can try to understand how identity is subjective and can be used as a source through which power operates.These identities are not static or timeless. Rather, identities, as well as power and knowledge constructions, are fluid and constantly being redefined.

Chris Weedon’s (1987:125) insights are also useful in considering the nature of post-structuralist subjectivities. In this regard she writes:

Although the subject in post-structuralism is socially constructed in discursive practices, she nonetheless exists as a thinking, feeling subject and social agent, ca-pable of resistance and innovations produced out of the clash between contradictory subject positions and practices. She is also a subject able to reflect upon the discur-sive relations, which constitute her and the society in which she lives, and she is able to choose from the options available.

Accepting the fluidity and complexity of identity positionalities, in the ensuing discussion, I focus on themes which heavily influence, and were influenced, by identity constructions of feminist teachers, both in the literature and within feminist teachers’ community of practice. The dis-cussions are framed around Gore’s (1993) conceptualisation of the femi-nist teacher’s authority, which she differentiates as authority versus nurturance, authority as authorship, and authority as power.

Section 1: Authority versus Nurturance

In order to understand the feminisation of teaching that occurred in Western societies during the nineteenth century, it is useful to identify those attributes of femininity and pedagogy that became associated with each other. During that period of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation when women entered teaching as a way of fleeing domesticity, they were inducted into an institutional paternalism that expected them to assume responsibility for the moral fabric of the family. In commenting on the genesis of women’s entry into teaching, Grumet (1988:84) observes:

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Women were not asked to create this moral leadership in either the home or school, but they were expected to be the vehicles through which laws, rules, language, and the order of the father, the principal, and the employer were communicated to the child. Thus it is not surprising that the structure of the school replicates the patriar-chal structure of the family. Women teachers’ own passivity was to provide the model of obedience for the young to emulate. The women who maintain daily con-tact with children and nurture them are themselves trained, supervised, and evalu-ated by men.

In elaborating Grumet’s observation, regarding the implications of the roles which women were expected to play in education, Walkerdine (in Mercer 1997:40–41) suggests that from the late nineteenth century on-wards, female teachers were exhorted to use their ‘natural’ talent forloving nurturance; an exhortation that emanated from the associative and traditional functions of women as care-givers and nurturer. In addition, Walker (1983) points out that the symbolic maternal which is also em-bodied in the concept of Alma Mater, is discursively constituted on the relation between women and universities as maternal. The concept Alma Mater, which is variously translated as ‘bounteous mother,’ ‘foster mother’ or ‘soul mother,’ is also the name that is attributed to the Roman goddess of teaching, especially as the teacher of the mysteries of sex. Ironically, maternal nurturance has been critiqued for ignoring female sexuality and the sensual and sexual life of the female educator. The female teacher was expected to banish sensuality from the classroom and from her life, and this perhaps provides a convincing explanation for the Mind/Body split that regulates patriarchal curriculum discourses. In-stead, the association between sexuality, maternity and teaching was rendered invisible in favour of an image of the benign and self-less ma-ternal teacher. In this regard, the emergence of nurturance or maternal pedagogies remains one of the major discourses that has developed within the ambit of feminist pedagogies; it is based on the caricature of women as nurturer and care-giver. However, not only did many feminists embrace such conceptions of maternal pedagogies, but it was a particu-larly narrow version of the maternal that was embraced. In practice there are a multitude different ways of mothering; but one way of mothering that has been perpetuated in much traditional feminist pedagogy is that of the bourgeois, all-sacrificing, all-nurturing, well-resourced, power-sharing ‘good’ mother.

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Kirby (1994) is also perplexed as to why we have not overturned the apparent delusions of maternal stereotyping, which have resulted in the conflation of teaching with motherhood. Within patriarchal society the notion of woman is laden with the traditional functions of care-giver and nurturer, and those functions are apparently considered to be incompatible with the ability to exercise authority in public spaces. The perceived dissonance between authority and nurturance has become a recurrent theme within discourses on feminist pedagogy. The contention being that while women are required to assume authority in educational and social spaces, traditional conceptions of women render notions of authority incompatible with the role of women as nurturers and care-givers.

By definition, nurturing, embodies the actions of feeding and pro-tecting, supporting and encouraging, bringing up, training or educating. Therefore, to nurture a person essentially encompasses some of the basic functions of what a teacher does. Nurturance pedagogy finds parallels with maternal, connected, holistic, and empathic teaching, which are all defined by the same basic characteristics. Nurturing in the theatre of pedagogic performance is defined in both positive and negative ways and is related to the effectiveness of teachers’ impact and influence on stu-dent learning. Jarratt & Culley et al. (in Bell & Nugent 2001) highlight the positive aspects of nurturance teaching. They contend that helping a student become a better and more involved learner is an important issue in any discussion of nurturance teaching, because it exists as one of the ultimate goals of an encouraging and supportive teacher. Productive stu-dent learning, therefore, is an asset and valued outcome of any positive and effective teaching method, including nurturance teaching. For the most part, a nurturing attitude is looked upon as a necessary element of teaching because it provides students with a safe environment for their ideas to flourish.

However, some scholars, for example, Dorsey (2002); Eagleton (1998); and Mercer (1997) signal the drawbacks of enacting nurturance pedagogies, especially within university contexts. They argue that the definition must be expanded in the context of universities where the nurturing teacher is meant to challenge and stimulate university-age adults, and not merely foster simplistic growth. Essentially, Dorsey, Eagleton and Mercer propose that, at this juncture, a more scholarly in-terpretation of nurturance is appended to the discourse in order to

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strengthen the claim that it belongs in the realm of higher education. In this context, a nurturing educator may be posited as one who creates a supportive, non-threatening and accepting environment; one that is dis-cursive, interactive, yet challenging.

Against this landscape of different views, the participants have raised the following issues regarding the maternalisation of teaching. Their conceptions revolved around:

Language as Symbolic Order; Teacher as Bounteous Mother; and Familial and Friendship Practices, Caricatures and Condescension

Language as Symbolic Order

In identifying the possible source for the conflation of female teacher with mother, Jennifer advances a psychoanalytic interpretation, which she argues is tied to the role that language plays in configuring and con-flating the female teacher with mother. She articulates the predominance of gynocentric conceptions of the teacher as follows:

We create ourselves and are constructed by others in the medium of language, which has been called ‘the Symbolic order’ by psychoanalytical theorists such as Kristeva and Lacan. The Symbolic order, a linguistic realm characterised by difference and separation, is constructed upon the foundation of erasure of the ma-ternal union with a child. In this dyad, boundaries are fluid, dependency is acceptable and even body spaces are permeable. In order for the child to enter soci-ety, s/he has to forsake the maternal and construct a sense of self that is premised on separateness. Language, therefore, is made possible by revoking union with the beloved other, whose very body encompasses all the infant’s desires. This, I be-lieve, is a key aspect of what Kristeva means when she describes women’s position in society as primarily sacrificial. The element of choice enters in when the individual becomes aware of herself as gendered by others’ expectations and dis-course and can then choose how to respond to that construction. (Essay)

Discernible in Jennifer’s explication of the Symbolic order is a push-pull tension. The ‘pull factor,’ which signifies maternal presence, and entails drawing the mother and child towards each other, is captured in the

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acknowledgement that: boundaries are fluid; dependency is acceptable and body spaces [are]permeable [by] the beloved other, whose body encompasses all the infant’s desires. The ‘push factor,’ which signifies maternal absence, repels the mother and child away from each other, and is captured in the phrases: difference and separation; erasure of the ma-ternal union with a child; for the child to enter society s/he must forsake the mother … self is premised on separateness; revoking union with the beloved other. It is within this dynamic that we see the psychoanalytical theoretical exposition of maternal absence and presence. This oscillation between maternal absence and maternal presence becomes the basis for the child’s ego development. Grumet (1988:27) argues that it is only in the mother’s absence that the child begins to perceive his or her own selfhood so that their intermittent separation is the basis for the first identification of self. The converse is also true in that the willingness and capacity for separation pivot on the prior and anticipated satisfaction of the child’s need for intimacy, dependence and nurturance, which are contingent on maternal presence. Thus, the developmental needs of both mother and child simultaneously sustain and contradict the concrete, symbiotic origins of their relationship.

In attempting to understand the applicability of mother-child rela-tions of union and separation to education, Frank’s (1995:35) work has been useful in unraveling what goes on between teachers and students, and why. Using discourses of psychoanalysis, Frank examines the trans-ference relation that persists between teachers and students and con-cludes that the end of transference requires separation, which then allows the other to be perceived as someone else. When mirrored against the classroom context, a feminist epistemology reflects this dialectical de-pendence of subject and object in teacher-student relations. Severed in-crementally from the biological mother, the child (student) continues this psychosocial, bio-cognitive relationship, first with female school teachers who dominate early childhood learning, and often, many stu-dents perpetuate the remnants of this pattern with female faculty in in-stitutions of higher learning. In this regard, the feminist classroom be-comes a fertile ground for the prolongation of mother-teacher/child-stu-dent relations, given its preference for connected learning, and recogni-tion for women’s ways of knowing and being. Within the context of the university, the ‘pull’ dynamic between the teacher and her student is evident in at least two ways. The first way refers to creating a conducive

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bio/cognitive environment for learning, which entails that the teacher literally engenders a learning space that makes the student feel physically at home and then draws/socialises (‘pulls’) her/him into academic dis-courses. Second, once she has succeeded sufficiently in socialising/drawing/‘pulling’ the student into academic discourses, the ‘push’ dynamic of challenging and reconceptualising pedagogic and educational knowledges is operationalised. This means that the teacher discourages the student from uncritically consuming her views and that of hegemonic discourses and thus pushes the student away, towards al-ternative ideas/knowledges, etc. The mother-teacher/push-pull/absence-presence equation is succinctly captured by Grumet (1988:20–21) when she relates this psycho-social-bio-cognitive arrangement to curriculum concerns and suggests that the aim of the project of curriculum:

… is to claim the child, to teach him or her to master the language, the rules, the games, and the names of the fathers. Contradicting the symbiotic nature of mater-nity, the maternal project of curriculum is to relinquish the child so that both mother and child can become more independent of one another.

Examining the mother-child relationship from the perspective of the role which language as Symbolic Order plays in defining relational dynamics facilitates understanding its transference and replication in teacher-stu-dent relations. Furthermore, such an analysis provides an explanation as to why students expect the teacher not just to assume the role of mother, but to play the role of the bourgeois, self-sacrificing and bounteous mother, at that.

Teacher as Bounteous Mother

Jennifer’s thesis about the gendered expectations of the sacrificial nature of women is clarified in Carol’s observations about the roles which fe-male faculty are generally expected to perform in academia. In high-lighting the consequences of operationalising the teacher as mother personae in academia, Carol expands on the expectation of female edu-

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cators to acquiesce to motherly and nurturing pedagogic performance as naturally inscribed in their social script. She writes:

Women’s tendency to pay attention to students’ needs in line with their conditioning as women, particularly at a university like UWC, which serves a dis-advantaged body of students, means they are not promoted as quickly. On the whole, men have a greater sense of their own worth, and a greater sense of entitle-ment to promotion and pay rises, than women. (Essay)

Carol elucidates Jennifer’s comment that women’s position in society [is] primarily sacrificial. While Carol does not offer any comment in her extract on the agentic potential of women educators to subvert socially gendered expectations of them, she does address the sacrificial ethic of women educators on two complementary levels, which may be explained by examining them in relation to the Nature/Nurture coupling. Generally, the Nature/Nurture coupling is presented within the reductive binary of the either/or logic. Within the traditional debates, Nature is viewed as biologically determined, while Nurture is associated with cultural influ-ences that shape the social actor.

Although Carol disassociates herself from, and is highly averse to, arguments that support women’s instinctual or maternal nature, readers may, on the basis of the above extract, erroneously interpret Carol’s reference in the sentence fragment women’s tendency to pay attention to student’s needs as connoting an apparently natural predisposition, a gen-eral course, a propensity, and inclination for women to attend to stu-dents’ needs. Such an interpretation may obtain from the etymological association of the word ‘tendency’ with the family of words ‘tend’ (which means to care for) and ‘tender’ (which means having or expressing warm feelings, being gentle and delicate, sensitive to moral and or spiritual feelings). Proponents who associate women with innate tendencies of caring and nurturing foster the expectation that female educators will respond to students’ needs as a natural consequence of their essentially organic and ‘true’ natures. Furthermore, Carol refers to female teachers as responding to students’ needs in line with their condi-tioning. In this instance, she attributes women’s attention to students’ needs to Nurture influences, which shape and condition their behaviour. This tier of the binary coupling posits that the female teacher’s maternal response to her students is as a consequence of socially created and envi-ronmentally engendered expectations of her. Thus, the Nature/Nurture

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binary summarises the social expectation of female educators to acqui-esce to maternal and nurturing pedagogic performances, both as organic and naturally occurring manifestations of their disposition, as well as culturally learnt expectations inscribed in their social script.

Furthermore, in the sentence segment particularly at a university like UWC, which serves a disadvantaged body of students, Carol alludes to an intensification of, or extra appeal to maternalistic and nurturance pedagogic relations when serving a disadvantaged body of students. Dorsey (2002) has coined the adjective ‘intellectualised mammy’ to illustrate how students selectively and strategically expect female faculty to guide them towards intellectual growth while also nurturing them. This expectation of students is accentuated when female teachers have to work with students who are from disadvantaged socio-economic and political circumstances. Often such students arrive at university with stymied conceptual skills and lacking in basic reading, writing and study competencies. Generally, sub-standard pre-tertiary educational experi-ences exacerbate the challenges which these students have to address when they try to adjust, and acculturate themselves, to academia. This circumstance necessitates additional care-taking responsibilities, which – as attested by Carol – are taken up by female faculty, as they are cast into the role of intellectualised mammy. This expectation of maternal practice is poignantly captured by Mercer (1997) who describes the traditional mother-teacher as the:

… bourgeois all-sacrificing, all-nurturing, well-resourced, power-sharing ‘good’ mother. This mother has no desires of her own, no needs, no problems, no will of her own except to nourish and empower all her students/children, whom she loves equally and without reservation.

Central to Mercer’s descriptions of teacher-mother is the ineluctable sacrificial ethic that Jennifer has identified in the mother-child relation-ship. Carol illustrates its consequences for women educators when she alludes to the career mobility sacrifices which female educators make as they are called upon to pay attention to students’ needs. Given that the benchmark for upward career mobility in academia is tied to research and scholarly publications, Carol confides that female educators – by attending to students’ needs in line with their conditioning – means that they are not promoted as quickly. In addition, Carol points out that: women … work harder at proving themselves, often ending up doing

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much of the donkey work. In this regard, Douglas (1977) also laments that the cruellest aspect of oppression is the logic by which it forces its objects to do the dirty work in their society. She points out that:

... women, through our work as mothers, as students, and as teachers, need to un-derstand how we have contributed our labour to institutional and social organisa-tions that have extended our own subordination and have contradicted our own experiences of nurturance.

When female faculty resist, or are genuinely unable, to attend to stu-dents’ needs, they are criticised for being “heartless, bearded mothers.” In addition, being locked into teacher-mother roles inevitably results in perpetuating the equation of teaching with women’s work as opposed to scholarly research that faculty and students generally associate with men’s work. Assailed with care-giving and care-taking responsibilities invariably eventuate in undermining the female faculty’s scholarly abili-ties and contributions. The persistence of the teacher as mother image that is associated with a pedagogy of nurturance, care-giving and senti-mentalism has essentially defined and confined the role which women play in education and in broader society. Grumet (1988:87) identifies the grim consequence as follows:

Many women, mothers and teachers, [live] through other people’s stories. Having relinquished our own beginnings, middles, and ends, our stories of teaching resemble soap operas whose narratives are also frequently interrupted, repetitive and endless.

Familial and Friendship Practices, Caricatures and Condescension

Vijay and Phumzile contend that there is a tendency for students and faculty to recreate familial and friendship patterns within the education domain. Vijay does not stereotype maternal/nurturance pedagogies as either essentially good or bad, but provides a balanced view on the de-bate. She says:

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My students have taught me to interact at a more human level. Engagement for me has been highly politicised, because with my Department, the engagement is clini-cal. In a way that is satisfying to my feminist ideals because it engages, it nurtures, but it maintains a learning distance. … A lot of people are looking for mother in the classroom, and unfortunately women academics get confused with mother. From my own experience, it is a difficult one because if you buy into that then the student won’t deliver and won’t grow. At the same time you have to buy into it sufficiently to nurture, but you have to keep giving the student tough kinds of reactions. It’s almost like the way a bird will push a fledgling out of a nest. Those are mothers. They are educators also, and it is around survival. I really don’t want any of them dependent on me because I am not going to be around all the time. I do have some good relationships with former students but with most of them I’ve had to take that trip down that road which said, ‘Excuse me I’m not your parent. Don’t keep feeding me this kind of crap.’ It is that kind of thing where most of us need to replay those familial roles. But in the learning situation, there is a very fine line between dependency and developing a student who is strong, and confident. (Interview)

Three important points emerge from this extract. First, in arguing for the importance of connected teaching and learning, Vijay comments on the pervasive chilly climate that new student recruits to academia experi-ence. She admits that feminist insights have taught her to interact with her students on a more human level. Her more connected interactions with her students have become politicised in the faculty to which she is attached because – as in most other academic institutions – it runs against the grain of traditional faculty-student traditions that tend toward clinical and aloof interpersonal relations. The sense which emerges from Vijay’s view positions nurturing, teaching and connection to students as a meaningful intellectual activity – one that helps to fuse a bond between student and faculty. A nurturing attitude, from this perspective, serves teaching at university level in a positive way, in that it demystifies teacher-student relations, and presents teachers as human beings.

However, it is important to note that Vijay’s view is fraught with the push-pull dynamic and the notion of separation and difference that is enunciated in psychoanalytic theory. Vijay captures this relational dy-namic repeatedly in statements such as:

It engages, it nurtures, but it maintains a learning distance; You have to buy into it sufficiently to nurture, but you have to keep giving the student tough kinds of reactions; It’s almost like the way a bird will push a fledgling out of a nest. Those are mothers. They are educators also, and it is around survival. (Interview)

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The push-pull dynamic between teacher and student is inextricable to the logic of fundamental pedagogic philosophies, which portray the more experienced adult leading the child towards self-actualisation. This process requires that the teacher remains in touch with the emotions, confidence levels, intellectual growth and social dynamics with which the student has to deal, without negating the importance of argument and critical engagement. Given that the project of education aims at devel-oping students’ intellectual, cognitive and social survival strategies, this means that parochial images of maternal pedagogies which are inclined to sentimentalism and protectionism are more than likely to stunt stu-dents’ emotional, psychological and cognitive growth. Fostering senti-mentalism and protectionism in and of itself would be antithetical to the mission of teaching and learning. It is against this backdrop that Vijay asks her students: Can’t I treat you like adults? She then proceeds to declare: You are adults. Embodied in her question and answer is a desire to believe that, at university level, students have indeed entered the por-tals of adulthood, and henceforth she does not need to relate to them as children and she should also not be expected to entertain infantile patterns of behaviour and a dependency syndrome. The paradox of pa-rental (teacher) presence and absence is summarised in: I really don’t want any of them dependent on me because I am not going to be around all the time. The crux of the educational project is summarised in the paradox that while students will graduate out of Vijay’s physical presence, she will remain present symbolically in their lives as they assimilate, adapt, challenge and change the various ideological, sociological and psychological views that she has shared with them as their teacher. Like the mother’s biological genetic material remains em-bodied in the child even after separation, similarly, the student will carry the educational and ideological ‘genetic’ influences of Vijay, their teacher, long after they have graduated out of her class.

Second, Vijay also points out that: A lot of people are looking for mother in the classroom … and women academics get confused with mother. Inferred in this statement is the tendency for some students to operate from the belief that female faculty are supposed to be open to intimate, even familial relations with their students as a necessary counter-point to patriarchal tradition. An area that is already fraught with interpersonal tensions then becomes the site for students to act out childish patterns of interaction with maternal figures. Good teachers do

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nurture their students, encourage independent thought, and help them improve academic skills; however, there is a distinction between nurturance and ‘intellectualised mammy’ work. Thus, while acknowledging the need to be supportive of, and nurturing to her students, Vijay reminds them: Excuse me I’m not your parent. Don’t feed me this kind of crap. In these statements, Vijay introduces the third point regarding the modelling of pedagogic relations on a nuclear family para-digm. The ideological configuration of school management structures is continuously legitimated by presenting the triad of teachers, manage-ment, and pupils as essentially homologous to the family structure. In other words, the school structure replicates the patriarchal structure of the family, wherein the female educators are cast in the role of mothers, the men – who administratively and procedurally manage the school and are invariably responsible for training, supervising and evaluating – play the role of the proverbial ‘head of the family,’ and they, within this in-stitutionally sanctioned heterosexual marriage, jointly perform parenting roles to the children/students. Mercer (1997:42) ponders: Why should teachers be modelled on either mothers or fathers? Why not develop an ethic of teaching which steers well clear of any romantic, version of the nuclear family?” Gatens (1994:13) also ponders what are the impedi-ments circumscribed by the imposition of a familial psychoanalytic model onto pedagogical relations and what happens when those relations are re-imagined outside those traditional roles?

In responding to what could possibly transpire when familial roles are re-imagined in the class, Grumet (1988) points out that female teachers’ own passivity is largely meant to provide the model of obedi-ence for students to emulate. Expanding on how she discourages developing parent-child relations from being inappropriately replicated within pedagogic relations, Vijay comments on the concept of obedience and its manifestation in teacher-student relations:

It is this obedience thing. I really don’t want them to do something for form sake, and because she wants it, and because it is going into the register. I want them, even when they are doing their notes, to pick up what is relevant and meaningful to themselves, and to not give it back to me like good children – I’m saying to them, ‘Can’t I treat you like adults? You are adults. Don’t pander and patronise me in the kind of stuff that you give me, because that is not what tertiary education is about.’ (Interview)

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Vijay conceives of student obedience in two ways: first, students engaging in learning activities for form sake, and/or because it is going into the register suggest that students indulge pedagogic routines out of a sense of formality, and have no real interest in its educative value. Probably, if students know that the work will be recorded in a register, this acts as a monitoring, surveillance and control measure, and they conform to the teacher’s technologies of micro-power as a way of satis-fying administrative requirements. Second, students may perform obedi-ence rituals because she wants it, thus they may oblige learning as a way of humouring, or appeasing, the teacher. Evidently, students who adopt such strategies do not impress Vijay, since she is more interested in their not attempting to win her favour or approval by reproducing what they imagine might be pleasing to her. Essentially, Vijay discourages students from indulging in narcissistic teacher reproductions and reflections; hence she implores them not to pander and patronise her. In a further attempt to discourage ritualistic obedience pedagogies, Vijay tells her students not to give back notes to her like good children … . Can’t I treat you like adults? You are adults. Contained in these statements are her desire to relate to them as adults; adulthood, in this instance, is associ-ated with critical thinking – a by-product of independence and cognitive maturation.

In addition, some students, who deviate from construing the female teacher as mother generally, opt for the teacher as ‘big sister’ or friend. This conception of the teacher is illustrated in the following extract:

Phumzile: So you would have Black students coming for one thing and then two hours later they’re still there and you realise they’re just lurking. I mean there was an academic issue to be dealt with, but also there’s some other function that you’re serving which goes beyond the immediate material that you’re teaching and a kind of fascination because there are so few Black lecturers on campus. ... You can un-derstand me being read as a kind of a big sister in some ways – which is fine for me as long as that does not mean that you expect certain privileges, or certain allowances because of that. (Interview)

Phumzile posits that if students are given the impression that the feminist teacher overtly and covertly sympathises with them, or suggests that she understands them and identifies with them on the basis of racial and/or gender similarity, we should not be too surprised if – in trying to make sense of themselves – students become bound up in the teacher, either in

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excessive admiration that is tied to a kind of fascination, or unrealistic expectations that certain privileges, or certain allowances will be made to accommodate them. Choosing to identify with a Black woman in au-thority is a manifestation of a positive self-identity, especially in the minds of young women who live in a society that regularly endorses negative and dysfunctional images of Black women. Aware of this state of affairs, Phumzile does not object to being read as ‘big sister,’ but she inserts the proviso: as long as that does not mean that you expect certain privileges, or certain allowances, because of that. Implied in Phumzile’s statement is the forewarning that her potential acquaintance with the student’s personal problems or circumstances should not be interpreted to the effect that she will entertain sub-standard work, grant concessions about deadlines, or extend special privileges to them.

Students’ endeavours to recreate familial and friendship relations with female faculty may be attributed largely to the expectation that: teacher = family/friend = emotional blanket. Many young students still dwell in the realm of the familial; thus – when translated to classroom practice – they expect female teachers to concern themselves primarily with student casualties and function in the capacity of emotional blanket, on whom they can rely for rescue and support. This scenario is eluci-dated in the following episode which Vijay provides about a bulimic student who sought her out to discuss a personal issue:

One of the students had come to tell me that she was a bulimic, quite early in the year. I barely knew her. She clearly needed to talk, and engage with a woman in authority, or a teacher. I couldn’t figure it out whether it was gendered or not. I have to practice a thin line there where you both have to comfort, but you can’t get confused with mother. (Interview)

In highlighting her unfamiliarity with the student, Vijay signals that generally people confide highly personal matters in those with whom they are acquainted rather than in strangers. This circumstance draws attention to yet another variety of invisible labour that female faculty perform and relates to Bartky’s (1990:102) Marxist interrogation of women’s emotional labour – an activity with which many female teachers are familiar. Family, motherhood, sisterhood can be quite com-plicated relations, and they have the potential for conflict, as well as support and connectedness. A feminist pedagogical strategy that encourages students to draw parallels between family and friendship

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relations runs the risk of tapping into tensions which are rooted in dy-namics that may be less benign than envisioned by a more expansive vision of such relations.

Finally, another possible reason for female educators wanting to distance themselves from being construed as teacher-mother relates to the nurturing mother being associated with the imagery of food. By defi-nition to nurture, embodies the actions of feeding and protecting. While feeding and protecting are generally regarded as positive behaviour in society, the image of feeding takes on less positive connotations by Vijay and Thembi in relation to teaching and learning. Consider, for example,Vijay’s comment: don’t feed me this kind of crap! While several meanings could be attached to the word crap, it may be safe to extend its association with regimes of knowledge regurgitation. Such an interpreta-tioan could find support in the context of Vijay’s statement: I want them,even when they are doing their notes, to pick up what is relevant and meaningful to them, and to not give it back to me like good children. Her call for students to engage their education in a critical and informed way highlights the important discussion on knowledge production and repro-duction as it is taken up by feminist and critical theorists. (see Weiler 1988).

Continuing on a parallel trajectory, Thembi sustains the imagery of food and nurturance by introducing the metaphor of spoon-feeding. In doing so, she demonstrates the agentic potential which female teachers possess to transcend parochial associations of mother-teacher with nur-turance and nourishment. Thembi declares: Spoon-feeder. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be looked at as one who spoon-feeds or an uncommitted teacher. Through the food image, Thembi proceeds along a related but tangential trajectory to that of Vijay, in her emphatic disasso-ciation from images of the teacher-mother as nourisher. Through her double denunciation to being construed as a: Spoon-feeder. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be looked at as one who spoon-feeds, Thembi em-phasises the negative stereotyping that occurs when teachers are per-ceived as spoon-feeders. Her spirited and repeated disassociation from this metaphoric image of spoon-feeder can also be traced to teaching and learning paradigms which Freire (1968) has critiqued for bearing the marks of banking/transmission systems of education. Traditional peda-gogies have been critiqued for spoon-feeding and even force-feeding students. Notorious for undermining both students and teachers’ critical

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propensities ‘spoonfeeding/transmission’ pedagogies have come to be associated with teachers and teaching philosophies that reduce students to empty receptacles into which teachers pour received, sacred knowledge which parades as universal truth. A transmission mode of education is at odds with Thembi and Vijay’s stated objectives to pro-voke their students to critical thinking.

Thembi’s refusal to be seen as one who spoon-feeds or an uncommitted teacher combines an unconventional binary, namely, that of the spoon-feeder and the uncommitted teacher. Her use of the either/or binary is an unusual departure from the way in which binaries operate. Generally, in a binary, the first component of the coupling is elevated and privileged, while the second is devalued and disprivileged. In setting up the binary spoon-feeder/uncommitted teacher, Thembi disassociates herself from the entire binary because each entity in the coupling has come to be associated within educational circles as unscholarly and lacking in professionalism. The negative consequences of acquiescing to spoon-feeding pedagogies court the risk of earning the educator a repu-tation of being an unscholarly, theoretically uninformed and uncommitted teacher, who is merely a conduit for cultural reproduction and cognitive cloning. Aware of the possibility for female educators’ to be undermined, it is likely that – against this backdrop – Thembi attempts to steer clear of reproducing the caricature of the uncommitted teacher among her students.

In so far as Thembi’s objective is aligned to the food for thought maxim, as opposed to spoon-feeding pedagogical practices, she echoes Grosz’s (1989:124–125) stance that teacher-student relations should be understood as active subject-to-subject exchanges, during which:

… the mother must give the daughter more than food to nourish her … she may also give her words with which to speak and hear. The gift of language will always be reciprocated, as food can never be: it is ‘returned’ to the mother ‘with interest’, in the daughter’s new-found ability to speak to rather than at her mother.

It may be surmised that this kind of reciprocation is at the heart of what Thembi hopes to achieve in her teaching relationships. Thembi’s preference for subverting traditional gynocentric pedagogies points to broadening portrayals of female teachers. Imagining the teacher’s role as providing a gift of language/discourse not only reinvests the concept of mothering/teaching as positively enabling, but also displaces the hierar-

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chical model of teaching as knowledge transference into a more interac-tive and dynamic relationship.

Synthesis

From the insights that have emerged from an investigation of the au-thority versus nurturance debate, the participants collectively acknowledge the narrow conceptions in which female teacher identity has been defined. They point to significant departures from this staid image that has come to dominate the discourse. Each particpant provides possible reasons for the existence of these limiting conceptions and ex-plains her personal responses to the teacher as mother phenomenon. Jennifer submits that psychoanalytic interpretations offer a convincing explanation for the transference of the mother-child union being mirrored within patriarchal education system. Carol, Vijay and Phumzile indicate that in various guises, students attempt to forge familial relation-ships with their female teachers, by casting them in the role of either benevolent mother, or sister, or friend. While the participants acknowledge the need for students to form close pedagogic connections with their teachers, they also signal the setbacks that arise when mother/parent/sister patterns are performed in educational domains. In synthesising discussions around authority versus nurturance, the following key points emerge:

The first point relates to Gore’s (1993) formulation of the theme authority versus nurturance. Gore suggests that – in the construction of feminist pedagogies – authority is addressed in three ways, namely, au-thority versus nurturance, authority as authorship, and authority as power. We notice that her identification of the authority versus nurturance framing highlights an important departure from the way in which she frames the two other themes, namely, authority as authorshipand authority as power. In the two latter themes authority is not set up as binaries, instead authority as authorship and authority as power are pre-sented as forms of authority that are not in opposition to another cate-gory/concept. In presenting authority versus nurturance as a binary, Gore highlights the either/or oppositional logic that frames the debate. By comparison, the participants confirm that authority is neither opposi-tional to nurturance nor inconsistent with the personae of the female

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teacher. Critical incidents in Vijay’s, Thembi’s and Phumzile’s extracts illustrate the impetus not to ignore the tensions that are created in the classroom by their female bodies. While willing to engage connected learning paradigms in their feminist classrooms, the participants do not shy away from stances that subvert maternalised, personalised and ame-liorative conceptions of the female educator. For example, Vijay pointedly reprimands her students, telling them not to feed her crap, and she reminds them that she is not their parent and that they are not her children. Such exchanges with students shatter assumptions of both Vijay herself and of her students, and they provide a space for the development of their personal independence and independent knowledge constructions. This shattering of assumptions is an especially important message for students who are likely to interpret female teachers’ caring, connective and emotional support as an end in itself, rather than as a means towards achieving independence and development.

The second point that emerges from considering the authority versus nurturance delineation relates to the notion that the classroom replicates the familial drama and functions as a foundational understanding of the educational dynamic. Miklitsch (1994) considers the difficulty students are likely to experience when attempts are made to disrupt familial patterns/models within schools. He acknowledges that if the female teacher cannot assume traditionally respected male or paternal authority, and the authority of the feminine becomes a denigrated configuration of the maternal, the space for articulating a productive female pedagogy is foreclosed. Miklitsch also concedes that all teaching attempts to alter students in some way and that students may be assumed to understand change as an integral aspect of the educational experience. However, Miklitsch is wary about a radical shift (change) in primary assumptions regarding the replication of familial patterns in educational contexts, and he contends that ideology is not simply an intellectual matter. Miklitsch argues: “If ideology, like hegemony, is primarily an unconscious proc-ess, critical pedagogy must engage affect and intellect, emotion and cog-nition if it is to be persuasive, which is to say transformative.”

This is a sentiment to which most participants are sensitive. While they are keen to acknowledge psychoanalytic notions of separation and difference, they are aware that oscillation between proximity and retreat is often present in the feminist classroom. The task remains holding in creative and constructive balance the push-pull dynamic of teacher-stu-

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dent relations. Good teachers do nurture their students, encourage inde-pendent thought, and help them improve academic skills; however, the participants stress that a distinction has to be made between nurturance and parental condescension/intellectualised mammy work.

Third, participants critique traditional feminist scholarship which overlooks the possibility that a female teacher is perceived as a manifes-tation of maternal authority, rather than as someone without any authority. A feminist pedagogy that stands in opposition to the patriarchal model denies the maternal as a particular kind of authority. This denial, according to Jarratt (1991 in Bell & Nugent 2001) high-lights:

… the deep ambivalence toward and repression of the mother in our culture. A fo-cus on male configurations of power situates the female always in relation to the male and represses the understanding that within the confines of her own class-room, constructions of female authority dominate. While, for the feminist teacher, attaching negative connotations of authority with the male may valorise a facilita-tive or nurturing stance, the female teacher cannot assume patriarchal authority, so there is no need for renunciation of that role. The presence of a female body in the classroom denies that possibility.

Finally, presenting nurturance in confrontation to authority invites the charge of being caught in a false binary between connection versus dis-connection, mothering versus managing, and healing versus empower-ment. A considerable body of feminist pedagogical theory would persuade us to move towards some more satisfactory third term, by in-corporating our contradictory claims into a higher level of theory. Walsh (1996:192–193) argues that feminist teachers should resist binary and hierarchical demarcations by embracing feminist pedagogy’s ameliora-tive, inclusive and healing function, by recontextualising it within a dis-course of empowerment, and thereby reconciling the apparent contradictions between feminist teaching as therapy and politics. If femi-nist teachers are rejecting the image of the traditional maternal role as paralysing for students and teachers, their teaching bodies could also be configured as female and non-maternal. The participants in my study are also wary not to replicate teacher-student relations that are likely to be counterproductive to the education enterprise, although they are not as strident as Broughton (in Broughton & Potts 2001) in articulating their

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conceptions of what it means to exercise nurturance and authority. Broughton (in Broughton & Potts 2001) writes:

I would rather be disliked, resented, and extruded from the scene of learning than enmire my students in a minefield of mother-daughter relationships, or worse still, in my own neuroses, my own fantasies of friendship and/or feminism.

Section 2: Authority as Authorship

In expanding on the conception of feminist teacher authority as author-ship, Pagano (1990:99) argues that feminist educators can approach questions of authority by focusing on authorship. She suggests that au-thority as authorship involves sharing stories on the basis of particular attachments to the world and to each other. Thus, feminist educators might consider teaching as an enactment of a narrative in which authority refers to the power to represent and challenge versions of reality. Authority as authorship could therefore embrace epistemologies of teacher and student experience and interpretation.

Within feminist discourses, the conception of authority as author-ship is encapsulated in exhortations for the validation of personal experi-ence as a legitimate source of knowledge. The need to challenge patriarchal definitions of women and to overcome their voicelessness by naming their experience is central to the feminist project of liberation. The realm of personal or private experience has always been trivialised, particularly for women. Thus, central to the feminist movement has been the argument that the personal is political. This slogan is the umbilical cord that connects the self to political reality by redefining the personal as political.

In appropriating the concept of voice within the English language classroom, feminist pedagogy advocates employing it as an emancipa-tory strategy by positing that what transpires in the private sphere of stu-dents’ lives has political import within the classroom and in broader society. Thus, redefining the personal as political through the validation of student experience and voice has become central to the discourse of feminist pedagogies. Much of the concern to encourage student voice

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and experience in the pedagogic encounter emanates from the disen-chantment with mainstream pedagogy, which silences students’ voices and denies the representation and acknowledgement of their experiences.

In her thesis on the validation of personal experience as legitimate knowledge, Lorde (1984) postulates that one should not rely exclusively on abstract rationality; rather, feeling and experience should be used as guides to accessing a deeper truth. This point draws attention to the criti-cal challenge that is being mounted against epistemologies which are derived from a binary logic, because that logic dichotomises and elevates rationality over emotion, mind over body, culture over nature, etc.

Lorde (ibid.) conceptualises feeling as a source of power and knowledge, based on the assumption that – as human beings – we have the capacity to feel and know, and we can thus engage in self-critique by challenging our ways of feeling and knowing. Since experience and feelings are claimed as a kind of inner-knowing that is shaped by society, but at the same time contain an oppositional quality, experience can serve as a basis for challenging dominant schemes of truth if what is experienced does not correlate with officially accepted definitions of Truth.

By valuing and accepting as true the knowledge and discursive power that grow out of communicated experience, feminist pedagogy poses an epistemic challenge to what counts as knowledge. Based on the premise that one’s own experience is a valid source from which learning proceeds, feminist pedagogy contends that the recognition of student voice should also eventuate in the demystification of traditional knowledge. In this regard, feminist pedagogues are joining in the challenge being made by people of colour, women and other oppressed groups to grand Western narratives, modernist knowledge claims which masquerade as universal Truth, and transmission approaches to learning. Such challenges do not imply that traditional knowledge should be ig-nored, but that they should be critiqued, so as to examine its underlying assumptions, gaps and silences, thus ensuring that diversity is attended to in its complexity.

While conceding that it is essential to commence with students’ ex-periences, Williamson (1981) argues that this can be problematic, be-cause it is personally threatening for many students to place their lives under scrutiny, as the very sense of themselves is at stake. She asserts that students can never understand these issues purely intellectually –

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they need to encounter them in the course of practical, productive work. Other cautionary signals regarding the accommodation of students’ per-sonal narratives as epistemology include the potential for students to remain within the mode of the vernacular and familiar, and to resist connecting and analysing their experiences within the matrix of broader public discourse (Bell, Morrow & Tastsoglou 1999). There is also the potential for personal disclosures to be traumatic and sensitive, and the classroom may not be the most appropriate context to open painful wounds, which may need professional counselling to help the student negotiate/contain the experience. Allied to this aspect is the possibility for certain students to exploit their painful and traumatic experiences as a way of evoking sympathy and concessions from the teacher.

Another common theme is the relation of teachers’ personal narra-tives, and its various manifestations in the feminist language classroom. Feminist teachers bring the ‘self’ into the classroom, both as pedagogical strategy and pedagogic content, and they ask their students to do the same. Broughton & Potts (2001) suggest that problematic aspects which are related to teachers’ personal narratives could arise in at least two, not always overlapping, ways. The first problematic is that the feminist class, ideally, should be made aware of, and be able to challenge those aspects of the institutional and pedagogical setting, which, by virtue of power differentials, have a direct bearing on the scene of learning. This might include, for example, such basic matters as how teachers and stu-dents address each other, who is allowed to say what, and why. The second problematic is linked to the premise within women’s studies that, if we value students’ experiences as legitimate topics for discussion, debate, and as a basis for theorisation (if their personal is political and pedagogical), then arguably students should have a right to call upon the teacher’s ‘personal’ experiences as a resource just as teachers might en-courage students to make theirs available to the class.

In practice, however, teachers slide along a spectrum of pedagogies, from the most personal to the most impersonal. This slippage is not al-ways for strictly pedagogical reasons. Lingard & Douglas (1999:77) out-line the complex re-gendering effects of globalisation, performativity and managerialisation on education, and highlight the ways in which teachers deal with the new emotional labour demands of marketised schooling systems. What becomes apparent from Lingard & Douglas’ observation (1999) is that feminist technologies of self-disclosure may

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have been ‘safe’ within contextual and temporal specificities if they did not have to be made in campus climates that are pervaded by prospects of retrenchment, financial scarcity, professional defensiveness and com-petition for students and income. Sensitive to these harsh institutional realities, hooks et al. (1996:824) caution:

Academe is, essentially, a competitive corporate structure. In an atmosphere of competition, people become more guarded, more defensive, and, frankly, more paranoid. When you begin to draw on personal experience you become vulnerable. The questions, critiques, and interrogations that may be made of you and your work may not be directed at those individuals who never speak about their personal lives. To be always scrutinised is difficult. To live openly, honestly, in such a way that there is nothing that cannot see the light of day, that’s difficult. It requires constant vigilance. This is not a path everyone can walk.

Bearing in mind the above debates, I draw on the views of the partici-pants to explore the following key aspects:

perspectives on teacher-student personal in the feminist classroom; exemplars of teacher and student personal narratives as epistemology; and the politics of assessment.

Perspectives on Teacher-Student Personal in the Feminist Classroom

a) Teachers’ Personal Disclosure as Epistemology

In addressing the dynamics of teacher disclosure, Potts (in Boughton & Potts 2001) contends that teacher intimacy or personal narratives may actually encourage a more dynamic learning situation. Potts explains that the personal, and the intimacy, which she as a teacher invokes/provokes is associated with being approachable and supportive, and it entails mu-tually listening to and sharing personal revelation from one’s stories and experiences. However, such an understanding of teacher self-disclosure in feminist pedagogy portrays a nominal conceptualisation of the

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practice, in that it fails to highlight the complexities and demands that are associated with such a teaching/learning practice. This is a debate that has been taken up by Gallop et al. (1995) who have theorised the question of personal experience in teaching as for good or ill.

The two different views which are presented by Potts and Gallop etal. are also discernible in the different perspectives that are offered by Phumzile and Vijay regarding the use and/or avoidance of teacher per-sonal narratives for pedagogic purposes. Phumzile explains why she largely steers away from using herself as ‘text’ in the class.

As far as sharing my experiences, I don’t, because I don’t want to be that accessible to my students – and my students are my students. I don’t share personal experi-ences very easily generally at the best of times. Even my friends and family have to probe. I don’t use myself as text in classroom situations. I may refer to something briefly in a conversation with my students in a different context, but it is highly unlikely that I am going to go into detail. (Interview)

Phumzile does not differentiate between avoiding private or political personal disclosures, as Broughton & Potts (2001) do, but she makes a blanket statement about avoiding the sharing of personal experiences, in general. However, Phumzile advances several reasons for not indulging personal disclosure in the classroom. The first reason relates to her wish not to be accessible (read: open to familiarity, obtainable, available) to her students. Evidently, she would like to engage her students from a professional distance. The tautologic statement: and my students are my students, signals that the nature of her relationship with them is that of teacher-student (a hierarchical relationship), and is decidedly different from the nature of the relationship which she has with significant others in her life (like friends and family). She attributes her reticence to remain ‘accessible/available’ to students to her general personality trait about being guarded, and introverted about personal disclosure. Predisposed to not indulging in self-disclosure easily, not even with people who are close to her, she is even less likely to draw on her personal life and ex-periences in a class situation, with her students. On the rare occasion that she may do so, her disclosure remains characteristically brief and vague and is context-dependent. Although she does not offer much elaboration in this extract, in other data sources in this study, Phumzile refers to her conscious decision to maintain a professional distance from her students. Apart from her not wanting to foster teacher-student familiarity by

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blurring their professional relationship, the context in which she teaches also plays a significant role in dictating the nature of relationships which she forges with her students. This owes largely to the fact that as a young, Black female teaching at a predominantly White institution, she is the object of an assortment of undermining tactics that cast aspersions on her professional integrity and capabilities. It is possible that teacher personal disclosure (of both a private and political nature) is likely to exacerbate the disparagement of her professional standing in a context that is predisposed to such practices. Thus, for Phumzile, teacher ‘imper-sonality’ derives from her personality trait and contextual specificities, and it services her philosophy regarding teacher-student relations.

Offering another dimension on the use of teacher personal as peda-gogic content and strategy, Vijay admits:

I try and refer to myself because I find that’s an easy way to teach something that people are unwilling to learn. I say, ‘When I was 18 … whatever …’ I find that works. I find that sometimes I’ve got to use leadership, take a position, stick my neck out. Show them how it’s done. The most important thing that I do in teaching sensitive and personal issues, (I’ve done a lot of that this year through race issues), I have to teach it through my own values. I try not to lay it on too thick, but I try and suggest a way of talking about it. (Interview)

Disclosure on the part of the teacher is one way of getting students to understand the connection between the ideas which are being studied and life experiences. Vijay attests to this pedagogical strategy when she ex-plains that she draws on her personal experience as an easy way to teach difficult issues. By sharing with students her personal experiential and cognitive journeys, she exemplifies with reference to ‘real life’ autobio-graphical anecdotes how she has had to deal or dealt with sensitive issues. For example, by sharing her engagement with issues when she was a certain age, she probably tries to show the evolution that has taken place in her thinking and/or the way the social and political discourses on the issues have changed over time. Thus, it appears that her intention for sharing personal experiences with her students is meant to serve as a point of reference against which they could compare, contrast and cri-tique similar issues in relation to their lives and the course material which they are studying.

In assuming the ‘teacher as role-model paradigm,’ Vijay makes the following significant statements: I find that sometimes I’ve got to use

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leadership, take a position, stick my neck out. Show them how it’s done.From these statements, two important points emerge. First, in sticking her neck out, Vijay points to the real potential of making herself vulnerable by taking the risk of exposing herself. While, on the one hand, the likely positive spin-off from teacher self-disclosure may be the narrowing of the affective gap between teacher and student, and the strengthening of teacher-student connections, on the other hand, personal disclosure allows students access to unusually deep levels of the teacher’s personal experiences. Depending on the content and nature of the disclosure, some students may misunderstand/misinterpret the inten-tion behind the disclosure, and this may potentially harm teacher-student relationships. There is also the possibility that, because Vijay draws on her personal experiences and teaches through her own values, this may be misconstrued as a disposition to narcissism, and/or she may alienate herself from students who subscribe to a value system that is different from hers, and/or it may be read as an invitation to pursue familiar rela-tions with her.

Second, the issue of leadership is intricately linked to the discourse on feminist teacher authority. Briskin (2002) notes that, in attempting to be sensitive to the psychological and cognitive marginalisation of stu-dents’ lives, feminist educators have often denied themselves their pro-fessional authority by de-emphasising their leadership role in the class-room. While rejecting teacher authoritarianism, Briskin conceptualises teacher authority as authorship by advocating the acknowledgement of teacher (professional and personal) expertise. Vijay’s conceptualisation of leading from the front illustrates Briskin’s call for a revised perspec-tive on feminist teacher authority. By sharing her personal experi-ences/expertise or responses to sensitive and personal issues, such as race, and teaching something that people are unwilling to learn, Vijaysuggests to students ways in which sensitive and personal issues may be addressed. She draws on the lessons she has learnt from her experiences and offers them as a ‘reference text’ to her students. Taking a similar position, Valle (2002:168) forwards the concept of ‘modelling,’ which she describes as leading “by example, utilising real life experiences to exemplify a point.” Thus, in dealing with sensitive issues, like race rela-tions, this is probably one way in which Vijay can teach the boundaries of acceptable language about the Other, and the ways in which students may construct themselves and Others in multiracial relations. As a way

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of showing [students] how it’s done, her personal experiences become an exemplar which students can refer to.

In addition, assuming teacher leadership as a pedagogic strategy carries the potential of making the medium the message. This means that the teacher can teach leadership by being a leader in the class. By taking the ‘lead’ in discussions, Vijay models/exemplifies leadership strategies and echoes Shrewsbury’s (1987) sentiments on the role of teacher leadership. Shrewsbury writes: “Leadership is a special form of empowerment that empowers others. … The goal is to increase the power of all actors, not to limit the power of some.”

Linking leadership to empowerment submits to the reality that stu-dents and teachers’ ability to claim power in the classroom varies on the basis of gender, class, race, sexual orientation, etc. These differences have to be addressed, and one strategy is to teach leadership directly. Vijay refers to race as a sensitive issue that she teaches through her own values. Other topical issues in her Language and Power Course includecourse content on gender, class, language diversity, all of which are po-tentially sensitive topics, because they are marked by strong power im-balances. Thus, as a young Black academic, Vijay (in her interview) referred to isolated instances when, by virtue of her age and gender, her power was undermined by male students. By responding in a confident and assertive way against such discriminatory relational behaviour, Vijay serves as a role model to other women in the class – modelling, leading, educating and empowering them in possible ways whereby gendered power differentials could be negotiated. Her personal narratives of racial and gendered relations are employed to educate others, how not to domi-nate through power, but to script the use of power productively and con-fidently.

While discussion on teacher personal disclosure as pedagogy has not been the subject of widespread debate, feminist educational discourses have been substantially more vocal on student personal as epistemology.

b) Students’ Personal Disclosure as Epistemology

Much of the impetus to encourage student voice and experience in the pedagogic encounter emanates from the disenchantment with main-stream pedagogy, which invariably disregards their experiential realities.

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This often results in the silencing of students’ voices and the subsequent denial of the representation and acknowledgement of their experiences. The challenge remains seeking ways in which students can be encouraged to articulate the knowledge which they have gained from experience, and to contrast and compare this knowledge to their theoreti-cal studies. This challenge encourages students to examine the political nature of knowledge, and it requires an identification of classroom prac-tices that foster the exploration and discovery of knowledge, and the articulation of personal experiences which are relevant to their studies. Lewis (1990:170) suggests that the focus of feminist pedagogy must be the political struggle over meaning and the encouragement of students to “self-consciously examine and question the conditions of our meaning-making and to use it as the place from which to begin to work toward change.”

An examination of the participants’ various data sources confirms their commitment to encouraging student authority as authorship. The positive aspects of student personal narratives and voice in the feminist classroom relate to creating, fashioning and encouraging critical per-spectives on knowledge construction. I address the potentiality for acti-vating student voice by exploring ways in which teachers promote student voice in relation to:

(i) authorship as invention (through engaging them in autobiographical writing exercises);

(ii) authorship as experiential and theoretical praxis (juxtaposing per-sonal and social experiences with theoretical insight); and

(iii) authorship as positionality (critiquing and deconstructing texts and theories).

In the following series of extracts, the activation of student voice is achieved on two distinct levels. The first level is concerned with acti-vating student voice through the creation of personal texts (in the form of written and oral autobiographical experiences). The second level en-courages student voice through the critiquing of created texts (i.e. texts that are already in existence, such as prescribed readings, theories, etc.).

(i) Teachers can encourage student authority as authorship by pro-moting authorship as invention. Authorship as invention provides a rich forum from which to examine the evolution of students’ voice as a

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means of self-expression, which is a stance that is supported by Jennifer, who wrote:

As a feminist teacher of language, I believe that students’ own experiences are rele-vant to their studies and to their language acquisition. This is in contrast to the tra-ditional model of academic study; where the student is supposed to develop objectivity and erase all traces of his or her own subjectivity. Therefore, I use auto-biographical writing exercises as a resource for students to develop fluency and communicative competence in what is often a second or third language. (Essay)

Jennifer shares her views on the role of students’ knowledge in the teaching and learning process. Her views capture an important principle in feminist pedagogy and sociolinguistic studies as it relates to authority as authorship, namely, that students’ personal experiences are relevant to their studies and language acquisition. The recognition of student voice in feminist pedagogy is intricately linked to validating personal experi-ence as a legitimate source of knowledge. An acceptance of personal experience as a legitimate source of knowledge allows for the acknowledgement of subjugated and alternative knowledges. In acknowledging the relevance of student experience to learning and language acquisition, Jennifer critiques traditional models of teaching and learning that ignore student subjectivity and endorse a universal truth script that is intolerant of diversity and alternative knowledge claims. In attempting to encourage and recognise the subjective/individual experi-ences of students’ lives, Jennifer sets language tasks that require them to write about their personal (autobiographical) experiences. She believes that asking students to reflect on – and to relate their – personal life sto-ries and experiences helps them to develop fluency and communicative competence in English, especially if they are not native English speakers. Thus, the practice of writing is one concrete strategy to use in the class-room as a way of encouraging authority as authorship, and it illustrates how teachers can encourage student identity as invention. More writing on the part of students is already a recommendation in many reform re-ports. The motivation behind writing is not to reproduce or represent how much of the teacher’s knowledge students have acquired, but to serve as an avenue for practicing authority as authorship. Jennifer em-ploys authorship as invention as a useful confidence building strategy. By writing autobiographical pieces students reflect on and document experiences with which they are familiar and closely connected; they are

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thus, more at ease to concentrate on the development of fluency and communicative competencies, by writing about topics/issues in which they may, arguably, be regarded as ‘authorities.’

(ii) Teachers can promote authority as authorship by encouraging authorship as experiential and theoretical praxis. This means that theory could be created by studying people’s reaction to and negotiation of their experiences. In the following extract, Vijay invites her students to incor-porate and relate their vernacular/local knowledges and experiences into their learning. She asks:

Whose voices do you want to record? And this is where Vasie’s topic provides an interesting counter. The voices of the dissidents are fairly well known and fairly well documented, whereas the voices of, perhaps, your peers, your friends, people you know, people you live with are not so well heard. What do you think about AIDS, and does anybody know what you think about AIDS or HIV infection? Is it important that your own voice is heard? (Lecture Observation)

Vijay engages her students in the AIDS Assignment as a way of exca-vating subjugated voices and knowledges. She encourages students to document the voices of peers, your friends, people you know, people you live with. In addition, she asks: Does anybody know what you think? Is it important that your own voice is heard? By posing these reflective questions, Vijay inspires students to find, fashion and make audible their own voices, as well as the voices of those who have been relegated to the margins of mainstream discourses. Furthermore, the exercise is designed for students to explore for themselves by purposely using the public and private discourses of their daily lives (that is, the discourses of their families and communities). It requires critical engagement with knowledge which is based on experiences that have remained invisible to mainstream investigation. In the process of such engagement, students can redistribute the narrative field and yield new and alternative theories which are geared towards action and social change. Comparing, con-trasting and documenting subjugated knowledges alongside official public discourses and debates highlight yet another dimension of authorship as invention.

In her extract, Thembi draws attention to yet another dimension of authorship as authority. This dimension of authorship as authority is re-lated to the connection between the evolution of voice and the languages of experience and theory. Thembi explains that the shift from private

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stories to more public discourse often demands that students bridge the gap between these two languages. She says:

Remember you wrote an essay for us about your experiences regarding gender issues. You wrote a biographical sketch of about 1 – 1.5 pages, situating yourself within your own environment at home, at school, at the university or at church or within larger society. … I want to suggest to you that there is a very close connec-tion between this statement – ‘What is now called the nature of women is an emi-nently artificial thing,’ from Mill’s essay – and what you wrote for me in your essays. So would you apply these thoughts to your own experience and elaborate whether you disagree or you agree in terms of why you think the ‘nature of women is an eminently artificial thing?’ (Lecture Observation)

Thembi encourages her students to intersect private and public experi-ences with the discourses of expert knowledge. Rather than writing exer-cises that faithfully replicate prior knowledge, the process of activating authorship as invention promotes the cross-fertilisation of discourses of daily life (local and meta-narratives) with the narratives of grand theory. Essentially, this process requires mediation between the range of per-sonal voices and the voice of theory. Connecting personal experiences to theory helps to compare, contrast, critique, elaborate and exemplify con-ceptual issues from both personal experience and theory; hence Thembi says: you apply these thoughts to your own experience and elaborate whether you disagree or you agree. Linking their own experiences with broader theoretical discourses is intended to help students to bridge the language of theory and experience.

The preceding discussion has highlighted the creative and positive spin-offs of encouraging student authorship as invention. It is, however, also important to signal the practice of authorship as inauthenticity. Thisrefers to instances when the origins of authorship are disputed because they are not ‘genuine.’ Jennifer refers to plagiarism (literary theft), which is the illegal appropriation of the voices and intellectual property of others as one’s own. Plagiarism is becoming an escalating phenomenon in academia. She says:

I encountered the paranoia about plagiarism that a lot of the members of university management have. At UNISA it is very severe because the top management feel that they have no control over what the students write and the students can write essays for one another, or get their parents to write or whatever … . We had a great number of fights with UNISA management to allow us to use a year mark system

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and the portfolio, where we set students highly individualised tasks so they cannot plagiarise. (Interview)

In addition to activating authentic, original autobiographical pieces, Jennifer refers to the practice of setting highly individualised writing tasks that could potentially reduce instances of inauthentic authorship.

(iii) While authorship as invention derives largely from personal ex-periences, authorship as positionality involves permutations of students legitimising texts and theories by endorsing/accepting the viewpoints offered therein, and/or resisting/challenging theories, by critiquing and deconstructing dominant ideologies. In an attempt to unmask the poten-tial for texts to be open to critique and deconstruction, Jennifer writes:

This extends to my teaching of literary critical skills, where the text is no longer seen as oracular, but rather as interactive and constantly under construction by its readers, including my students. (I hasten to add, though, that I do not embrace radi-cal relativism in literary interpretation, but still adhere to the guiding principles of coherence and inclusivity as criteria for acceptable interpretations). (Essay)

…….………………………………………………………………………………….

We would like you as postgraduate students to get away from the idea that meaning is inferred in the text; that the researcher is objectively taking it out of the text. There is a box containing meaning and you are just taking it out. It is actually to talk about your own biases; your own concerns and to say that I am interested in the following, or I like to read with this angle in mind … . (Lecture Observation)

Intrinsic to encouraging subjective engagement with teaching and learning activities is the intention to develop students’ critical literary skills. Of particular importance is the task of reversing traditional en-gagement with literary texts that require students to dissect them according to fixed formulae,8 as if in doing so one could unravel the 8 For example, analysing literary texts using the SIFT SEI Method, in which the

acronym provides a formula for the analyst to:

(i) look for the following in relation to the author:

- Sense (gist of the text) - Intention (author’s intention) - Feeling (feelings expressed by the author) - Tone (tone of the text)

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author’s original intention (and as if a single interpretation and meaning was resident in the text). Given the inevitability of individual ideology and readership idiosyncrasy, in addition to the fact that students emanate from diverse demographic backgrounds, means that they bring different interpretations and understandings to literary texts. Jennifer echoes the views of the literary theorist Roland Barthes (1967) who posits that the text is re-written with every new reading of it. Such a view de-authorises and de-essentialises the text as divine revelation that is closed to multiple interpretations (see Perumal 2002; Perumal 2001a). Jennifer believes that the text must be engaged in an interactive, inter-relational and discursive way. This position is consolidated in two separate exchanges with stu-dents during the observed lectures in Jennifer and Vijay’s classes, re-spectively:

Jennifer: I really recommend that you go and read Freud for yourself, because Freud has suffered so badly at the hands of popularising intellectual culture, and actually he is such a complex theorist and such a meticulous psychologist, in terms of writing up of cases – admitting complexities, problems and difficulties. For

(ii) comment on the text in relation to the impact/appeal it has on the reader:

- Senses (appeal of the text on the sensory dimensions of the reader) - Emotions (emotive impact of the text on the reader) - Intellect (intellectual impact of text on reader)

The SIFT SEI protocol in literary criticism derives from the debates around relativistic and absolutist notions of criticism, the former based on the premise that the critic employs any or all systems, which aid in elucidating the nature of a work of art. The absolutist critic holds that there is only ONE critical procedure or set of principles and no others that can legitimately be applied to appraising art. The SIFT SEI approach appears to be based on the absolutist position, which assumes that the purposes of criticism are to:

(i) justify one’s own work or explain it to an uncomprehending audience. (ii) justify imaginative art in a world that finds its value questionable. (iii) to prescribe for writers and to legislate taste for their audience. (iv) to interpret works for readers who might otherwise misinterpret or fail to

appreciate them. (v) to judge works by clearly defined standards of evaluation. (vi) to discover and apply the principles which describe the foundations of good

art. (Holman 1972).

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example, he didn’t say that you have to be straight. He said that it is more socially acceptable to be straight. That’s a big difference. Danielle (White female): I have a problem with that … Jennifer: With Freud? Danielle: No. I did English Honours and I did all this theory … Jennifer: My suggestion is that you should find something in it that you can relate to … Danielle: It is not something I can’t relate to. It is about evaluating it. I keep thinking that minds far greater than mine have said that, and that’s why I can’t challenge it … Jennifer: … It must be true? Danielle: I look at the interpretation that I feel is closely allied to how I read the book, but I think that’s the problem with all theories … Lisa (team teacher): Theory is mediated by other voices, and you feel who am I to add my voice to that mediation? Danielle: Yes. It is not so much about developing a theory as it is about developing a language, and that’s an enormous problem … John (team teacher): You said that you felt quite inadequate when we were talking about Freud. It is quite interesting to valorise this ubiquitous patriarch in psycho-analytical theory. Look at Irigaray who went against him. It is quite interesting that the way in which he is treated is that you dare not challenge the father of psycho-analysis – and this links into the whole power of the father – that you don’t question! He is the law. He is the embodiment … Lisa (team teacher): Luce Irigaray wrote her doctoral thesis on it. She was expelled … She destabilised Freud. (Lecture Observation)

While Jennifer is disinclined to radical relativism in literary interpreta-tion, she does, however, encourage students to engage their texts dialogi-cally and critically. However, Jennifer’s encouragement is not embraced with unbridled enthusiasm by all her students. In the above extract, for example, we read a classic response of reticence from Danielle, a female student, to challenging theoretical perspectives which are advanced by minds far greater than hers. Implicit in Danielle’s reticence is the preference to adhere to the hierarchical order that has been established in terms of whose voices/opinions/interpretations matter and whose do not. Undermining her own propensity for critiquing and creating alternative theoretical and interpretative postures, Danielle’s voice is swathed in a sense of self-effacement, self-doubt and self-silencing technologies. Her fear of critique is confirmed in findings from the collaborative research of Belenky et al. who – in their much-celebrated book Women’s Ways of

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Knowing (1986) identified five categories9 to describe the epistemologi-cal perspectives held by the women they had interviewed. Danielle’s response correlates to at least three of the categories which had been developed by Belenky et al. namely, silence, received knowledge and procedural knowledge. Belenky et al. elaborate these categories as follows:

Silence: refers to the condition when women experience themselves as mindless and voiceless and subject to the whims of external au-thority; Received knowledge: refers to the condition when women conceive of themselves as capable of receiving, even reproducing knowledge from the all-knowing external authorities, but not capable of creating their own; and Procedural knowledge: refers to the notion that women are invested in learning and applying objective procedures for obtaining and communicating knowledge.

These categories, which Grumet (1988:16–17) calls ‘masculine episte-mology,’ correlate with categories of received and procedural knowledges, and with the subsequent silencing that their politics and practices produce. Cumulatively, such stances legitimise the text, rather than resist or critique it. Belenky’s et al.’s categorisations aptly describe Danielle’s reluctance to add her voice to those whose minds are greater than hers; thus a double-barrelled silencing is produced. The first si-lencing relates to the belief that others have said it (have engaged the issue), so there remains no need for her to enter, reiterate or expand the conversation. This viewpoint is evident in Danielle’s statement: I look at the interpretation that I feel is closely allied to how I read the book. The second silencing relates to the notion that it would be audacious for her to refute or challenge the wisdom of the ‘fathers’ or other official voices. Team teachers Jennifer, John and Lisa recognise the fear which Danielle 9 The other two categories are: Constructed Knowledge … women view all

knowledge as contextual, experience themselves as creators of knowledge, and value both subjective and objective strategies for knowing. Subjective Knowledge … truth and knowledge are conceived as personal, private and subjectively known or intuited. These are two categories that Jennifer encourages her students to explore.

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experiences, and – by referring to Luce Irigaray – they provide an example of at least one person who was brave enough to challenge Freud (the father of modern-day psychology) with an alternative interpretation on the psychology of women. A counter interpretational stance illustrates authorship as positionality. By trusting her interpretative instincts and articulating her views, which ran against an established institution of thinking, Irigaray was able to change the tide of understanding women’s psychology. In this way, the teaching team attempts to encourage Danielle, and the other students, into critical thinking, and into using the power of multi-perspectival analyses. The attentive student would have picked up the different opinions that Jennifer and John have about Freud. Jennifer is evidently more celebratory of Freud when she draws attention to the way in which he has been misunderstood/misrepresented by popular theorists. Jennifer points out that Freud has suffered so badly at the hands of popularising intellectual culture, and actually he is such a complex theorist and such a meticulous psychologist. In contrast, John considers it quite interesting that the way in which he is treated is that you dare not challenge the father of psychoanalysis – and this links into the whole power of the father – that you don’t question! He is the law.More elaboration from Jennifer and John regarding their different views on Freud and the status of his theories would have served as a significant example on how different scholars hold different views on the same subject.

Student Danielle also alludes to another impediment which students experience when she says: It is not so much about developing a theory as it is about developing a language, and that’s an enormous problem. Thisis an observation that Haring-Smith (2000) makes when she writes:

Any field has an insider’s code that won’t make sense to your students. As a gradu-ate student, you learn to write and speak within the context of your field, though it might seem like total nonsense from the outside. You learn the language of the discipline. Under-graduate students rarely have that language. Therefore, you need to find out where they have come from in order to take them anywhere.

Danielle’s lack of confidence is related to the fact that she has not inter-nalised the code or discursive register of the discipline. Critical analysis requires being conversant with a language that is peculiar to the dis-course. It requires socialisation in a specific register that has to be ac-quired in order to operate confidently and fluently within the discourse.

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Being able to read/enter the discourse is a prerequisite for attempting to challenge the discourse.

Vijay extends a challenge that is similar to that of Jennifer, John and Lisa when she encourages her students to engage their prescribed texts critically. She says:

But the point is resting on an argument that’s unsound, and what informed that ar-gument is unsound, and I already warned you about Webb. I said, ‘I like his text-book, but there are some real problems with it.’ I’m not prepared to be the only one to pick these things up, you must also pick it up. … When you start to read thoroughly and carefully this is what’s going to happen. You are going to disagree with textbook writers, and it is fine to do that. You may even write to them in the country, and say, ‘Excuse me, what were these people speaking originally, and for how long have they been speaking Afrikaans, and what were the factors that led them into that? Because they learned Afrikaans does not mean that they had to lose their mother tongue. Did it?’ (Lecture Observation)

The fear of agency on the part of students is corroborated by Vijay’s comments, when she draws their attention to the inaccuracies in their prescribed text by Webb. In an earlier extract, Vijay – in reference to the AIDS Assignment – pointed out that some voices are well documented. She alerts students to the possibility that those who receive more expo-sure, and whose voices are widely documented (the voices of experts), are not infallible/flawless. Like Jennifer, who pointed out that the text [should] no longer [be] seen as oracular, Vijay also points out that the arguments of experts may be unsound, and that there are [likely to be] some real problems with it. As a way of provoking authorship as resistance, Vijay encourages her students to assume critical interpretative responsibility by reading thoroughly and carefully. She says: I’m not prepared to be the only one to pick these things up; you must also pick it up. In this statement she is suggesting to students that interpretative au-thority is not the exclusive domain of the teacher ‘expert,’ but that – as students – they also possess the power to de-authorise, re-authorise, de-construct and reconstruct the text. She also suggests that they go one step further and match their critical reflection and interpretation with activism by writing to textbook authors and sharing their critique. In the same way that Jennifer and John assure student Danielle that challenging the experts is what academic discourse is all about, Vijay too assures her students that it is fine to disagree with textbook writers.

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Like Jennifer, Vijay also discourages her students from passively re-producing knowledge and reverently accepting arguments or claims made by ostensible experts in the field. As feminist teachers of English, they suggest that students should instead actively construct arguments and make a case for a particular theoretical/interpretative position. Stu-dents can thus assume authority as authorship, develop resistance identi-ties, and become producers rather than consumers of academic discourses. In addition, Jennifer alerts students to the fact that even as their own biases, prejudices, ideologies and world-views shape their in-terpretative engagement with texts, these same variables also infiltrate the sentiments/arguments that authors present in their texts.

The following extract, from Thembi’s lecture, encapsulates some of the key issues around which the discourse of authority as authorship pivots:

What we want to urge you to do from now on is try and make a critical evaluation of your experiences. Not only that, make a critical evaluation of the experiences of the theorists, or words or thoughts or expressions of the theorists that you are reading. In other words, we do not expect you to look at an essay by John Stuart Mill and then say, ‘John Stuart Mill says this,’ period. If you agree with John Stuart Mill I think it’s important to tell your reader your own position regarding the issue at hand. In other words, engage yourself in the debate too. The debates are going on, the debates are going to go on. For as long as we live we are going to have generation after generation looking at the same issue, looking at it differently and building on what they have read and carrying it forward.

First, Thembi acknowledges the value of personal experience in the feminist class, but she qualifies that personal experience must be accom-panied/surrounded by a critical evaluation of one’s experiences. Second, she urges students to engage theorists and their theories critically. Merely paraphrasing them, by saying, for example, that John Stuart Mill says this period is inadequate. Academic discourse requires interacting with the views of different theorists and their debates and articulating one’s own position in regard to the issue at hand. This postulation reso-nates with team teacher Lisa’s observation that: theory is mediated by other voices. Such mediation may take the form of questioning, dis-agreeing, destabilising the voices/views/theories of the experts. Third, Thembi’s understanding of positionality as authorship suggests the tem-poral and contextual variability of theory, when she refers to the genera-

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tional, genealogical and evolutionary nature of theoretical issues. This interpretational slant is evident in her statement: For as long as we live we are going to have generation after generation looking at the same issue, looking at it differently and building on what they have read and carrying it forward. This perspective supports Jennifer’s conceptions that the text is no longer seen as oracular, but rather as interactive and constantly under construction by its readers. In both Thembi’s and Jennifer’s conceptualisation of the nature of texts, which is also conso-nant with reader response theories, there emerges a sense of the mutability and permeability, and of the creative and pro-creative nature of knowledge construction. By aligning themselves with such concep-tions of knowledge, the participants provide a rationale for employing student personal experiences as pedagogy. The activation of student cri-tique and interpretation of texts provides another way of challenging, elaborating and exemplifying theory, while simultaneously encouraging student personal narratives to count as valid epistemology.

Finally, student experience, voice and positionality are also articu-lated through the process of authorship as dialogue. Given that student-centred pedagogy is a preferred teaching methodology in the feminist classroom, student-teacher-student dialogue provides ample opportuni-ties for students to find, fashion and shape the voices of others as well as their own. Authorship as dialogue is characterised by communities of personal disclosure, critique, confrontation and consolidation of diverse socio-cultural, religious, racial and gendered relations and ideological positionalities.

Activating student experience and voice as authorship first, compels students to focus attention on subjects in their own lives as well as within broader social discourse about which they may not have thought about in much depth previously; second, it moves students from vague feelings about an issue or concept to working through those feelings toward criti-cally informed thinking and reflection; and third, it engenders a state of permanent criticism by challenging students to re-examine those assumptions that inform the processes of how they come to understand social representations.

Having considered the delineation authority as authorship in rela-tion to (i) authorship as invention, (ii) authorship as experiential and theoretical praxis, and (iii) authorship as positionality, in the ensuing discussion, I summarise the contents of the student disclosures that

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emerged from my lecture observation to highlight their substance and the emotional sensitivities which are associated with them. In addition, I identify some strategies which teachers employ when disclosures of a traumatic/sensitive nature are made in class.

Exemplar of Teacher-Student Self-disclosure

From the foregoing discussion it is evident that there is widespread support for regarding personal experience and voice as a legitimate source of knowledge. This is especially so when personal disclosure is conceptualised as authority as authorship. Generally, the preferred approach to responding to topics is to begin with a personal account of a situation and to disclose the feelings which it had aroused. However, this approach presents the familiar dilemma about the degree of control which each person has over the management of the private domain (as opposed to the public domain) in the life of the class and in the context of the course; it precipitates these questions: What are the implications of self-disclosure in classroom discussions? Whose interests are met and whose are displaced if this mode of working is to be accepted?

In the light of the importance feminist pedagogical discourses have invested in teacher-student disclosure as valid knowledge sources, in the twenty four hours of lecture observations I undertook for this study, I identified only approximately five instances of personal self-disclosure; four by students, the content of which I merely summarise (below) to illustrate the nature of disclosure, and one teacher-student disclosure by teacher, Lisa, and student Pauline. In the four students’ personal disclo-sures that were made during lectures, I found that students related ex-periences, and feelings about themselves, or friends and family close to them.

For example, in a discussion on the reductive nature of the hetero-sexual patriarchal system, Alison, an adult female student disclosed: My partner has one testicle, and his father was a doctor, and he was given all manner of things – and he lives with that shame. Now think about how society views the eunuch, the male who is sexually different or who

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has undeveloped testicles or one testicle. It is the same thing. To which team teacher John added: And the phallus is just as reductive. Everything that is associated with it, all the activity is also confining the male within that aggressively sexualised, thrusting and penetrative realm.

A second example came from Pauline, another adult female student in Jennifer’s lecture, who confessed her complicity with patriarchally scripted roles for women, when she said: I’m guilty of the masquerade … half of me has enjoyed being a woman, and having all the privileges … of a chivalric husband who opens my car door, who walks between me and the traffic; who loves me to bits, who will do absolutely anything for me. It’s been like this all the time. But at the same time there is a big rebellion in me which feels totally trapped when I know that I’m able to fulfil myself properly as a person. I’ve just become a wimp! Unless he organises, and does everything for me, I don’t do it. I’ve lost out … . To which team teacher Lisa adds: … all that love and protection has in fact inhibited you in strange ways, to which, Pauline emphatically agrees.

Two examples of personal disclosure in Vijay’s class were shared during the negotiation of the AIDS Assignment topic. One involved a student relating the story of her cousin who was in denial about his HIV positive status and eventually died; and the other from a student who talks to her friends about AIDS, who have subsequently become suspi-cious that she might be HIV positive, and they try to steer away from the conversation because the stigma is too hard for them to handle.

In the above instances the teachers merely added on ‘tag’ comments, and there was no deep probing on their part. In the case of the student who told the class about her cousin’s AIDS related death, Vijay suggested that it would be safer to address the topic from a point that would not be painful, for example, they could research the topic from an angle that dealt with AIDS prevention.

Team teacher, Lisa seemed not to mind sharing (at least on a politi-cal level) her personal experiences with her students. She, for example, spontaneously shared what appears to be a deeply personal and painful experience with the class. It appears that during tea break, student Pauline requested Lisa to speak to the class about Black feminism. Scarred by an unpleasant experience at a conference, Lisa relates to the class the source of her fear and pain, and through this self-disclosure, makes visible why she resorts to technologies of epistemic avoidance to

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safeguard herself, as a White woman, from being criticised for researching/discussing the experiences of Black women.10

b) Strategies for dealing with Sensitive Personal Disclosures

The numeric scarcity of teacher-student personal disclosure is not meant to undermine or reduce the value of self-disclosure in the pedagogic en-counter, but to support Carol’s and Phumzile’s observation that people do not readily confide personal or sensitive issues within the realm of the classroom.

Carol and Phumzile attribute the paucity of self-disclosure to various factors. These factors include the element of competitiveness by which people want to present themselves in a light that depicts that they are in control of themselves. In addition, students may prefer to confide per-sonal issues/experiences to people with whom they enjoy close personal relations and with whom they feel comfortable. While Carol surmises why students may avoid personal disclosure, Phumzile alludes to teacher choreography in curbing student personal disclosure in class. In declaring that she is not their friend, Phumzile confirms Carol’s view that students are more likely to discuss/relate personal experiences with friends or with people whom they are familiar and comfortable. Hence, there is a tendency for students to talk about general issues.

Enabling students to fashion a voice does not necessarily mean that they will or should talk at that particular moment in the class, but that they may be able to identify with the issues under discussion and express themselves in more appropriate contexts. In this regard, Carol thinks that: often students continue their discussions out of the classroom with people that they’re more comfortable with. Consciousness-raising, coun-selling, the confessional all seem to be implicated in some respects in personal disclosures. Phumzile’s reluctance to draw on teacher and stu-dent personal disclosure in her classroom may be linked to Broughton’s 10 As a White feminist, Frankenberg (2000:448) notes that in her study of the social

construction of whiteness … it seemed as though White feminists had a limited repertoire of responses when they were charged with racism: confusion over accusations of racism; efforts to communicate with White women about racism, despite it; frustration and the temptation (acted upon temporarily or permanently) to withdraw from multiracial work.

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(in Broughton & Potts 2001) query as to why feminist pedagogies so readily welcome an analytic, therapeutic, counselling or confessional mode, and in a way that no real analyst, counsellor, therapist or confessor would ever dream of doing, that is without setting boundaries, time limits, clear goals, support network, self-analysis. In the following extract, we also see Carol expressing sensitivity to being too probing of student personal experiences for fear of embarrassing, hurting or trau-matising them in her class. Although she does not ever recall resorting to changing the subject when a classroom discussion infringed on a stu-dent’s sensitive area, she does recommend it as a strategy for dealing with sensitive issues that may traumatise a student. Carol comments on the way in which she handles instances of sensitive personal disclosure when they surface in the class:

They quite often arise when you teach feminism. I try to let the students deal with it, but if I feel somebody is suffering or things are going awry, or somebody’s being attacked and that they need a little bit of support, I might intervene. I might even change the subject, although, I can’t remember it actually happening. I suppose I try to leave it to the students to deal with it. I wouldn’t be too probing as well because you don’t know what other people’s areas of sensitivity are and how you might be tapping into an area, which is traumatic for that person, especially when you’re in a group … . (Interview)

While Carol and Phumzile comment on student disclosure of sensitive issues, in the following extract Jennifer alludes to the possibility that a topic may be sensitive for the teacher. She comments on how she re-sponds to students who raise issues/express sentiments that may be in-sensitive to her, as a teacher, and possibly other students in the class. She says: I’ll use the example of being gay. Strategy number one, breathe deeply. Strategy number two, allow the student to finish. Strategy num-ber three, keep to the course content, don’t engage on a positional level,and answer the question.

During my lecture observation of Jennifer’s seminar on Heterosexu-ality and its Alternatives, student Joan spoke about homosexuals in an insensitive and irresponsible manner. Joan suggested that they must have suffered a trauma that caused an abnormality which resulted in their be-coming homosexual. In the Joan-Jennifer exchange, Jennifer allowed Joan to finish making her point. This ensured that the student was not interrupted, and there was a measured calmness to the dialogue. Jennifer

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drew the student back to the course content (the novel under discussion), so as not to engage her on a positional/personal level. Jennifer suggested that the student should listen to herself and think about what she was saying, and make her comments in relation to the novel under discussion.

Feminist pedagogical discourses confer great importance on per-sonal epistemologies. The preceding discussion highlighted that personal disclosure may carry pedagogic value, but teachers need to make the pedagogic and educative relevance of personal disclosure explicit to stu-dents. The discussion also highlighted the potential for the disclosure of personal experience to be painful for both teachers and students. How-ever, for the most part, teachers and students do not readily disclose deeply personal experiences in the class. Such disclosures are usually made to people with whom one feels closely connected. In addition, in spite of the high premium which feminist pedagogy places on personal epistemology as a valid source of knowledge, from the lectures I ob-served for this study, there were not an overwhelming number of per-sonal disclosures made either by teachers or students.

Pursuing critical analysis and the politics of assessment

In the following series of extracts, Vijay, Phumzile, Jennifer and Carol emphasise that personal experiences also need to embody certain key ingredients in order to qualify as relevant and meaningful knowledge in the classroom:

Vijay: I would be concerned about solipsism because in literature – it is a kind of process that involves one scratching one’s wounds, as James Joyce famously said – kind of private activity that has no real meaning for the rest of the world. Does it involve the way one interacts with the larger world? I think that the most productive kinds of reflection do that. I think that it has a role. I’m not prescribing it as a cau-tionary check because literature is all about the subjective, internal world and it can sometimes be taken to a fault. I have to keep asking myself what have I learned from things? (Interview)

Phumzile: If it’s directly relevant to the course and you find a way to integrate it to the issue under discussion; otherwise students will write autobiographies instead of

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essays. Autobiographies are fine, but if you’re supposed to be analysing a particular novel, then it’s not really. (Interview)

Jennifer: In general, personal experiences must be accompanied by critical reflec-tion. It is no good just saying that this happened to me. One must be critically re-flective of it, and relate it to the issues that are being studied in the course. (Interview)

Carol: But you have to move between the personal and other areas of knowledge, which might be using a particular theoretical model. It needs to be contextualised. Yes, a person’s experiences are valid; it’s a kind of knowledge. Feminism positions the personal as political, and one of the things that we’re saying is that women too are entitled to a voice. And one of the things post-modernism does is it asserts that differentiated kinds of voices are important. But I think you’ve got to do something with that voice. You’ve got to relate it to a theme, or an issue, or a theoretical model … . You might have to surround it with some kind of analysis to give it more value. (Interview)

Both Vijay and Phumzile address the issue of self-disclosure in relation to literature. Vijay is cautious in her comments about the role of the per-sonal for pedagogy in her submission that literature is, by its very nature, concerned with the subjective, internal world. She is however, aware that preoccupation with the personal can be taken to a fault and evolve into a solipsistic activity, where students become so caught up in their own experiences as to exclude a recognition of its relevance in broader social discourse. Hence, Vijay’s comment that there needs to be meaningful interaction of the personal with the larger world. Phumzile, too, is open to student self-disclosure if that is what the academic task at hand re-quires of them. However, if the learning task requires literary analysis of a prescribed text, students must justify the incorporation of self-disclo-sure by explaining its direct relevance to the course and also find a way to integrate it to the issue under discussion.

It is in the light of the potential for discussion to circulate exclu-sively within the realm of something familiar, like personal self-disclo-sure, that Jennifer also welcomes student personal narratives, with the proviso that they are related to issues under discussion. Carol corrobo-rates this proviso when she says: You’ve got to relate it to a theme, or an issue, or a theoretical model. It thus seems that, while the accommoda-tion of personal experiences of all participants in the teaching and learning dialogue needs to be affirmed, there emerges the call for it to be

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nestled in a theoretical dialectic that moves narratives of self-disclosure from the realm of the personal (which Vijay refers to as solipsism … private activity that has no real meaning for the rest of the world) into the arena of public discourse and theorising. This position implies thatstudents’ personal disclosure needs to clarify public discourse. This is perhaps one way in which students can begin to understand the experi-ences of others and to understand their own differently. Given that authorising experience invariably presents the dilemma of how to avoid the dichotomy between personal experience and a structural and political understanding of it, Carol encourages students to move between the per-sonal and other areas of knowledge.

From the above extracts there emerge at least four criteria which the participants suggest as a regulatory mechanism for the inclusion of stu-dent self-disclosure qualifying as pedagogic knowledge. These include:

(i) clarifying the relationship (social, political, personal connec-tions/dealings) of self-disclosure to the course material under discussion;

(ii) contextualising (providing details regarding pre, post and in- process circumstances relevant to) self-disclosure within the discussion;

(iii) integrating (incorporating, amalgamating) self-disclosure into the discussion; and

(iv) explaining/demonstrating the relevance (pertinence, bearing) of self-disclosure to the course material.

Stipulation of these criteria is linked to the challenge that the teacher has to guard the classroom from becoming simply a space for student per-sonal disclosure and support to the exclusion of more critical engage-ment with issues in a way that contributes to theory building, and to effective and strategic social interventions. From the four criteria which have been identified above, it appears that student self-disclosure could be characterised by the following three distinct ‘moves’:

Move One: recounting a relevant experience that is related to the material under discussion Move Two: integrating, contextualising, and critically analysing the self-disclosure in relation to the course discussion

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Move Three: gleaning the lessons that experiential and theoretical praxis produce with a view to effecting personal and social change

The significant point which emerges is that a focus on students’ interests and identities, and on drawing subject matter from their own lives, lan-guage and cultures, must be accompanied by a critical reading of domi-nant socio-political constructs from which to envision and enact social change. The advantages of critical and analytical reflection in the class-room have been a focal point in recent educational theory and research, and much of what has been written in this area explicates the transfor-mative potential of critical approaches to teaching. Hence, the partici-pants do not merely want to invite student self-disclosure; instead, they seek to socialise their students into practices of critical, analytical, and productive reflection. Jennifer talks about personal disclosure being accompanied by critical reflection; Carol talks about surrounding self-disclosure with some kind of analysis; and Vijay talks about productive reflection. Egalitarian pedagogies posit that critical and analytical reflec-tion are key to enabling students develop critical consciousness, thus helping them to recognise and evaluate oppressive social power struc-tures. It further challenges them to consider their own positionality within these structures with the intention of exposing their complicity and/or victimisation therein. Critical reflection moves the reflector to take a stand either for or against something. Although feelings are a natural and necessary part of the critical process of self-reflection, they have to be linked to what Vijay calls productive reflection – that is, re-flection that does not remain merely affective or cerebral, but is ac-tion/activism-oriented, thereby making explicit its meaning/implications for the rest of the world.

In this vein, Laditka (1990) points out that for Freire, reflection and action go hand in hand. Praxis must begin with reflection, but reflection alone is merely an empty word, as incomplete as would be action alone. Concurring that the constitutive aspects of critical analysis are crucial for the construction of knowledge, and for the distribution of social justice, Glenn (2002) points out:

It is the primary means for helping students develop an awareness of their agency enabling them to identify and/or create conditions for the possibility of change in oppressive socio-political constructs. Performing as critically thinking, [writing]

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and speaking subjects in the classroom provides, for students, the basis for per-forming as citizen-critics outside it.

In addition, the crux of the discussion regarding the place and qualifica-tion of what constitutes academically relevant and valid knowledge is succinctly captured in Bernstein’s (1996:170–171) argument that the private/public dialectic of knowledge may be better conceived of if it is coached in a language of horizontal and vertical discourses. Bernstein notes that everyday, commonsense knowledge is expressed in horizontal discourse which is “local, segmental, context-dependent, tacit, multi-layered, often contradictory across contexts, but not within contexts.” He argues that, in contrast, a vertical discourse “takes the form of a coherent, explicit, systematically principled structure, hierarchically or-ganised, or it takes the form of a series of specialised languages.” On entering educational domains, students become subject to, and partici-pate in a new network of activity systems, and they thus combine net-works from home and from the community. This necessarily involves them in boundary crossing, translation, analysis and a synthesis of different sources of information, as well as exposes them to new seman-tic orientations and/or new forms of regulation. However, a preoccupation exclusively with the horizontal nature of personal experi-ence may hinder the conceptual coherence and progression of knowledge formation and acquisition, which underpin the purpose of the educational enterprise.

Conscious of both their educative and pedagogic roles, concepts like value, validation, and evaluation surface in, for example, Vijay’s comment, when she says: I have to keep asking myself what have I learnt from things? Carol concurs in her statement: You might have to surround it with some kind of analysis to give it more value. This observation brings us full circle to Thembi’s question: Who has the right to decide what is valid/valued or not? Thembi submits that personal experience constitutes a store of knowledge and information, but ponders who has the authority to qualify/sanction/certify such knowledge forms as valid or legitimate. She comments: Personal experience implies that one knows and is informed about something. … Yes, it constitutes knowledge.But the question whether it constitutes valid knowledge – the question from me would be who decides? Who has the right to decide that this is

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valid or not? The questions that Thembi poses are perhaps succinctly answered by Clifford et al. (2001). They point out that:

As staff we are accountable to the institution in which we work. We are agents of the institution that validates dominant constructions of knowledge. We are expected to uphold certain priorities and values. Yet we also want to empower students, to value the skills of personal reflection: the ability to make connections between the academic learning and one’s own life and the ability to think critically and trans-formatively about the very basis of the disciplines which students are studying.

Evidently, assessment still remains the means by which educational in-stitutions declare what in the curricula they regard as valid and valued. Assessment of what we value in education immediately leads to an ex-ploration of the political dimensions of curricula. Assessment is the place where students must fulfil the requirements of understanding, knowledge and skills that grants them formal recognition and validates their knowing. As such, assessment drives students’ learning by telling them what the institution really values, and it provides feminist teachers with opportunities to explore just how prepared we are to use the institutional power that we hold and what we ultimately value in learning. Since feminist educators do not seek to enculturate or reproduce the world, but to change it, an important question remains: How do we assess whether personal self-disclosures are valid and relevant? How do we measure the extent to which students have made connections between the political and the personal, and how much have they developed their critical and analytical thinking skills? Which criteria can be usefully applied? In the following extract Jennifer shares how she has to resort to adopting old academic criteria for the assessment of students’ deeply personal and traumatic responses to writing tasks:

For example that rape poem I mentioned, its very incendiary and it drew it a lot of extremely personal responses from students who told us in their written essays that they were rape victims and the trauma that they had suffered. How does one assess that, when you set an assignment and say ‘respond to the poem?’ Then you get these very traumatic stories. But then you mark it on the old academic criteria.

I’m not ‘an anything goes kind of teacher.’ I tell students that they have to meet certain criteria in their writing and that they will be assessed in terms of what they write. I forever ask students to make an argument, and to make it logically and clearly. I don’t know whether you can call me a feminist teacher, because I still have pretty firm criteria about what I want students to produce. I’m very strict on grammar, but it is a very complicated matter, because at postgraduate level you ex-

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pect, as our Head of Postgraduate Studies says, ‘fault free essays: no comma mis-takes, no quotation mistakes, no bibliographic mistakes. It must be flawless.’ That presupposes a norm of what is correct grammar. One doesn’t get it from students for whom English is a second or third language. In that case, I read the student’s essay with an eye to communicative competence. (Interview)

First, Jennifer refers to the dilemma of having to assess the disclosure of traumatic experiences which students may relate in response to an aca-demic assignment. She poses the question: How does one assess that?She then proceeds to answer that question by outlining the criteria which she adopts. She is fully cognisant of the trauma and suffering that the student may have endured, and there is an expectation in civil society for suffering and hurt to be met with empathy. It is at this juncture that Jennifer’s test both as an empathetic human being and an educator appears to be at odds, in that while she may empathise with the trauma of the student – the grade which she assigns to the student’s academic work may not necessarily reflect her empathy. The student thus has to deal with the trauma of the rape and the trauma/disappointment of a poor grade for not responding to the question according to the stipulated crite-ria. Hence, we note that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the severity of the trauma (rape), and the awarding of a high grade.

Second, Jennifer outlines the criteria that she employs, which are underpinned by adherence to old academic criteria, such as the require-ment of producing (at postgraduate level at least) fault-free/flawlessessays, without grammatical errors, punctuation errors and bibliographic errors, in addition to presenting arguments that are logical and clear. Several times, Jennifer stresses her commitment to abiding by these cri-teria. Her commitment to the stipulated criteria is captured in the im-perative they have to meet the criteria … . I still have pretty firm criteria … . I am very strict on grammar. Her insistence on adhering to these criteria is further solidified by her declaration: I’m not an anything goes kind of teacher.’ This declaration, when read in conjunction with the sentence I don’t know whether you can call me a feminist teacher, be-cause I still have pretty firm criteria about what I want students to pro-duce touches on a common perception about feminist teachers. That perception rides on the essentialist notion that for feminist teachers ‘anything goes’ or that their criteria for assessing students may be lacking in strictness. That perception is tied to the expectation that the

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democratic ideals which feminist teachers strive to engender in their classes translate into a carte blanche, laissez faire/anything goes philoso-phy, even where assessment is concerned. All the participants in this study are self-identified feminist educators, and they all actively distance themselves from this prevailing perception. The following extracts show that they attach varying degrees of importance to the adherence to grammatical rules and language conventions:

Phumzile: If there are rules, then they must be followed. (Interview)

Thembi: I take the English language like any other language, which has its own voice – grammatical rules. I think for anybody to communicate effectively, one has to follow those rules. … when you ignore that then the argument you make be-comes either nonsensical or illogical. If you want to communicate effectively, you want to learn by following certain rules. (Interview)

Carol: We have constantly to make decisions as to which of such influences from Afrikaans and Xhosa should be accommodated, and which in fact blur meaning. When does an ‘unidiomatic’ phrase become vividly expressive of a student’s worldview? How important are ‘correct’ prepositions? How formal does the lan-guage of an academic essay have to be? We have had to distinguish between rules and conventions, recognising that language conventions are just that, a matter of what is socially acceptable, rather than a fixed rule of the language. (Essay)

Vijay: … correct grammar and logical argument is all around clarity. I really have no vested interest in any of the conventions. … It is mainly around clarity and it is about teaching a style of being clear. (Interview)

Like Jennifer, Phumzile and Thembi recognise the role which adherence to grammatical rules plays in effective communication. Carol and Vijay appear to be more accommodating of deviation from grammatical con-ventions; however they, like the other participants, have an underlying concern with logical and clear arguments.

Clifford et al. (2001) observe that it is perhaps in the area of assess-ment that feminist teachers’ power sharing with students has proven to be the most fallacious. The participants, in varying degrees, expect from their students logical, coherent arguments and the responsible use of the English language, so that it promotes meaningful communication. The grades which they assign to students are not based on the level of empa-thy that students can elicit from them, however much they would like to grant concessions and be considerate towards students for whom English

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is not a first language. As feminist teachers, their empathy is evoked more by the consideration that it may be unfair to demand ‘native-like’ control of the English language from the student for whom English is not a first language.

Synthesis

The key points which emerge from an exploration of authority as au-thorship are:

First, admitting teacher-student personal disclosure into our teaching confirms that it does not just subvert the status quo by disrupting the division between the public and the private. Instead, teacher-student per-sonal disclosure also represents an active critique and challenge of staid pedagogic practices that have sanctioned what constitutes sacred, official knowledge and its transmission through the exclusive voice of the teacher expert. While feminist pedagogy has been instrumental in sub-verting this arrangement, the discussion on the admittance of teacher-student personal narratives as pedagogic content and strategy begged the question whether allowing personal disclosure into the classroom does really enhance teaching and learning, and whether it does disrupt the boundaries of the public and the private in a politically and pedagogi-cally positive way?

Responding to these questions in relation to the implications of teacher disclosure, Phumzile and Vijay forwarded two different views. Referring to her personality trait for valuing her privacy, Phumzile ex-plained that she chooses to maintain a professional distance from her students, thus her disinclination to make personal disclosures of a private and political nature to them. Vijay, on the other hand, uses herself as text in the class, both as pedagogic content and strategy to teach difficult issues, and to provide a ‘leadership’ model to which students may refer when they address sensitive issues.

The question on the merits of inviting student personal into the classroom received much support from the participants. There was wide-spread encouragement for activating student voice through various inter-pretations of authority as authorship. However, important criteria for the narration of personal experience in the feminist class is linked to making its relevance, relationship, contextual appropriacy of the personal disclo-

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sure, and its integration into the academic discussion under consideration explicit. The participants were unanimous in stressing that personal dis-closure should be coupled with critical reflection; thereby constructing the conditions for informed socio-political judgments and transforma-tion. This emphasis on critical reflection means that, within the teaching context, it is important to consider strategies for managing the personal, and showing how it is implicated in the political, and vice versa. In the absence of such criteria, educators court the risk of students becoming preoccupied in self-absorption technologies, narrating personal revela-tions that circulate within the realm of the familiar, solipsistic, narcissist and egotistic without concretising its pedagogic relevance. To avoid this risk is especially important given that assessment is linked to the demon-stration of academic skills, of critical thinking, and to the presentation of relevant, coherent, logical, clear and convincing arguments, rather than to the intensity of empathy or sensationalism which personal disclosures can evoke from their audience (unless that is the stated objective of the learning activity).

In this regard, Moi (1999:167) suggests that there is a need to con-tinue a clear-eyed analysis of our practices, motives and investments in the personal. It should not necessarily be incorporated wholesale into our vision of positive pedagogy. Moi questions the current vogue for cele-brating the personal, the located and the subjective at the expense of the impersonal, the general and the objective. She points out that issues of relevance and power are at stake in both cases, and that – whether one chooses impersonal or personal forms of pedagogic content and strategy – argumentation should depend on context, on purpose and on the par-ticular body of knowledge in question. Her argument is that:

The turn to the personal needs to be justified by showing what problem it solves. In the same way … one cannot assume that any attempt to turn to the impersonal is a universalist, patriarchal plot. The analysis of the particular case – of the individual speech act – will tell us whether this is a likely explanation.

The second significant point that emerges from an exploration of au-thority as authorship relates to feminist discourses which engender the notion that the personal is political, by challenging the normative, essen-tialist idea of the social actor, and by interrupting attempts to divide the world into two parts (reason/emotion; mind/body). Against this backdrop is the recognition that self-disclosure has the potential to bring deep

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emotion to the surface. In practice, teachers encounter and struggle with their own internal and external boundaries and limitations. This experi-ence of teachers was, for example, evident in Lisa’s recollection of the painful episode she experienced during a conference that she had attended. That traumatic experience has led her to a point of epistemic avoidance about engaging issues on Black women. Students too, in ac-tual classroom disclosures and in their writings, often grapple with sen-sitive and traumatic experiences, which may need professional counselling and support networks. Caught in the bind of not compro-mising their professional rapport and being misconstrued as teacher-mother/emotional blanket, the participants are aware that problematic moments arise from teacher-student personal disclosure. Thus, the ideo-logical predicaments of teaching from a feminist perspective need to be debated alongside material and practical dilemmas of responding to sen-sitivities that require emotional support, which teacher resources and workloads may not be equipped to handle. It is at this juncture that teacher-student personal disclosure may become potentially detrimental to good pedagogical practices and Miller’s (1995) observation gains cre-dence in this regard. Miller notes that sometimes personal disclosure just moves the boundaries, so that either the personal expands to fill the space available or the public infiltrates the private. It is in the light of this possibility that Miller advocates:

… bringing this crux out into the open: refiguring contemporary pedagogy as management of the vernacular at all its levels, and, rather than celebrating the per-sonal relationship between the teacher and her class, distinguishing sharply between the personal and the relational.

The third point regarding the discussion on teacher-student personal dis-closure emerges from the gaps/silences in the debate. Much in the explo-ration of teacher-student disclosure attends to the arousal of traumatic/painful emotional experiences. This aspect of the exploration marks an interesting skew/bias in the representation of the spectrum of human emotions and experiences. Human beings’ experiences and emo-tions are not generically and pathologically traumatic. As social actors, we experience a kaleidoscope of emotions, not just painful and traumatic ones. However, there appears to be a silence around this spectrum of the emotion/experiential continuum. It is possible to attribute this ‘skewness’ to the preoccupation of feminist discourses with identifying oppressive

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social structures and women’s victimisation within it – hence the over-representation of trauma and pain. This preoccupation may be corrobo-rated by reference to Pitt’s (1997:133) observation that there are two discernible narratives that are consistent with feminist knowledge pro-duction, namely: (i) victimisation; and (ii) resistance to victimisation – hence the preoccupation with pain and trauma.

The fourth point relates to the potential for self-disclosure to be sen-sitive. Thus, apart from the recognition of emotion that emanates from team teacher Lisa’s self-disclosure, a tangential, but equally important point for consideration relates to the issues of personal experience, epis-temic privilege and epistemic disenfranchisement. The political implica-tions translate to the notion that – when experience of oppression is the condition upon which one can know – anyone who occupies a dominant social position (in terms of race, class, sexuality, gender) is summarily excluded from the enterprise of creating feminist knowledge. Such ex-clusion results in a curious outcome, in that people who cannot be/are not experiential knowers of oppression are unaccountable for the crea-tion and consideration of feminist knowledge. The utility of this disen-franchisement becomes suspect, because it renders those who have been oppressed primarily responsible for directing and defining the production of feminist knowledge, and it thereby relieves those who have not ex-perienced oppression of the responsibility for constructing knowledge about difference, exploitation, and liberation. Macdonald (2002) recommends a realist theory of identity which challenges the assertion that there is a determinate relationship between the experience of oppression or privilege and the knowledge that is conferred upon the oppressed or privileged by virtue of that experience.

Amid the merits and de-merits which are associated with teacher-student personal narratives being called upon as pedagogic content and strategy, a key concern that emerges relates to how pedagogic relations are redefined by power differentials in the teacher-student dyad. This redefinition of pedagogic relations is an issue that I consider in the en-suing discussion authority as power, which explores Gore’s (2002) proposition for developing a theory of power in pedagogy.

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Section 3: Authority as Power

In addition to teacher authority being associated with nurturance and authorship, Gore (1993) points to the delineation of feminist teacher au-thority as power.

In their book, Women’s Ways of Knowing, Belenky et al. (1986) cite the comments of a new entry university student after engaging with a professor for the first time. The student is reported to have said: “Our teachers appear to us first in the guise of gods and are later revealed to be human. We think the revelation might occur sooner if those of us who teach could find the courage – and the institutional support – to think out loud with students.” In elaborating on the student’s experience of her professors being more godlike than human, Belenky et al. describe pro-fessors as having a fear of stepping down and joining in on a more fa-miliar discourse with their students (not only on a personal level but also on an institutional level). It is against this dominant backdrop that Lubrano (2002) advocates a more nurturing and connected teaching style to help students dispel the myth of professor = god. Thus, it is not sur-prising that in responding to the interview question ‘What type of teacher identity would you not want your students or colleagues to construct of you?’ – the participants in my study invariably disassociated themselves from the imagery of dominant authoritarian, as is evident in the following extracts:

Jennifer: The unassailable authority figure, I don’t want that – the idea of the oracle, or she who must be obeyed. Certain colleagues and students think I am unapproachable, and I wouldn’t actively foster that idea. The idea that I can’t be questioned or I can’t be enquired of or asked for help – that is the identity I don’t want. I would also hate to be put on a pedestal where every word is holy truth. I’d hate that, because sometimes your students are complete strangers, and then they feel like they need to show respect and to genuflect at one’s altar. It makes me very uncomfortable, and then I feel like I have to draw the student out and try to tell them that I am a person, and if I wrote something in the tutorial letter, it doesn’t mean that it’s the word of God, it’s simply my point of view. (Interview)

Carol: Bossy, which I am at times. (Interview)

Vijay: I wouldn’t want to be considered authoritarian. I like having authority in the class, but authoritarian, I would have problems with that. (Interview)

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Jennifer’s, Carol’s and Vijay’s unanimous distancing from being con-strued as bossy, authoritarian, unassailable oracles of authority, is con-sistent with the ideal that is expressed in feminist and critical discourses as they relate to the issue of teacher power and authority. Bent on not replicating the teacher-as-single-authority figure for which mainstream patriarchal education has been critiqued, feminist educators strive to make their classrooms collaborative, experiential, egalitarian, empowering, relational and affective. In doing so, they attempt to de-centre authority and to remain learners in the classroom. Feminist edu-cational literature has emphasised sharing power with – or empowering – students in an effort to distribute classroom authority more evenly and to diminish the potentially negative effects of traditional classroom hierar-chies. In spite of these egalitarian ideals, several scholars (among them, many feminists themselves, like Ellsworth 1992; Gore 1993; Clifford et al. 2001) ring out the sobering reminder that feminist teachers exist within the social and political power structures of the university. Those power structures must be recognized in order to make explicit the power relations that exist therein, while also acknowledging that power rela-tions are fluid and identity-related. The general currency of thought is that patriarchal models of authority are based on hierarchical power rela-tions, competition and control (Kenway & Modra 1992). Some feminist educators are attempting to alter perceived characteristics of patriarchal pedagogy. Discussions on the authority and role of the teacher in femi-nist pedagogy attempt to redefine the pedagogic relationship with a view to promoting connected, collaborative and negotiated teaching and learning (Gawelek et al. 1994:182) thereby creating classrooms that are non-hierarchal, non-competitive and more democratic.

Although not all writers of feminist pedagogy use the same termi-nology in their writings about authority, invariably the concerns that are discussed seem to support the view that the authority which the feminist teacher seeks is ‘authority with’ – not ‘authority over’ – his/her students; it is a form of authority that is not authoritarian, but is based in caring and reciprocal relationships.

A common explanation that is given for the discussion of authority in feminist pedagogies lies in the intention of feminist teachers to em-power their students and themselves by encouraging the interrogation and critical analyses of their experiences thereby becoming theorists of their own lives (Wolfe & McNally 1994:21). Feminist pedagogies

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attempt to move beyond the mere identification and articulation of ex-perience to the creation of a critical understanding of the forces that shape experiences. This notion of a critical understanding implies ac-quiring a critical literacy that transcends a mere consciousness of social power configurations by developing the political and ethical will to con-front and transform discriminatory social practices.

Shrewsbury (1987:9) for instance, identifies some empowering strategies that feminist teachers employ to encourage students to find their own voices. She contends that:

… empowering classrooms are places to practice visions of a feminist world, con-fronting differences to enrich all of us rather than belittle some of us. Empowering pedagogy does not dissolve the authority or power of the instructor. It does move from power as domination to power as creative energy.

In spite of the emancipatory intent that is inscribed in feminist pedagogi-cal discussions on authority and empowerment, these concepts are fre-quently acknowledged as problematic. Ellsworth (1992) contends that such terms can be repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domina-tion – myths that are based on rationalist assumptions and that posit a universality that is, in fact, oppressive. Orner (1992:74) expresses con-cern that certain critical and feminist pedagogues, who are preoccupied with issues of empowerment and student experiences, often position stu-dents as deficit Other and condescendingly assume that students do not already value their own language, experiential realities and backgrounds. Furthermore, Orner argues that such a stance by critical and feminist pedagogues presumes that they themselves are already enlightened and are ‘empowerers’ and not oppressors. As a way of spotlighting the con-ceptual gaps in traditional feminist discourses on feminist teacher au-thority, I draw on Gore’s (2002) propositions for developing a theory of power in pedagogy, which I discuss under the following four categories:

Pedagogy is the enactment of power relations between teacher, stu-dents and other stakeholders and is endemic to the teaching and learning dynamic. Thus, rather than construe it negatively, its posi-tive and enabling elements should be harnessed to foster emancipa-tion.Bodies are the objects of pedagogical power relations and in peda-gogy, different differences matter. (Bodies are raced, sexed, gen-

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dered, classed, clothed, aged, languaged, etc., and these identity markers constitute difference.) The discussion also explores the gen-dered citizenship status of female educators in academia. It explores the barriers which women have to negotiate as a result of their gen-ders and the resistance strategies which they employ. The kind of knowledge that is produced in pedagogy interacts with its location and the techniques of power that are employed there. First, the selection, sequencing, pacing and assessment of teaching material are not arbitrary activities. They entail premeditated consid-erations and planning on the part of the teacher and point to the teacher’s pedagogic authority. Second, the conceptual and ideologi-cal perspectives which are enshrined in the goals, aims, mission and vision of both the feminist educator and the institution within which she performs her pedagogy shape the corpus of knowledge that is produced therein. This corpus of knowledge constitutes the educative authority of both the institution and the feminist teacher.Pedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques of power (I discuss pedagogical strategies/teaching methodologies that edu-cators employ in the teaching/learning situation. I focus more expan-sively on dialogic, student-centred learning which is a preferred pedagogical strategy in feminist and critical discourses.) These pa-rameters invariably result in regulating and normalising pedagogic technique and content in order to service the pedagogic and educa-tive goals which are outlined for the course of study.

Pedagogy is the enactment of power relations

In her proposition pedagogy is the enactment of power relations, Gore (2002) contends that power is inescapable, and it should, as such, not be despised and shunned as an evil in the classroom. She also contends that the power relations of pedagogy are normalising: hence there are limits to feminist educators’ efforts to create power-free classrooms. Gore con-curs with Foucault’s (1980) argument that power is ever present; there-fore teachers should not be afraid to exercise their authority and power,

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but they should use it sensitively for the positive construction of relations among participants and themselves, and in the construction of knowledges.

Reiterating the sentiments of Gore, de Lauretis (in Luke & Gore 1992) submits that it is necessary to distinguish between the positive (enabling/creative) effects and the oppressive (disabling/coercive) effects of power. Foucault (1980) elaborates the invisibility and pervasiveness of power in society. He describes disciplinary power as circulating rather than being possessed, productive and not necessarily repressive, existing in action, and often operating through technologies of self. Gore’s (2002) view, which is derived from Foucault, demonstrates how the power rela-tions that are inextricable to pedagogy govern and regulate bodies and knowledge; and she argues that discourses are constructed out of peda-gogy itself. From this perspective, power is not simply the imposition of one will on another; its subtleties and nuances need to be acknowledged in a way that transcends the mere imposition or reproduction of broader societal power relations. In the following autobiographical disclosure, Thembi provides an illustrative episode on the fluidity of power configu-rations.

I immediately resolved in my mind that if a man sitting on the department chair thinks he is there because he is any better than a female colleague, then I should de-stabilise what he thinks is a fixed position. I should show him that he is in that po-sition simply because we cannot all be Head at the same time; that he is chair not because the rest of the staff, especially women, are incapable. My resolve was to unseat him; to show him that leadership is not about asserting the inferiority of others, thereby asserting one’s own superiority. My goal was to begin to work to-wards being the next chair as a way of changing the stereotypical beliefs so rife even in academic circles. And of course when the time came, I gladly took over as the next and first woman chair in that department. The roles had been reversed. I was in control. And what did I discover in that ivory tower? Power is in one’s mind. You simply feel it only if you want to. Indeed it is fluid, not fixed. (Essay)

In the light of the fluidity and relativity of power dynamics, much of the discussion in this chapter examines the lead teachers take in enacting pedagogic power relations. However, given the notion that power is not simply the imposition of one will on another, we witness, in the following extracts from a series of Vijay’s lectures, that students are not passive, powerless, subservient victims in the class; they also exert power, and they are sometimes courageous enough to challenge the

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teacher’s script, as well as each others’ scripts. In the ensuing discussion, I identify a few instances in which students:

(i) challenge the teacher; and (ii) act as accessory to the teacher’s authority by challenging fellow

students.

(i) student challenging teacher authority

The following series of extracts pertain to the negotiation of the AIDS Assignment topic that Vijay was preparing to engage the class in. The extracts span over a period of three lecture sessions, and involve the following exchange between student Vasie and teacher Vijay:

Vijay: What is the question that you need to deal with in the AIDS Assignment? … It’s not a question that I set. The whole point about the assignment is that it refers to your needs as an intellectual, and as a member of society. (Lecture Observation: 18 April 2001)

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Vijay: Vasie, have you done your homework? I can almost tell that you haven’t. Come on, prove me wrong. Vasie (Indian female): No, you tell me. Vijay: I can almost count how many lectures you have attended …. (Vasie says that Vijay is picking on her. First, when she indicated that she would like to work on a different aspect of the AIDS topic, Vijay insinuated that she would be submitting someone else’s work; now she is picking on her about her attendance,and the homework, and that’s not very nice.)Vijay: Of course that’s not very nice. But it’s for you to challenge me, and say, ‘but of course it is my work!’ Vasie: It is my work. I spent many hours on the Internet getting the information … . Vijay: If you got it from the Internet, then it’s not your work. Vasie: Everything, every bit of information is somebody else’s work. Vijay: But how you work through it is critical. But let’s talk about your homework. Did you do it? Vasie: No. Vijay: But you were not here last week. Buyee (Black female): But, Vijay, we knew about it. This was given to you ages ago, and you were supposed to have photocopied the chapter. Vasie: I’m not the only one in class who has not done it. Vijay: No, indeed, but your performance is a bit – you know … Vasie: I have passed all my tests.

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Vijay: But it’s not just your test, your performance mark is important too. (Lecture Observation: 18 April 2001)

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Vijay: Have you worked out the questions for the AIDS Assignment? Vasie: I wanted to know whether I could do another topic regarding AIDS? Vijay: What other topic? Vasie: The one where we talk about the dissident views regarding the AIDS debate. Vijay: You could, but it might be a good idea for all of us to work on the same topic, so that we can learn from each other. Vasie: I’ve done a lot of work on … Vijay: You have a friend who’s done a lot of work on it? Vasie: No, no, no, I have, sincerely. I’ve asked around … . Vijay: How does it tie with the Language and Power Course? (pause). Think about it … obviously it has to be related. Vasie: I’ve got my information if you want to have a look at it first … . (Lecture Observation: 18 April 2001)

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(Vijay goes around the class, asking each person by name, whether s/he would be able to do a three-page assignment on the AIDS topic): Vijay: Vasie so we are going to take you out of the dissident question and into this. Are you all right with that? I’ll probably talk to you a bit about that. (Lecture Ob-servation: 24 April 2001)

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Vasie: I asked you the question about the difference between HIV and AIDS; you said we are not going to get technical. Vijay: Did I say that? Vasie: And now you said its fine. Vijay: Ah, maybe that’s prejudice. Let’s investigate it. What did you say in your question? Maybe there is a slight difference to the question. I don’t know. Do you think that there is a difference between HIV and AIDS? Vasie: I asked the same question. Vijay: What is the difference between HIV and AIDS? I’m sorry I don’t even re-member. This was yesterday. Maybe what I was focussing on was attitudes … . Vasie: But you said it’s a good question when Tammy asked it. Vijay: Now that’s good, because if I am practising prejudice then I need to know about it. What was your question? Let’s look at the question once more and think it through … you will notice that I am not approving all Tammy’s questions. Vasie: No, I’m not saying that. I’m talking about justice. (Lecture Observation: 25 April 2001)

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Vijay: You are simply there to ask the questions, gather the information; and avoid making assumptions. Vasie will tell you that I made assumptions about her research the other day and how damaging that can be, and how unproductive that is. (Vasie nods her head). So it is important to avoid making assumptions. And if you make an assumption, you better sort it out. (Lecture Observation: 25 April 2001)

From the series of extracts, the following points emerge: Vijay declares: It’s not a question that I set. The whole point of the assignment is that it refers to your needs. The implicit and explicit message is that students have freedom of choice in compiling and finalising the assignment ques-tion. Thus, student Vasie assumes that, since the assignment refers to her needs as an intellectual, and as a member of society, it would be OK to research the AIDS question from the point of view of the dissident voices. This, however, runs counter to Vijay’s intention for containing the research topic so that there would be commonality in what the stu-dents investigate. However, subtexts on various issues (namely, atten-dance, homework and student integrity), which are unrelated to the AIDS Assignment topic per se, filter through and result in a ‘running battle’ between teacher Vijay and student Vasie, which spans a series of lec-tures. The substance of Vijay’s discontent is related to regula-tory/disciplinary politics and educational values, like maintaining academic integrity and not plagiarising by downloading articles from the Internet.

The Vasie-Vijay exchange combines several issues, namely, atten-dance, homework, student integrity and the normalisation of pedagogic content; hence the power dynamics in the exchange become quite com-plicated. The argument is further exacerbated when Vijay throws down the gauntlet on the student by challenging her: Vasie, have you done your homework? I can almost tell that you haven’t. Come on prove me wrong …. (The teacher’s expectation is that Vasie would produce evidence that she has done her homework, that her work on the AIDS Assignment, is indeed hers, and that she has neither plagiarised from the Internet nor from a friend). Hence Vijay says: But it’s for you to challenge me, and say, ‘but of course it is my work!’ Rather than humour Vijay with a de-fensive explanation as to why she has not done her homework, student Vasie opts for challenging teacher telepathy, when she cheekily re-sponds: No, you tell me. Implied in Vasie’s retort is the suggestion that,

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since Vijay presumes to know that she has not done her homework, and has plagiarised from a friend, she – as the all-knowing teacher ‘expert’ – should have telepathic knowledge to support these allegations. Here we note that, although Vasie has defaulted on her homework and attendance, she is offended when her integrity is called into question; and she is not afraid to let the teacher know that that is unacceptable.

Much of Vasie’s subsequent responses during the exchange seem to revolve around her appeal not to be pre-judged (that is for Vijay not to make assumptions about her) and to being treated in the same way as the other defaulting students. In this regard, student Vasie is able to describe her feelings and provide examples of the times when Vijay has singled her out for challenge and reprimand. Vasie says that Vijay is picking on her. First when she indicated that she would like to work on a different aspect of the AIDS topic, Vijay insinuated that she would be submitting work done by someone else, now she is picking on her about her atten-dance, and the homework, and that’s not very nice. Later in the ex-change, Vasie points out to Vijay: I asked you the question about the difference between HIV and AIDS; you said we are not going to get tech-nical. … But you said it’s a good question when Tammy asked it.Teacher Vijay moves Vasie’s allegations of perceived injustice against her by being able to name and frame the problem as a concrete accusa-tion of teacher prejudice. Vijay says: Ah, maybe that’s prejudice. Let’s investigate it … Now that’s good, because if I am practicing prejudice then I need to know about it. A courageous but cautious Vasie responds: I’m not saying that. I’m talking about justice, which arguably is the same thing that Vijay is saying. In hearing Vijay name the problem (of alleged teacher prejudice) so starkly articulated, it may be assumed that a diplo-matic Vasie recognises that the confrontational exchange into which she has entered with her teacher is uncharacteristic of teacher-student ex-changes and potentially not in her best interest. She thus, begins to downplay the accusation which she is levelling against Vijay. Vijay also senses that she has overstepped it with Vasie and offers a cautionary word to the class when she says: Avoid making assumptions. Vasie will tell you that I made assumptions about her research the other day and how damaging that can be and how unproductive that is. So it is im-portant to avoid making assumptions. And if you make an assumption,you better sort it out.

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The apparent ‘running battle’ between Vasie and Vijay illustrates that not all students accept with passive reverence the teacher’s authority. Although, often out of deference students may avoid con-fronting a teacher, Vasie – an undergraduate student – risks pointing out to Vijay what she perceives to be prejudicial teacher behaviour. Given that the Vasie-Vijay exchange extended over several lectures, I was able to raise the issue with Vijay in the post-lecture interview. Vijay commented on the exchange as follows:

The other day you were there when I actually overstepped it with Vasie. I had to think about it … how could you do that? I had to think back on why I was reacting like that. In a way I’m glad that you are asking me these questions, Juliet, because I wouldn’t have thought through that one so seriously. Boy, I really need to watch this! I was a bit surprised at my own response to that. This voice of authority is so corrosive.

Even today in the class finalising the question, adding a few more, gonging out certain questions, is quite interesting. Vasie raised me on that question. Actually it was quite productive, because she made me think: ‘Hang on, yesterday I thought it was not valuable, today I think that it is valuable. What actually is it?’ It turned out that that was a very powerful intervention by her. I hope that I affirmed her. She was a bit uncertain. Any student would be a bit uncertain. I don’t know whether I would have the guts to ask the lecturer that, as a student, because for me it would have spelt a confrontation. They are too innocent. I don’t know whether it is be-cause I am over-exercising my power. I really do want more spunk from them. But as you saw when poor Vasie gave me a bit of spunk what I did.

It is the Freirean notion of critical reflection, and the importance of challenge. For me, power has to be questioned in the class ... . You need to question power and the teacher’s power is up for question. It can never be taken for granted. It’s the only way we really improve. I’ve found that I don’t lose anything by listening to students. It’s like Vasie in class, today, it is tempting to say, ‘Oh, shut up! What do you know?’ It is so easy to be off-hand, and dismiss them. I always find that I am not as clever as I think I am. (Interview)

Vijay provides a classic example of critical teacher reflection and the need for teacher repentance. Vijay commends Vasie for having the courage to publicly challenge her authority, and she points to the poten-tial ‘damage’ which unchecked teacher authority is likely to have on students who may not have the social capital and courage to ‘stand up’ and challenge the teacher’s script. Vijay’s repentance for overstepping itwith Vasie, and her commendation of Vasie for challenging her teacher authority, is framed within the educative goal of the feminist English

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language class, i.e. to educate students to confront corrosive power structures/agents, including teachers, if the need arises. That Vasie has confronted the teacher on her ‘repressive/disabling’ power performance actually testifies that she has learnt to exercise her agentic potential to challenge unproductive power plays. The cumulative effect being that Vasie’s challenge was, according to Vijay: a) quite productive in that it made the teacher think about her responses to the student; and b) power-ful in that teacher Vijay had to stop to think about what angle she wanted students to address the AIDS Assignment from.

In addition, Vasie’s challenge provoked Vijay to acknowledge that: a) the voice of teacher authority can be corrosive; and b) she might be over-exercising her power. This is an important reflection, especially in a feminist class that seeks to engender enabling, creative and constructive relations among teachers and students in knowledge production. It illus-trates that power is not the imposition of one will on another, but it cir-culates, rather than being possessed by the most obvious bearers of authority. This dynamic is further illustrated when students exercise power over each other.

(ii) students act as accessory to the teacher’s authority

Given the prevailing problem of absenteeism with which both Thembi and Vijay contend in their undergraduate classes, we notice in yet another exchange from Vijay’s lecture that some students wield power not through being confrontational with the teacher, but by becoming an accessory to the teacher’s authority, as is evident in the following ex-tracts:

Vijay: Thembi, you were not here, are you aware that you had to do a question? Thembi (Black female): No. (Vijay asks other students in the class, whether they have a question for the AIDS Assignment) Vijay: Thulani? Thulani (Black male): No. Buyee (Black female): But Vijay, they knew about the question a long time ago. (Vijay laughs). I don’t think students have an excuse for not bringing in an assign-ment question, because I was also absent but I have brought a question. (Lecture Observation)

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Vijay: But let’s talk about your homework. Did you do it? Vasie: No. Vijay: But you were not here last week. Buyee (Black female): But Vijay we knew about it. This was given to you ages ago, and you were supposed to have photocopied the chapter. (Lecture Observation)

Vijay seems to be more accommodating of students Vasie and Thulani, who have arrived in class without an AIDS Assignment question, attributing their lack of preparedness to their absenteeism. However, student Buyee is not as accommodating or empathetic. She points out: But Vijay, they knew about the question a long time ago … . But Vijay we knew about it. This was given to you ages ago. On two separate occa-sions, student Buyee acts as an accessory to the teacher’s authority. Out of a sense of mounting frustration with the lack of commitment from fellow students, Buyee assumes ‘teacherly’ authority and reprimands defaulting students who arrive unprepared at lectures by pointing out that students really have no excuse for not doing homework that they were given ages ago. Student Buyee’s interjections of annoyance show that pedagogy, as the enactment of power relations, is fluid and relational. It confirms that power differentials do not just define teacher-student rela-tions, but also student-student relations.

In yet another instance of students becoming accessories to teacher authority, we note the female students in Vijay’s class demonstrate their power to challenge a fellow male student, who articulates a point of view that discriminates against women.

Nathi (Black male): What about returning to cultural practices for girls to protect them and keep their virginity? (somebody chuckles)Vijay: And men? Nathi: The idea is that if women abstain from sex and keep their virginity, you’ll be safe if you marry her. Devi (Indian female): Will she be safe if she has sex with you? (class laughs) Nathi: The thing is you will marry her … Vijay: So you yourself will be a virgin? Nathi: No, no, that I can’t guarantee … . (laughter and general protest from the class about double standards). I know, but for women it’s different. They have to keep their virginity. Men should have a choice … Thandi (Black female): You don’t think that men should stay virgins? Nathi: If I want to stay a virgin then, I mean, it’s my choice. Thandi: Then why are you just saying women? Devi: Then it should be her choice as well.

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Nathi: Ja, it is her choice, but I was only making a point … you don’t have to bite my head off. (class laughs). (Lecture Observation)

In a class that is designed to interrogate and subvert sexist and misogy-nist attitudes, Vijay finds that she can safely rely on the female students to challenge an ‘offending’ male student. In her interview Vijay commented on the above student-teacher-student exchange as follows:

Like the student who was saying that for men it’s different. It is obviously a thing that I will deal with. But I had enough sense as a teacher then, to know like, hang on Vijay, there are women in this class who can handle this, and sure enough they did and they did it powerfully. I don’t think I would have done a job as well as they did and what is more they were speaking to him as peers, and not as the Power,whom he can forget about as soon as he is gone. These are women who are his age, very typical of his social circle. Sometimes it is those voices that count and my own silence that adds to it. (Interview)

Vijay draws attention to the horizontal and vertical dimensions of power differentials. By pointing out that the female students who challenge offending student Nathi are of his age and social circle, and are also his peers, Vijay distinguishes between the hierarchical Power (in reference to the teacher) and the horizontal power of the female students. She re-alises that hierarchical teacher power is sometimes likely to be ineffec-tive, while the power of one’s peers to challenge and convict may be taken more seriously. Her teacher discretion to exercise her power of silence has enabled the female students to respond to the ideologically offending male student.

Giving credence to both Foucault (1980); and Gore’s (2002) con-ceptualisation about the nature of power, it is evident from the above series of extracts that students are not mere objects to be acted upon, but they possess agentic power and potential to challenge the teacher and fellow students alike. Corroborating this conception of power, in the post lecture interview, Vijay comments on the above exchanges and identifies the various axes of power that operate in the classroom. These axes of power include power differentials between teacher and students, students and students, both male and female, the power to reprimand, critically reflect, affirm and repent, and the power of silence.

Central to acknowledging the fluidity and multi-dimensionality of power, and its enabling and corrosive potential, is the need to engage Vijay’s suggestion that we constantly reflect on the way all those who

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are involved in the pedagogic encounter engage power and question its constitution and the intentions of its use. That the feminist classroom cannot be rid of power brings us to the recognition that pedagogy in-volves the enactment of power relations. It further confirms Mercer’s (1997) contention that: “we are all in power, like fish in water, and we swim at different levels: sometimes we are sharks and at other times sar-dine.”

Synthesis

An examination of the proposition that pedagogy is the enactment of power relations has re-confirmed that power is fluid and circulatory, and those who exercise power neither possess nor embody it. Although de-bates in feminist pedagogy generally isolate for discussion the notion of power and authority in relation to the feminist teacher, the gaze in this discussion shifted to an analysis of students and their vertical and hori-zontal power performances. Teacher-student and student-student inter-changes have illustrated that students are not powerless and subservient victims in the class: they also exert power. Sometimes students are cou-rageous enough to confront the teacher’s script (a vertical challenge of power); at other times they assume the role of accessory to the teacher’s authority and reprimand and challenge fellow students (a horizontal challenge of power). The discussion has illustrated that the intersection of students and teachers’ multiple identities yield fluid and fluctuating relationships within feminist teaching practices and discourses.

Bodies are the objects of pedagogical power relations

Foucault (1980:39) argues that power operates through bodies; that is, power takes the form of actions upon actions. He contends that discipli-nary power functions at the level of the body when he writes:

In thinking of the mechanisms of power, I am thinking rather of its capillary form of existence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals,

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touches their bodies and inserts itself into their action and attitudes, their dis-courses, learning processes and everyday lives.

Foucault’s reconceptualisation of disciplinary power recognises its re-percussions and reverberations from the macro-realm of structures and ideologies to the micro-level of bodies, a material and physical site at which the enactment of power relations is observable. Student and teacher subjectivities are clearly implicated in the enactment of power on bodies. One of the central tenets of critical feminist pedagogy has been its insistence on challenging the mind/body split. For hooks (1994:193) this tenet of critical feminist pedagogy pertains not only to connecting knowledge to experience or theory to practice, but to the way it is taught or embodied by the teacher. She talks about ways in which we are taught to ignore the teacher’s body, a device which Waldby (1995) calls “the fiction of the disembodied scholar,” whose authority lies in being seen only as “a properly trained mind, unlocated in the specific historical ex-perience and social position of a sexed, classed or racially marked body.”

Following these conceptions of power technologies on bodies, Gore (2002) proposes that this perspective on power relations has direct impli-cations for the construction of teacher and student subjectivities. Power relations are configured by variables such as race, class, gender, ethnic-ity, sexuality, etc., which are all not enacted or produced in identical ways in classrooms (they constitute differences that make a difference). She further suggests that the institutional sanctioning of power gives a particularly corporeal character (that which concerns the material or physical) to the exercise of power in educational institutions. Viewing bodies as material and physical sites highlights a need to see teachers and students not as generic individuals, but as people who have differential capacities to enact definitions of power, based on their place in the hier-archies of the social world. This precipitates a need to examine the differences and similarities that teachers and students experience in the classroom as a result of skin colour, age, gender, race, language, eco-nomic status, personal experiences, etc.

Some of the participants in my study have also talked about the ways in which their authority is valorised, compromised or challenged as a result of factors which are linked to their age, gender and/or race, dress style, professional background, etc. In the following discussion, I examine these variables of teacher identity with a focus on:

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Pedagogic Power Relations defined by Age, Race and Gender; Dress sense, physical and mental wellness, and disaffected student bodies; and Women’s Bodies as Objects of Gendered Academic Citizenship

Pedagogic Power Relations defined by Age, Race and Gender

In exploring the politics of bodies as objects of pedagogical power rela-tions, the following extracts from Phumzile’s essay encapsulate corpo-real issues which are central to the discussion on feminist teacher identity and its impact on teacher-student relations. Phumzile addresses aspects of her personal and professional identity that specifically pertain to her individuation as a Black educator who is lecturing at the Univer-sity of the Free State, which is a predominantly White student and staff institution. In addition, she refers to age and gender as variables that are drawn upon in attempts to undermine her female teacher power. Phumzile writes:

I soon discovered that in my literature classes race and gender were swear words. My first lecture provoked protests from a right-wing student organisation. Although I received support from members of my department, the then Dean chose to side with the protesting students.

This has been one of a series of incidents, which were overtly racist, and sexist directed at me since I started teaching at the university. As a recent audit of the Black staff in the Faculty of Humanities revealed, I am not alone in experiencing an assortment of tactics accompanied by (often stated) scepticism about our ability to function as credible professionals.

The dominant image of a knowledgeable person on any subject (read expert) is male, White, older. That I am Black, female, younger has three discernible simulta-neous effects: For many of my (White) students, maybe less so now than when I arrived here in 1997 at 24 years of age, by their own admission I am a very rare example of a Black woman they have encountered in a position outside of (poten-tial) servitude to them. (Essay)

First, the undermining tactics which are associated with gender discrimi-nation are well documented as they relate to scepticism regarding the female teacher’s professional status. Traditionally, professorial authority

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and knowledge have been linked to the broader patriarchal authority that is wielded in institutions of higher education and which is founded on what Phumzile describes as: The dominant image of a knowledgeable person on any subject (read expert) is male, White, older. Within this tradition of patriarchal society, merely being female has sufficed as justi-fication for being accorded inferior professional status. That Phumzile is female, Black, and younger has three discernible identity markings that destabilise the hegemony and trouble traditional student and staff con-ceptions of figures in authority. For the purposes of exploring the propo-sition, bodies are the objects of pedagogical relations; the ensuing discussion examines the issues of race and age as identity markers, which impact the enactment of teacher identity, in different university contexts.

Ropers-Huilman (1997) notes the belief that if students know teachers’ ages and professional backgrounds well enough, they would be willing to grant them a measure of authority based on those presumed experiences. Thus, the tendency to equate age with maturity, experience and a wealth of professional expertise is a prevalent, though erroneous perception that Phumzile has to endure. Having to negotiate her gender and age identity markings in a learning environment that is comprised predominantly of White students, Phumzile admits to making strategic decisions as to how she enacts her pedagogic role. In the light of having experienced racial and sexist disparagement, the need to assert her teacher authority is crucial in order to counter the scepticism about herability to function as a credible professional. She is aware that in this particular teaching space, to stage democratic technologies of teacher and student as joint learners runs the risk of it being construed as a tacti-cal manoeuvre on her part to mask her lack of knowledge in the field of study. Simply put, students and staff who believe that her being young, female and Black is an embodiment of innate ignorance and cognitive deficit are likely to see her efforts at drawing on their experiential epis-temology as a way to mask her lack of sacred knowledge. Thus, choosing to foreground her teacher authority via an active demonstration of ‘expert/official’ knowledge, Phumzile writes:

This has had several challenges for the ways in which I have chosen to participate in the lecturing space. … Robin Powers suggests that the servant-leadership ethic is an example of feminist and anti-racist epistemology. … The non-hierarchical class-

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room model is contradictory and counterproductive. It is difficult to maintain re-sponsible and efficient co-ordination when an organisation is truly non-hierarchical. It is also misleading to think that classrooms can ever be truly non-hierarchical for learners are not educators within the classroom context. While their multiple litera-cies are not called into doubt, it is clear that the area they chose to register for a course in is not one they identify as within the ambit of their expertise. By contrast, the lecturer has herself undergone extensive training in precisely the field she offers the course in. Thus the choice of lecturer is not arbitrary and the systems of knowledge present in the lecture room are not interchangeable. A commitment to equity need not be so idealistic as to deny that difference has currency and that hierarchy is not always bad. In a lecture situation it is true that I know more about literary critical analysis than my students do. (Essay)

The crucial points that emerge from the extract relate first to the hierar-chical nature of the university, which in attempting to fulfil its roles and responsibilities, and to pursue efficient co-ordination and organisation, can prove undemocratic. Thus, in the first instance, hierarchal relations play themselves out at the macro-level of the University of the Free State. Second, in negotiating the challenges of lecturing at the University of the Free State, Phumzile finds it useful to also retain educator author-ity at the micro-level of the classroom. She does so as part of her educa-tive and pedagogic mandate, because she maintains that: In a lecture situation it is true that I know more about literary critical analysis than my students do. She argues that students register for courses of study because they identify these as areas in which they need to expand their knowledge. As a way of exposing students to wider knowledge in their chosen field of study, as a qualified educator who has undergone exten-sive training, she is comparatively more knowledgeable in the chosen field of study. Thus, her craft and disciplinary knowledge imbue her with more insights into the discipline by virtue of her specialised educative and pedagogic expertise.

In addition, given that the feminist critique of teacher authoritarianism has emanated from disenchantment with class and gen-der supremacy wielded by predominantly elite, White men, the call for sharing/divesting academic authority is not applicable or appropriate to Phumzile as a Black female. She is aware that in a climate of overt and atmospheric racial and gender undermining, her real claim to pedagogic authority is vested in her academic expertise. Thus, while recognising the strategic value of equity, Phumzile rejects the fantasy of non-hierarchical egalitarianism, and does not yield her teacher authority indiscriminately.

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The very present and conspicuous reality of being a young, Black woman who constitutes a racial minority in a largely White student classroom has tempered Phumzile’s blanket adoption of the feminist and anti-racist model of establishing non-hierarchical pedagogic relations with her students. Phumzile’s sentiments resonate with the following extract in which Dorsey (2002:207) also reflects on her personal experi-ences regarding professional and racial disparagement:

My authority in the classroom is rooted neither in my class, nor my gender or my race. Indeed, in the eyes of most students and faculty at predominantly white insti-tutions, my authority is tied specifically to my body of knowledge as marked by the professional qualification. I reject, therefore, the assumption that the professor’s voice should be used sparingly in the feminist classroom on the grounds that to set aside my professorial status is most often to re-inscribe traditional class (upper middle over working class/poor), sex (male over female), and race (white over black) dynamics. I have found it difficult to use a democratic approach to my teaching precisely because of student scepticism and the resistance rooted in their assumptions. My task as a feminist teacher is to challenge students to become con-scious of position and privilege and to denaturalise social structures of power in the process of discussing and analysing information … . Ideally the challenges, shifts in consciousness and greater knowledge will contribute to the process of social change. My place at the front of the classroom and in authority goes a long way to-ward beginning that process.

Thus, like Dorsey, Phumzile is aware that when her body is associated with identity diminishing stereotypes, her ‘true’ claim to authority is tied to the body of expertise/specialised knowledge that she has acquired through extensive training. This perspective implies that her appointment as lecturer is not arbitrary, but is based on her academic credentials that have qualified her for the post.

Phumzile is also intent on challenging images of Black women and their traditional association with servitude. Thus, another reason which Phumzile forwards for not relinquishing teacher authority is linked to dismantling the White leader/Black servant hierarchical binary that pre-vails in wider social configurations of power relations. Phumzile writes:

Clearly, my new terrain demanded radically different forms of insurgency. When I, as a Black woman lecturer, walk into a classroom composed of mainly

white students who are not much younger than I am, what meanings stem from my use of servant-leadership paradigms? If, indeed, ‘[t]eaching is a performative act …

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meant to serve as a catalyst that calls everyone to become active participants in learning’, what participation am I enabling?

Servant-leadership then does not challenge their thinking in any way if their ex-pectation is that as a Black woman servitude is my role. Forms of service can be read as submission especially when they are seen as natural. It is therefore to be ex-pected that learners who respond to me as though I ought to mother them would do so even more were I to participate in this paradigm. I would be challenging none of their preconceived ideas, conscious or otherwise. I would indeed be reinforcing racist and patriarchal ideas about the appropriate behaviour and station of a Black woman in South Africa.

In a situation like the university I am attached to, where undermining activity stems from colleagues and students with equal frequency, aspects of the hierarchy remain useful. When the Black women learners in my class see me as a Black woman in power who chooses to play it down, gives it away and is complicit in her own silencing, they are not empowered. My lack of assertiveness would neither affirm white women or Black male students nor force them to question their own sexism and racism. If my teaching evokes in some of my right-wing male and fe-male students a violent reaction because it symbolises a threat to all they hold dear, I choose to measure that as a form of success. (Essay)

Phumzile points out: For many of my (White) students, by their own ad-mission, I am a very rare example of a Black woman they have encoun-tered in a position outside of (potential) servitude to them. Phumzile is perceptive that her identity as a Black woman frames her students’ per-ception of her professorial authority; she thus attempts to subvert the pervasive images that are associated with the construct of Black woman-hood/mothering and its conflation with servitude. Enacting a servant-leader ethic, as espoused to within feminist and anti racist discourses, is inappropriate, counterproductive and contradictory because it does not challenge students’ preconceived ideas, conscious or otherwise, regarding racist and patriarchal ideas about the appropriate behaviour and station of a Black woman in South Africa. In her book Black Femi-nist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empower-ment, Hill Collins (1990) includes a chapter: Mammies, Matriarchs and Other Controlling Images, in which she also deconstructs the hegemony of the process of objectifying Black women. Echoing sentiments similar to Phumzile, Hill Collins writes:

Created to justify the economic exploitation of house slaves and sustained to ex-plain Black women’s long-standing restriction to domestic service, the mammy image represents the normative yardstick used to evaluate all Black women’s

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behaviour … . Even though she may be well loved and may wield considerable au-thority in her white ‘family,’ the mammy still knows her place as obedient servant. She accepts her subordination.

As a way to both short-circuit this reductive and dominant image of Black women, and to enact the institutional authority that is expected of her, Phumzile opts to perform her feminist educator authority in a way that is cognisant of contextual and ideological contingencies. Opting to employ aspects of teacher hierarchy, Phumzile subverts both traditional patriarchal expectations and feminist sensibilities, as they relate to Black racial submission and feminist power sharing, respectively. Through this enactment of power she strives to portray a positive, confident role model for Black and White female students alike, and she thus demon-strates that power does not necessarily have to be manipulated for nega-tive effects.

The issues of race, gender and physical presence as they are ex-pressed in Phumzile’s extracts are also echoed in extracts from Vijay’s interviews. Like Phumzile, Vijay is aware that her race, gender and age as identity markers, do not immediately signal her as an embodiment of authority, unless she indicates/performs her power in a tangible way with which students are familiar. Jones (1993:237) describes tangible, recognisable forms of authority as follows:

The canonical literature on authority, presents leaders as those whom we recognise as having authority to act because they exhibit certain marks or signs of leadership. These may be certain personal characteristics, expert knowledge, the occupation of certain offices or roles, or some combination of all these.

The issues which are raised in Jones’ quote echo Vijay’s comments on how conceptions of her identity are shaped both by herself and by her students, and how these in turn impact pedagogical relations. She re-flected on this as follows:

I find that the signifier Indian upon an individual in this country [South Africa] is narrowing and diminishing and in many ways does not carry the strengths that I think are part of identity. It is minority. It is less than. It’s insular, separate. I wouldn’t want that to inform my teacher identity. I wouldn’t want my students to construct that for me. I would find that disconcerting, although they do, because ra-cial identity is right there. I like them to think: she is an Indian – but. Like, she is a women – but. She is a Black person – but she is still on time. She is efficient. She

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does her work. She is reliable. She is honest (of course that is deeply tongue in cheek). (Interview)

In a country such as South Africa, which continues to be wracked by parochial racial and ethnic fragmentation, Vijay is aware of the identity diminishing stereotypes that circulate even within the classroom. As a South African Indian, who constitutes a minority within a predominantly Black South Africa, Vijay admits to not wanting her ‘Indian’ identity to inform the way in which students relate to her, while Phumzile, who belongs to a Black majority, asserts her Black identity by challenging stereotypes that associate Black women with servitude. Vijay chooses to refuse her ‘Indian’ categorisation and to identify, instead, with the Black majority. In this way, Vijay privileges her national identity, rather than her third-generation-diasporic-root-identity. However, Vijay’s identifi-cation with the South African Black majority does not redeem her from having to navigate the negative stereotypes that generally plague Black identity. In trying to understand the racial stereotypes that Vijay experi-ences, we can return to what Phumzile (as a young Black woman) has elucidated in her autobiographical extract. Phumzile identified under-mining tactics that express, for example, scepticism about Black aca-demics’ ability to function as credible professionals, and expectations on Black women to perform roles of servitude, etc. In playful, yet – none-theless – telling statements (a case of many a truth being told in jest), Vijay expresses sentiments which are similar to that of Phumzile. Vijay explains: I like them to think: she is an Indian – but. Like, she is a women – but. She is a Black person but she is still on time. She is efficient. She does her work. She is reliable. She is honest. In contravention of the staid expectations for her as a Black/Indian female to perform her public roles at sub-standard level, Vijay wants to enact her persona in accordance with her own standards of excellence, even though this may be deemed an extraordinary feat in the estimation of those who equate her ‘dark skin’ with an overt sign of inefficiency, ineptitude and professional me-diocrity. Vijay thus demonstrates that she has been able to transcend inhibiting and discriminatory social hurdles to actualise her potential.

In choosing to subvert and downplay her ‘Indian’ identity, Vijay – teaching a university class comprising predominantly Indian and African students – comments on the way in which she embraces and/or veers away from her racial identity. The fluidity of her racial identity seems to

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be manipulated more for epistemological than interactional and interper-sonal purposes. Vijay says:

I’m very definitely aware of myself as Indian, but not Indian. Being an Indian doesn’t mean that I can’t talk about this. In fact, I might be able to show you how you can find one way of talking about it. I think of what is most appropriate, and when I find it then I do it.

The identity thing was something very weird for the students. They had to write about it, think about it. They could see that I was coming from somewhere quite different. They were actually nervous when I used the word charro in class. I made them go and look at words like coolie and kaffir and it really helped the class grow in a few days. (Interview)

Implicit in what Vijay is saying is that she is able to fluctuate between racial categories, and that she thereby de-essentialises identity normativ-ity, thereby exemplifying the non-unitariness of identity. While Vijay generally refuses her Indian identity, there are instances when she strate-gically foregrounds it for pedagogical purposes, for example, for concept deconstruction. In this regard, she is thus able to name and talk about racial pejoratives (like charro and coolie in reference to South African Indians), in a way that perhaps a non-‘Indian’ educator might be reluc-tant to discuss, for fear of being construed as racist. Vijay feels comfortable critiquing, discussing and addressing issues that may be regarded ‘Indian-specific.’ However, because she identifies herself, in the first instance, as Black, and then as an Indian, as is suggested in the statement: I’m very definitely aware of myself as Indian, but not Indian,this ontological-in-betweeness, or ‘racial cross-dressing’ engenders a sense of alienation among some of her Indian students, who feel that she pays more attention to the African students. This sense of alienation emerges in the following extract:

The situation in class is that no one is actually saying to me, ‘Now how dare you do that?’ Except that as you picked up, Juliet, some of the Indian students feel a bit alienated … . I must actually find a way of investigating that … what I could do is raise it with the African students and say, ‘How do you feel about having this In-dian lecturer?’ And then ask the Indian students, ‘Do you think that I have been ne-glecting your interests, in order to play up to the African students?’ Ask them the question, and then let them deal with it. They can do it in writing. (Interview)

Vijay was unaware that some Indian students felt that she pays more attention to the Black students in class, until I overheard a group of In-

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dian students discuss this during one of my lecture observations and raised it with Vijay during the interview. It appears that Vijay’s refusal to promote racial narcissism, racial favouritism, or ethnocentricity, un-intentionally engenders a feeling of social distancing from her Indian students. Having brought this sentiment to her attention, Vijay decided that she would enquire of the Indian students whether they felt that she was neglecting their interests in order to play up to the African students.There might perhaps have been an expectation among the Indian students for their ‘Indian’ lecturer to be a safe, and familiar, ‘space’ with whom they could feel close, rather than alienated. This is an issue that Phumzile also raises. Phumzile, too, is conscious that her status as lecturer at a predominantly White institution often sets her apart as a social refuge for Black students who have been given epistemological access to predomi-nantly White tertiary institutions, but who remain socially and contextu-ally dislocated and dispossessed.11 Phumzile is cautious not to differentiate on the basis of race in the way in which she relates to her students by endeavouring to be a confident role model to Black and White female students alike.

From the preceding discussion we note that both Vijay and Phumzile express the view that their classroom authority is rendered suspect because of pervasive societal presumptions, assumptions and expectations of them as women (and young Black women, at that). Both of them have no qualms about assuming and asserting educator author-ity. There appears to be a concurrence in Phumzile’s and Vijay’s under-standing of the politics of feminist teacher authority. Phumzile says: It is also misleading to think that classrooms can ever be truly non-hierarchi-cal … that hierarchy is not always bad; aspects of the hierarchy remain useful. Echoing similar sentiments, Vijay admits: I like having authority in the class, but authoritarian, I would have problems with that.

For Phumzile, in addition to being assertive, confident and enacting her teacher authority in a way that overtly demonstrates her pedagogic and educative expertise, Vijay too comments on the usefulness of tangi-bly enacting feminist teacher authority in the class. She says:

11 See: Horton (1985) “Black Education at Oberlin: A Controversial Commitment.”

Journal of Negro Education, 54(4). pp. 477–499.

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Vijay: I told you about that doctoral student who was trying to take advantage of me because of my gender. I just blasted that class. I just let them have it, probably I was too hard on them, when I think back on it, but it was the only way I could reassert my authority. Juliet (researcher): It would be interesting to see how your dealing with authority has evolved … Vijay: That must have been a turning point. I seem to remember thinking and talking about it, but this is a long time ago. I remember saying to people that when I go into the class I make it very clear who is in charge. At the beginning I go in tough, and then I gradually ease up and then I allow power. But let someone get slightly out of line, I sort them out there and then. I’m probably coming on very strong, but I need to because not only am I a darkie, I’m a woman, and I’m young. Most of these students look at me and they don’t know me from a bar of soap. They don’t know what chances they can take with me. I think that when students first meet me, I am really tough, formidable, I’m pushing, I’m loud, I’m clear, responding to everything. I can crack jokes at them. It’s all hearty and buoyant. I was actually saying something to you yesterday, about how I am actually shy. My work has taught me to be a public person, and I love the teaching for that. (Inter-view)

Vijay reiterates how identity body markers that are related to race (not only am I a darkie), gender (I’m a woman) and age (and I’m young) sur-face as variables that frame the authority which is embodied in the teacher. Significant in Vijay’s extract is the notion that ways of per-forming authority are not static but evolutionary. This evolutionary-ness in the performance of authority is evident in Vijay’s reflection: When I go into the class I make it very clear who is in charge. At the beginning I go in tough, and then I gradually ease up and then I allow power. Inaddition, we see Vijay’s demonstration of power manifest itself in tangi-ble and audible ways when she says: I just blasted that class … . I am really tough, formidable, I’m pushing, I’m loud, I’m clear, responding to everything. Both her attitudinal and behavioural postures confirm Jones’ (1993:237) observation that: “Physiognomy, voice, and physical stature have been among the personal marks believed to signify one’s being an authority. We speak, for instance, of a commanding presence, of au-thoritative voices.”

Vijay is conscious that she is deliberately ‘performing’ the personae of someone in authority in that – while coming on strong, and wanting to transmit the message about who really is in charge – she is simultane-ously firm but friendly. Thus, her power performance is interspersed with jokes, heartiness and buoyancy. Vijay is aware of how her power

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enactment as a teacher who is loud, formidable and tough is inconsistent with her ‘authentic’ self, which she describes as shy. Essentially, Vijay is making the point that she stages an authoritative pedagogic teacher per-formance in response to students who do not immediately equate her young, Black female body with authority.

Both Phumzile’s and Vijay’s understanding of the fluidity of power and identity seem to resonate with reconceptualised notions of feminist teacher authority as espoused by Ellsworth (1992); Gunter (1995); and Gore (2002). Their struggles to create a basis for authority, when – be-cause of their age, gender and/or race – students are hesitant to grant it, confirms the need to re-consider the notion that institutional power suffi-ciently compensates for the lack of power or authority that is ascribed to the female body (more especially, it would seem, a young, Black female body). Such reconsideration is of paramount importance, since students’ understandings of what it means to be gendered, invariably override the presumed authority that is granted to female educators in tertiary teaching positions.

While the foregoing discussion has explored the experiences of Phumzile and Vijay – two young Black females whose identity markings do not immediately set them apart as the embodiment of power – the following discussion turns the speculum on Carol – a middle-aged, White, female educator, who teaches at the University of the Western Cape, which comprises a predominantly Black student and staff popula-tion. Like Phumzile’s and Vijay’s negotiation of their racial teacher identities, Carol as a White female educator is also aware of the politics of her skin and its impact on her teacher identity. Her racial self-aware-ness is a departure from findings in Frankenberg’s (2000) study, White Women, Race Matters: the Social Construction of Whiteness, in which she noted that – when White women look at racism – they tend to view it as an issue that people of colour face and have to struggle with but not as an issue that generally involves or implicates them. According to Frankenberg:

[viewing racism in this way] has serious consequences for how White women look at racism, and for how antiracist work might be framed. Within this view, White women can see antiracist work as an act of compassion for an ‘other,’ an optional, extra project, but not one intimately and organically linked to our own lives. Ra-cism can, in short, be conceived as something external to us rather than as a system that shapes our daily experiences and sense of self. Clearly, White feminist women

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accounting for their experience were missing its racialness and were not seeing what was going on around them: in other words, they lacked an awareness of how their positions in society were constructed in relation to those of women and men of colour.

In contrast to Frankenberg’s observations, regarding the White women in her sample who externalised or missed the implications of their racial positionality, Carol is aware that being a White female educator who teaches at a predominantly Black institution has significant implications, as is evident in the following extracts:

Bossy, which I am at times. … A prudish White, middle-class woman trying to tell them how to live their lives and what to think. That’s what I wouldn’t like. And I’m very conscious of it because all my students are Black. I sometimes think if I had grown up under Apartheid I would be very resentful.

In a way it comes back to race but I have found it enormously enriching working at UWC because it’s taken me out of a White world that’s not only privileged, but it’s also rather fearful of anything that’s different. When I first went to teach at UWC people were saying, ‘Won’t you get stabbed?’ There are still the occasional throwing of bricks, and so on. But also when there were the disruptions on campus people always thought that we were afraid of our students and UWC’s had a very bad press … even now if you interact largely with White people there’s so much fear, a feeling of things going to pieces. But when you work with young Black people you know their aspirations and their dreams and I really like my students. They’re just really nice people. But the rigidities of Apartheid, if you’ve grown up in this country, are very powerful and I’ve felt this has been an enormously enriching thing for me to do. Plus the encounter with literature from the rest of Africa, which I wouldn’t have had at either of the local universities, and also the opportunities to teach more freely. (Interview)

Unlike Phumzile and Vijay, who don the trappings of overt teacher au-thority, Carol is cautious about demonstrating overt teacher authority by being bossy, prudish and exercising social class and race supremacy. In the interview, as well as in her essay, Carol confides that for someone who has considered herself privileged and superior, she is humbled by what her students have to teach her about cultural, linguistic and racial diversity. She writes that teaching at UWC, a previously disadvantaged tertiary institution that comprises predominantly non-English, Black and disprivileged students, has been enormously enriching in that it has sen-sitised her to the nuances and complexities of diversity as they relate to the varieties of Englishes, sexualities, cultural and religious affiliations,

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etc. In addition, her teaching experience at UWC has made her aware of her White privilege – unlike Phumzile and Vijay, who name the factors that render their professional status and credibility suspect – Carol does not describe in detail the specifics of White privilege that make her want to downplay her classroom authority. However, the legacy of Apartheid that ensured preferential treatment for Whites in terms of socio-eco-nomic, political, cultural and linguistic privileges offers some insight into what frames Carol’s teacher identity as a White South African. In addition, it is possible to draw on McIntosh (1997) who – as a White women herself – employs the baggage metaphor for discussing White privilege as an important social construct that frames power relationships both within and outside educational settings. McIntosh enumerates the following three examples of White privilege:

she can be fairly sure of having her voice heard in a group in which she is the only member of her race; she is never asked to speak for all the people of her race group; and if she has low credibility as a leader, she can be sure that her race is not the problem.

It is very likely that these privileges, among other unnamed ones, make Carol particularly aware that she might be construed by her all Black students as a prudish white, middle-class woman trying to tell them how to live their lives and what to think. In addition to her race supremacy, Carol is also aware that her middle-class status may presumably afford her more deference from her students.

Furthermore, while Vijay chooses to distance herself from an Indian identity, because it carries the baggage of being, narrowing and diminishing … minority … less than … insular, separate, Carol traces the evolutionary trajectory of her identity construction, which she believes has been enriched by her first-hand experience and interaction with Black students. This exposure and interaction with Black students has made her critical of the tendencies to associate Blacks with violence and destruction, which have fuelled fear among fellow White South Africans. Thus, Carol distances herself from the prevailing conception among White South Africans who hold stereotypical views about Blacks. She is aware that the rigidities and injustices of Apartheid could justifiably

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make her students resentful towards her if they perceive her as an em-bodiment of racial oppression.

Another important issue relates to Carol’s attempts to inculcate in her students national values of democracy, equality and citizenship. These are regarded as important for nation-building, and they are in accordance with the egalitarian ideals which shape South African soci-ety. However, a tension arises between Carol’s White teacher identity and the identities of her Black students. The politics of a White educator, teaching a predominantly Black student population, creates epistemic dissonance, which Carol reflects on as follows:

English has, partly by virtue of the extent of the British imperium, become a world language. I have found myself struggling, in the days of late-Apartheid, with ideas articulated by ardent ‘Black’ students to the effect that English is the language of liberation. As a teacher of English, I see it as part of my business to counter such contemporary forms of imperialism, by encouraging students to read texts more critically. (Essay) (emphasis added)

Carol says that, as a teacher, she regards it her moral obligation to alert students to the un-innocence and non-neutrality of English in order to equip them to be responsible, well informed citizens who participate meaningfully in a democratic society. However, her objectives do not go unquestioned. Although there is a widespread belief that English is a useful tool to facilitate modernisation, Carol – who subscribes to theories of critical language awareness – is sensitive that inequality and exploita-tion are generally not regarded as a consequence of the spread of English. Critics of modernisation theory (Tollefson 1991) argue that un-der-development in some societies is a result of development in others; that is: differences in development emanate from relationships of ine-quality and exploitation. For Carol, whose first language and mother tongue is English, her attempts to divest English of its colonial legacy and expose it as an un-innocent, value-laden language of imperialism come into tension with the visions of economic and social liberation which, in the estimation of some of her students, a command of English facilitates. The complexity and battle to transform such ideologies is evident in her declaration: I have found myself struggling, in the days of late-Apartheid, with ideas articulated by ardent ‘Black’ students to the effect that English is the language of liberation. In recent times, the po-litical correctness that is associated with the celebration of

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multilingualism has stirred a growing body of Black scholars who are suspicious of educators’ (like Carol’s) altered ideologies about interro-gating the status of English, especially in a global environment where admittance to, and participation therein demand proficiency in English.12

Linguists and educationists carry particular social, ideological, cultural and geographical backgrounds. Who teaches what to whom, why and how are curricular decisions which are fraught with political allegiances that confirm the non-neutrality of language pedagogy. Carol’s sensitivity to her Black students’ quest for ‘liberation’ does not readily correlate with her critique of the English language. Instead, based on the legacy of her kin and skin her pedagogic intentions to expose the exploitative and un-innocent propensity of the English language are rendered suspect. Hence, she struggles with alerting her Black students to the Janus-faced nature of the English language in its propensity to be simultaneously exploitative and liberatory. Often, as the experiences of the other partici-pants in this study show, this desire to conscientise gives rise to peda-gogic performative anxiety as it relates to issues of epistemic privilege and paternalism. Thus, Carol is not alone in her epistemic struggle against oppression. In a similar vein, Phumzile also writes: I soon dis-covered that in my literature classes race and gender were swear words.My first lecture provoked protests from a right-wing student organisa-tion. Here we see that, as a Black educator, Phumzile has had to deal with public protest for teaching against racial and gender discrimination.

An interesting trajectory to the race, gender and age question is the way in which Phumzile, Vijay and Carol perceive of their own racial, gender and age identities, and how these identities affect their teaching practices and relations with students. We see from their accounts that teachers often problematise the intersections and interactions between their identities with a view to creating educational environments that are conducive to achieving the educational goals. Consequently, teachers’ perceptions of their own identities, as well as their understandings of students’ perceptions impact on the learning environment and pedagogic content. These identities are always fluctuating and contextually specific, as is evident in the way in which Phumzile changed her personal and

12 See: Oppressing The Oppressed Through Language Liberation: repositioning

English for meaningful education (Cele 2000); and Carrim (2001) Language, Social Inclusion and the Social Construction of Discrimination.

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democratic pedagogic performance when she relocated from the Univer-sity of Cape Town and Cape Technikon to the University of the Free State. Phumzile writes: Whereas at UCT and Cape Technikon students were exposed to a range of teaching styles as a matter of course, where initiative was encouraged, the University of the Free State worked on a different rationale. Phumzile observes of the University of the Free State: My new terrain demanded radically different forms of insurgency.… In a situation like the institution I am attached to, where undermining activity stems from colleagues and students with equal frequency, as-pects of the hierarchy remain useful. Carol, too, had to perform her identity differently when she relocated from the historically White uni-versities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch to the predominantly Black UWC. In her interview, Carol compared her teaching experiences at different universities in South Africa, reflecting that at an English lan-guage university (for example, the University of Cape Town), ideas are generally debated very passionately, whereas at the University of Stellenbosch, for example, ideas were not easily debated. She attributed the latter mindset to students’ socialisation at school, which emphasised reliance on what the authority had endorsed as correct: thus, the mindset of accepting ideas as they were taught continued within the more au-thoritarian structure at Stellenbosch, where students were likely to be-come quite dismayed or threatened if they were asked to critically debate knowledge systems. She noted that similar tendencies prevail at UWC, where students are generally very deferential to their lecturers. Thus, rather than exploit the deferential nature of her students at UWC, Carol is sensitive not to be bossy and prudish by dictating to students how to live their lives or telling them what to think.

From the preceding discussion, we note that race, gender, age, pro-fessional experience and background contribute towards teachers estab-lishing classroom authority. This confirms the contention that teachers anticipate and respond to students’ expectations of their identities in re-lation to their ethnicities, appearances, professional backgrounds, ages, genders, etc. Teachers participate in constructing their own identities, and so do others, as they bring socially constructed expectations and assumptions about a feminist teacher’s multiple identities into classroom discourses. These expectations and assumptions either imbue the female teacher’s body with power and authority or they detract power and au-thority away from her. In responding to the constructions of her em-

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bodiment, the teacher either acts out overt power performances, as in the case of Phumzile and Vijay (who, as young, Black females, emphasise their pedagogic and educative authority as a way of subverting negative racial, age and gender stereotypes), or the teacher participates in power-diminishing technologies, as in the case of Carol (who, as a middle-aged, White woman is aware that her predominantly Black students, on the basis of historical associations of her race and age identity markers, may perceive her as powerful).

Other personal identity markers which are unrelated to female teachers’ collective public categories of race, gender and age also con-figure and define power relations. Variables such as dress sense, the status of their health, absent and present student bodies also frame peda-gogic and professional relations.

Dress sense, physical and mental wellness, and disaffected student bodies

Tseëlon (1995) argues that identity is realised through the presentation of many selves, and that clothes are a vital expression of this self-realisa-tion. Through clothes, people attempt to negotiate a satisfactory synthe-sis between body and identity. To this end, the body is constantly re-clothed and re-fashioned in accordance with changing arrangements of the self.

Both Carol’s and Jennifer’s comments about their dress sense con-firm Young’s (1994) contention that clothes go beyond the reproduction of capitalism, because wearers use their clothes in a variety of ways, from pleasure and gratification, to compliance and contextual appropri-acy, to acts of subversion and resistance. From Carol’s comments, we note that her dress sense is consistent with achieving contextual appro-priacy, while Jennifer’s dress sense is consistent with resistance and sub-version. Although Jennifer and Carol are conscious of their dress style and preference, they use it to achieve different ends. This harnessing of clothes to specific social or professional ends is borne out by Cooley’s (1902) notion of the ‘looking glass self,’ where it is the imagined impact

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on others that is important. Although both Carol and Jennifer comment on the impact which their dress sense has on collegial relations, it may be surmised that it also impacts their power relations with their students.

Personal physical and mental wellness also impact pedagogic power relations. Carol reminds us of the toll which a demanding academic ca-reer can take on the teacher’s body. Referring specifically to her personal struggle with sickness, she draws attention to the stresses and strains that the teacher’s body and mind experience. Her comments acknowledge the frailty of the human body, which succumbs to pain, and endures the very real feelings of impatience and irritability.

Disaffected student bodies also impact on pedagogic relations. While much of the preceding discussion has focused on the teacher’s body, it is not just teacher’s raced, gendered, languaged, dressed, aged or able-bodiedness that impact pedagogic relations. The teacher has to deal with students’ bodies as well. Quite often, the teacher has to deal with absent student bodies; that is, she has to deal with students who do not show a commitment or responsibility to the course and are prone to ab-senteeism. This aspect highlights another way in which present bodies and absent bodies activate power relations. The substance of this obser-vation comes through as a refrain in Thembi’s and Vijay’s lectures in relation to student unpunctuality and absenteeism.

Vijay and Thembi show that they have a concern for disaffected stu-dents, whose bodies hardly ever appear inside the classroom. Through varying techniques they try to regulate student bodies by insisting on regular lecture attendance and punctuality. Perhaps the most telling exer-cise of teacher power is evident when Vijay turns to credentialing as a mechanism to regulate lecture attendance (student physical presence in the classroom) and participation in the learning process. By linking physical presence with assessment, Vijay hopes to motivate students sufficiently into improving their attendance and participation in lectures. This observation once again highlights the weight that credentialing plays in maintaining pedagogic power relations.

In considering feminist teachers’ authority and bodies as objects of pedagogical power relations, it is important to note that teacher-student interactions are not simply verbal. The body provides a materiality which influences the ethos of teacher/student relationships. An important dis-claimer to my study is that it has relied heavily on transcript texts rather than on analysis of video material. A semiotic analysis of video se-

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quences would have provided a rich source to explore how authority is mediated and maintained through gesture, posture, facial expression, proximity and touch, which are forms of regulation that are not obvious from textual transcriptions.

Finally, our bodies as raced, gendered, aged, languaged, clothed, present or absent affect how we write them into our stories and acknowledge them. These diverse variables inevitably affect interper-sonal relations between teachers and students, and among students, and the way in which we work with knowledge and with the possibilities for teaching. As with any feminist practice, our bodies can be regarded both as narrative strategy and as lived practice – through which we read (and write) our texts, our courses, our students and ourselves. In view of the corporeal nature of the teacher’s body, Broughton & Potts (2001:374) contend:

[The female teacher’s body] could and sometimes does include aspects of her status in the classroom by virtue of, or in spite of, class, ‘race’, physical ability, educa-tional privilege, age, etc. But it might on occasions also involve much more: her intellectual convictions and political ideals, her material conditions and the con-straints they place on both the resources at her disposal and herself as a resource, all aspects of her embodiedness (ill? tired? pregnant? sexually desirous? ageing?), her emotional economy and the scope it has, or doesn’t have, in caring for students in-dividually and collectively, inside the classroom and beyond.

The preceding discussion has explored the many ways in which the fe-male teacher’s body can no longer be viewed as the disembodied scholar who is fractured from the workings of her mind. The multi-dimensionality of the female teacher’s body is central to configuring pedagogic power relations.

Women’s Bodies as Objects of Gendered Academic Citizen-ship

If there is any setting or context in which female professionals should be successful, it is in universities, as teaching is seen as women’s forte, and universities are considered to be meritocratic institutions. However,

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Limerick (1991) describes teaching – a profession in which women have been traditionally well represented – as a “woman’s job but a man’s ca-reer.” Katila & Merilainen (1999:166) argue that women are often posi-tioned in the contradictory place of being simultaneously present and absent in academia. Davies (1993) notes how difficult it is for women to come to terms with the ‘equality mystique’ in higher education institu-tions, which generally purport to be liberal and progressive. Brooks (1997:1) also identifies a contradiction between the liberal ideology and egalitarian aims of the academy on the one hand, and the reality of com-petitive careers in male-dominated hierarchies, which leads to endemic sexism and racism in defence of male privilege, on the other hand. Luke (2001) confirms that the issue of female academics in higher education does not constitute a research priority, despite the fact that, globally, men outnumber women 5:1 at middle management level and about 20:1 at senior management level. In South Africa, a national audit that was con-ducted by the Centre for Science Development (CSD) in 1997, which aimed at ascertaining the research and teaching status of women in aca-demia, attested to similar experiences which are faced by female South African academics. Among the recommendations which emerged from the audit was the need to review institutional policies and to focus on networking and support. (see also Orr et al. 2006).

Against this backdrop, the participants in my study, almost organi-cally reflected on institutional factors that enabled or disabled their par-ticipation in academic life. Drawing on these reflections, the ensuing discussion explores the notion of academic citizenship as it relates to the status and practice of the five women educators. The discussion focuses on:

(i) The institutional barriers that impact women’s academic citizen-ship status: The discussion draws on the British sociologist T. H. Mar-shall’s (1950) tripartite conceptualisation of citizenship, namely, civic citizenship; political citizenship; and social citizenship as a framework for exploring the constituent factors comprising an individual’s citizen-ship status and membership in society. The discussion adapts these macro notions of citizenship to examine women’s academic citizenship within the micro context of universities; and

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(ii) The female educators’ responses to institutional barriers: The discussion explores how these educators attempt to negotiate the tight-rope of rights and justice, on the one hand, and the morality of ethics and care, on the other hand.

(i) The Institutional Barriers that Impact Women’s Academic Citizenship Status

One of the most striking features that has emerged from my participants’ essays and interviews is their commitment to preparing students for full and meaningful participation in a democratic society. The preoccupation of the participants with full and meaningful citizenship within the macro-context of South African society prompted me to pay special attention to the status of their gendered citizenship within academia. A decade down the line, the barriers that were identified by the UDUSA and University of Cape Town research papers (see Budlender 1994) reverberate in the following excerpts. They tell, with unrelenting familiarity, the same story regarding the second-class academic citizenship status of women.

From Policies to Socio-Political Practice: Women’s Experiences of Second-Class Citizenship

Jennifer reflects on how female educators come to be treated as disem-bodied scholars who are denied full civic citizenship through an in-fringement of their right to the freedom of speech and the assertion of their rights in terms of equality.

I am aware of the complications in the workplace around gender divisions … where men have the right to speak in meetings and to make decisions about work to be done; and so on. As a professional woman, I am typecast in many subtle ways by the expectations of my colleagues and I often feel very constrained by these. The academic institution is notoriously conservative, with most full professorships still being occupied by men, while women are entrenched in middle-management posi-tions with little or no promotion prospects. (Essay)

Jennifer highlights the infringement that women academics experience regarding their fundamental right to the freedom to speech. Both the unwritten entailment and assumed entitlement most male colleagues re-gard as their citizenship privilege result in their dominating meetings,

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where men have the right to speak in meetings and to make decisions about work to be done and generally to treat with contempt as trivial and infantile contributions women colleagues make. This dynamic perpetu-ates the phenomenon that is commonly referred to as ‘male deafness,’ which turns a deaf ear to, or shouts down women’s contributions in meetings, only to regard the same contributions as avantgarde when they are repeated or re-articulated by a male colleague. Jennifer points to the state of affairs that prevails in the institutional hierarchy, where the fe-male body, in spite of its physical presence, is symbolically excluded, and where decisions are taken by men in what has often been described as the ‘old boys’ club.’ This situation results in the female body becoming the alienated body of the market economy, and it is attenuated in institutional contexts that subdue/silence women’s voices. Jennifer feels constrained by the expectation to participate in a process of ven-triloquism and impersonation, because men deem it their right to speak in meetings and to make decisions about work that is to be done. The implications are that the female educator is expected to be an imple-menter of male decision-making and job delegation, thus reducing her presence to a receptacle and/or conduit for the expression of male power and directorship.

Further, two related issue emerge from the study. The first issue re-lates to a combination of the gendered, class-based and race-based so-cialisation that women have received. Carol writes: I have identified factors concerning class and gender that undermined my confidence.Thembi recalls: I withdrew into my self and became the ‘silent’ one thereby confirming the multiple misconceptions about the inferiority and incapability of Blacks. Both Carol’s and Thembi’s accounts testify to the debilitating psycho-social surrender of silence to which they have succumbed by virtue of the de-legitimated self-concept that was engen-dered by their socialisation. Having internalised the fiction that devalues their existential validity, these women withdrew voluntarily into a web of self-silencing and censorship.

On the other hand, attempts by some women to rehabilitate their self-concept and find their voice draw attention to the backlash that this is likely to incur. Herein lies the second infringement on women’s free-dom to the right to speech. This further infringement is captured in Carol’s observation: … other women colleagues, too, who might resent your outspokenness and independence of mind, as a feminist, will un-

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dermine you, usually in allegiance with dominant males so as to gain their favour. Implicit in their resentment is their disapproval of women who defy their patriarchally prescribed role as submissive, unassuming, silent and obedient. Women who are outspoken, and who exercise the independence of their minds, may find themselves falling out of favour with fellow female colleagues who ascribe virtue to women’s silence and regard outspokenness and independence of mind as unfeminine.

Allied to the infringement of the freedom of speech is the assertion of one’s rights in terms of equality. While, within South African circles, it has become commonplace to talk about gender equity rather than gen-der equality (see Department of Education, Gender Equity in Education:Report of the Gender Equity Task Team, 1997) essentially, this citizen-ship right within academia is severely compromised by a web of inter-related factors which encompass quantitative as well as qualitative issues. The CSD 1997 Women in Research Audit reveals that there is an acute under-representation of women in senior academic positions. Carol confirms that: One only has to look at the figures of women employed in senior academic positions to see that something is still seriously wrong when it comes to fostering the career of women, especially Black women.It is primarily at this level that policy-making decisions occur. Jennifer reports of the institution at which she teaches: It is full of male professors, and women don’t get promoted, unless they stay, play the game, advance themselves and behave ambitiously. The numerical un-der-representation of women at this level (see Cooper & Subotzky 2001:244–245) consequently curtails their decision-making powers, be-cause – as Jennifer notes – men have the right to speak in meetings and to make decisions about work to be done. Once again, drawing on Mar-shall’s conceptualisation of citizenship, it becomes clear how a key prin-ciple to enjoying full political citizenship, which is predicated on collective, participatory and democratic engagement of citizens in de-termining community affairs, is violated within the academic commu-nity. Practices like co-operative activity, joint decision-making and mutuality create democratic ways of living and develop specific virtues that are appropriate to the mutual realisation of moral identities.

In considering the political citizenship rights of women, the gross numerical under-representation of women at decision-making levels may serve to explain the continued second-class citizenship status of women in academia. This low status also has implications for collegial co-

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operation, for negotiations over the distribution of resources, and for the activities of production and reproduction. Carol describes the role and function of the majority of the women in academia as follows:

Women … work harder at proving themselves, often ending up doing much of the donkey work, and retarding their careers. Women’s tendency to pay attention to students … means they are not promoted as quickly … . Women’s and Gender Studies Centre has struggled to continue at times, for lack of institutional support (funding for academic and administrative staff, mostly). Academics who, like me, teach courses in this centre do so by taking on teaching over and above their de-partmental workload. (Essay)

Jennifer describes herself thus:

… a disillusioned academic. The trouble with being an academic at UNISA is that I’m not an educator. I’m an administrator. The educational side of it gets fitted in, in the little gaps between my administrative duties, and I’m very frustrated – ex-tremely frustrated. I don’t want to spend my time on files and pieces of paper and meetings. I want to spend my time on teaching my students what I consider valu-able. (Interview)

Carol’s and Jennifer’s views echo the findings of both the CSD Women in Research Audit, and the UDASA Report which show that most teaching and administrative work is done by women. Perhaps the most blatant disparity in the distribution of resources is the investment of most female academic’s time in the labour intensive execution of teaching and administrative tasks that are not imbued with high premium status. Lister (1997:201) notes: “Time is a resource for citizenship and one which is generally highly skewed in favour of men. Citizenship politics is there-fore in part about the politics of time.”

It is not surprising that preoccupied with teaching and administrative duties means that for the most part women academics located in entry level academic posts compete on an unequal basis with their male coun-terparts. The constant struggle of having to prove themselves as better than the men in order to be treated with parity is perhaps best seen in reported levels of low research output figures among women academics. Research output that is associated with the generation of academic publi-cations is the activity that earns academic credibility and visibility and attracts funding. In contrast a preoccupation with ‘donkey work’ that is

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often done with no prospect of extra remuneration testifies to the uneven and unfair distribution of time and money resources within academia.

Coupled to the cooperation, negotiation over the distribution of re-sources and the activities of production and reproduction are two addi-tional issues, namely, collective, participatory and democratic engagement of citizens in effecting social transformation. The first issue relates to access to information, and the second issue relates to teaching as an activity of production and reproduction. First, the non-communica-tion of information regarding access to research opportunities and funding, together with experiences of isolation and a lack of mentorship, signal the tragic social fragmentation that most women in academia ex-perience (see also Mavin & Bryans 2002). Carol writes:

I would have benefited in the years that followed from mentoring, by way of en-couragement and information, much useful information, for instance, such as how to apply for research funding, has come to me years after I would first have found it useful. (Essay) (emphasis added)

And Vijay laments:

I’m sad that I wasn’t in a department where I could belong more and where I could give and take more. It would be nice, looking back on 17 to 18 years of work, to have had a more equal and sharing relationship with colleagues. I wish I could have trusted people. I wish I could have had mentors. But I found that once I started to go to conferences, and that too I didn’t even know I could go to conferences, I didn’t know the mechanism. And you don’t feel that you can. (Interview)

These excerpts confirm that the non-communication of information counterposes a commitment to a ‘dialogic,’ ‘deliberative’ or ‘communi-cative’ democracy and appropriates the knowledge is power slogan in a divisive and hierarchical manner. It undermines the notion of a commu-nicative ethic, which emphasises the crucial role of free and open public communication and deliberation between citizens as the basis of democratic political legitimation.

Proceeding from the arrangement that sees female academics carry the bulk of teaching duties, one would assume that it is within this realm that female educators would enjoy the greatest degree of freedom. It may be assumed that – while labour and time intensive teaching and adminis-trative duties impinge on female academics’ research and publication production – their teaching activities would allow them a space to

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challenge and transform dominant regimes of knowledge. This challenge and transformation of knowledge systems would in fact allow female educators to recast themselves as producers of knowledge, rather than as mere conduits for reproducing raced, sexed and classed discriminatory epistemologies. This analysis can be deduced from Jennifer’s summation of her professional and pedagogic power: My power to change anything is limited to curriculum revision and to teaching my students. It is in fact within the context of classrooms that teachers wield the greatest doses of power. However, their power does not go unchallenged or uncontested, either by students or management, as the following series of comments demonstrate:

Vijay: In the old days, I focussed on media. That was me just retrieving my section on Journalism which had been shut down, because it was considered ‘too political.’ How was it too political, when what I was doing was the political economy of the media? … The Head of Department said: ‘Well try not to teach so politically.’ (In-terview)

Jennifer: We have a section on transgression that is extremely controversial. That section deals with poetry written by gay men. It is very explicit – could be called pornographic from a certain point of view. It has poetry on rape and it is sexually explicit poetry. A number of conservative students in lectures complain that they don’t wish to be exposed to this kind of trash, or sickness or deviancy … That sec-tion is now optional … . (Interview)

Phumzile: I soon discovered that in my literature classes race and gender were swear words. My first lecture provoked protests from a right-wing student organi-sation. Although I received support from members of my department, the then Dean chose to side with the protesting students. (Essay)

The incidents that are described in the excerpts highlight institutional preference for these female educators to confine their scholarship to cultural and epistemic reproduction of hegemonic scripts, rather than to challenge, and to produce radical epistemologies. Since such institutional preferences tend to support epistemic paternalism and parochialism, they may be seen as yet another mode of infringing on women’s freedom of speech and their power to engage in decision-making, which in turn thwarts their potential for enacting the civic mandate to transform soci-ety.

The notions of social citizenship embody the key principles of enabling social and material conditions that promote an ethics of justice

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and care. The most problematic aspects of citizenship rights for those who are marginalised as a result of race, ethnicity and gender relate to their social rights and to the notion of multiculturalism. Arguments which have been advanced by Jayasuriya (1990); and Parekh (1990) suggest that the homogenous community of Marshall (1950) needs to be transformed so as to take into account potential conflicts of interest among the different groupings of citizens, and the special provisions that are given to members of groupings which are defined as ethnically disen-franchised. These arguments relate to policies of affirmative action which are aimed at group rather than at individual rights. In countries which have officially adopted multiculturalist policies, such as Canada, Britain and the United States, it has recently been accepted that – in order to overcome the practical effects of racism, rather than just its ideology – collective provisions and affirmative action, based on group membership, are the only effective measures to be taken. Similar policies have been constructed in pluralist states, such as India and South Africa; their effects are evident in Jennifer’s and Phumzile’s accounts.

In this regard, while the participants’ narrative excerpts highlight some of the barriers that inhibit socio-political transformation and re-structuring within institutions of higher learning, they also draw attention to another area of importance within the South African academic land-scape, namely, the agenda to transform the demographic population of the academic community. Jennifer’s take on the issue captures the nature of this process of transformation and restructuring. As a White female academic, Jennifer writes:

I’m a member of the Implement Equity Forum, and they conducted great numbers of statistical surveys and found that because of the Department of Labour’s impera-tive we must make our department more equitable, and it found that the top posi-tions were held by White men, and the middle positions were held by White women, and the non-White members of staff are all in lower positions … . In the climate of government demands for employment equity in terms of race, I am unlikely to be promoted to a position where I have any more power in policy-making than at present. This means I shall probably remain in a middle-manage-ment role for the foreseeable future … . (Essay)

Jennifer’s situation presents a different angle on the glass ceiling – brick wall metaphors that have come to describe the barriers to upward career mobility that women experience.

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Social engineering policies that seek to re-distribute employment opportunities mean that White women, in particular, face a double set of boundaries, by first having to negotiate admission to a male dominated employment site; and second, having to compete with affirmative action policies that supposedly work in the favour of Black males and females. While this is currently the theoretical blueprint for social engineering within the South African academic community, Phumzile – a young Black female academic – is totally disillusioned by the incidences, both overt and covert, of institutional racism which she continues to experi-ence. Her argument is: I refuse to be a token representative of Blacks,just so that the UFS can boast that its affirmative action programme is alive and well, while blatant racism and sexism are construed as normal.

(ii) Women Educators’ Responses to Institutional Barriers

The barriers which impact the five female educators echo sentiments and experiences that have become quite commonplace within both national and international academic communities. If anything, their narratives confirm that barriers to women’s full and meaningful participation con-tinue to be hindered by various socio-political dynamics that assume familiar, overt and insidious guises. Their narratives confirm that posi-tive social change is an onerous and painfully slow process.

In the following discussion, I identify the strategies and stances which the participants adopt in an attempt to negotiate the barriers that they confront. Proceeding from the premise that to pathologise women as helpless victims within academic structures that procedurally and ad-ministratively remain the domain of male domination would be to dis-count the agentic power that has seen women claim a legitimate place within academia. Central to this accomplishment has been women’s ability, firstly, to unhinge power from the debilitating misconception that it is organically destructive; and secondly, to challenge the orthodoxy that women should aspire to the virtue of selflessness and subordination.

Firstly, in accepting the relativity and creativity of power, the strate-gies that women have adopted to confront institutional barriers testify to the individual’s agentic potential to re-script power dynamics and rela-tions in the labour market. The existence of this potential gives credence to Giddens’ (1991) conceptualisation that agency embodies a transfor-mative capacity, which has been vital in the development of women’s

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academic citizenship. Giddens identifies two notions of power: the hierarchical, which describes the ability of a group/individual to exert their/her will over others; and the generative, which is about self-articu-lation. He argues that people can at the same time be both the subordi-nate objects of hierarchical power relations and subjects who are agents in their own lives and, as such, capable of exercising power in the gen-erative sense. Secondly, this capability to exercise power in the genera-tive sense parallels Gilligan’s (1982) postulation that morality of action can be assessed in terms of personal and calculated consequences, not on the basis of appearance or others’ impressions. Gilligan maintains:

[Morality of action] encompasses the desire to be ‘good’ both by being responsible to others and by adopting a self-responsibility, which ensures one is honest to one-self. Within this transition, a rejection of female self-abnegation coincides with an injunction against hurting that is elevated to a moral principle and is based on the moral equality of self and other.

Gilligans views parallel Porter’s (1991) observation that at the heart of feminist epistemology and ontology is a conception of self-other rela-tionship, which is in contra-distinction to a self-other abstraction. Thenotion of human interdependence that is based on an understanding of self-in-relations is encapsulated in the defining principle which is identi-fied for experiencing full civic, political and social citizenship, that is, the existence of enabling social and material conditions that promote an ethic of justice and care. In recognising the importance for the existence of such a social environment, Lister (1997) advocates a social policy approach that promotes women’s independence in the context of rela-tionships of interdependence. Such an approach combines an ethic of care and justice, and it promotes women’s equality and difference while acknowledging their diverse concerns. It is precisely the absence of so-cial and material conditions that contribute to what Gilligan (1982) has identified as two human psychological problems – oppression (theproblem that arises out of the denial of equality) and abandonment (the problem that arises out of a break of attachment or connection). Gilligan acknowledges:

When women feel excluded from direct participation in society, they see them-selves as subject to a consensus or judgement made and enforced by the men on whose protection and support they depend and by whose names they are known … .

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The conflict between self and other thus constitutes the central moral problem for women … . The conflict is between compassion and autonomy, between virtue and power.

In responding to inhibiting work conditions, the women in my study sub-scribe to an ethic of care that deviates from a linear stage maturation model. Showing a clear preoccupation with self-care and self-protection, the women display random permutations of First Stage egocentrism, Second Stage Other regarding and Third Stage balance between self and Other. This observation is more consistent with understanding the con-crete and detailed knowledge of situations and the implications which these have for social relationships. In addition, their responses confirm Puka’s contention (in Tronto 1993) that: “Care is not a general course of moral development, but a set of coping strategies for dealing with sexist oppression, in particular … . Foremost, it seeks to preserve care’s strength and the strengths of women’s development.”

While the participants in the study share similar institutional barriers to enjoying full and meaningful academic citizenship, their responses to the institutional barriers vary significantly. Their responses include:

(i) Systematic Incursions/Insurgencies (ii) Strategic Compliance (iii) Selective Collegiality and Cloistered Scholarship (iv) Flights to Fantasy (v) Contemplating a Flight to Freedom

(i) Systematic Incursions/Insurgencies

This response is marked by a fierce determination to confront and challenge expectancy bias that is based on stereotypical attitudes and behaviours which stubbornly construct women as deficit. Thembi em-barked on a concerted effort to prove, both to herself and others, that she had an inalienable right to substantive citizenship. She writes:

I immediately resolved in my mind that if a man sitting on the department chair thinks he is there because he is any better than a female colleague, then I should de-stabilise what he thinks is a fixed position. I should show him that he is in that po-sition simply because we cannot all be Head at the same time; that he is chair not because the rest of the staff, especially women, are incapable. My resolve was to

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unseat him … when the time came, I gladly took over as the next and first woman chair in that department. (Essay)

(ii) Strategic Compliance

Carol resorted to strategic compliance with the unwritten norms and ex-pectations of ‘feminine codes of conduct.’ This compliance was evident in an apparent alignment with procedural knowledge regarding social expectations of women’s behaviour, but with the intention of cordially, subtly and through subversion de-legitimating misogynist behaviour, sexism and atmospheric sexual harassment. She writes:

While I have worked very hard and have given service freely in many aspects of university life, I believe I have benefited from a kind of deference that many men give to women. I have found that in meetings, other members might take their bearings from me (often, one of only two women in the room). There are condi-tions, though, for such respect: I behave courteously and dress with a certain degree of ‘professional’ style; I try to convey the fact that I take men colleagues on trust, as human beings, and that I neither dislike nor fear men, unless they do me or others harm. When men colleagues have raised doubts and fears they have concerned with feminism, I try to show that I understand their reservations and to discuss the matter unaggressively, through presenting feminist viewpoints. Again, as a ‘white’ person, I have had to do my best not to project arrogance and moral grandstanding. (Essay)

In comments from the respondent validation process, Carol clarified that she has learnt that confrontational behaviour did not always work and at times resulted in her being ‘punished,’ in various ways, by male colleagues. Hence, she adopted a less abrasive stance. She recalls that – when she left UWC – two Black female colleagues (who now occupy important positions in prominent institutions) told her that, because she had spoken out in senate and faculty meetings, she had served as a role model to them.

(iii) Selective Collegiality and Cloistered Scholarship

Jennifer and Vijay opted for selective collegiality and ‘cloistered’ scholarship as a strategy to stake a territorial and patented claim over areas of teaching and learning that they specialised in. In this way they formed a protective guard against barriers that impacted their pedagogic decisions. Aware of the social fragmentation that this protective guard was likely to engender, Jennifer and Vijay felt that it was strategic to

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channel their energies in a productive way and thus secure personal aca-demic survival. This Stage One egocentrism, which is advanced in Gilli-gan’s theory of moral development, is evident in the following extracts:

Jennifer: It depends on who one is working with. After 14 years of working at UNISA I have learnt to stay out of the way of troublemakers. There are some people that I refuse to work with because they are obstructionists, and difficult, and they throw obstacles in your way. (Interview)

Vijay: There are all these other people wanting to audition for the Language and Gender Course. Well, not only audition, but come and claim a bit of it. I was quite aghast, when someone was bidding to teach the Language and Gender Course.That person didn’t have the first understanding of gender and was, collegially violating all kinds of tenets that inform any knowledge of gender … . I don’t know why I think that I must stand gate at that, but somehow I have that kind of assumption. (Interview)

(iv) Flights to Fantasy

Apart from engaging in selective collegiality, another response which Jennifer displayed towards institutional barriers was, sometimes, settling for a resigned frustration at the status quo. She sought solace and fulfilment in researching science fiction literature, which for her entertained the prospect of a more equitable society. She writes:

My ideas have also been strongly influenced by feminist science fiction. I am an idealist who believes that human beings could, if they chose, take apart the struc-tures of our society and ‘re-mould them closer to the heart’s desire’ and science fic-tion satisfies my need for change, speculation and a different mode of existence. It is the only literary genre where existing configurations relating to power, gender, desire, sexuality and reproduction can be re-imagined and re-envisioned in a different, more satisfactory way while questioning the received order … . (Essay)

(v) Contemplating a Flight to Freedom

Having struggled against other tiers of discrimination on the basis of race and age, Phumzile was weary and worn, and contemplated migrating to contexts where she could put her energies to better use. She says:

I refuse to be a token representative of Blacks just so that the UFS can boast that its affirmative action programme is alive and well, while blatant racism and sexism are construed as normal. I have seriously considered resigning my post to work in an environment where I don’t have to swim against the tide. (Interview)

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Synthesis

In identifying and responding to the barriers that impact women in aca-demia, the foregoing discussion on bodies as objects of gendered aca-demic citizenship and professional relations alerts us that the rhetoric of social justice in policy documents is insufficient to engender the tenets of democracy. Such policy documents succeed only in confirming citizen-ship as status rather than citizenship as practice. Realising meaningful academic citizenship for women resides in employment contexts that recognise and validate women’s ways of being and knowing; contexts that encourage and privilege social justice over discriminatory practices. Failure to do so is certain to dilute and divide the impact that academia can make in a post-Apartheid society attempting to emerge from the shackles of racism, sexism, classism and other disenfranchising mecha-nisms of surveillance and control. The realisation of full socio-political academic citizenship is likely to remain an elusive ideal under such con-ditions. Such acknowledgement should inform a working towards en-suring that pedagogic and academic professional power relations at the level of mind and bodies are configured and negotiated constructively and sensitively.

Allied to conceiving of pedagogy as an enactment of power rela-tions, an exploration of the proposition bodies are the objects of power relations prompted a closer analysis of how teachers’ race, gender, age, dress, well-being, etc. frame academic and pedagogic relations. It is sig-nificant that irrespective of the impact that her body has on interpersonal relations, each of the feminist teachers in my study has invariably linked her power to her educative and pedagogic authority, which is intrinsic to her professional mandate as educator in academia. It is in the light of this perspective that Gore’s (2002) proposition that the kind of knowledge which is produced in pedagogy interacts with the site and the power that is employed therein, become significant. In further arguing that power is inescapable in the feminist class, and as such should be acknowledged and employed constructively, in the next section, I examine – how femi-nist educators assume and exercise their educative and pedagogic au-thority in their classes.

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The kind of knowledge produced in pedagogy interacts with its site

As institutions of learning, universities are by definition sites that are established to fulfil specified roles and functions. Debates between modern and postmodern conceptions regarding the identity, roles and functions of universities have become associated with fostering teaching, learning and research (Smith & Webster 1997; Perumal et al. 2000). Within the South African university landscape, as is generally the case elsewhere, universities publish mission and vision statements that encap-sulate what they regard as worthwhile educative and pedagogic goals to pursue in order to remain relevant, both locally and internationally. Gore’s (2002) proposition for developing a theory of power in pedagogy gains credence in that the kind of knowledge that is produced within universities interacts with the site and the techniques of power that is employed there. Given that feminist teachers are located within universi-ties, their location within these sites circumscribe the boundaries and make explicit the institutional expectations regarding the norms and practices to which they have to conform as part of their contractual obli-gation to the university. In doing so, they in turn, service the university’s contractual obligation to its students and to broader society.

A cursory overview of the various mission and vision statements and goals of the five universities at which the participants in my study are located reveals that these universities broadly, and cumulatively fulfil educative and pedagogic roles and functions that are related to knowledge, skills, values and attitude development.13 Through their con-

13 Pedagogic Role

- designing curricula, syllabi and research programmes appropriate to the social context, and the professional, and vocational needs of the country;

- providing relevant, mixed mode academic tuition through a variety of technologies.

(See: http://www.ukzn.ac.za; http://www.unisa.ac.za; http://www.uovs.ac.za; http://www.uwc.ac.za)

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tractual obligations to the university, feminist educators, as employees, also become accountable for fulfilling these roles and functions. It is at this juncture that the ideals of feminist pedagogy, with its emphasis on classroom environments that are non-hierarchical, have proven to be somewhat problematic. Eagleton (1998) admits that as a feminist teacher she has to hold in tension the power dynamics that are at play between teachers and taught, generally, and between the teaching situation and the institution itself. She further points out that, despite genuine efforts on her part, she is aware that the feminist classroom is an unequal place, and that – in some instances – it can be exploitative because the feminist teacher has a number of awkward institutional roles to fulfill. Eagleton (ibid.) is not alone in this realisation; her experiences are supported by current feminist pedagogical work that problematises power relations between teachers over students. A more nuanced understanding regarding the problematic of power relations emerges from Castells’

Educative Role

Knowledge

- creation, integration, application and transmission of knowledge; - commitment to excellence in teaching, learning, relevant research and

community service, by producing knowledge in partnership with government, and industry.

Skills (cognitive and affective)

- developing critical and analytical thought; promoting academic freedom and independent scholarship within a context of social responsibility;

- cultivating an environment conducive to academic creativity; - promoting the social and personal well being of staff and students.

Values & Attitudes

- nurturing cultural, intercultural and spiritual understanding and tolerance in a demographically diverse South Africa;

- taking pride in ourselves and in our past, and building independent nationhood;

- building an equitable, dynamic and democratic society, as a way of redressing historical imbalances of race, class, gender and other forms of social disadvantage.

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(1997:6–7) contention that – for a given individual – there may be a plu-rality of identities, which become sources of stress and contradiction in both self-representation and social action, because identity must be dis-tinguished from what sociologists have traditionally called roles and role-sets. Roles are defined by norms which are structured by social in-stitutions. Their relative weight in influencing people’s behaviour de-pends upon negotiations and arrangements between individuals and these social organs. Identities, by comparison, are sources of meaning for the actors themselves, and they are constructed through a process of indi-viduation. Identities can originate from dominant institutions; however, they only become identities when and if social actors internalise them, and construct their meaning around this internalisation. Identities organ-ise the meaning while roles organise the functions.

With a clearer distinction between roles and identities, and acknowledging that negotiating power differentials in the feminist class is inescapable, in the following discussion I explore the view that the feminist teacher may attempt to mask her authority, but that the very mandate of her profession comes with various roles and responsibilities which she has to fulfill. For the purposes of illustrating that the teaching-learning encounter is not void of power performances, I will confine my discussion to the educative and pedagogic authority that all teachers, feminist teachers included, enact. I explore some of the implications of Gore’s (2002) proposition that the kind of knowledge that is produced in pedagogy interacts with the site and the power which is employed there. For theoretical support I draw on Shalem’s (1999) essay, in which she critiques performative pedagogy, as advocated by feminists like Orner, Miller and Ellsworth, who posit that – given its contingent nature – it cannot be planned and developed in advance. Shalem argues that this conceptualisation of pedagogy denies teacher authority in at least two significant ways. First, this authority is the “constitutive good of the practice of teaching, and should be clearly acknowledged and examined.” Second, it depreciates the actual authority that the teacher has in planning and developing knowledge for the student. In urging for a more robust understanding of feminist teacher authority, as articulated by Eagleton (1998); Gunter (1995) and Gore (2002) – Shalem (ibid.) too, argues that teacher authority permeates teaching and learning discourses. She differentiates between the pedagogical and the educative authorityof the teacher. She elaborates that, while pedagogical authority refers to

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the teacher’s conceptualisation and execution (planning and implemen-tation) of epistemological labour to induct students into a working rela-tion with the curriculum, educative authority refers to the ability of the teacher to confront hegemonic narratives with the intention of effecting a conceptual shift in students’ belief systems. Rather than erase teacher authority, Shalem contends that these two variants of teacher authority foreground the enormous importance of the authority of the feminist teacher in the classroom.

Shalem’s critique lends credence to Gore’s (2002) proposition that the kind of knowledge that is produced in pedagogy interacts with its site and the techniques of power which are employed there. This proposition implies that the conceptual and ideological perspectives which are en-shrined in the goals, aims, mission and vision of both the feminist edu-cator and the university within which she performs her pedagogy shape the corpus of knowledge produced within this site.

To illustrate both Shalem’s (1999) and Gore’s (2002) contention re-garding the inescapable authority that the feminist teacher wields, in the ensuing discussion I contend that despite the egalitarian ideals of femi-nist pedagogies, feminist teachers do enact educative and pedagogic au-thority. I argue that, given the almost exclusive focus of current scholarship on student-centred pedagogies, the educative and pedagogic authority of the teacher to facilitate effective learning is being disenfran-chised. It is not my intention to argue against student-centred pedagogies and the validation of students’ experiential epistemologies; instead, I urge an acknowledgement of the important role which teachers play in working both behind the scenes and as co-actors in staging the pedagogic encounter. In the same vein as there is widespread acknowledgement that students do not enter the class as tabula rasa, the feminist teacher also does not enter the class without epistemologies of personal experience, or without an educative and pedagogic agenda. She is written over with values, attitudes, instructional, regulatory and disciplinary knowledges, which she holds out to students for critical engagement. In following this line of thinking, I argue that despite the ideals of rendering the feminist teacher a co-learner with her students, she nonetheless assumes and exercises educative and pedagogic authority in order to choreograph meaningful learning experiences, and conceptual ascen-dancy/maturation/progression, through the teaching of socially uplifting knowledge, skills, values and attitudes. In this regard, I argue that:

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The feminist teacher wields pedagogic authority by planning and executing learning activities through the use of appropriate teaching methodologies. Here, I identify an assortment of teaching methodologies, which include the demonstrator approach,facilitator approach and formal authority approach that were discernible in the lectures which I observed for this study. These approaches exemplify the pedagogic authority and epistemological labour of the feminist teacher as she attempts to bring students into a working relationship with the curriculum. However, an important disclaimer in examining these approaches is that they are not intended to associate or define any of the participants exclusively with a particular teaching style. The discussion is cognisant of the fact that feminist teachers are likely to employ various teaching styles, dependent on what is most efficient and appropriate for socialising students into critical and meaningful engagements with the learning material. In addition, the features of the various teaching approaches are not mutually exclusive; they share points of similarity. The educative authority of the feminist teacher is evident in the values into which she attempts to socialise students. She does this socialisation by getting students to understand the social conditions under which messages are constructed. Hence, her educative authority is grounded in her ability to influence the beliefs and the perceptions of students, and to alter their ways of being and knowing in accordance with new normative ideals which are based on feminist and critical language (re)visions of social justice.

Pedagogic Authority of the Feminist Teacher

The first significant role that the feminist teacher plays is linked to her pedagogic authority. More recent debates in feminist discourses are be-ginning to recognise the pedagogic authority of the teacher in the con-ceptualisation and staging of the learning encounter. While the exercising of pedagogic authority does not suggest a return to teacher-dominated-content-driven curricula, it is urging the recognition of the teacher’s pedagogic discretion in content selection, progression and se-quencing, ensuring conceptual coherence, and the assessment of

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knowledge. The success of feminist pedagogies, like that of other pedagogies, depends on the quality and the qualifications of teachers, and on their content knowledge, their facility with different teaching methods, and their access to learning materials.

Acknowledging this important dimension of (feminist) teacher la-bour, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Indiana State Uni-versity differentiates among a demonstrator approach, facilitatorapproach, a formal authority approach, and a delegator approach.14 I briefly examine the features of these approaches to teaching with a view to illustrating that the feminist teacher performs pedagogic authority in the class in order to service the educative goals which have been identi-fied for the courses that s/he teaches.

Demonstrator Approach

The demonstrator approach to pedagogic pathing focuses on performance of an academic procedure. Lessons are normally organised according to steps and a set of procedures students are expected to mas-ter. The teacher-demonstrator defines the necessary steps and procedures to accomplish tasks and the standards which are to be achieved to indi-cate whether students have mastered the process. She then develops situations in which students can perform these steps, and observes their results. The teacher-demonstrator may demonstrate the procedures, and get the students to practice them, or she would apply some combination of these steps. Lessons generally include an introductory overview and a summary review. The emphasis shifts from ‘knowing about’ (content

14 The delegator approach is based on the belief that it is insufficient to teach only

content, procedures, or skills. Rather, the purpose of education is to enhance the holistic development of the individual through knowledge, practice, and skills, which imbibe a vision of human potential and some ideas about factors that inhibit its development. The teacher must assess the current beliefs and abilities of students and arrange experiences that allow them to become more fully human through the use of disciplinary knowledge and skills (for example, the development of communication skills, analysis, problem solving, valuing in decision-making, social interaction, taking global perspectives, effective citizenship, and aesthetic responsiveness). See: http://web.Indstate.edu/ctl/styles/id4.html for an extended discussion.

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coverage) to being ‘able to do’ (i.e. thoughtful application of content, for example, employing critical thinking skills for linguistic critique). This shift of emphasis does not imply that educators who employ a demon-strator approach are not concerned with content coverage. They acknowledge that skilled performance includes basic knowledge of terms, concepts, principles and theories; however, they assume that these skills would be better learned when they are integrated into the steps of a task. (http://www.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/id3.html)

Practical Criticism is a compulsory section in the examinations for undergraduate English courses at the University of Botswana. I identified teacher pedagogic authority in the processes and procedures that Thembi and team teacher Molly employed in inducting students into the me-chanics of Practical Criticism. They employed a demonstrator pedagogic approach in which they:

(i) offered an introductory overview of what the session would entail and provided a summary review of the debates that were forwarded by various theorists writing on gender and society;

(ii) defined the steps and procedures for engaging the task – Thembi outlined the important steps students need to follow in order to per-form the exercise on Practical Criticism, successfully. She empha-sised, for example, the need to read the passage and question repeatedly and understand them within their contexts;

(iii) emphasised the shift from ‘knowing about’ to being ‘able to do’ – the team teachers worked with specific questions and used them as examples to demonstrate how to read and respond to questions appropriately and comprehensively;

(iv) required students to draw on their basic knowledge of terms, con-cepts, principles, or theories to ensure skilled performance; they showed students how to draw from the various gender theories that had been discussed in class in the previous lectures so as to utilise these concepts to support the claims which they make in their responses to the questions; and

(v) defined the standard, which would indicate mastery of procedures. This relates to how their responses would be assessed.

Thembi and Molly demonstrated their shared pedagogic expertise of the relevant steps and procedures that are to be employed when working on

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an exercise on Practical Criticism. They did not just provide abstract procedures for engaging the task, but they carefully and sequentially socialised students into the tradition and requirements of the task by guiding them through the most systematic way to work through the exer-cise on Practical Criticism.

Facilitator Approach

A facilitator pedagogic approach focuses on learning processes. Debates, discussions, games, presentations, projects, etc. are but some of the ac-tivities that lend themselves to teaching through a facilitator approach. In this approach, the teacher-facilitator chooses to value the development of learning skills as equally important as the content. This balance of pri-orities is based on the assumption that a student who learns how to learn a subject is far more competent than someone who repeats facts or theo-ries verbatim. Thus, the goal of the approach is to learn how to use the content in a problem-solving way. The teacher-facilitator also teaches students how to locate material as part of learning to think and problem-solve in the field.

Students perform both theoretical and practical steps. The teacher-facilitator develops the course around the phases through which students have to go in learning the subject, and selects activities that are appropri-ate to each segment of the learning cycle. In employing the facilitator approach, the teacher-facilitator normally begins the lesson by leading students through an assessment of particular characteristics (their needs, interests, prior knowledge, etc.), and through a reflection on how these characteristics relate to studying the subject matter. The lesson then moves to the explanation and practice of specific skills. Students are evaluated by their ability to complete tasks or projects. Lessons generally, conclude with a reflection on how well students can apply these skills. (http://www.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/id4.html).

I spent a month observing lectures in Vijay’s classes where a teaching style that is consonant with a facilitator approach was discernible. Vijay told students that the development of research skills was a component of the Language and Power Course; as such, the class would, through the process of interviews, complete an AIDS Assignment

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that required them to conduct ethnographic research. In employing a facilitator pedagogic approach, Vijay:

(i) assessed and reflected on students’ needs, interests and prior knowledge in relation to the subject matter that was being studied. In order to assess students’ needs, interests and knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS, Vijay engaged the class in a discussion. The discussion endeavoured to impress upon students their roles as intellectuals in society; gauge students’ acquaintance with the methodological moves and mechanics of conducting ethnographic research; and – in particular – to acquire a sense of their interviewing skills;

(ii) staged practice sessions for student to develop specific skills. In order for students to practice and test their competencies before en-tering the research field, Vijay planned micro-activities through which students could develop their interviewing skills, compile field notes, negotiate entry into and exit from the research field, and write the research report;

(iii) taught students how to locate material. Apart from getting students to share their knowledge about HIV/AIDS, Vijay also directed them to various resources that dealt with HIV/AIDS issues; and

(iv) built into the course teacher and peer reflection and assessment. When adopting a facilitator approach, lessons generally conclude with a reflection on students’ competence in applying the skills which they have practiced. Students are evaluated by their ability to complete tasks or projects. Apart from engaging students in informal peer assessment, Vijay also built continuous and formative assess-ment into the assignment project.

Through her exercise of pedagogic authority, Vijay socialised her stu-dents into the necessary traditions, knowledge, skills and values which they would require to engage in informed learning. The teacher-facilita-tor approach illustrates that teacher facilitation does not/should not translate into the abdication of pedagogic duty or authority. Although the approach emphasises student-centred pedagogy, students are not left to their own devices. The teacher-facilitator’s role is essential in sequencing activities, distributing students into working groups, and helping them develop and test their skills and competencies for problem-solving ac-tivities, both in the class and on the research field.

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Formal Authority Approach

The formal authority approach translates roughly to conceptions of a lecture. The word ‘lecture’ is derived from the Latin word legere and means ‘to read.’ According to Gleitman (2000) lectures may be defined as a period of more or less uninterrupted talk from a teacher.

It is a period of ‘output’ by the teacher; but a period of ‘input,’ ‘re-ception’ or ‘perception’ by the audience. Lectures are a way of transmitting overviews/summarisations of course material, drawing together diverse elements, and showing connections between concepts. (http://ctl.unc.edu/fyc6.html).

According to Haring-Smith (2000) a lecture should consist of a con-versation among the text, the teacher and/or the student. However, we may distinguish between dialogic and didactic lectures. The dialogic lecture is preceded by gathering the student’s words, ideas and interpre-tations primarily through discussions and reports. The didactic lecture tells students what will be covered, covers the content and then reviews what was covered. (http:// web.indstate.edu/ ctl/ styles/ rhythm4.html). The formal authority dialogic and didactic lecture approaches were dis-cernible in Jennifer’s and Phumzile’s classes, respectively.

Formal Authority: Dialogic Lecture Approach

In the formal authority dialogic approach to teaching, the teacher begins the planning process by choosing the goals of the course. These goals are formulated in broad statements that provide a framework for a more de-tailed range of objectives. This framework is supported by the careful selection and definition of theories, principles, concepts or terms that students need to learn in order to achieve the goals and objectives of the course. Taking into consideration the need for sequencing and progression, appropriate activities are structured for each part of the lec-ture so that they provide a conceptual scaffold for the work which the teachers and students do together. The dialogic lecture invites students’ ideas and interpretations through discussions. These activities accommo-date learning differences (for example, the incorporation of visuals, question sessions and reflective activities, all of which form part of the pedagogic sequence). Another important feature of this approach is that lectures are based on timeframes within which objectives are covered.

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The lecture generally concludes with a review of the main points, and out of class assignments are considered part of the instructional unit. (http://web.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/id2.html).

By and large, Jennifer and her team teachers’ day-long lecture tended towards the formal authority dialogic approach. The teaching team engaged in several pedagogic moves that endowed the English 111 Honours seminar on Contemporary Women’s Writing with educative and pedagogic significance and coherence. These pedagogic moves included:

(i) time-tabling the three seminar sessions; The lecture was punctuated with Jennifer’s framing it according to three macro time segments, i.e. Seminar One, Seminar Two and Seminar Three. Through these temporal markers, the teaching team used their pedagogic discretion to introduce, halt or continue discussion, introduce teacher input, screen movie excerpts, etc. These temporal markers were employed to highlight, foreground, and draw attention to important points in the discussions. In addition, the time segments signalled pedagogic rhythms, i.e. the movement from personal teacher and student dis-closures and anecdotes, to theoretical inputs, to reflections and summations;

(ii) individual student activities, whole class dialogues, and teachers’ theoretical inputs – all converged to support the course objectives, namely, Deconstructing Gender. The structuring and management of the sessions seem to have been tailored to allow for conceptual pro-gression; and

(iii) concluding the session with reflections and summaries. Jennifer concluded the day-long seminar by synthesising the theoretical and personal anecdotal discussions that the class engaged in throughput the day.

From the day-long seminar, we see that the sessions are punctuated with clear evidence of the teachers’ pedagogic authority. These include teachers pre-planning the trajectory which the lecture would take in its design and implementation. From planning of the individual student writing session, to whole-class discussions, to team teachers making theoretical inputs, to Jennifer capturing salient points, and summarising student and teacher inputs, and screening selected excerpts from several pre-selected movies, all these processes show that successful and

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meaningful learning pivot on the pedagogic authority and epistemologi-cal labour of the teacher. Apart from highlighting their sensitivity and discretion in reading when and how to sequence teaching and learning activities, lesson planning also evinces teacher skill in juxtaposing stu-dent personal narratives (from their writing exercise); to popular narra-tives (movie excerpts); to the narratives of grand theory (Freud and Irigaray’s theories on gender and psychoanalysis).

Formal Authority: Didactic Lecture/Critical Rhetoric Approach

The didactic lecture approach draws extensively on teacher input; that is, student input does not necessarily form the centre of the pedagogic en-counter. In this regard, the didactic lecture shares features with critical rhetoric. Critical rhetoric may be conceived of as a way of developing students’ critical consciousness without prioritising student-centred dia-logue. A teacher who practices didactic lecture/critical rhetoric becomes what Foucault (1980) calls a ‘specific intellectual’ who – through her/his performance – offers a sensible critique/reading of the discourse/text. The pedagogical function of the didactic lecture/critical rhetoric acts as a ‘model’ of critical thinking. It creates conditions for students to reflect on the teacher’s critique and thereafter engage their own critical reading. Thus, the didactic lecture/critical rhetoric approach either translates course material into a new language or provides outside material that contextualises the text. It moves between abstract and concrete textual knowledge by presenting an idea and then exemplifying it (Haring-Smith 2000).

Phumzile offered me the opportunity to attend several of her lec-tures. In most of her lectures she engaged students in small group discussion and whole class report back sessions. The pedagogic rhythms in these lectures saw her largely assuming the role of teacher-facilitator. Phumzile had also scheduled a series of lectures on Desai’s novel Jour-ney to Ithaca, which was the prescribed text for the course. The sessions that I observed for the English 225 course in literature were presented largely through the didactic lecture/critical rhetoric mode. Throughreferences to other texts – for example, Passage to India – which also deal with travel to the East (notably India), she compared and contrasted representations of Europe’s Other in English literature. The following

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features of formal didactic pedagogic authority were evident in her lec-tures:

(i) teacher provides a summary and a contextual overview. In her lec-ture, Phumzile summarised what had already been addressed in pre-vious sessions of the lecture series. This summary was followed by an exploration of inter-textuality between the two novels Journey to Ithaca and Passage to India in which she provided comparative contextual backgrounds to the two novels.

(ii) teacher makes connections between diverse elements and concepts through intertextual conversations. Phumzile did this in an attempt to develop students’ critical consciousness. Phumzile performed her pedagogic authority and literary critical expertise by suggesting multiple analytical strands through which to engage the texts.

In her didactic lecture series, Phumzile’s epistemological labour in-cluded, among other things: providing a historical and geographical background to the two texts Journey to Ithaca and Passage to India. Sheexplained the reference and relevance of Greek mythology in Journey to Ithaca. She highlighted the features of travel narratives. She identified different protagonists that emerge by paying attention to narratorial ma-nipulation and structural outline of the text. She suggested alternative reading routes through inter- and intra-textual analysis. Phumzile’s pedagogic pathing serviced her objective, which aimed at developing critical thinking in her students by deconstructing surface meanings in the text. Having equipped students with a rich tapestry of conceptual and contextual signifiers which suggested a framework for engaging the texts, students could now read/re-read the text by bearing these points in mind. They could proceed to investigate the validity of Phumzile’s pos-tulations and analytical markers, and explore multiple reading routes.

Finally, in the light of the significant and necessary educative and pedagogic labour that feminist educators perform in the classroom, it is perhaps useful to reiterate Phumzile’s critique of feminist scholarship that subscribes to truly non-hierarchical classrooms. While the notion of pedagogic egalitarianism is certainly noble, Phumzile contends:

It is … misleading to think that classrooms can ever be truly non-hierarchical, for learners are not educators within the classroom context. While their multiple litera-

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cies are not called into doubt, it is clear that the area they chose to register for a course in is not one they identify as within the ambit of their expertise. By contrast, the lecturer has herself undergone extensive training in precisely the field she offers the course in. Thus the choice of lecturer is not arbitrary and the systems of knowledge present in the lecture room are not interchangeable. (Essay)

The significance of Phumzile’s comments is confirmed in the light of the various teaching approaches that feminist teachers employ in their attempts to socialise students into an intelligible working relationship with the curriculum. Thus, whether the feminist teacher employs a demonstrator, facilitator or formal authority approach, (all of which are not mutually exclusive), the pedagogic rhythms require that she exercise her pedagogic authority and perform epistemological labour in staging meaningful teaching/learning processes. The interconnectivity and mutu-ality of these various teaching approaches illustrate that her pedagogic authority and expertise pervade:

Content Selection: identifying goals and materials and deciding on instructional approaches; Presentation/Reception: in which teachers and students cover course material in a systematic way; Application: getting students to practice and apply their knowledge; andReflection/Summation: evaluating and assessing students’ work (which may involve deciding on the most appropriate assessment in-struments to be used, including, for example, permutations of peer, formal, informal, continuous and summative assessment).

Educative Authority of the Feminist Teacher

The second significant role that the feminist teacher performs is linked to her educative authority. Feminist pedagogy is best understood as a po-litical standpoint and personal practice that seeks to transform relations of domination and oppression. Thus, the feminist educators in this study enter their classrooms with transformative educative agendas. They sub-scribe to various goals, objectives, ideals, visions, outcomes and missions that are meant to service anti-discriminatory language and gender practices, and they entrench these as a new social normative or-

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der. Shalem (1999) asserts that the teacher’s agenda to make students suspicious of the dominant discourses and eventually alter their percep-tions is a manifestation of the teacher’s educative authority. She writes (ibid:58–59):

To be a feminist pedagogue is to have a project that embodies a commitment to a set of educational beliefs and goals. Feminist pedagogues draw this set of educa-tional beliefs from the feminist epistemological critique of what they refer to as the ‘masculinist culture’ of representing truth and coherence. These ideas have impli-cations for the educative authority of the teacher in that to see oneself in terms of altering perceptions of history and reality must mean that the feminist educator is guided and informed by some kind of conception of the good. Throughout her ac-tivities, the feminist teacher is committed to getting learners to understand the so-cial conditions under which a message is constructed. Hence, the educative authority of the teacher is grounded in her ability to influence the belief and the perception of the learner, to alter them in line with these new normative ideals. This could mean, for example, convincing learners to take a stand against their own his-tory of oppression, against false ideas of what it means to be a woman in their so-cieties, against prevailing interpretations of particular historical texts. In this way, the educative authority of the feminist teacher does position her as an authority in and of a dialogical relation with the learners.

In examining the plan of the feminist teacher, there emerges a four step educative agenda that s/he adopts in order to socialise students into iden-tifying with feminist (re)visions of a just society. This four-step agenda may in some instances be presented in a linear manner and in others as an iterative process; in either case, however, the four steps service the educative goal of personal and social transformation. Given that the edu-cators in my study are involved in teaching English from a feminist per-spective; their transformative agenda is framed within two discourses, namely:

the discourse of feminist and gender studies; and the discourse of critical multilingual studies.

In keeping with the transformative educative agenda, the feminist teacher draws on her authority to first narrate/describe the status quo in relation to both language and gender discrimination. She does this by laying bare the patriarchal foundations that have prescribed a minoritising view of

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female social roles, responsibilities, attitudes and values about them-selves. For example, Jennifer and Thembi write:

Jennifer: There is a long literary tradition of representing masculinity as prototypi-cally human. There is also an extensive legacy of fiction representing marriage and union between men and women as the highest fulfilment for both sexes. … the ways in which women have been and still are used as exchange objects between men … constructed in accordance with patriarchal power structures. (Essay)

Thembi: It was that time of the year when students’ performance was being dis-cussed, and the Head of Department who was a man would describe the low per-formers (both male and female) as getting ‘ladylike scores.’ … it became quite obvious to me that … women are not regarded so highly after all. They continue to be associated with non-performance.

In my culture, at funerals, women and men get different signals about what is expected of them. When there aren’t enough chairs … men sit on chairs, and women sit on the floor. … In all these roles women are expected to be cooperative, to ensure the smooth running of the programme. (Essay)

Jennifer’s and Thembi’s statements describe the oppressive gender status quo. These are examples which they are likely to use to acquaint students to prevailing patriarchal practices, what may be called the hegemonic blueprint of patriarchal discourses.

In addition, as teachers of English in multilingual contexts, they also endeavour to lay bare the colonial imperialism of the English language, which devalues ‘minority’ languages, and its speakers. In reference to linguistic imperialism, Vijay and Carol point out:

Carol: In 1974 still affected by the values of childhood and school education, I saw English language and literature as superior to others and desired to acquire adept-ness in speaking and writing standard British English. (Essay)

Vijay: … the Apartheid [state] attempt to divide and rule the oppressed majority through entrenching language differences … that serviced ethnic chauvinism. (Essay)

In combination, patriarchal language and gender practices result in phallogocentrism, which is an embodiment of discriminatory linguistic practices, against females, and minoritised Other. By identifying the organs and agents of patriarchal propaganda (family, school, literature, etc.), the feminist teacher of English proceeds to link the disprivileged status of females, and minoritised Other, to their inferior sociolinguistic

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socialisation and conditioning, which result in entrenching their de-valuation as neutral, normal, natural and as an innocent state of affairs. Exposure to the inherited tradition is evident, for example, in Carol’s reference to values of childhood and school education that are transmitted via family and teachers and which have contributed to per-petuating oppressive gender and linguistic practices.

Having narrated the social status quo, which masquerades as inno-cent, normal and natural, the feminist teacher then embarks on the second step in the educative agenda. She highlights the injustices and inequalities that characterise the status quo. This is evident in the following series of extracts:

Carol: … While much has still to be done regarding the oppressions of racism and classism in this country, most remains to be done regarding the abuse of women and children. (Essay)

Jennifer: … but this masks many of the ways in which women have been and still are used as exchange objects between men …

I try to explain to my students that gender identities and gender roles are never given or inborn, but instead are constructed in accordance with patriarchal power structures. (Essay)

The feminist teacher then highlights the discriminatory practices through consciousness raising mechanisms, for example, by pointing to the abuse of women and children; the patriarchal practice of using women as ex-change objects between men; associating females with non-performance; and expecting females to be co-operative. This consciousness raising leads to the third step in the educative line of action, which is to seek ways to intervene. Making incursions by subverting social injustice re-quires an urgent and mobilised effort consistent with the seriousness of the need for corrective action. Thus, these educators propose a counter hegemonic agenda. This approach is evident in the following extracts, which comprise an armoury of rhetorical devices framed in a language of insurgency:

Jennifer: I believe that this myth needs to be thoroughly investigated, overthrown and replaced; … teaching students suspicion of gender that they encounter in literature. Thembi: Study and consider how these could be subverted … consider the extent to which the authors themselves are interrogating or subverting the issues.

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Carol: I see it as part of my business to counter such contemporary forms of impe-rialism.

The palpable aura of militancy and urgency in the words (overthrown,replaced, subverted, counter) embody a powerful oppositional corrective discourse that manifests the educative authority of the feminist teacher. Such terms which signify patriarchal domination provide an inroad for the fourth educative move, in which the feminist teacher outlines the project of deconstructing oppressive hegemonic social ideologies and practices. She shares her transformative social vision, by conscientising students to alternative ways of being in the world. The project of positive social transformation is evident in the following extracts:

Carol: Ideally, you have also suggested a way in which they might in the future re-form that world.

In the meantime, tertiary education has a vital role to play in enlarging the per-ceptions and the understanding of those who will move into influential positions in policy-making in government, education, the media, and in business.

English studies as it has developed in many South African English Departments, so as to incorporate a critique and to include cultural and media studies, promises to keep pace with the changes required to equip young South Africans to become effective and responsible citizens.

… a means of empowering students, so that they ‘read’ their world in a more in-formed way, and so that they more readily have access to a wide range of careers. (Essay)

Jennifer: Once students have developed a critical attitude towards received ideas about gender in writing, they can begin to encounter alternative depictions and per-haps write their own creative pieces. (Essay)

Vijay: Social sensitivity is a big issue for me. I’m always concerned at how insensi-tive and inconsiderate intellectuals are. Unfortunately, a university education con-fers certain class status and the benefit of that is supposed to make one very powerful and very arrogant. The sensitivity I’m trying to inculcate is to each other.

In my experience multilingualism is an expression of a democratic ethos and represents anti-racist struggle for linguistic equity. (Interview and Essay)

Carol says that tertiary education has a vital role to play in enlarging the perceptions and the understanding of those who will move into influen-tial positions. By attempting to move students to an ideological place of critical awareness, sensitivity, alertness, feminist teachers, Carol and Jennifer, hope that students would begin to encounter alternative depic-

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tions and perhaps write their own creative pieces as a way of buttressingpower interests of race, class and gender.

Synthesis

In summarising the four step educative transformation plan, what we notice is that having narrated the tenets of patriarchal ideology, the femi-nist teacher proceeds to expose the oppressive regimes of patriarchal domination. Through this consciousness-raising critique, she hopes that students would be sufficiently challenged to identify and agitate for broader social transformation, an alternative social vision of re-con-ceived political, psychological, social empowerment, and emancipation. In accordance with her project identity, she strives to effect a change notjust in ideological terms, but through real intervention/activism in poverty eradication, HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, race, class, gender, linguistic equality, etc. The overarching goal, as articulated by Vijay, is to inculcate in students an ideal of justice, care, fairness and respect for others that springs from the recognition of oppression, by responding to these inequalities.

Evidence that the feminist teacher has the educative power and au-thority to effect a conceptual shift in students’ ways of knowing and being in the world, is manifest in the following extract from Jennifer’s interview.

The strength of the course is its subversive potential. Many students of this course have told us that this course has changed their lives; changed the way they have thought about themselves. It has made them reflect about their own positions as wives, mothers, etc. That’s the best thing about the course. We want to make it as subversive as possible. (Interview)

By bringing students to an understanding of their social location aswives, mothers, etc., and by altering their beliefs and perceptions through changing their lives, and [changing] the way they [think] about them-selves, feminist educators provoke a conceptual shift in students about the way in which they read themselves in relation to hegemonic dis-criminatory discourses. Declarations by students of changed lives, changed understanding about their social positionalities, and changed thinking suggest that by assuming and exercising her educative authority,

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the feminist teacher can successfully alter students’ perceptions in accor-dance with a new normative ideal which is based on linguistic and gen-der justice. What becomes evident is that there is a need to unmask and acknowledge the educative authority and agenda of feminist teachers. Culley (in Laditka 1990) offers an important perspective for all teachers regarding our responsibility to share with students the energy of our commitments. Culley writes:

No, we don’t want a return to the kind of authority that makes students passive and dependent; there is just no place for tyranny in our classrooms. Our challenge is to continue to nurture our students toward their own authority, an authority we might hope to sensitise with care, while at the same time finding a place in our classrooms for our own knowledge and experience. We all recognise teaching as a complex and ambiguous activity. But one certainty stands clear: the demands and responsibilities of literacy are too great for teachers to abdicate their proper roles as acting subjects in our society.

Culleys view finds support in Friedman’s (1985) observation that femi-nist teachers in our eagerness to be non-hierarchical and supportive in-stead of tyrannical and ruthlessly critical have sometimes participated in the patriarchal denial of the mind to women; and we often deny our-selves the authority that we seek to nurture in our students.

The educative goals that the feminist teacher strives to achieve through enacting her educative authority is encapsulated in an important tripartite tenet in feminist pedagogy, namely, an orientation toward so-cial transformation; consciousness-raising; and social activism. In other words, the educative authority of the teacher is linked to the tenets of feminist pedagogies, which outline specific aims for personal and social transformation through radical education. Several of them, in turn, reso-nate with the educative and pedagogic roles that are encapsulated in the vision, mission and goals of the university sites where the feminist edu-cators teach. The educative role of the university is linked to its power to foster the creation, application and transmission of knowledge; it does this by promoting the development of critical and analytical thinking in its students, so that they can participate responsibly in an equitable, dy-namic and democratic society. University faculty service its educative role through their pedagogic considerations as they design curricula and research programmes that are relevant and effective. This illustrates how

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the kind of knowledge that is produced interacts with the university site and the kind of educative and pedagogic power it possesses.

Pedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques of power

Yet another important dimension in recognising the feminist teacher’s authority as power is connected to Gore’s (2002) proposition that peda-gogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques. Gore maintains that the power relations of pedagogical interaction will not be overcome by simply adopting different classroom practices, such as the use of dia-logic, student-centred approaches, journals, portfolios, role-playing, group-work or other pedagogical strategies. Given that there is a limited set of techniques through which pedagogy can occur, educators might instead concentrate on what kinds of pedagogical and ideological nor-malisations they are enacting in their classrooms. Arranging students in circles, imploring all students to have a voice, engaging in dialogue, etc. may be as repressive as traditional forms of pedagogy. A more signifi-cant deliberation should focus on how pedagogic techniques are em-ployed and with what effects, and not whether or not they are employed. Gore suggests that if pedagogy proceeds via the enactment of specific techniques, these regulate the parameters within which feminist teachers can succeed in divesting their classrooms of the effects of power.

In the classroom, teachers influence who is accorded the right to speak and the roles that they may take as observing, seeing, listening, or questioning subjects. By manipulating the enunciative field that deter-mines the discursive formulations which are possible in the class, teachers perform varying degrees of micro-power techniques via both regulative and instructional discourses. Gore (2002) identifies these mi-cro-power techniques, as including, inter alia, surveillance, regulation, normalisation, exclusion, distribution, classification, individualisation and totalisation. If these micro-power techniques are inextricable to pedagogy and surface in varying guises throughout the pedagogic process, they require teachers to assume leadership and authority in the

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performance of their institutional duties. Thus, there seems to be a more pragmatic need to be sensitive to how power and authority are addressed in the feminist class, especially as it is a principal aim of feminist peda-gogies to create conditions within which students are able to develop a critical and analytical consciousness. The pedagogical process of developing critical consciousness involves showing students how to recognise and evaluate structures of power. Even though the specific means of doing so vary among teachers, affording a privileged status to student-centred dialogue is a familiar theme in feminist pedagogical dis-courses. Student-centred critical and analytical dialogue is cited as essential in facilitating the development of critical feminist consciousness.

While acknowledging the value of critical consciousness-raising, and dialogic interaction in student-centred classes, an equal acknowledgement of the unique contingencies of institutional, socio-political, personal differences, preferences for certain learning styles, and ideological affiliations is also needed. This is especially so when dealing with courses (such as feminist discourses) that work to change con-sciousness and which may not necessarily be experienced immediately as fun, positive or safe. Distinctive contexts and contingencies possess their own promise and potential for the enactment of specific techniques of pedagogic power. Finke (1993) reflects on the teacher-student dyad and claims that: “teaching is a practice which proceeds not progressively through time, but through resistance, regressions, leaps, breakthroughs, discontinuities and deferred action.” Gore (2002) contends that where there is an emphasis on the formation of radical understandings, normali-sation of ideologies will be a dominant technique, and there is likely to be some resistance by students. Foucault (1980) also cautions that radical educators may experience resistance to the techniques and knowledge that they seek to promote.

In confirming Foucault’s (1980) contention, Willis (1977) and Giroux (1983) posit that the concept of resistance emphasises human agency, in the sense that individuals are not simply acted upon by social structures, but actively subvert and struggle against imposed social meanings and forms of socialisation to create meanings of their own. It is within this struggle for agency that the complex pattern of student resis-tance is produced. Students might resist participating in pedagogical techniques that are avidly espoused within feminist discourses (for

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example, participating in group, paired or collaborative work), and/or they might resist the ideological pressure to adopt a feminist or radical perspective, or a particular angle on a debate. Layder (1993:64) distin-guishes five types of student resistance. The typology comprises two types of ideological dissent, namely: a) collective and individual; and b) non-cooperation, escape/avoidance, and concealment.

In the ensuing discussion I also contend that, irrespective of the pedagogic techniques which are employed (group work, paired work, whole class teaching, etc.), the centrality of dialogue is pervasive. I also argue that despite the attempts of the feminist teachers in my study to foster egalitarian pedagogies based on recognition of difference and critical dialogue, this did not eradicate the need for teacher discretion and teacher direction, which invariably eventuated in students submitting to the teacher’s educative and pedagogic authority. In this regard, I examine:

student resistance to pedagogic technique and engaging course con-tent; andstudent resistance to ideologies in course content.

MacGregor (1991:1–4) notes that there have always been social dimen-sions to the learning process, but only recently have specially designed collaborative learning experiences been regarded as an innovative alter-native to the lecture-centred and teacher-as-single-authority approaches which are typical of most university classrooms. With increasing fre-quency, students are working with each other (in paired work, group work, whole class discussions, etc.). During a lecture, students might be asked to turn to a neighbour to formulate responses, draw connections to other material, raise questions, or solve problems. Given that many minds are grappling with the material at once, the mutual enterprise is believed to generate a unique intellectual and social synergy. What is essential to collaborative work, though, is positive interdependence among students, an outcome to which everyone contributes, and a sense of commitment and responsibility to the group’s preparation, to the learning process and to product. While collaborative learning is an effective enterprise for realising dialogic processes, teaching and learning in this mode come with high expectations about student participation. Given that collaboration requires substantial role shifts for

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students, it is not unusual to encounter student resistance to group work. As they move into collaborative learning settings, students grapple with several shifts. According to MacGregor (1991:2–3) this ‘grappling’ in-cludes, inter alia, the transition:

from listener, observer, and note-taker to active problem-solver, contributor and discussant;from low or moderate expectations of preparation for class to high ones;from a private presence in the classroom (and few or no risks therein) to a public one, with many risks; from attendance dictated by personal choice to meeting community expectations;from competition with peers to collaborative work with them; from responsibilities and self-definition associated with learning independently to those that are associated with learning inter-depen-dently; and from seeing teachers and texts as the sole sources of authority and knowledge, to seeing peers, oneself, and the thinking of the commu-nity as additional and important sources of authority and knowledge.

The transitions that MacGregor identifies for the success of collaborative work impact strongly on individual personality, and preferences in rela-tion to the collective good of learning. While philosophies which are associated with radical pedagogies are vocal on the recognition of difference and diversity, more debate is required in the crucial area of pedagogic normalisation and regulation that invariably result in tenden-cies which bring students to conformity and consensus.

In the following discussion, I examine a few episodes of student re-sistance and teacher normalisation techniques, which include:

(i) student resistance to engaging in collaborative work (normalisation of pedagogic technique);

(ii) student resistance to engaging in pedagogic content; (iii) student silence and non-participation as resistance; and (iv) student resistance to radical ideologies.

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(i) Student resistance to engaging in collaborative work

Vijay had made the pedagogical decision to engage students in various micro-collaborative activities for an AIDS Assignment. In the following extract, we note that this intended procedure is met with resistance from some students, both in relation to pedagogic technique and content:

Buyee (Black female): We have done stuff on AIDS so many times. Vijay: We’re doing too much? Buyee: Lots. I have done this so many times that I wish I could run away from it. Vijay: The whole point of this particular choice is that I thought it was a very im-portant thing, and that’s the angle we’re coming from. In terms of your interviews, and I’m still keen on the interviews and how you are going to choose your inter-viewees. How you are going to select the questions. That’s what we are going to be involved in today. The question has not been set. The question must be created in class. ...………………………………………………………………..……………………. In one group I hear students speaking in isiZulu. One student says: ‘Everyday its AIDS, AIDS, AIDS.’ (Researcher observation)

………………………………………………………………………………………

Vasie (Indian female): Therefore, I told you that I wanted to do the assignment from a different angle, from the point of view of the dissidents. Vijay: But you also understand that I’m trying to create conditions where students can dialogue with each other. I’m trying to enable you to talk to other people in the class. Buyee: We are just saying maybe there are different ways of going about this, and we don’t do the same thing, we would be able to cover more things. (Two students who are sitting in front of me agree that that’s a good idea).Vijay: That’s a nice proposal, but how tenable is it? Remember, I talked to you about this a little while back. Let’s figure out what it is we are doing because I have already set the exam question. Buyee: Are we going to write about AIDS in the exam? Vijay: Not necessarily, but you are going to do an angle on the issue. And you will get choices. I’ve found that getting the class to work on a particular topic, for example, in the past I’ve done topics on the African Renaissance, means that you all talk to each other about problems, and I’ve found that it works very well because everybody is dealing with the same kind of issue. Because you are all doing different interviews, you are all doing different angles on the topic, but you are able to talk to each other and it becomes collective work, which is something I’m not sure you generally get a chance to do. Buyee have you had a chance to work collectively with a group?

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Buyee: Too much. Vijay: Too much. Everyone is pushing collective work. Buyee: Especially in the Education Department. Vijay: Why is collective work so important? Buyee: They say that it is important because you get to share ideas, learn from each other, you practice different skills: listening skills, and communication skills, and you are able to understand each other. Vijay: Is it working, or are you being forced to? Buyee: I think, you already know that you are not living alone, you have to handle different people and all those things, and I’ve been having problems with this. Vijay: Let’s see how developed your skills are. Maybe let’s test it. Prepare to back down on some of the whole communal learning ethic as long as you can prove to me that you have great listening skills. Something I’m not convinced about from the classroom so far. Remember how many times I’ve said, you are not listening to any of the stuff in class? (Lecture Observation)

In this extract, student Buyee expresses her dissatisfaction about engaging in group work for the AIDS Assignment. Given that one of the limitations of this study is that students do not form a principal unit of analysis, we can only surmise – apart from Buyee feeling that she has had too much of collective work, that collaborative work was going into ‘overdrive’ – that some of her reservations for engaging in group work may be related to issues which MacGregor (1991:1–4) has identified regarding students grappling with the demands and dynamics of collabo-rative work. Drawing from other episodes during the lecture observa-tions, Buyee, in particular, is noted to have assumed the role of accessory to teacher authority. On two separate occasions she reprimands fellow students for arriving in class without having done their homework. On these occasions she chides:

Buyee (Black female): But Vijay, they knew about the question a long time ago. (Vijay laughs). I don’t think students have an excuse for not bringing in an assign-ment question, because I was also absent but I have brought a question. (Lecture Observation)

………………………………………………………………..……………………..

Buyee (Black female): But Vijay we knew about it. This was given to us ages ago, and we were supposed to have photocopied the chapter. (Lecture Observation)

In the light of these two instances, it may be safe to surmise that Buyee’s dissatisfaction with engaging in collaborative work supports the conten-

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tion that collaborative work requires students to transition: a) from low or moderate expectations of preparation for class to high ones; b) from attendance that is dictated by personal choice to meeting community expectations; and c) from responsibilities and self-definition which are associated with learning independently to those which are associated with learning interdependently. Thus, the success of collaborative work pivots on all participants assuming responsibility for the process and product of learning. It seems that Buyee’s experiences with fellow stu-dents sabotaging the expectations of communities of collaborative prac-tice has left her disillusioned with the social or intellectual benefits of this pedagogic technique. We note that teacher decision regarding the technique via which pedagogy would proceed prevailed above the stu-dent’s dissatisfaction with engaging in group work. Vijay comments that a change in pedagogic technique would be considered on the following proviso: Prepare to back down on some of the whole communal learning ethic as long as you can prove to me that you have great listening skills.Something I’m not convinced about from the classroom so far. Remem-ber how many times I’ve said, you are not listening to any of the stuff in class?

In elaborating student resistance to collaborative learning, Reynolds & Trehan (2001) argue that differences in students’ personal preference to learning modes is an issue that needs to be considered. They contend that student-centred pedagogies bring to the surface affinities, antipa-thies, and preferences for learning methods, as well as the different values and beliefs, which underpin them. In addition, cognisance must be given to collaborative groups developing perspectives of working with process and task, and patterns of power dynamics as they relate to race, gender, sexualities, and ideological positionalities within group forma-tions. Deconstructing the notion of collaborative learning reveals its more problematic aspects that include pressures to conform, and the assimilation or denial of divergent beliefs and practices.

(ii) Student resistance to engaging in pedagogic content

We note that students not only resist pedagogic technique (namely, group work), but are also often reluctant to engage pedagogic content. Students Buyee and Vasie inform Vijay that they have done a lot of work

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on AIDS. Thus, student Vasie requests to engage the AIDS Assignment from the point of view of the dissidents, rather than in relation to AIDS awareness and prevention. However, this request is also absorbed into the need for students to work on a common topic so as to facilitate group dialogue and to enhance interpersonal social skills (such as listening, speaking, etc.).

The tension that emerges from the Buyee-Vijay-Vasie exchange embodies two key features which are associated with collaborative work. This observation is pertinent to MacGregor’s (1991:2–3) postulation that collaborative work is reputed to generate a unique intellectual and social synergy. The students who complain of having done such a lot of work on the topic probably signals a kind of intellectual saturation in the form of their perception that they have already engaged the topic exhaustively from the angle which Vijay is proposing. However, Vijay tries to explain the different nuances that would emanate from working on a common topic. She says: I’ve found that it works very well because everybody is dealing with the same kind of issue. Because you are all doing different interviews, you are all doing different angles on the topic, but you are able to talk to each other and it becomes collective work. Without re-solving the debate on the intellectual benefits of engaging the AIDS Assignment collaboratively, Vijay turns the discussion to the social skills that accrue from engaging collaborative work. She points out: But you also understand that I’m trying to create conditions where students can dialogue with each other. I’m trying to enable you to talk to other people in the class … it means that you can talk to each other about different problems. To which a diplomatic Buyee responds: I think you already know that you are not living alone, you have to handle different people and all those things, and I’ve been having problems with this.

Notwithstanding Buyee’s and Vasie’s request for different peda-gogic technique and content, Vijay’s concern with the ethic of communal learning, and for the development of interpersonal communicative skills wins over both student Buyee’s reluctance to engage in collaborative learning and student Vasie’s request to work on the AIDS question from the point of view of the dissidents. The technique of normalisation and regulation that Vijay employs in getting students to work on the same topic relates to the following three educative and pedagogic goals which she had outlined for the AIDS research project:

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First, the educative goal is tied to the development of affective and cognitive skills that are related to a value system of communal teaching and learning. Second, Vijay outlines the pedagogic goal as follows: I’mstill keen on the interviews and how you are going to choose your inter-viewees. How you are going to select the questions. Vijay’s pedagogic goals are related to educating student on research methodology (sample selection – how students are going to choose their interviewees; and re-search instrument development – how students are going to select the questions for the interviews). Third, the need for pedagogic normalisa-tion is further linked to the balance of power in assessment. That Vijay turns to the pre-set examination question as a mechanism to exercise regulation and normalisation reinforces both the institutional power and the pedagogic power that is vested in the teacher, as is evident in her comment: Let’s figure out what it is we are doing because I have already set the exam question. This comment returns us to the recurring contra-diction in feminist pedagogical discourses in regard to sharing power with students, on the one hand, and holding onto the reins of assessment and credentialing authority, on the other hand.

We note that several micro-power dynamics feature in the Vijay-Va-sie-Buyee exchange. These dynamics include teacher regulation and normalisation, in which Vijay subjects both Buyee and Vasie to restric-tions and conformity in regard to pedagogic technique and assignment topic. The regulation and normalisations, in turn, spill into distribution ofstudents into groups or pairs for the different group work activities (for example, simulated interviews which students engaged in as practice for future field work). This organisational device in the learning process generated a totalising effect which entailed specifying a collective will to conform to the teacher’s pedagogic discretion, direction and choreogra-phy. All these micro-power techniques determined what would be per-mitted and excluded in the classroom in terms of pedagogic content and technique. Cumulatively, these power techniques trace the limits of what would/would not constitute the domains of validity and normativity, that is, which differences would be included and which differences would be excluded as pedagogically relevant.

Aware that she has wielded considerable teacherly power in nor-malising and defining the parameters of pedagogic technique and con-tent, perhaps the most insightful analysis of the Vasie-Buyee-Vijay interchange comes from Vijay herself. As a critically reflective practitio-

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ner, Vijay analyses the anatomy of the regulatory and normalising in-structional performances which she has enacted. In the post-lecture interview, she succinctly comments on the incident as follows:

Yesterday I had to tell them you couldn’t go there with the assignment because I’ve already set the exams. I was saying, ‘But Vijay, of all the stupid reasons you have to have for constraining students this is the one you have to have?’ All the right wing, Fascist things you can do to students and in a class where we are explicitly saying we are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, anti-authoritarian. Because we are locked into an exam system – there are deadlines, there are processes and sys-tems – we get bureaucratised. Some of the violence is bureaucratic. I suppose it is my own challenge to figure out how to get around this. That is something that I need to give attention to.

Vijay refers specifically to the fact that feminist discourses align them-selves with anti-hierarchical value systems. Vijay recognises the dis-juncture between espoused theory and theory in use and that she had to resort to boundary marking practices in terms of how and where students could ‘go with the assignment’, she is aware that she has thus con-strained them, especially in the light of her opening statements in the lecture, in which she told them: The question has not been set. The ques-tion must be created in class. Although Vijay grapples with how to downplay teacher power in the feminist class, Gore’s (2002) postulation is sobering in its reminder that the kind of knowledge that is produced in pedagogy interacts with the site and the constituent power which is em-ployed there. The nature and purpose of universities as knowledge pro-ducing, knowledge dispensing and knowledge credentialing agencies suggest that there are functions that lecturers need to fulfil which are consonant with their identities. This factor circumscribes the extent to which feminist teachers can divest their classes of power. This is borne out by Vijay when she says: We are locked into an exam system – there are deadlines, there are processes and systems – we get bureaucratised.Some of the violence is bureaucratic. Thus, although Vijay identifies getting around the violence of the bureaucracy as a project to which she needs to attend, there are evidently limits to what may be achieved in this regard. These are processes and knowledge systems that sometimes make pedagogic and educative normalisation unavoidable.

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(iii) Student silence and non-participation as resistance

In the Vijay-Vasie-Buyee exchange, we have noticed teacher justifica-tion/motivation for the merits of dialogue in student-centred pedagogy. In the following collage of extracts from Vijay’s and Thembi’s lectures, we notice that teachers have to negotiate student silence. Given that stu-dent-centred classrooms pivot on student interaction and dialogic partici-pation, silence may be interpreted as a possible display of ‘passive resistance,’ as may be the case in the following exchange:

Vijay: Do you want to respond to what Buyee has had to say? Surely I don’t need to pounce, this is your assignment. (long pause). Should I declare a minutes prayer silence? (long silence). No one wants to respond? (long pause). You can even ask her a question if you want. (long pause). Can’t clap with one hand. (long pause). Somust I handle it? Buyee (Black female): I’m worried that Sibongele refers to the AIDS issue as a problem. I’m wondering whether it is the right word. According to my understanding, it is more than a problem; because my definition of a problem is when you make attempts to solve a problem it can be solved. Vijay: Anyone wants to respond directly to what Buyee has said? (long pause).Shall we just accept what she has said? Come on I’m trying to get a reaction out of you. Hello, is anyone out there? (Still no response. Long silence). Sibongele is actu-ally suggesting giving you a lot of work when you do your assignment. You are not just going to go there and do research, you are going to have to go there and educate them. Are you consenting to that? You want to explain that to us Sibongele? Sibongele (Black female): Whatever we find out try and put it in a way that they can understand, make them relate it to their daily lives even if they are not directly affected. Vijay: And must we do the education? Can we just do the research and run away? Sibongele: We can find out what they know, and find out what their fears are … . We are finding out but we are also giving something back. So we can also be em-powered. (Lecture Observation)

We note attempts by the teacher to coax students into participating in classroom dialogue. We see Vijay encouraging students to take owner-ship of the discussion, when she says: This is your assignment. However, in the period of prolonged silence, she is aware of the power which she could exercise by singling out individual students to respond, but she chooses to exercise her power of restraint by not pouncing on them. The word pounce carries with it the image of springing or swooping as a way of capturing one’s prey, and if Vijay were to pounce on students, that

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would translate into forcing them to participate, which is something that is hardly consistent with the desideratum of willing student participation. In encouraging students to participate, Vijay is in effect attempting to engage students in what would be regarded as a normative prerequisite for dialogic student-centred learning, and in the necessity for the physi-cal and vocal presence of the dialogic community; hence she asks: Hello,is anyone out there? This teacher-student ‘exchange’ illustrates the ten-sion between democratic forms of education and the latent tendency to teacher hierarchy by highlighting the dilemma for teachers to resolve the contradiction between dialogic student-centred methodologies and the authority that is vested in their role. Even in restraining her power, Vijay draws attention to her latent potential to exercise power. In not being phased by the awkward silences that marked this exchange, Vijay’s de-liberate silence let students know that she was not going to contribute to the discussion, and that the onus was on them to move the discussion forward. Vijay’s ‘silence’ activated at least two normalising pre-requi-sites that MacGregor (1991:1–4) identified for collaborative work, viz. students transitioning: a) from listener, observer and note-taker to active problem-solver, contributor and discussant; and b) from being a private presence in the classroom (with few or no accompanying risks) to a pub-lic presence with potential risks. In reflecting on the silence and long process that marked the negotiation of the AIDS Assignment topic, Vijay commented as follows in her interview:

The process of setting up this question was long but very rewarding … . I was very pleased with them, and I found that it was a function of my shutting up. Once I was not prepared to fill in the silences they opened up and a lot of people participated, and had very germane contributions to make.

The following instance of student non-participation was evident in Thembi’s class:

Thembi: Just a minute, that’s another stereotype? Gladys (Black female): Yes. Thembi: Okay. Were you going to come up with another stereotype, or is it a follow up? Petrus (Black male): What she said. Thembi: No, she hasn’t said anything yet. (laughter) Petrus: But she was about to say that. (laughter) Thembi: I can’t believe this. So thank you very much.

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…………………………………………………………….…………………………. Thembi: And can you imagine allowing this many minutes to pass in an exam, be-cause I can tell you I set this for a fourth year exam. Can you imagine how much time you’re losing? … This is a discussion please, nobody is testing you. Say a word, somebody will add or modify, but say something. Remember that this same week you’re going to sit for a test of this kind. Please exercise your minds a little, and be free to do so. (Lecture Observation)

From the extract two important points emerge. The first point relates to the nature of student resistance to dialogic participation. Student Petrus, displays a nonchalance and lethargy towards meaningful participation by electing not to expand the discussion or to make a contribution. Instead, he defers to a ‘comment’ that was supposedly made by another student, even though her response was in relation to something else. As such he contravenes a normalising prerequisite for collaborative work, namely, that of transitioning from listener, observer, and note-taker to active problem-solver, contributor and discussant.

In dealing with student silence and non-participation, Thembi resorts to the familiar pedagogic mechanism of reminding students of the need for effective time utilisation, which is an important factor in the exami-nation. Again, the tension between democratic forms of education and the latent tendency to hierarchy, and the dilemma for teachers to resolve the contradiction between dialogic student-centred methodologies and the authority that is vested in their pedagogic role resurfaces. Students are encouraged to feel free to exercise their minds, but if they do not do so spontaneously and expeditiously, they are reminded that they would be unlikely to negotiate the time and cognitive demands of a test or examination successfully.

Once again, since one of the limitations of this study is that students do not form a unit of analysis, we can only surmise what the underlying reasons for student resistance in incidents of non-participation. In the absence of student explanation for the long and awkward silences that have punctuated the two extracts under consideration, a significant factor in interpreting student non-participation may be linked to student com-petency and fluency in the English language. Research which has been conducted by Diaz-Rico & Weed (1995:40–41) suggest that – in attempting to understand and bridge the gap between culture and lan-guage – several theories and models have been developed to address the social and individual factors that are involved in English second lan-

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guage learning and acquisition, which subsequently affect student confi-dence to participate in classroom dialogue. It seems that – in order to bridge the gap between language policies, sociolinguistic theories, and educational practice, all of which implicate teacher authority and student agency – what is required is a more holistic conceptualisation of English second language teaching and learning that would take into consideration both individual student variables as well as variables that are located within the macro-socio-historical and political structures of society.

(iv) Student resistance to radical ideologies

Confirming Foucault’s postulation regarding student resistance to nor-malisation techniques, we notice that in addition to students offering resistance to the assignment topic, and the pedagogic technique, in the following extracts from the various participants’ lectures, we encounter student resistances in various other guises. Rakow (1991) posits that – when feminist lecturers provide occasions for students to question their own complacency – they face student resistance to the liberatory, radical and transformative nature of the course material. In my study, I have found that the thinking of students who resist feminism and radical ide-ologies fell into the following four resistance postures; that is, they deny,discount, distance and/or express dismay concerning women’s inequality and other injustices in a patriarchal society. In the following discussion, I explore student resistance as a basis for, rather than as a barrier to, learning.

Denial and Discounting

According to Titus (2000) researchers concur that the strongest denial of women’s reality within patriarchy comes from males who feel they are being cast into the role of exploiters and blamed for what they take to be women’s mythical oppression. When students are faced with values and beliefs that call into question their ideological frameworks, they denythat women constitute an oppressed group, regardless of the structural barriers they might experience to their own success, (the latter being the case, especially among female students). Some students may dismiss the

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significance of gender or absolve themselves of any responsibility to agitate for gender equality, and shift blame onto some unchangeable factor. This might actually be employed as an avoidance mechanism from examining their lives more closely.

An allied posture that some students adopt is the tendency to dis-count the authenticity of ‘allegations’ of female oppression. Taking the view that feminist theory is based on opinion rather than on fact they see a feminist as someone who has a personal vendetta against patriarchy. Given that people who have a personal interest in something are considered incapable of objectivity, they conclude that feminist teachers are biased rather than credible. This conception is further exacerbated since the feminist teacher is likely to be intolerant of sexist and misogy-nist attitudes, racist beliefs, etc. Any empirical general statement about an entire group is taken by students as couched in stereotypes. They view feminists as seeing sexism everywhere and exaggerating the reality of inequality. Vuyo’s comments in the extract from Thembi’s lecture illus-trate features of student resistance in the form of denying and discounting women’s oppression in patriarchal societies.

Vuyo (Black male): I don’t think the women were denied any chance. There is a problem with women. They have a serious problem. They lack the initiative to stand up, but they want to laugh and like to support their men. (class laughs). You know, it’s part of their nature. Their male counterparts are working day and night trying to make women believe in themselves. Women are not going to take up the initiative and the courage. Why are they like that? … They lack the initiative. (class laughs). I will give them the liberal politics in Botswana, and the freedom that we have. Women deny themselves the chance. I’m describing the status quo, there are very few women who have actually displayed the courage and the zeal to go for-ward in so far as challenging the male is concerned. Why is it like that? Women, in-stead of thinking about living, they think about the niceties of life. They enjoy singing, cheering, voting, partying. (class laughs).Thembi (teacher): Okay, it’s your observation; you’re looking at the status quo. Fine, but our business here as students of literature is to interrogate the status quo, to question what is happening and try and trace this to its roots. Hence, it keeps on saying, ‘What are these the result of?’ Vuyo: But I think that what you are doing is the other side of finding the answer. I believe that somebody else may have better answers than that which we have in feminism. This is another issue and way of explaining it and it cannot be taken without an influence and a meticulous interrogation because some other schools of thought are meant to give us an answer as to why the situation is the way it is. I un-derstand that we actually have to study these things with caution because if we are

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not careful we are going to be programmed feminists and then we won’t be able to address another view somewhere else. Jake (Black male): I hear my colleague, but there are socialising processes. Thembi: Ja. That’s a very important point, which is part of our cultural belief that we have to explore.

Vuyo’s response is an embodiment of the classic denial and discounting postures that have come to characterise resistance to feminist critiques of patriarchy. Vuyo comments: I don’t think the women were denied any chance. There is a problem with women. They have a serious problem.They lack the initiative to stand up, but they want to laugh and like to support their men properly. Blaming the victim is an established phe-nomenon which is alluded to, for example, in de Beauvoir’s (1953) metaphoric articulation of the problem: “They clip her wings and then complain she cannot fly.” Vuyo’s intolerance, annoyance and perplexity emerge in his repeated question: Why are they like that? … Why is it like that? Vuyo’s response in blaming women for lacking agentic potential is met with the suggestion from Thembi that he should interrogate the status quo. Perhaps he would thereby be conscientised to the causal rela-tionship between structural inequalities and the generally inferior psy-chological and cultural socialisation of females. Women and girls have to unlearn their devaluation in order to become agents of personal and social transformation. Vuyo’s non-recognition of the underlying barriers to female actualisation leads him to discount the existence of women’s oppression and to attribute it to their personal choice. Perhaps his more ‘privileged’ male status makes him incredulous about the authenticity of women’s social oppression. Further, in citing the more liberal politics of Botswana, he does not recognise the disjuncture between the symbolic and functional nuances of democracy.

Second, Vuyo makes sweeping generalisations about women and their failure to act for themselves. Compounded in his belittling male gaze of women, he also externalises his belief that women are associated primarily with infantile trivia. He says: Women instead of thinking about living, they think about the niceties of life. They enjoy singing, cheering,voting, partying. They want to laugh and support their men properly.Inherent in this utterance is the image of women as lacking the capacity, will and zeal to engage more important social responsibilities, like assuming leadership. Instead, they gravitate naturally towards supporting and supportive roles, while their male counterparts work tirelessly,

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apparently around the clock (night and day), to motivate them to aspire to greater pursuits. Even though women might participate in voting, an activity that requires the power to make a personal and political decision, the fact that it is embedded among such frivolities as singing, cheering,partying is perhaps meant to demonstrate that women lack the perception to distinguish personal, political decision-making as an important and serious activity, which should in fact not be a ‘laughing matter.’ Vuyo’s conception of women finds ample support in thinkers such as the linguist Jespersen (in Cameron 1990) who – in castigating women’s communi-cation patterns – wrote: “Women … are conservative, timorous, overly polite and delicate, trivial in their subject matter, and given to simple, repetitive or incomplete/illogical sentence structures, softly spoken and soft in the head.”

Against this reductive perceptual backdrop, Vuyo finally shares his scepticism as to whether feminism is the most appropriate discourse to interrogate patriarchy. Suggesting that there might be a flaw in drawing on a feminist critique of patriarchy, he cautions that feminist theorising may well be operating as yet another regime of truth. He maintains that one should be careful not to become programmed feminists. Judging from his comments, it would appear kosher to operate as a programmed sexist and misogynist, rather than as a programmed feminist.

Vuyo’s resistance to the ideological intent of feminist theorising is met with educative normalisation techniques from Thembi. Firstly, Thembi alerts Vuyo to the patriarchal foundations that circumscribe a minoritising view of females. Thus, Thembi urges Vuyo to examine the status quo by tracing it to its roots (‘they are a result of something,’ she tells him). Thembi’s next normalisation technique relates to decon-structing the status quo, thus moving Vuyo (and the other students) to critical consciousness and counter-hegemonic thinking. Thembi tries to socialise Vuyo into the discourse of deconstruction when she responds: Fine. But our business here as students of literature is to interrogate the status quo, to question what is happening … are these the results of something? Cumulatively, Thembi’s response to Vuyo correlates with the normative educative outcomes that she has identified for the Writingsin Africa Course, which she outlined as follows:

I think the objectives are twofold. One is to make students sensitive and consciousto what they read and to the world around them … just to develop a critical con-

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sciousness. The other one is to encourage this same student to examine the domi-nant representations of gender in African Literature that they study and considerhow these could be subverted – or even the extent to which authors themselves are interrogating or subverting the issues that they are dealing with. (Interview)

Based on the above objectives the discernible technique of normalization offered to the student’s ideological resistance, is associated, first, with making Vuyo sensitive and critically conscious to the Word (what they read) and the World; second, with encouraging Vuyo to examine the status quo; and third with subverting the discriminatory status quo by considering an ideological/conceptual shift. The teacher’s educative au-thority aims at altering the student’s perception, and effecting a concep-tual shift in his belief and value system. Thus, Thembi attempts to re-constitute a new ideological normative that is based on a just social or-der.

Mphele, another male student in Thembi’s class, offers a similar line of argument to Vuyo. He enquires:

Mphele (Black male): I just wanted to know … I think Christianity is very fine. Christianity because it tells you that men were created in the image of God and why do we have to question the original? Thembi: Ja, it’s good to question that because again if you read the Bible as litera-ture, which allows you to go into all of that, and you see a lot of references and so forth. … look at it as literature in fact it is literature. (Lecture Observation)

Inherent in Mphele’s question is the needs to know why are we not accepting of the status quo. Appealing to God, a higher power, and all the attendant attributes that are vested in deity, it seems audacious to subtend hierarchical power relations and structures. Suggesting a stance that is counter to the educative goals of creating critically thinking indi-viduals who would challenge and change oppressive social relations, Mphele prefers to subscribe to the belief that our social gender status is natural and divinely ordained. Thembi’s response to Mphele, while it is not as elaborate as that which she gave to Vuyo, nonetheless embodies the same message. She contends that if Mphele classifies the Bible within the literary genre, which she points out it is, then the Bible, like all other literature (for example, African Literature) – needs to be en-gaged with critically. The Bible’s claims and value system – in general, but particularly in relation to dominant gender representations – need to

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be subjected to the same processes of critique which are the normative characteristic of developing critical consciousness.

Finally, Sipho’s comment that women are not refined, receives the following crisp response from Thembi:

Thembi (teacher): Please just repeat your question and then I’ll take it down. Or make a statement. Sipho (Black male): I’m saying from the feminist group, I’m oppressed, and she is saying, I am more refined. Thembi: You’re oppressed and more refined than …? Sipho: Because when we look at women they are not refined. (laughter) Thembi: Once more, please read the concept of the Other in the Simone de Beau-voir extract from The Second Sex. We are going to explore it in regard to gender relations. … men define women not in herself but as relative to him. de Beauvoir says: ‘ … women on the whole today are inferior to men, that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities.’ The question is should that state of affairs con-tinue? We have to understand how she develops the concept of the Other. (Lecture Observation)

Rather than entertain extended discussion, Thembi refers Sipho to the concept of Othering as elucidated in the extract from de Beauvoir’s text The Second Sex, which has been prescribed for class reading. De Beau-voir’s thesis of the Other explores women’s inferior and denigrated status in patriarchal society. In referring Sipho to the article, Thembi’s educative intention would be for him to examine, interrogate and scruti-nise his assessment of women’s lack of refinement in relation to an alter-native feminist ideological normative.

Thembi’s responses to Sipho, Vuyo and Mphele aim to resocialise students into a normalisation of critical consciousness, in general, and into critical gender consciousness, in particular. In responding to the students’ resistance to feminist ideologies, Thembi refers to the educa-tive goals that are outlined for the course, as well as to the prescribed course readings, for example, de Beauvoir’s extract from The Second Sex; Mill’s essay, The Subjection of Women, etc. which have been spe-cifically selected to support, elaborate and elucidate feminist conceptions of social justice as a new normative order. These texts serve to provide theoretical and ideological support for the conceptual shifts she attempts to effect in her students so that they would be sufficiently in-spired/moved to confront and subvert discriminatory social practices.

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However, Thembi’s responses to the resisting students are done in a subtle, almost hands-off kind of way. This approach may be attributed to the lesson she reflects on learning awhile back, when one of her students interpreted her enthusiasm and passion for gender equity as a ‘brain-washing’ exercise.

While Vuyo’s and Mphele’s responses shed some light from a male perspective on the postures of denial and discounting of the existence of women’s oppression, Lisa attempts to elicit a response from Portia as to the possible cultural impediments which she – as a Black female – ex-periences, as the following extract illustrates. Lisa’s attempt to secure a counter-response from Portia is framed against the following response from Meshack, a Black male:

Jennifer (teacher): And where do you situate yourself? Meshack (Black male): Well, I think that I am very male – sexually, and I think that I am very male – gender-wise. Well actually, it places me in a right position in my society. It makes me feel comfortable. I feel myself. I feel like I am fulfilling my duties – that’s where I belong. Lisa (teacher): How far do you think that is attached to your cultural affiliations and the way you were brought up culturally? Do you have a strong cultural bond? Meshack: Yes, it gives me power – a sense of power … . Lisa (referring to Portia – Black female). Now you answer, I want you to answer, if you don’t mind … I have experienced this – with a sense of cultural impediment, and it attacks women, but it empowers men within the cultural framework. Do you feel that, or am I wrong? (Silence). Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you feel imprisoned at any time by the way you are brought up in your cultural envi-ronment? Portia (Black female): (silence). Sometimes. (hesitantly). Not always. Alison (White female): I must say, as a woman, I don’t think that it is ever that easy, even at the most basic level. If you want to buy a car, I am very, very con-scious that as a woman I am trivialised in many, many ways. It is a perception that when I am driving a car I’m stupid. (general consensus from class) … but I’m very, very conscious that I am a woman. It is an uphill battle much of the way … I am conscious of that and it makes me very, very angry. Lisa: And yet you contribute to it, don’t you? Alison: I do. I do. I do. I do. And I’m conscious of that as well. Jennifer: And also it makes the relationship easier to play the role rather than to stand up and deliver a lecture on women’s identity and women’s competence to some guy who is treating you stupid. Alison: … because he is treating me stupid it doesn’t really matter. (Lecture Obser-vation)

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Portia’s initial silence, followed by her hesitant response that she only feels disempowered sometimes, not always, is of course open to multiple interpretations. Felman (1982) argues that student ignorance may in fact be an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information. This ignorance is a kind of repression that can be understood on both an indi-vidual and a cultural level. Thus, Smith (2003) cautions that – even if a teacher manages to communicate that s/he is a safe audience for the stu-dent – the possibility of being expected to discuss personal experience or provide more information could be uncomfortable for the student who is being vague or minimally participatory as a survival strategy. The stu-dent may in fact identify herself with the dominant culture for good rea-son, or it may be a survival technique. We can surmise that – as the only Black female student in the class – Portia may well have felt exposed; her possible disenfranchisement by race, gender and language, in a pre-dominantly White, female, English-speaking class may have caused her to be vague or minimally participatory as a survival strategy, or copying mechanism.

The other likely possibility is that female students often resist femi-nist theorising if they feel characterised as victims. Manicom (1992) cautions that – when female students reject feminist analysis – this has variously been labelled false consciousness or resistance and has often been conceptualised as a flaw in the student herself. Given that Lisa is uncertain whether Portia knows what she is talking about suggests that Portia may possibly not have begun to interpret her cultural socialisation as an impediment or oppressive, but accepts it as normal and natural. It is possible that for her the development of a feminist consciousness may only come much later, and may follow a ‘pattern of change’ feminist consciousness trajectory.

We see that student Alison assumes the role of accessory to teacher authority by drawing on her own experience to identify and name patri-archal impediments. Wary that Portia’s hesitant response, and episodes of silence regarding the cultural impediments which women experience, may be read as a rare or mythical phenomenon, Alison – a middle-aged, White student – points to the pervasiveness of female denigration in pa-triarchal society. Alison points out that women are trivialised and made to feel stupid irrespective of race and participation in patriarchal society is an uphill battle much of the way and never that easy.

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In examining Portia’s response to Lisa’s question alongside Alison’s, we note that – although both students seemingly respond differently to patriarchal oppression – there is nonetheless an underlying similarity. It appears that Portia may occasionally perceive herself as a victim of patriarchal cultural impediment and that she is thus not overtly suspicious of the status quo. However, Alison is incensed by the status quo, yet she opts for being consciously complicit, and strategically com-pliant, in playing the patriarchal female devaluation game. Feminist dis-courses aim at making critical gender consciousness and resistance thereof a normative practice. However, student Alison and feminist edu-cator Jennifer indicate that normative knowledge/consciousness of gen-der discrimination does not necessarily eventuate in overt resistance politics. Alison admits to contributing to patriarchal complicity, because as Jennifer elaborates: … it makes the relationship easier to play the role rather than to stand up and deliver a lecture on women’s identity and women’s competence.

In understanding why women become self-consciously contradic-tory by being complicit in patriarchal postures, Hogeland (1994) suggests that to understand what women fear when they fear feminism, it is necessary to make a distinction between gender consciousness and feminist consciousness. The difference resides in the connection between gender and politics. Feminism politicises gender consciousness by lo-cating it in a systematic analysis of histories and structures of domination and privilege. Fear of feminism, then, is not a fear of gender, but rather a fear of politics, which may be understood as a fear of living in conse-quences of reprisals. Hogeland (ibid.) writes:

Feminism requires an expansion of self, an expansion of empathy, interest, intelli-gence, cultures, ethnicities, sexual identities, othernesses. It is easier to rest in gen-der consciousness, in one’s own difference than to undertake the personal and political analysis required to trace out one’s own position in multiple and overlapping systems of domination. To stand opposed to your culture, to be critical of institutions, behaviours, discourses, when it is clearly not in your immediate in-terest asks a lot of women. Of course women are afraid of feminism – shouldn’t they be?

Examining the note on which the Lisa-Portia-Alison-Jennifer exchange ends, the following discernible features, that correlate with the normative

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educative goals which have been identified for the course, become evi-dent.

Jennifer: Students need to reflect critically, they need to isolate and identify issues in literature, and they need to be able to think about those issues in the context of other discourses … not only theory, but ideas that are circulating in society at the time … force them if necessary to make connections between the literature they are reading and society, issues, philosophy, other disciplines. So as to also think wider. (Interview)

Through their leading questions, the feminist teachers, Jennifer and Lisa, have managed to elicit confirmation from Alison that women’s oppression in society, as a result of cultural impediments, is not mythi-cal. They have done so through the normative educative goal of making connections between the literature students are reading and society. In a course that is designed to examine gendered representations in contem-porary women’s literature, student Alison is able to draw on personal experience, for example, on the perceived stupidity that is associated with women and driving a car. The educative agenda of naming the status quo of female oppression, examining the status quo and subverting it, is evident in the discussion. The exception is that rather than subver-sion/resistance assuming an overt form, it assumes a subtle compliance. Essentially, Alison shows that she has been socialised into the normative ideal of gender consciousness. She appears to be on the same ideological wavelength as her feminist teachers, but she opts to enact her resistance through strategic compliance. Perhaps, as Hogeland (1994) points out, “to stand opposed to your culture, to be critical of institutions, behaviours, discourses, when it is clearly not in your immediate interest asks a lot of women.”

Distancing

Assuming distance as a resistance posture occurs when female students express concerns with excluding men in discussions and pedagogic con-tent which focus on women. Statements that men are victims just like women serve as a dis-stancing mechanism and indicate that – as women – they do not necessarily associate themselves with a critique of patriar-chy. Female students feel advantaged relative to other times in their

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lives, while male students feel disadvantaged. The following extract illustrates this point:

Pauline (White female): But John how do you feel in all this? We sometimes emas-culate you. We are looking at all this gender as if it is women who are threatened, but what about men? Lisa (teacher): Gender has become a synonym for women’s issues. Pauline: Yes. John: That’s true … Pauline: That is why I asked the question: do you have a struggle maintaining your masculinity? I think that men do. Jennifer: There are novels, particularly The Long View and The Magic Toyshop,that say, it is not all that nice falling in love with somebody of the opposite sex all the time because what happens is that you get married and end up bare foot and pregnant in the kitchen. I know that that is a terrible oversimplification … Pauline: Or the man ends up being trapped by all the children. We always look at it from a woman’s point of view. There are lots of men who have also been trapped …John: Yes, yes. Jennifer: Or the man gets trapped into doing all the fixing around the house … Pauline: It seems men today – more than in my generation – feel that they deserve their independence. Guys getting married today feel worried about being trapped with children. Alison: In other words, it is about the gender separation, and the roles. Women are to stay at home and look after the children and this frees the man financially … Pauline: I’m not talking about financial freedom … Jennifer: You mean physical freedom – give him more time to do his own thing. That relates to another of those oppositions, which is very traditional in Gender Theory – that is the Public/Private dichotomy. The male domain is that of the public – public achievement, going out and becoming successful in the corporate world, and being a leader of nations … whereas the private domain has always been that of women. You just have to read Virginia Woolf’s essay: The Angel in the House, or you just have to watch yourself at home picking up and cleaning to see how perva-sive that still is. (Lecture Observation)

A dis-stancing resistance posture to feminist theorising is evident in stu-dent Pauline’s concern that there is a tendency to look at all this gender as if it is women who are threatened, but what about men? … do you have a struggle maintaining your masculinity – she enquires of John. Pauline’s empathising with John lends credence to the contention that female students sometimes play a care-taking role, becoming protective of the feelings and emotional well-being of their male colleagues in or-der to maintain harmonious relationships. The teaching team does not

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negate what student Pauline is saying, as there is a measure of validity in her observation that men may feel trapped by children, fixing around the house, etc. However, in line with the educative goals of the course, Jennifer normalises and legitimises the critique against patriarchal gen-dering of roles and responsibilities. Jennifer points out that traditional and current practice locate women within the private domain of house-keeping drudgery, while men occupy public offices that generally give them financial, temporal, and spatial/physical freedom. Jennifer draws on techniques of normalisation by referring to the educative goal of the course, which she defined as follows: Students need to reflect critically,they need to isolate and identify issues in literature, and they need to be able to think about those issues in the context of other discourses … not only theory, but ideas that are circulating in society at the time. Jennifer achieves this critical reflection by referring Pauline to Gender Theory, which confronts the public/private dichotomisation of male and female social positionality. The repertoire of literary texts (The Long View and The Magic Toyshop) and gender theories that Jennifer has selected and prescribed for the course also serve to institute revised gender relations and positionalities. In the same way in which Thembi has referred stu-dents to de Beauvoir’s theorising about the Other, Jennifer summarises the crux of the debate in Gender Theory, by exposing students to the discriminatory status quo that associates women with the private domain and men with the public domain. Jennifer thus articulates a new social normative for conceiving of gender relations and positionality. Further-more, by referring to the literary texts, The Long View and The Magic Toyshop, which suggest alternatives to heterosexual relationships, Jenni-fer alludes to the objectives of the course, which is concerned with de-constructing gender. In addition, her reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay, The Angel in the House becomes an exemplification of the taken-for-grantedness and normalcy of gendered dichotomies. This pervasive stereotypical gendered social arrangement invariably shortchanges and circumscribes women’s public and career opportunities, and it may be equally restrictive for those men who might be attracted or predisposed to domesticity.

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Dismay

Inasmuch as the postures of resistance play themselves out through de-nial, discounting and distancing technologies, some students are not re-sistant to feminism as a normalising ideology in the conventional sense; instead, they express being puzzled, confused, overwhelmed, unsettled and – sometimes – depressed by a sense of fatalism. In these cases stu-dents admit to feeling virtually ‘paralysed’ by the enormity of the task for social transformation and the perceived impossibility of creating a more humane, just and pain-free society. Many students expect a single definitive solution – the product of an easy recipe for action.

In the following extract, there are hints of Rani feeling overwhelmed by being unsure of how to research the AIDS Assignment, while simul-taneously educating her interviewees:

Vijay (teacher): You’re very sure that all the people you know are aware about AIDS? … So how can you ask questions that enable you to make people consider those measures? What are those situations that get in the way of knowledge, where knowledge is no longer empowering? What are the situations that you are referring to? Rani (Indian female): The question that we are asking will most probably be about how does one get AIDS? We don’t want to go out there and tell people that AIDS is bad. We just want to find out how do we think AIDS affects everybody. We are not there to … I don’t know what you want … Vijay: … let’s work a way out … . Rani: Ja, I don’t think you want us to go out there and try to prevent AIDS as such …Vijay: … but you don’t feel strong enough to be able to do education and training? Where’s the gap, and how can we fill the gap? Rani: … and how are we going to educate them? Buyee (Black female): I think it would be a good idea if you start educating yourself about AIDS … . It’s not like you are going to go there and start being a Sister and show charts. Whatever you know about AIDS, the basic things that you know, you will share. Ask as many questions, and answer as many from what you know. There are many misconceptions about AIDS, and you can try and clarify these. Rani: So Vijay, what is it that you want from us? Vijay: No, that’s what we are trying to work out. We need to figure it out. Let’s address the question, what is it that we know about AIDS that other people may not know. Let’s query it amongst ourselves. What’s the most important point each of us knows about AIDS? (Lecture Observation)

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Comments like I don’t know what you want … . How are we going to educate them? suggest a sense of being uncertain and overwhelmed. In diagnosing the student’s sense of dismay, Vijay perceives that Rani probably feels ill-equipped in terms of her knowledge base to negotiate the demands of the AIDS Assignment interview process, as is evident in Rani’s query/statement: We just want to find out how do we think AIDS affects everybody. We are not there to … I don’t know what you want … .On this level, Rani is seeking clarification on the scope of the AIDS Assignment topic. On another level, her sense of being overwhelmed is related to her role of researcher and the AIDS preventative, intervention role which – she feels – the research project will expect her to play. More importantly, implied in Rani’s query is her sensitivity to the mag-nitude of the AIDS pandemic and the stigma and silences that render it a highly personalised matter to engage. Fellow student Buyee suggests that commencing with self-education, and recognizing that the AIDS Assignment is likely to be a reciprocal learning process, may help allevi-ate the stress of dismay and the feeling of being overwhelmed. Buyee’s suggestion resonates with Titus’ (2000) recommendation that – when students feel overwhelmed and dismayed – teachers (and student accessories to teacher authority) may help them to acquire a sense of the possibilities for positive social transformation. Vijay’s response to Rani may be traced to the educative goals that she had outlined for the Lan-guage and Power Course. Vijay’s stated educative agenda was to im-press upon students their role as intellectuals in society. She commented:

For me the intellectual has a far more important role in our society. I have always been very annoyed by this whole dilettantish aspect of intellectuals who live on the fringe and are really weird and wonderful. We are publicly funded and for me that defines everything … . It ties our work with the notion of a whole civic responsi-bility. There is enough room for existential angst in those crises. (Interview)

Thus, in responding to Rani’s sense of being overwhelmed by the enor-mity of the AIDS issue, Vijay formulates her perception thus: … but you don’t feel strong enough to be able to do education and training?Where’s the gap, and how can we fill the gap? … what is it that we know about AIDS that other people may not know? The ideological normalisa-tion occurs in these statements, and it is linked to the educative goal of educating her students, who – in turn, as intellectuals – have a civic re-sponsibility to wider society to conscientise/educate others who may be

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lacking in knowledge. Thus, rather than be paralysed by existential angst, and the magnanimity of social crises, students are encouraged to embrace the normalising educative goal and to locate themselves in community social movements that harness the power of collective action as an avenue for change.

I have examined postures of resistance which students offer to femi-nist ideological course content. In the ensuing discussion, I examine ideological tensions that emerge when students in the dialogue process express insensitive views that run counter to the radical educative goals of the course. When course content brings into question students’ seemingly comfortable acceptance of culturally sanctioned assumptions that justify inequality and social oppression, students feel that their taken-for-granted identification with the existing social order is being confronted. In such instances, while protests could be interpreted as barriers or resistance, their opposition is not a refusal to engage in the content of the course so much as it is a challenge to that content. For example, in the following extract from Jennifer’s lecture, student Joan expresses herself in a less than sensitive way, when she advances the ‘Trauma Theory’ regarding the ‘abnormality’ of homosexuality.

Joan (White female): The way I see it is as though there are two types of gays. The one I would say is a gene that probably one is born with and the other is acquired, for example, the rugby player – something goes wrong – probably at puberty. I would say that there are definitely two types of gays. Jennifer (teacher): Listen to what you are saying – something goes wrong … . (John laughs. Jennifer appears unhappy with the way the student has expressed herself).Joan: I have a friend who was straight and she had a boyfriend who let her down very, very badly. She went out for a while and ended up in a gay relationship, and as far as I know that’s where she’s been. Before that time she was perfectly normal. (class laughs). It’s called the Trauma Theory of the origin of gayness. Jennifer: The man traumatised her to such an extent that she became gay, whereas in the novel – the girl right from the beginning didn’t feel as if she was a girl. She was climbing trees and doing all kind of things … . Is it essential to feel like a girl to be heterosexual? For example, if you go into a gay relationship do you not necessarily feel like a female? Joan: She was a female in every way. She did everything that an adult female would do – had children – but from a trauma … . Jennifer: I think that it would be interesting for you to look at why you think that. It is my belief that our society likes people to be straight, and likes two people of the opposite sex to be married, for a number of reasons: people like to reproduce. The whole heterosexual system serves the interest of the man, at the expense of women.

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Women are not given the choice when they are incarcerated in marriage. They are not given a choice as to whether they want to be the cooks, the nurturers, the mothers, etc. Being a mother is not a natural role. It is something that you have to learn, and not all women like it, and not all women want to be the main children caregiver with all the repercussions that has. Joan: That doesn’t make a woman lesbian. I think we are now talking about sexual preference. John (teacher): I have a problem with the preference bit. I think sexual preference is a very problematic term. It suggests that you choose, and I think that with gay people it is not a choice. Do you think that someone would choose to be gay when they are persecuted, and marginalised? I think that it is part of the pathologisation of gay people – they choose to be abhorrent, deviant, weird, freakish. If you think about it logically, you would hardly choose to be part of an oppressed minority. You would much rather have a socially mandated position. Jennifer: What goes along with that is the pathology of AIDS. AIDS is only some-thing gay men get and it is their fault, never mind the fact that well over 50% of HIV/AIDS positive people in sub-Saharan Africa are women. (Lecture Observa-tion)

Jennifer responds to student Joan’s remarks with an urge for her to lookat why she thinks that and listen to what she is saying. Jennifer suggests that the student pauses to be more sensitive to what she is saying and to think about the basis for her ideological perspective. Both Jennifer and John point out the stereotyping that has resulted in the pathologisation of homosexuality, and the attendant misconceptions and generalisations that have been perpetuated, for example, the association of gay men with AIDS. Jennifer’s call for the student to look and listen to what she is saying is essentially a call for her to examine her use of language and how it shapes her ideological perspective. Such an examination of lan-guage use is especially important given that our ways of talking about things reveal attitudes and assumptions that testify to the deep-rooted-ness of sexism, homophobia, linguicism, etc. Jennifer, as a teacher of the English language, confirms Voloshinov’s (1973:10) observation:

In actuality, we never say or hear words; we say and hear what is true or false, good or bad, important or unimportant, pleasant or unpleasant. … Words are always filled with content and meaning drawn from behaviour or ideology. That is the way we understand words, and we can respond only to words that engage us behaviour-ally or ideologically.

If students hold ignorant, bigoted views about any group of people and if feminist teachers want those students to learn to become more accepting

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of the different ways of being in the world, teachers must encounter those students’ resistance. It is more likely that feminist teachers will encounter resistance as they de-centre hegemonic ideologies, and nor-malise anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-classist ideologies.

It is in the light of Joan’s insensitivity that Laditka’s (1990:3) en-quiry becomes pertinent. Laditka asks: “Is it really desirable to vanish one’s teaching authority in dialogue that never leads to judgment but only to a continued cycle of questions and comments?” Evidently not so, as both Jennifer and John attempt to make Joan aware of her insensitive use of language about gays, while they also suggest that she examine the cultural ideologies that have shaped her thinking.

In the above extract we see teachers challenging the student; in the following extract, by way of contrast, we see female students confronting the sexist comments which have been made by a fellow student:

Nathi (Black male): What about returning to cultural practices for girls to protect them and keep your virginity? (somebody chuckles). Vijay (teacher): And men? Nathi (laughs): For men, it’s like … Vijay: So men can go and kill themselves? (class laughs).Nathi: No, it’s not like that, but if a women … Vijay: Do you care about men … use a condom? Nathi: The idea is that if a woman abstains from sex and keeps her virginity, you’ll be safe if you marry her. Devi (Indian female): Will she be safe if she has sex with you? (class laughs).Nathi: The thing is you will marry her … Vijay: So you yourself will be a virgin? Nathi: No, no, that I can’t guarantee … (laughter and general protest from class about double standards). I know, but for women it’s different. They have to keep their virginity. Men should have a choice … . Thandi (Black female): You don’t think that men should stay virgins? Nathi: If I want to stay a virgin then I mean it’s my choice. Thandi: Then why are you just saying women? Devi: Then it should be her choice as well. Nathi: Ja, it is her choice, but I was only making a point …you don’t have to bite my head off. (class laughs).Vijay: Sorry, there’s no need to, what? Devi: Bite his head off. (Class laughs. Vijay moves onto the next student). (Lecture Observation)

The double standards which ooze from Nathi’s comments are met with the contempt and challenge that they deserved. A defensive Nathi indi-

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cates that he was only making a point, but evidently his point of view, like Joan’s in the previous extract, run against the educative norms and values of the feminist classroom. Hence, both are subject to regulative and normalising mechanisms.

In commenting on this exchange in the post-lecture interview, Vijay confirms that it is something that she would have addressed, but exer-cised her teacher discretion by devolving authority to the female students to handle it. Rather than being applauded for participating in classroom dialogue, he comes under attack for his sexist views and has to request not to have his head bitten off. Razak (1998) reminds us that “there are penalties to choosing the wrong voice at the wrong time, for telling an inappropriate tale.”

The message that is transmitted via these dialogic regulatory tech-nologies requires that those who speak should be able and willing to ar-ticulate the reasoning behind their statements clearly and as fully as possible, by supporting their arguments with evidence from the course materials, making their case from reason, and being prepared to carry their remarks through to their logical conclusions. Students should not be accustomed to being rewarded simply for speaking. While feminist edu-cators support students in developing their power to construct their own understandings of themselves and the world, they would want to harness the educative authority with which they are mandated by encouraging students towards a view of the world that includes fighting inequalities, oppression and prejudices in line with the normative ideal of engendering social justice.

Synthesis

First, in considering the proposition that pedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques of power, the preceding discussion has focused on the dynamics of dialogic student-centred pedagogies for engaging feminist and radical ideological perspectives. In considering dialogic, student-centred pedagogical practices, the pedagogic labour of covering, explicating and relating curricula shifts from resting almost entirely with the teacher to a shared enterprise. This shift also poses interesting ques-tions. Authority and expertise, power and control continue to remain highly intertwined matters for the teacher, because they all resurface for

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examination and redefinition in the collaborative classroom. MacGregor (1991:4) observes:

As students together begin assuming more responsibility for their learning, and as more classroom time is taken up with conversational inquiry, the teacher begins to sense subtle but powerful shifts in her role, which is not so much a relinquishment of control so much as sharing it in new ways. The lines of authority are not so much blurred as they are reshaped.

Second, in reflecting on the various postures of resistance to pedagogical technique and issues in the course content, two important points emerge. The first relates to the contradiction that sexist, racist and homophobic utterances are unwelcome in the feminist class, yet when they are made, they offer a valuable platform to confront and critique prejudicial ideolo-gies. These productive, teachable moments come at the expense of stu-dents who are prepared to expose themselves in a public forum and risk coming under criticism for doing so. The second point relates to the laughter that is generally generated when students like Joan and Nathi air their jaundiced views. Laughter as a dialogic, communicative strategy is an interesting response; while it may be open to various interpretations, it may well be read as shock at the audacity and/or parochial worldview of the student who voices such undesirable ideologies in a class that is de-signed to subvert such thinking by urging a new normativity based on tolerance of diversity, difference and social justice. Laughter could also be read as an expression of support of a perspective that certain students also subscribe to, but lack the courage to make public.

Third, educators must examine whether they impose their own cri-tique of culture on their students and thereby lead those students to resist what they experience as oppression. In this regard, Lindquist (1994) points out that:

… we are caught in a contradiction if we applaud and encourage student resis-tance when it is a challenge to the dominant culture and is compatible with the politics of the educator, but treat resistance as something to be ‘ignored or over-come’ when feminist teachers experience it.

Student questions are legitimate ones, as Thembi recalls from a personal experience:

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First, my students should understand the real impact of gender in their personal lives. They have to understand that it is culture that defines and constructs the roles for mother, father, wife, husband, daughter, son, working woman, working man, female leader, male leader. It is important however that students assess their own culture rather than let the lecturer do it for them, so that the lecturer is not accused of imposing his/her own ideological and political beliefs on ‘innocent minds.’ I in-sist on this type of approach because … . I remember one student commenting on my teaching of gender issues as ‘Brainwashing.’ I guess that because I often feel very passionate about ‘gender injustice,’ I probably did not give students a chance to participate equally in this construction of knowledge. … I have since … insisted on ‘collective construction of knowledge’ to break free from the monopoly of ‘knowledge production’ by lecturers. (Essay)

Thus, it is apparent that we must accept student resistance as an integral part of learning; and – as feminist teachers – we must learn from the questions which it poses, the tensions which it supports, and the alterna-tives which it suggests for crafting new classroom cultures. In this re-gard, Jones (1993:145) suggests:

… a more fruitful, more humane practice of authority will follow the cues offered by the return to a consideration of authority as the relationship that founds the meaningfulness of a political community not in terms of command-obedience structures of imposed interpretations, but by weaving stories together that invite dialogue across our differences.

Taking a counter stance, ‘O Gorman (1978) ponders whether we have the right, as teachers, to raise the consciousness of students. She extends her question to ask whether teachers as agents of consciousness-raising, have the right to manipulate others’ ideological perspectives? This is a vital question which is especially to be addressed in the debate on whether classrooms are value-free or designed to manipulate students with particular ideological ends in mind. Smith (2003) in describing the pedagogical enactments of bell hooks, notes that in spite of hooks en-couraging student-centred classrooms, and regarding every class mem-ber’s contribution as important, she does not, however, relinquish her teacherly authority, and neither does she necessarily think that every student has something valuable to say. Some students may be calcified in a kind of mono-vision that is racist, sexist, while also harbouring other prejudicial ideologies. Rather than valuing student utterances as worth-while in themselves, hooks values them as entry points for raising stu-dents’ consciousness, employing them as markers to critique, analyse

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and resist prejudicial ideologies. Conceiving that her job as an educator is to provide a worldview that opposes racism and sexism, hooks de-scribes her teaching style as ‘confrontational.’ Unlike some feminist pedagogical models that suggest students best come to voice in an at-mosphere of safety, hooks encourages students to work at coming to voice in an atmosphere that involves risk and potential contestation.

Fourth, it is in this light that hooks’ pedagogic stance provokes an interrogation of what we mean when we talk about making feminist classrooms egalitarian. Even though feminist classes may appear ho-mogenous, and free from power differences, they are implicated in the structures and prejudices of the outside world. Students are of different genders, sexualities, ethnicities, colour, etc. The various postures of re-sistance that students enact suggest that, if feminist teachers work to cre-ate counter-hegemonic teaching, they must also be conscious of their own gendered, classed and raced subjectivities as they confirm or challenge the lived experiences of their students. Self-awareness on the part of teachers does not mean avoiding or denying conflict, but legiti-mising this polyphony of voices and making both our oppression and our power conscious in the discourse of the classroom. Our jobs as teachers should include active resistance to students’ active resistance, which – while it does not require the assumption of a traditional teaching position – does draw a purely student-centred pedagogy into question.

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bleedand the blood red earth is your mirror weepand the soil erodes with your sorrow

writeand the ground beneath you grows fertile with hope

she has written and she says it moved her

it pierced a forsaken place with sharp words searchlighting gargantuan pain

cut open the words spill the juices of your hidden longings

Every Woman who writes is a Survivor Hammar (in Kitson 1994:44)

Chapter Six

Endnotes: insights, hindsights, oversights

Introduction

In understanding something so intensely personal as teaching, it is cru-cial to know about the personal and professional nuances of teachers’ lives. Our paucity of knowledge in this area is a manifest indictment of our sociological imagination. In response to the paucity, distant, divorced and disengaged nature of many of our studies of teachers, there has been a move towards embracing the teacher practitioner as an important entity for sociological investigation. This study has attempted to contribute to this move by engaging five Southern African feminist lecturers of Eng-lish in a critical reflection on their practice, and in so doing, to also add their under-represented voices to the feminist conversation. Drawing on (auto)biographical narratives, the study has identified social variables that shape the participants’ identities, which in turn inform their lan-guage teaching philosophies and pedagogies. By examining the theoreti-cal and ideological stances of these educators in relation to their enactment of feminist tenets in multilingual classrooms, the study has endeavoured to attain deeper understandings of feminist theorising and its implications for teaching in demographically diverse language class-rooms. The study has explored the empirical dimensions of recurrent themes in feminist debates, namely, teacher positionality, teacher au-thority, teacher and student personal epistemologies as a valid source of knowledge, and the politics of difference and dialogue. By extension, the study has endeavoured to enhance concept clarification, concept recon-textualisation, concept redefinition and concept elaboration as a way of confronting the critique that feminist discourses are coached in theoreti-cal abstraction (see Tong 1989).

Although Noblit & Hare (1988) declare that qualitative research re-ports do not easily lend themselves to synthesis, they do contend that

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some form of synthesis is essential to enhance the practical value of qualitative research, and facilitate a fuller understanding of phenomena, contexts and cultures under investigation. Thus, in this concluding chapter, I revisit, for the purposes of reflective synthesis, salient insights that have emerged from the study. The chapter is presented in two sec-tions. Section 1: Theoretical Reflective Synthesis – synthesises what has emerged in relation to the key theoretical lines of argument that were identified for investigation. Section 2: Methodological Reflective Syn-thesis – presents the participants’ comments in relation to verifying the analysis chapters, and their reflections on the personal and professional value which participation in the study has had for them.

Section 1: Theoretical Reflective Synthesis: insights, hind-sights, oversights

According to Goodson (1997) (auto)biographical studies of teachers en-sure that their backgrounds and experiences count as important in under-standing their personal and pedagogic philosophies. Goodson contends that a biographical approach sensitises us to the relationships between the everyday realities of teaching in relation to teachers’ ages, social status, family backgrounds, ideologies, affinities, etc. Thus, who teaches what, why and how are critical questions that require exploration in attempting to understand the relationship between teachers’ latent identi-ties and their pedagogic and academic identities.

In Chapter Three, I have presented a cursory analysis of each par-ticipant’s public collective narratives. The chapter has focused on family influences, and on experiences from childhood and early adulthood, to explore the impact which culture, language, sexual orientation, religion, nationality and politics have had on the individual participants’ identity formation. The chapter also presented a cross-analysis of these variables with the intention of exploring the potential which a retrospective gaze of the participants’ formative identity conceptions could have in terms of how they frame interpersonal relations with students and colleagues, and issues of potential pedagogic significance (for example, nationality and

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citizenship; multiculturalism and multilingualism; gender and sexuali-ties), which they could, and often do, explore with their students.

In reviewing the insights that have emerged from this chapter, I found that Carol and Thembi acted in relation to legitimising gender, race, religious, political, etc. identities, which conformed to the authori-tative norm, while Jennifer, Vijay and Phumzile challenged or resisted prescribed social scripts from an early age. Another key impulse that emerged from the descriptive commentary and cross-analysis supported the contention that narratives embed identities in time and space frame-works; thus, a core conception of identity should include dimensions of time and space relationality, so that identity can be understood as a con-ceptual narrativity. Temporal and spatial variables shape the political and contextual contingency of identities and also provide organising themes for personal and professional narratives. In this regard, the legacies of colonialism and post-colonialism; Apartheid and post-Apartheid, for example, have served as useful tropes for the participants in framing and reflecting on the temporal and contextual situatedness of their varying personal experiences of privilege and disprivilege; dominance and domi-nation; enfranchisement and disenfranchisement. The heuristic value of the cultural-historical context was especially effective in relation to how the participants reflected on their changing identity constructions in terms of nationality, ethnicity, race, class, language, religious, etc. posi-tionalities. From the participants’ retrospective gaze and critique of their personal and the broader social ideologies that were prevalent during their childhood and early adulthood, we note that they experienced, in varying degrees, permutations of cultural identification, dis-identifica-tion, schizo-identification; feelings of strong We and weak We political, social and sexual orientations, and tensions between group charisma and group shame. The social, historical and ideological contextualisation of the participants’ identities has provided a more nuanced understanding of the psycho-social tensions which the women have experienced. Life in patriarchal societies imposed its own set of gendered prescriptions and restrictions on the participants, and when gender was coupled with the politics of race, the combination produced a different set of dynamics. For example, for the White women, Apartheid conferred upon them a supremacy that reduced the dynamics of oppression in comparison to those participants who were both women and Black. However, within the experiential universe of the Black women, the intensity of oppression

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was not universal. For example, for South African-born Phumzile, con-cessionary Apartheid policies saw her growing up in a multiracial, more economically privileged environment that disconnected her from fellow Black South Africans. Botswana-born Thembi, for whom racial dis-crimination was not an issue, admits to enjoying the privileges of be-longing to an ethnic and linguistic majority.

Tracking the trajectories of the participants’ changing identities over time and space has provided a backdrop against which to surmise why – in their teaching space – they privilege certain curricula choices and exercise epistemic paternalism over others, and opt for epistemic disso-nance in yet other instances. A retrospective gaze of the participants’ backgrounds has also provided a historical context against which to un-derstand why and how they negotiate pedagogic relations in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. in the ways in which they do.

The significance of engaging in a retrospective gaze of the partici-pants’ backgrounds in terms of their various positionalities is encapsu-lated in Hall’s (1988:29) contention that:

All groups require a narrative that recognises that we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, a particular culture, without being contained by that position. However, rather than searching for the origins of our identities as historical agents in struggle, we need to focus more on what we can achieve together. We need also to remember that the narratives we tell and retell in our classrooms are both reflective and constitutive of who we are and what we will become.

While an exploration of the participants’ backgrounds enhances our appreciation of the contiguous variables that shape individual identities, in crystallising the insights from an exploration of the participants’ re-flections of their childhood and early adulthood, I concur with Eagleton (1991:210) who suggests that there is no internal relation between par-ticular socio-economic conditions and specific kinds of political, cultural or ideological positions. McLaren (1993:214) too, argues that material location by, for example, class or race does not necessarily furnish an individual with an appropriate set of political beliefs or desires. However, Eagleton and McLaren do posit that there exist connections between forms of social consciousness and material conditions, to the extent that some narratives are motivated by experiences of class, race, ethnicity and gender. This observation suggests that race, class and gen-

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der identity markers may reinforce certain subjectivities so that there exist generic as well as idiosyncratic relationships between identities and social determinants.

The discussion in Chapter Three forwarded the view that, in as much as social actors situate themselves in terms of ethnicity, class, gen-der, etc., they also refuse to be confined to those locations or to be ex-pected to endorse value systems, rituals, morés that are associated with those positionalities, especially if such practices are discriminatory. For example, while Vijay appreciated the educational benefits that obtained from belonging to the middle-class, she was critical to the point of feeling ashamed about the ‘arrogance and stupidity’ which are generally associated with a middle class disposition.

In Chapter Four – Identity as Ideology: Trajectories of Feminist Identity Construction – I continued the focus on the participants’ forma-tive socialisation; however, I assumed a sharper gaze on the trajectories of their feminist ideological development. I explored the cluster of ex-periences that led the five participants to identify themselves as femi-nists, by examining whether there are experiences that contribute to the development of a feminist consciousness. Discussion in this chapter was framed in relation to three movements of coming to feminist conscious-ness. In the discussion, I distanced myself from the notion that coming to feminist consciousness presupposes a unitariness/singleness of mindset, or that it is characterised by a linear trajectory. A summary of the fea-tures of the three movements of coming to feminist consciousness yielded the following insights:

Movement One showed that through an introspective gaze, partici-pants reported sensing and experiencing the dailiness of patriarchy. They wrestled with the psychological and existential tensions in their performance of public and private female roles, responsibilities and be-haviours, which elevated and validated maleness above femaleness.

Movement Two saw a transitioning from an inward gaze to an out-ward gaze during which the participants transitioned from having gender consciousness to coming to feminist consciousness. In addition, the women began to view their oppression not as a unique, private experience, but as pervasive and public.

Movement Three tracked the participants’ enactment of a trans-formed identity in which they adopted project identities that manifested

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themselves in their teaching and theorising about personal and social emancipation.

The three movements of the participants’ coming to feminist con-sciousness and their responses to their gendered, racial, class, etc. social scripts may be understood in the light of Bourdieu’s (in Connolly 1997:71) concept of habitus. According to Bourdieu, the habitus refers to the manner in which we have developed and internalised ways of approaching, thinking about, and acting upon our social world. Progressively we come to learn from, and to incorporate the lessons of our lived experiences, which guide our future actions and behaviour and dispose us to thinking in certain ways. Bourdieu argues that, as our ex-periences become consolidated and reinforced, the habitus becomes more durable and internalised, and we habitualise the way we think and behave.

In moving on from this conception of habitus, an exploration of the participants’ trajectories of gender, race, class, ethnic, etc. consciousness did not suggest, however, that habitus predestines human beings as automatums of social determinism. Such a conceptualisation of habitus leaves no room for human agency, which enables social actors to make sense of the contingent, complex and contradictory nature of their multiple identities. Human beings’ agentic potential to resist and rescript their social conditioning necessitates an understanding of the relationship between the habitus and Bourdieu’s other concepts of capital (which comprises scarce economic, cultural, social and symbolic goods and re-sources), and field, which may be conceived as an arena of contesting stratified forces where skirmishes over limited capital resources occur.Bourdieu (in Connolly 1997:73) explains the relationship between habi-tus, capital and field as follows:

The relation between habitus and field operates in two ways. On one side, it is a relation of conditioning: the field structures the habitus … . On the other side, it is a relation of knowledge or cognitive construction: habitus contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world, a world endowed with sense and with value, in which it is worth investing one’s energy.

For some participants, understanding the interrelated constellation of habitus, capital and field, leads to their recognition of the stratification of identity positionalities. For example, Carol reflects on how her early socialisation attempted to engender in her race (White) and ethnic

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(English) supremacy. However, rather than consolidate (habitualise) her early socialisation, on becoming conscientised to its discriminatory and cruel edge, she distanced herself from its value system. For some of the other participants who had recognised gender-based discrimination early in their lives, this recognition helped them to draw parallels to other forms of oppression (class, language, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.) and also resist them. In the light of this conceptualisation of habitus, the trajecto-ries of the participants’ altered consciousness testify to their choice to transcend the ‘accident of birth’ in relation to gender, race, class, etc. It demonstrates that only when the concept of habitus is contextualised in relation to the concepts of economic, cultural, social and symbolic capi-tal and field (for example, socio-political contexts) does the contingent, fluid, and reflexive nature of identity become apparent. The self becomes a reflexive project in which identity construction may entail displace-ments of identification, knowing and being in relation to race, class, gen-der, etc. through processes of deconstruction, decentering, revisionist readings, and an anti-assimilationist politics of the hegemonic status quo.

As individuals learn about the implications and consequences of their identity markers, consciousness raising events/episodes may moti-vate them to align themselves with particular struggles. This is suggested in Bourdieu’s quote “habitus contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world, a world endowed with sense and with value, in which it is worth investing one’s energy.” Thus, individuals may begin investing their energies in purposeful, value-laden, meaningful projects. Alignment and participation in such projects is consistent with the view that to be a human being is to know both what one is doing and why one is doing it. Hence, we note that for the participants Movement Two poli-ticised discriminatory gender, class, race, etc. differentiated behaviour and was characterised by their subscription to ideological, theoretical and methodological positions that advocate social justice, consistent with the redress agenda of feminist politics.

The participants’ transition from gender consciousness to feminist consciousness exemplifies the differentiation between episodes of change and episodes of continuity. In coming to feminist consciousness, those participants who subscribed to the authoritative norm, as far as gender scripts were concerned, began to adopt resistance identities. Thus, episodes of change marked turning points in their ideological and iden-tificatory histories and conditioning. Thembi’s and Carol’s recollections

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of coming to feminist consciousness proved consistent with episodes of change and entry into a new habitus. Episodes of continuity, on the other hand, detail subscription to a particular value or value system. For Phumzile, Jennifer and Vijay coming to feminist consciousness corre-lates with episodes of continuity, in that they maintain that they have always been feminists and continue to subscribe to value systems that are resistant to discriminatory gender and other social injustices.

From the discussion in Chapter Four we note that – irrespective of the variation in the trajectories of the participants’ coming to feminist consciousness – rather than consolidate negative conditioning about their gender scripts, the women learn to rehabitualise positive conceptions of themselves. Having identified with feminist sensibilities, some partici-pants assume, while others consolidate, their resistance identities. In this regard, their resistance identities are bolstered by the influences of people, places and publications, and are further strengthened when they form strategic and principled coalitions with other social actors, with whom they agitate not just for personal, but also for broader social emancipation.

Mennells’ (1994:176–177) metaphor of the filo pastry of identity highlights the participants’ social interconnectivity, which – when politi-cised – has the prospect of evolving into project identities. Project iden-tities engender a narrative imagination, which enables critical linkages to be made between one’s own stories and the stories of cultural Others.Project identities are created out of empathy for others by means of a passionate connection through difference. Project identities are charac-terised by resistance postures and by the ability to disinvest in absolutising tendencies of a racist, classist, patriarchal world that founds itself on the notion of a fixed, essentialist identity. We thus see that – rather than habitualise negative scripts about their personal subjectivities and the subjectivities of disenfranchised Others – the participants inter-nalise a new anti-discriminatory social habitus. They rename, reconstruct and compose positive social scripts, rather than appropriate negative subjectivities which are associated with signifiers of deficit, omission and erasure. Kovel (in McLaren 1993:223) captures the essence of pro-ject identities in his proclamation:

I am a subject, not merely an object; I am not a Cartesian subject, whose subjectivity is pure inwardness, but rather an expressive subject, a transformative

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subject; I am a subject, therefore, who needs to project my being into the world, and transform the world as an expression of my being; and finally, I will appropriate my being rather than have it appropriated.

As expressive subjects, one way in which the participants project their being upon the world is through their theorising and teaching. This self-projection is linked to their project identities, which are consolidated in Movement Three of their coming to feminist consciousness and in which they enact a transformed identity. This means that – for these women – exposure to feminism impacts both their personal and their professional identities. The connection between the participants’ transformed identi-ties and their teaching and theorising suggests that the narratives by which they live are not only evident in the way in which they reflect upon and analyse their past, present, and future, but are ingrained in the very theoretical formulations, paradigms and principles that constitute their models for such reflection, analysis and activism. Furthermore, the theories that the particpants read and espouse, as well as their personal theorising and teachings, tell a story about social life and their attitudes towards it.

Given that the participants espouse and teach post-colonial, decon-structionist and post-structural theories – which all advocate and seek to habitualise new normative ideals that configure experience and invest-ment in narratives of emancipation, the narrative intentionality of these radical and critical theories correlates with their personal convictions and beliefs. Apart from informing their identities as ideology, it also draws attention to the way in which their convictional identities influence the theories and texts which they include in their curricula programmes. Thus, as teachers who teach English from a feminist perspective, the participants employ their teaching space to conscientise their students to the dehumanising effects of discriminatory gender and sociolinguistic practices. They thereby attempt to teach students that language and gen-der are not neutral – or value-free – phenomena, but powerful conduits for the transmission of cultural values and attitudes. As socio-cultural constructs, discriminatory linguistic and gender practices can be decon-structed and reconstructed to institute new normative ideals that engen-der a just social order. Ideally, the participants’ students would also be convicted to develop project identities that are aimed at agitating for personal and social transformation.

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Chapter Five – Exploring the Complexities of Feminist Teacher Identities – identified for more detailed investigation the professional and academic personae of the feminist teacher. Important questions that surfaced early in the study in relation to the theorising and teaching from a feminist perspective have included: What makes this or that teaching practice feminist? Is it the content alone, the pedagogy, or an amalgama-tion of both? Maher & Tetreault (1994) have also posed similar ques-tions when they enquired whether a feminist teacher is naturally democratic, co-operative and concerned with connections and relation-ships, rather than authoritarian, competitive and rational? Are women’s ways of learning affective rather than rational? If we cannot make such dichotomies, what does constitute a feminist teaching practice? Is it de-termined by the curriculum, by the classroom environment and practice, or both? While Chapter Five did not set out to respond to these questions specifically, they were nonetheless addressed discursively through an examination of recurrent themes in feminist pedagogy. These themes converge on different conceptions of feminist teacher authority, namely, nurturance versus authority, authority as authorship and authority as power.

The strong sense that emerges from an exploration of nurturance versus authority is the participants’ unanimous efforts to unhinge the female teacher from association with care-giver and ‘intellectualised mammy,’ while simultaneously ensuring that she is not read as distant, superior and disconnected, bearded mother. To this end, the participants display features of what Eagleton (1998) alludes to when she proposes the notion of ‘impersonality.’ Eagleton suggests that ‘impersonality’ may serve as a strategic interpersonal pedagogic relational practice, which combines an ethic of care and connectedness while it maintains a critical distance that encourages students to come into their own intellectual and emotional maturity and independence. The participants give substance to the notion of ‘impersonality’ in their attempts to enact female teacher personae that favour a recontextualised and reconceptualised notion of female and feminist educators.

A recontextualised notion of the female teacher involves engendering interpersonal relations that are appropriate for university- age students. Such engendering of interpersonal relations apparently entails that the understanding of being a nurturing teacher needs to be expanded in a university context, so that the nurturing female educator is recognised as one who creates a supportive, non-threatening and

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encouraging environment that is discursive and sufficiently challenging to risk a pedagogical ‘politics of disappointment’ (Jones, cited in Lather 1998). A self consciously contradictory pedagogy like this is sensitive to interpersonal ideological differences, but is courageous enough to generate disconfirmation and unease when, for example, students en-act/express prejudiced worldviews.

A reconceptualised notion of the female teacher expands on the re-contextualised notion of the female educator. It suggests recognising the female teacher as a woman but not as maternal and conceives of the fe-male teacher as supportive, committed to improving students’ academic prowess and to promoting independent and critical thinking. However, such a reconceptualised notion of the female teacher cautions against her being misconstrued as an unscholarly, emotional safety net. It urges that the female teacher should not be stereotypically read as better suited to nursing students’ emotional casualties, since such conceptions mask her scholarly and academic competencies and astuteness. Thus, rather than become repressed into teacher-mother/‘intellectualised mammy’ figures, the participants in my study urge a recontextualised and reconceptualised understanding of the female teacher – an understanding that foregrounds their capability of offering critical intellectual nurturance.

Recontextualised and reconceptualised understandings of the female teacher correlate with the processes of transference and counter-transference. The notion of transference and counter-transference encap-sulates the oscillation between proximity and retreat (the push-pull contradiction) that is often present in the feminist classroom.

Another critical point that emerged from an examination of nurturance versus authority is related to the participants directing their pedagogic energies towards reading the texts of educational experience and practice as both semiotic and symbolic systems. Such a perspective translates to conceiving of curriculum as a project of transcendence,which suggests that – while both teachers and students are immersed in biology and ideology – they are also able to transcend biology and ideology. Thus, rather than enact their female teacher identity in relation to reductive and repressive expectations that associate their female bodies with ideological reproductive mother-teachers (consonant with spoon feeding/banking education) within their practical teaching spaces, the participants enact transformative/transcendent pedagogies. Such a strategy constitutes a refusal by the participants to be conduits for the

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reproduction of discriminatory knowledge systems. Their teaching and theorising propose political and epistemological educative and pedagogic agendas, which aim at developing in their students’ resistance project identities that subvert and sabotage socially unjust practices.

The significance of assuming a project identity that conceives of curriculum as a project of transcendence also becomes manifest when authority as authorship is understood as the mutual sharing of teacher-student personal experiences in relation to broader public and academic discourses. As a way of promoting authority as authorship, the partici-pants encourage their students to find, fashion and make audible their own voices, as well as the voices of marginalised Other. Authority as authorship, thus serves as an organising trope for activating:

(i) authorship as invention (through engaging students in autobiographical writing exercises);

(ii) authorship as experiential and theoretical praxis (encouraging stu-dents to juxtapose personal and social experiences with theoretical insight); and

(iii) authorship as positionality (encouraging students to critique and deconstruct texts and theories).

Promoting authority as authorship aims at engaging students in boundary crossing, translation, analysis and synthesis of different sources of information. However, while recognising the potential peda-gogic value of teacher and student personal narratives, the discussion cautions that a preoccupation exclusively with the horizontal nature of personal epistemology may hinder conceptual coherence, progression of knowledge formation and acquisition, as well as critical and analytical maturation. In this regard, authority as authorship should encapsulate features of what McLaren (1993:221) refers to as ‘critical narratology.’ Critical narratology may be interpreted as a defamiliarising strategy that seeks to move students and teachers away from rehearsing narratives that circulate exclusively within the realm of the horizontal and familiar to a place where exteriorising personal narratives constitutes a first step to-wards understanding its relevance and relationship to Others. Conceivingof authority as authorship in this way frames it in a Self-Other dialectic and foregrounds the following two points:

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First, authority as authorship becomes a reflexive conversation with one’s plural selves and heterogeneous Others. As such, reflexive conver-sations have the potential to contest and rupture the narrative structure of dominant social texts. It signals a border crossing, in the sense that the border that is crossed is both Self and Other. Through practicing author-ity as authorship, teachers and students learn to re-present themselves through a form of border writing/dialogue in which the narratives they construct for themselves in relation to the Other are de-territorialised politically, culturally and linguistically. The effect of such de-territoriali-sation is that the meaning tropes through which subjectivity becomes constructed circulate neither as a practice of narcissism nor does it seek to dominate the Other. Such a conception of authority as authorshipurges teachers and students to explore and develop insurgent/counter narratives that deconstruct and reconstruct narratives of Self and Other more responsibly. Thus, for example, by activating authorship as inven-tion and authorship as positionality, and by striving towards authorshipas experiential and theoretical praxis, the participants attempt to culti-vate in their students a language of narrative refusal/resistance, and the de-legitimisation of social scripts that sow seeds of discrimination. En-gaging students in critical deconstructionist exercises underscores the importance of inviting students to contest essentialist identities that are inscribed and legitimated within patriarchy.

Second, and by extension, while teachers encourage their students to critique identity-diminishing grand narratives and to reclaim and script marginalised narratives, students are also cautioned against romanticising their own cultural scripts and those of marginalised Other.The development of their insurgent imagination aims, ideally, at skilling students to assume the role of meta-cultural mediators who are critical of their own assumptions as well as of those of others, so as not to re-con-tain/re-instantiate oppression in their authorial stances.

Discussion around the theme authority as power was framed in re-lation to Gore’s (2002) proposition for developing a theory of power in pedagogy, which confronts the notion that the feminist teacher and her classroom can be void of power relations.

An examination of the proposition that pedagogy is the enactment of power relations has reconfirmed that power is fluid and circulatory, and those who exercise power neither possess nor embody it. Although de-bates in feminist pedagogy generally isolate for discussion the notion of

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power and authority in relation to the feminist teacher, the gaze in this discussion has shifted to an analysis of students and their vertical and horizontal power performances. Teacher-student and student-student interchanges have illustrated that students are not powerless and subser-vient victims in the class – they also exert power. Sometimes they are courageous enough to confront the teacher’s script (a vertical challenge of power); at other times they assume the role of accessory to the teacher’s authority and reprimand and challenge fellow students (a hori-zontal challenge of power). The discussion illustrated that the intersec-tion of students and teachers’ multiple identities yield fluid and fluctuating relationships within feminist teaching practices and dis-courses.

Allied to conceiving of pedagogy as an enactment of power rela-tions, an exploration of the proposition bodies are the objects of power relations prompted a closer analysis of how teachers’ race, gender, age, dress, well-being, etc. frame academic and pedagogic relations.

First, going into the classroom, the teacher’s body is marked, and the identity from which she is seen to speak is ‘read off’ her body. When she speaks, she may be read as speaking as woman, as teacher, as young/old, as middle class, as Black/White. The weight of each of these markings varies according to the students and colleagues who read her, how they interpret her authority or lack thereof, how she has been con-stituted by and inserted into the discursive norms of academia, etc. The teacher is essentialised by this reading, which takes place in silence, unless she finds ways to interrupt, deconstruct or minimise identity-essentialising expectations.

Against the backdrop of early feminist theorising that advocated re-defining pedagogic power differentials which would render feminist classrooms egalitarian, the discussion has shown that – when circum-stances, contexts, colleagues and students attempt to divest the female teacher of power – she may actively engage in power performances that subvert the Freirean (1968) ideal of being teacher-student. On these occasions the female teacher realises that by disinvesting in the notion of the professor or academic, she is actually masking her educative and pedagogic power and may be impersonating some other unrecognisable character in the educational drama. This dimension is particularly evi-dent in the way Phumzile and Vijay (two young, Black females) enact their teacher personae in overtly powerful and authoritative ways, so that

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race, age and gender diminishing stereotypes do not sabotage the educa-tive and pedagogic mandate to which they have committed themselves. The point is that their varying enactments of power are not always for strictly pedagogical reasons, because – more often than not – material sites, conditions and interpersonal relations, rather than strictly feminist, anti-racist ideological considerations, may demand pedagogic performances that make aspects of the hierarchy useful for them. Con-versely, circumstances, contexts, colleagues and students may direct teacher discretion towards downplaying female teacher authority. This is particularly evident, for example, in the way in which Carol performs her professional and pedagogic identities. Carol is conscious that as a middle-aged, White female, the legacy of her race, class, language and age sometimes act as technologies that can alienate her from her pre-dominantly Black students. Essentially, these teachers either call atten-tion to, or lessen the effects of, their identity difference, depending on reactions which they anticipate from and experience with their students and colleagues in the particular contexts in which they find themselves. There is a tendency, when working with teachers’ narratives, to focus on their teaching content, while contexts which influence their personal and pedagogic identities, receive short shrift in studies. Thus, the discussion flagged the importance of recognising the context in which teachers ply their trade.

The variations in the participants’ pedagogic identities resonate with Anzaldúa’s (1990:xxiii) observation that our voices and identities are sometimes framed out of a discourse of choice. Teachers choose with which voice to speak (the voice of the Black/White professor), the first person, the third person, and in which language (Black English, isiZulu, academese, vernacular, formal). When brought into teaching/learning situations, the varying accents which teachers place on their identities re-assert the non-essentiality and provisionality of their subject positions. The particular and contextually embodied expressions of teachers’ inser-tion into interpersonal relations is thus highlighted, and teachers are challenged to examine their own claims to centrality and marginality. In this way a contribution is made to distributing teacher power and author-ity to a variety of identity positions not all of which are ultimately and timelessly manifested in the institutionally-sanctioned position of ‘teacher.’

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Second, given women’s key role in servicing national educational systems and their identification with issues of citizenship, the partici-pants’ reflections on their academic citizenship signalled the need to examine the ways in which female educators are positioned in relation to citizenship. Female educators find themselves, on the one hand, posi-tioned as the key agents in the project of preparing society’s future citi-zens, while – on the other hand – they are often denied political agency. In considering how the female teacher’s gendered status impacts her academic citizenship, the discussion in this section supports the observa-tion that in the recent history of western societies, two major forms of patriarchal relations are discernible: namely, public and private. Private patriarchy is based on the exclusion of women from areas of social life, with individual men appropriating the labour of individual women in the home. Public patriarchy is a form of domination which does not exclude women from public life, but which subordinates them within it. Public forms of patriarchy, where women constitutionally have equal political, civil, and social rights, but face continued inequality have emerged in the participants’ testimonies. They reported that the intensification of teaching and administrative labour invariably sees them having to com-pensate for inequitability in the distribution of time and financial resources. In addition, given that teaching and administration work re-duces research and publications output, such labour is stigmatised with lower academic status and does not carry income-attracting potential. When these factors are coupled with the numeric minority of women in academia, this constellation perpetuates gender stratification, whereby women are included, and then subordinated.

In identifying the barriers that militate against their enjoying full academic citizenship, the participants also reflected on the resistance strategies which they employ to negotiate the professional hurdles that they encounter. Ranging from strategic compliance to contrived collegi-ality; from cloistered and territorial scholarship to contemplating reloca-tion to different academic institutions, and indulging in flights of fantasy to escape the feelings of alienation, the sense that has emerged is that women navigate a difficult course between complacency and cynicism. On the one hand, to discount cynically the extent of change is to under-estimate the achievements which women, as academic citizens, have brought about in the face of many odds. Adopting such a stance would reinforce the image of women as passive victims, rather than as active

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agents of change, and it would contribute to a culture of defeatism. On the other hand, complacency about women’s position today denies the extent to which many women in academia are still relegated to inferior citizenship status. The delicate balance between complacency and cyni-cism hinges in part on the question of power: power as self-realisation, which casts women as active academic citizens, to power as domination, which marginalises and subordinates them to second-class academic citizenship.

The proposition that the kind of knowledge produced in pedagogy interacts with the site and the power employed there supports the view that curriculum content selection, teaching and assessment are value-laden acts that operate within historically constructed relations and sites of power. Notwithstanding the fact that the participants in my study sub-scribe to egalitarian ideals and to social relations that are predisposed to emancipatory forms of power, they also recognise the dual nature of ter-tiary institutions, both as agents that reinforce the educational function of the university as a bureaucratic apparatus, and as organs of possible so-cial transformation. The discussion on this proposition foregrounds two key points.

First, in terms of the work which feminist teachers do, it is important to stress that subscription to a feminist agenda does not in itself alter the processes of classroom teaching. This cultural dimension of labour which McLaren (1993) refers to as the ‘ethnicisation of labour’ – shapes individuals in a way that is characteristic of the particular labour situa-tion. What emerges is that despite the expectation for feminist teachers to be democratic, students still have to be taught, enthused and ‘disci-plined,’ curricula have to be ‘covered,’ and examinations have to be worked towards. It is against this backdrop that the feminist teacher’s educative and pedagogic authority as power becomes apparent. Thus, the bureaucratic imperatives of the educational site at which she is em-ployed, and her contractual obligations, for the most part, suggest that a feminist agenda is more likely to change the goals of classroom teaching rather than the process. Irrespective of the variation in the teaching style which the feminist teacher employs (be it a facilitator, delegator, demon-strator, lecture approach, etc.), it is transformation of the underlying pedagogic and educative objective that transforms the teaching activity.

There is also a need to consider the prospect of norms of presence and purpose. Norms of presence and purpose depend upon a theory of

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community for clarifying what our relations and responsibilities to one another are. When appropriated specifically for the domain of pedagogic content and interpersonal relations, presence alludes to both the mental presence (critical consciousness that is associated with the mind) and the physical presence (associated with the body) of teachers and students. Purpose, on the other hand, relates to the narrative intentionality of teaching and learning, i.e. to teachers’ endeavours to effect conceptual shifts in their students. The realisation and materialisation of the norms of pedagogic presence and purpose support an understanding of the feminist teacher’s pedagogic and educative authority not as a practice that abandons rules, rights or normalisations. It is not ruleless, but is linked to a social vision (purpose) that detaches itself from private moorings. This aspect was evident in several instances when, for example, the participants attempted to regulate student attendance through reprimands and threats. Jointly, the norms of presence and purpose resonate with the intellectual and social synergy that is associated with collaborative learning (see Laditka 1990).

The second point that emerged from considering the proposition that the kind of knowledge produced in pedagogy interacts with the site and the power employed there is related to curricula content. The insight that emerges is that subscription to feminist pedagogy per se does not necessarily require that gender is the most important or exclusive topic for discussion. For example, Vijay and Phumzile’s lectures dealt with HIV/AIDS and post-colonial issues, respectively, which did not have an exclusive gender focus. However, the objective of consciousness-raising so as to improve the lives of men and women, by dismantling the inter-locking oppressions of race, class, gender, ethnicity, etc., lends itself for exploration via various routes/topical discussions. These issues explicitly or implicitly encompass power differentials and the potential to engender repressive and oppressive behaviour in interpersonal relations. Hence, Coffey & Delamont’s (2000:68) view – that feminist pedagogy is ulti-mately a practical decision about where to direct one’s limited energies and powers in the effort to create a more liveable world – is pertinent. The need to harness limited resources in order to move the vision for social justice forward is also effectively and expeditiously articulated by Cohee et al. (1998:7) who describe feminist pedagogy as:

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… a move beyond analysis of abstracts and the frustrations of feminist teaching and feminist administering to proposing detailed strategies and resources for raising students’ (and teachers’) consciousness about gender, race, class and sexuality; for transforming larger institutional environments to make them more equitable, de-mocratic places for the collective construction of knowledge.

An exploration of Gore’s (2002) proposition that pedagogy proceeds via a limited set of specific techniques confirms that pedagogical power re-lations will not be overcome by simply adopting different classroom practices such as dialogic, student-centred approaches. Gore recommends that it might be more useful to analyse the kind of peda-gogical strategies and ideological normalisations which teachers enact in their classrooms. In considering how feminist pedagogical sensibilities impact knowledge systems, the discussion has highlighted that teachers privilege certain epistemological and ideological stances and disprivilege others. It also confirms Shalem’s (1999) depiction of the feminist teacher as someone who has a project that embodies a commitment to a set of educational beliefs and goals. The feminist pedagogical project is predi-cated on a curriculum that is based on the values of social justice; equity and development; relevance; critical thinking and problem solving. Hence, the feminist teacher educates with the objective of effecting con-ceptual shifts in her students in accordance with feminist sensibilities. To this end she delineates both a pedagogic and an educative path along which her students travel. The educational enterprise for the feminist teacher is linked to her project identity. In considering the kinds of nor-malisations which teachers enact, two important points emerge. The first point refers us back to discussion on authority as authorship and the discussion on the normalisation of grammatically coherent language usage for assessment purposes. The second point relates to the normali-sation of feminist and radical ideologies.

First, a quick glance at the history of English language teaching philosophies and methodologies shows that it has been preoccupied with grammatical correctness based on normative standards. This emphasis on grammatical correctness has discouraged language variability in favour of linguistic purity. It has encouraged the memorisation of grammatical rules, and has persisted in the prescription of selected texts that celebrate classical Western traditions. Sociological positivism, psychological be-haviourism and linguistic structuralism have all demanded that oral flu-ency, accuracy and a native-like control of the language are learnt.

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Within these language teaching and learning paradigms, students are increasingly viewed as empty receptacles who can be programmed by the environment to learn the appropriate linguistic codes. Language is construed as a set of structures, and the learning process as largely linear and additive. Given that the participants are respectful of multilingualism and critical language awareness discourses, they recognise the short-comings of language teaching that is preoccupied exclusively with grammatical rules.

While recognising the socio-political constructedness of language, and the necessity for critical language awareness, the participants none-theless attach varying degrees of importance to the adherence to grammatical rules and language conventions. Jennifer, Phumzile and Thembi recognise the role which adherence to grammatical rules plays in effective communication. Although Carol and Vijay appear to be more accommodating of deviation from grammatical conventions, they – too – have an underlying concern with engendering the logical and clear use of the English language, for effective and meaningful communication. In this way the participants locate themselves at different points on the continuum of normative English language usage.

Second, although the participants distance themselves from de-manding that students conform to their personal ideologies, the moral and ethical intentionality that is tied to their pedagogic and educative objectives, however, aims at provoking students to interrogate the impli-cations of their learning for their own lives and those of others. Thus, there emerges a sense that, for feminist teachers, teaching responsibly translates to their having an interest, as individuals, in the social reality outside their classrooms.

However, teaching is a complex and ambiguous activity; hence de-fining the place for ideologies in classrooms is a subject that is fraught with ambiguity. This observation holds true for the project of conscien-tising and socialising students into feminist and social justice sensibili-ties. From the discussion we note that when teachers attempt to engender a new (radical) pedagogic or ideological normative, this is met with pockets of resistance from students over pedagogic technique or en-gagement with course content. Further, some students resist feminist and radical ideologies that propose new normative ideals; still others adopt silence and non-participation resistance technologies. Their resistance assumes various guises, namely, discounting, denying, distancing, and

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expressing dismay about the prevalence of patriarchal and allied social injustices. These are manifested through permutations of collective and individual resistance, non-cooperation, escape/avoidance, and/or con-cealment. Given that feminist teachers endeavour to contain and eventu-ally to eradicate narrative discourses that engender social injustice, when students reject/challenge feminist or other radical analyses of social phe-nomena, this response has generally been labeled false consciousness and has often been attributed to flaws in the students.

Three significant points have emerged from an analysis of student resistance. First, teachers use different kinds of narratives to tell different kinds of stories. They also sanction certain narratives and discount others for ideological and political reasons. Thus, there emerges a contradiction that sexist, racist, homophobic utterances are unwelcome in the feminist class, yet, when they are made, they offer a valuable platform for con-fronting and critiquing prejudicial ideologies. These pedagogic moments come at the expense of students who are prepared to expose themselves in a public forum and risk coming under criticism for doing so.

Second, there is the need not to distort the nature of difference in an educational setting by oversimplifying it. For example, student Joan’s Trauma Theory about gays was expressed in an insensitive way, and student Nathi, advocated two separate standards of sexual morality – one, which sanctioned male promiscuity and the other one which ex-pected female sexual purity. However, it is important to note that for each of us, voice and identity are multiple constructions, and the idea that each person has a (single) voice and identity is a fallacy. This obser-vation suggests recognition of the potentially evolutionary and multiple voices of students in general and of those students who utter discrimina-tory viewpoints in particular. Thus, although some students may voice/express discriminatory views, it is possible that – with changes in time and context – such students may re-evaluate their prejudiced world-views and align themselves with anti-discriminatory discourses.

Third, because feminist pedagogy embodies the object of effecting ideological and convictional changes in students, it may be regarded as a conversionist discourse. Diawara (1994:217) notes that, irrespective of whether conversionist discourses are motivated by religion, science or politics, they tend to underestimate culture or to liken it to pathology. Conversionists, whether they are politicians, religious leaders or teacher activists, tend to blame the culture of the people whom they are trying to

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convert. They expect people to come to a revolutionary consciousness, or a spiritual awakening, and to walk out of their culture in order to change the world. Conversionist discourses invariably address epistemological crises, which emanate from the unproblematic expectation that coming into consciousness from a state of ‘cultural innocence’ will automatically result in the acquisition of, and identification with new knowledge.

Fourth, this last observation returns us to Pitt’s (1997) argument that identity does not precede identification; rather identification informs identity formation. Feminist pedagogies, for example, invite students to identify with their teachers and with the images of marginalised Other (women, the economically disenfranchised, etc.), who populate the texts of feminist knowledge. These textualised characters portray narratives of oppression and counter narratives of resistance. Pitt (1997:131) suggests that the shortcoming of this approach to learning resides in its assump-tion that:

(i) the identificatory processes which it entails will be unproblematic for the student;

(ii) the student is rationally in charge of how knowledge will affect him/her; and

(iii) identification proceeds from, and results in, the affirmation of iden-tity.

According to Laplanche & Pontalis (in Pitt 1997) precisely the opposite is true. They refer to Freud’s work where the concept of identification reverses the relationship between identity and identification and suggests that:

(i) identification precedes identity; and (ii) identification constitutes the grounds of possibility for the emer-

gence of identity.

Engagement with feminist textual knowledge and feminist pedagogical and methodological practices instantiates something that is in excess of how social actors learn their place in the world. What is central are the dynamics by which feminism becomes the grounds of possibility for the fashioning of a new identification and a new sense of self and agency. The pedagogical practices and epistemologies set the terms by which

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students may engage the question: ‘Can I recognise myself in this course?’ The reply to this question cannot be adequately given by attempts to acknowledge social differences through textual representa-tional inclusivity. What is generally forgotten is that encounters between the self and textual representation cannot be reduced to scenes of recog-nition. Rather, such encounters set in motion psychic dynamics of identi-fication, which are an ambivalent process of recognising and recovering from the loss of the illusion that the self is a ready-made subject.

The focus in my study has been on the feminist educator’s partici-pation in pedagogic projects, which aim at redefining epistemology and interpersonal practices. Investigation around this subject matter was in-formed by, and engaged the politics of difference; debates on teacher authority; teacher and student personal epistemology as valid knowledge forms. There are, however, other allied narratives that still need to be investigated; some of these include, inter alia:

Issues of difference have been central to the theoretical debates around subjectivity. My study drew on Hart’s (1991) framework to track trajectories of coming to feminist consciousness. Another area of potentially valuable study is: How are racialised subjects formed? As feminist theory has been preoccupied primarily with the status of ‘sexual difference’ in identity formation, it has not yet given much attention to the question of racialisation of subjectivity/development of racial identity. Work has yet to be undertaken on the subject of how the racialised Other is constituted in the psychic domain. How is post-colonial gendered and racialised subjectivity to be analysed? Does the privileging of ‘sexual difference’ and early childhood in psychoanalysis limit its explanatory value in helping to understand the psychic dimensions of social phenomena such as racism? The participants in my study have referred to their inclusion of texts by marginalised Other in the curriculum. Such textual inclusions contribute significantly to redistributing the narrative field, and to redefining conceptualisations about the form, function and status of texts. The disenfranchised (which include women and post-colonial writers) appear to have a voice, and with this new-found voice comes a new series of concerns. For example, there is a need to be attentive to the seductive absorption of subjugated voices in class-rooms of higher education, where their texts form part of the pre-

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scribed curricula and appear to be more welcome than the marginalised students themselves. Thus, an important area for fur-ther research is how are marginalised Other treated in the classroom? Inclusion of curricula content and texts of the marginalised might give the illusion of change. This strategy of symbolic inclusion masks how the everyday institutional policies and arrangements that suppress and exclude marginalised students as a collective remain virtually untouched. This observation refers to the critique that marginalised Others are given epistemological access, but are embattled by the dynamics of social access in institutions of higher education. My study has focussed on the teacher as a primary unit of analysis. Drawing on reflections of the teacher’s family background and other identity influencing contiguous variables has been insightful in gaining a more nuanced understanding of her ideological stances. While students’ classroom participation has added invaluable in-sights in furthering an understanding of teachers’ pedagogic per-spectives and performances, my study did not produce in-depth data on students’ backgrounds and ideologies and how these inform their engagement with knowledge systems and interpersonal relations. While it has become fashionable to discuss difference among stu-dents, there remains a dearth of studies that provide concrete examples of individuals who actually occupy different locations within structures, sharing ideas with one another, mapping out terrains of commonality, connection and shared concerns. Studying students’ interpersonal dialogic relations gestures towards one way in which we can begin as teachers and critical thinkers to cross boundaries that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, etc.Bourne’s (2001) observation that there has been a proliferation of research into theories of learning (in the form of student-centred pedagogy) with an apparent decline into investigating theories of teaching returns us to an important area of study. The argument is not to agitate for authoritarian teaching styles that are consonant with a banking regime of teaching, but to understand teachers’ pedagogic and educative authority and the way in which they stage learning experiences for their students. The importance of such studies for the South African educational context is paramount,

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given that the legacy of Apartheid has yielded a large cohort of teachers who are un/under qualified and an equally large body of students who have received sub-standard education and who also require socialisation into a culture of learning. To achieve the democratic tenet of multilingualism, as envisaged in the South African Constitution (1996) institutions of higher learning are required to develop their own language policies. This require-ment is set against the backdrop that to date English and Afrikaans have been the dominant languages of instruction in most South Afri-can tertiary institutions, with some universities following a straight for English medium of instruction, others a straight for Afrikaans medium of instruction, and a few offering instruction in dual media. Since African languages have historically been used predominantly for personal and informal use, tertiary institutions are being challenged to develop the more widespread use of African languages as media of instruction. Tracking the developments of this policy in terms of its implementation in English language classrooms, specifi-cally, and within the broader fabric of universities, offers scope for groundbreaking research opportunities and has the potential to yield insightful findings to direct future educational language policies and pedagogies.Theobald (1999 in Weiler & Middleton) critiques the current vogue of representing and researching women teachers who reflect on their profession as a fulfilment of their ‘life calling’ or link it to personal emancipation. She suggests that there is a need to research those women who became teachers by default (that is those who did not want to become teachers, but did/do so reproachfully). This sugges-tion implies that the questions which we ask teachers and the stories that we tell about them can no longer co-exist unexamined alongside a grand narrative of personal emancipation. Perhaps we need to risk asking what happens if we admit the narratives of women and men who do not/did not wish to be teachers into the ambit of social en-quiry. Would this not release us to unearth a different history of teachers and teaching?

Finally, if storytelling is central to the conduct of life, and if story telling is the medium through which we construct as well as understand our

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personal and professional lives, then it matters how stories of teaching are told, which stories are told, and who gets to tell them.

Section 2: Methodological Reflective Synthesis

Notwithstanding the cautionary signals that have been posted by the dis-courses of postmodernism about autobiographical writing, I concur with Long’s (1987) observation that:

Feminist scholarship … has made it clear that third person accounts and ‘generic’ sociology have not, in fact, told us anything about women’s experiences. First per-son accounts are required to understand the subjectivity of a social group that is ‘muted,’ excised from history, ‘invisible’ in the official records of their culture.

The significance of this observation is compounded by Weiner’s (1994:11) postulation that feminist narrative accounts aim to articulate women’s identity as a process of historical construction, by offering con-sciously political perspectives on their lives. This insight, in turn, helps us to understand changes in historical perspective and in social condi-tions. This inspired in me a desire to draw on the autobiographical essay as a primary data production strategy. The voices of the prophets of doom and scepticism regarding the use of the autobiographical essay haunted me for much of the early stages of my research. Chief among the litany of scepticisms was the perceived unfairness of asking participants to write an autobiographical essay, for which they probably did not have the skills. Therefore, it was most heartening to receive the following correspondence from my participants, in which they reported that they had enjoyed the process of writing the autobiographical essay:

Thembi: You know that I was quite uncomfortable about it, because I thought you were talking about things outside my discipline and expertise, but the moment you explained to me that it has something to do with writing an autobiographical essay … that got me excited and interested about it. As a person in literature, I do read – not only novels – but also non-fiction like autobiographies and biographies, but I’ve never ever thought that I had a story that was worth listening to. Never. I really found other stories that I read about other people good and interesting, but through-out I never imagined … . I knew I had a story, because I was a human being that

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ever lived, but I never thought it was worth listening to. The moment I started to write, the self-reflective nature of that process was quite interesting and challenging. I discovered that I had, in fact, a lot more in my head than I ever imagined, to the extent that after writing what I’ve written so far I still feel I’ve left out so much. So that’s how interesting it has become. But basically I think it was through your explanation of what your project was about – and I found it very, very interesting and quite unique. And your proposal was very, very unique – it was something that I’d never heard anybody say she or he was doing. If it’s happening in education, in your field, definitely in my discipline, it’s something that I haven’t quite been exposed to. (Interview)

Carol: I thought it was a very interesting topic that I haven’t seen anyone tackle be-fore. From the point of view of one’s vanity it’s quite nice to be asked questions about what you really think about these things. Nobody really asks you most of the time. I thought it was a very interesting topic and it came at a good time for me be-cause I very possibly will be leaving the profession and it enabled me to look back on it and reflect on why had I gone into English studies and how had I changed? And in a way what had my last sixteen years at UWC meant to me. So it came at just the right time for me and was a very valuable cathartic thing really to write this piece … . (Interview)

Jennifer: There are some features of my life that I really take for granted, like the political and historical context. They were really background. Also being White is another one. I don’t take it for granted now, but I took it for granted then and I re-member taking it for granted. In your childhood home you imbibe a lot of things unquestioningly, like I imbibed my father’s multiracial, non-White friends. It was very unusual at the time, but I wasn’t aware of that; and my mother’s very critical attitude to the government, although she was an armchair liberal – not an activist. Writing the essay made me look back at those kinds of things. I’ve never done that before. It helped me to bring to critical focus aspects of my development that I hadn’t at all questioned then. Looking at it as it were outside of myself, which is in essence part of yourself. It is something that structures you. (Interview)

Apart from the above extracts which highlight the enjoyment and pleasure that the participants experienced in writing the autobiographical essay, in further examining the extracts, the following key issues emerged:

Uniqueness of the project

The majority of the participants commented on the uniqueness of the project. While receiving such positive feedback worked wonders in

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appealing to my own vanity, it also enhanced my confidence and im-pressed upon me the necessity to pursue this line of research enquiry. I read into these statements a confirmation of the scarcity of this type of research being conducted. This came through especially in Thembi’s comment … it was something that I’d never heard anybody say she or he was doing. If it’s happening in education, in your field, definitely in my discipline, it’s something that I haven’t quite been exposed to. Further-more, this feedback re-instantiated both Long (1987) and Weiner’s (1994) observation regarding the need to re-distribute the narrative field and to document the experiences of women in general, and women edu-cators, in particular.

Engendering a sense of self-worth

Both Thembi’s and Carol’s excerpts point to the pleasant experience of writing the essay. Thembi, in particular, was drawn to participate in the project, primarily because of the interest that she has in (auto)biographical writings. In addition, Thembi echoed a sentiment that corresponded with Buss’ (1985) suggestion that attention should be given to people who are literate and highly educated, but whose experi-ences have remained obscured. At least twice in her excerpt, Thembi expresses this belief: I never ever thought that I had a story that was worth listening to. Implicit in Thembi’s incredulity about the worthiness of her ‘story’ is the deeply entrenched inferior existential validity generally associated with female socialisation – the sense that their con-tributions, stories, experiences and opinions do not carry any significant import. While, for Carol, the writing of the autobiographical essay gave her a sense of pride and validation that her opinions and ideological per-spectives were worthy of documentation, she expressed a similar view about the audience-worthiness of her story in her remark: Nobody really asks you most of the time. The significance of what Thembi and Carol have to say about the narrative value of their lives, and the importance for them to speak it, is poignantly captured in Cixous’ (1976:50–51) ex-hortation:

But first she would have to speak, start speaking, stop saying that she has nothing to say! Stop learning in school that women are created to listen, to believe, to make no

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discoveries. Dare to speak her piece about giving, the possibility of a giving that doesn’t take away, but gives. Speak of her pleasure and, God knows, she has something to say about that … .

A cathartic-self-reflective exercise

Thembi, Carol and Jennifer allude to the reflective nature of writing the autobiographical essay. For these participants, the autobiographical essay afforded them the opportunity to step back and reflect critically on their personal, pedagogic and professional identities and trajectories. The claim that the autobiography is necessarily a selective remembrance of the present self in relation to the self recalled at various stages of per-sonal history is confirmed by Carol’s comment: The essay enabled me to look back on it and reflect on why had I gone into English studies and how had I changed? And in a way what had my last sixteen years at UWC meant to me. This claim also supports contemporary theories on identity that postulate the changing subjectivities of the social actor, where an assortment of subject positions surface within a cultural con-text, indicating the possibility of change as subjects explore the trajecto-ries of different social and ideological positions. The trajectory is often marked by diverse emotional and psychic ambivalences and contradic-tions. This aspect is expressed in Carol’s experience of the writing proc-ess as cathartic, which is a process of purging or purifying the emotions; of bringing repressed ideas or experiences into consciousness, thus re-lieving tensions.

Jennifer’s critical self-reflection regarding her childhood upbringing and the deviances of her family in ignoring the racially segregated na-tional status quo also attests to the fact that – as social actors – we are located within heterogeneous and unstable discursive practices, and that we inhabit multiple and changing identities. These identities are pro-duced and reproduced within the fluid social relations of race, gender, ethnicity, able-bodiedness, class and sexuality, and often only a con-scious critical reflection brings them to the fore. Jennifer admits: Thereare some features of my life that I really take for granted like … being White.

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Comparison between fiction and non-fiction

Jennifer and Phumzile highlight the propensity for the autobiographical essay to be read as a ‘truth script.’ Coe (1984, in Roos 1994) defines standard autobiography as “the writer’s attempt to tell the story of her (sic) life in a manner as factually accurate, and yet as significant as possible; to reveal from the inside that personality and those motivations which her (sic) contemporaries hitherto have known ... from the outside.” The apparent authenticity of the autobiography is alluded to by Jennifer. In drawing a comparison between autobiography and fiction, Jennifer seems to hint that an autobiography has greater non-fictive qualities. She says: The only form of writing that I am interested in is autobiography because I don’t have the imagination for fiction. I can’t imagine the strange behaviour of somebody I’ve never met. I’ve always wanted to write an autobiography. It was interesting for me to write it.

Phumzile offers a different view about the authenticity of autobiog-raphy. Admitting that she had to reveal more about herself than she would ordinarily do, Phumzile hints at the potentially deceptive nature of autobiography:

I don’t like writing academic autobiographical essays. Some of my creative work is autobiographical … . Some more than others and I’m fine with that … . Because I’ve cheated a bit, it’s creative and people read it differently ... . And it means different things … . I want to write about myself, but I don’t want to be the primary text. So I’m fine referring to myself, referring to a specific experience, referring to things, but I don’t want ... I often grapple, I struggle, with that being part of the central thread ... . (Interview)

Phumzile’s reflections on writing the autobiographical essay reiterate Maclure’s (1993 in Measor & Sikes 1992) cautionary word regarding the nature of autobiographical writings. Maclure warns that the autobiogra-phy cannot be accepted as revelations of the honest or unbiased self be-cause the process of composition has the culpability of composing narratives, consciously or unconsciously, which sometimes emerge as fabrications, evasions, suppressions, selective remembrance or eradica-tion. In commenting on other creative autobiographical narratives that she has written, Phumzile admits: I’ve cheated a bit, it’s creative and people read it differently.

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Ethical Considerations: non-unitariness of the social actor

Phumzile also draws attention to the ethical dilemma she had with writing the autobiographical essay. She says:

This essay has been harder because first of all I didn’t decide – it was part of the pa-rameters. It was kind of the format that was required, but also because I had to re-veal so much about myself. It was not necessarily those things that I would ordinarily choose to reveal or ordinarily choose to talk about. So for instance, I could very comfortably talk about certain things about how I come to feel the way I do, how I come to have the policies that I have, but I wouldn’t necessarily do that in the way that I have in this essay … the autobiographical narrative by definition … has involved more than me – more than my life. It has involved my family and so begins to say something about them too. I didn’t ask their permission, and of course superficially if I said, ‘Can I?’ they’d say, ‘Ja, don’t be silly’. I think my discomfort stems a lot from … opening up other people’s lives and I don’t have that right to presume that that’s okay. (Interview)

Phumzile’s obvious discomfort is expressed thus: I often grapple, I struggle, with that being part of the central thread.’Apart from her per-sonal discomfort with being the ‘primary text’, she is sensitive to the inevitability that, by definition, autobiographical writing calls for the disclosure of people’s personal lives; and this – subsequently – is an in-fringement on their privacy. Her views contrast with Lejeune’s (1989:4) view that the subject of the autobiography depicts the ‘individual life,’ that it is the story of a personality. Unlike Lejeune’s bourgeois individu-alism, Phumzile recognises that her story has a historical, social and class context. Her conception of autobiography parallels that of Ellen Kuzwayo’s as depicted in the novel, Call Me Woman (1985) in which she writes: “This autobiography refuses to focus only on the author, for it draws on the unrecorded history of a whole people.”

Stanley & Morgan (1993:2) also support the conceptualisation of autobiography as a sociological investigation when they write:

Autobiography means … rejecting any notion that a ‘life’ can be understood as a representation of a single life in isolation from the networks of interwoven biogra-phies. In spite of the widespread assumption that autobiography is concerned with a single life, in practice it is a very rare autobiography that is not replete with the potted biographies of significant others in the subject’s life.

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In the light of the above, Phumzile’s concerns regarding the infringement on the rights of other social actors directly implicated in her life are not unfounded.

Authorial Voice, Representation and Interpretation

Phumzile highlights an important methodological issue that is related to the author’s voice, its representation and interpretation. She says:

But also because I’m an academic too and I know that there’s a certain contradic-tion in how we treat texts, we privilege them and we have the utmost respect for them, but we also have this utmost disrespect for them. And that’s fine, I don’t mind my text, I don’t care what you do with it ... . But the thing is, once you set it out there it’s not your business and I really don’t think you put out other people’s business. That’s a very crude way of putting it, but that’s basically what my quan-dary is. (Interview)

Repeating her concern and quandary over opening up for public con-sumption other people’s business, Phumzile also draws attention to the possible tensions that may arise for both the correlation and the consis-tency between the authorial voices, and the interpretation and represen-tation of the data. Despite the nonchalant tone which Phumzile adopts in contemplating the fate of her published text, she echoes Measor & Sikes (1992:212) and Lieblich’s et al.’s (1998) observations that the accuracy and consistency of the stories which people tell, and the nature of the researcher’s interpretation, are two issues that are commonly addressed in discussions of qualitative research methodology.

Value of the Study for the Participants

In the Respondent Validation Letter, I requested that participants comment on their experiences of participating in the study; I presented them with the following series of questions:

What are your impressions of the research process? Did you find it democratic/undemocratic? What were the positive aspects of participating in this study?

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What were the negative aspects of participating in this study? Any other comments that you would like to make.

The participants’ reflections on participating in the research foreground the following features which pertain to the personal, academic and pro-fessional value that the study has had for them and – potentially – for the wider education community. Some of these features and benefits are:

Relational value which proposes a more sophisticated understanding of the phenomenon being studied. Without necessarily seeking praxis in this study I had set out to explore how, if at all, the feminist educator’s interpretation and enactment of her personal worldview informs her lan-guage teaching, in terms of what, how and why she teaches what she teaches. I was aware of the disjuncture that often emerges from the gap between espoused theories and theories-in-use. As such, the study was not in search of praxis. It was thus interesting to note the participants’ comments about both the methodological and the theoretical praxis (re-lational value) that have characterised the study. I have read from the students’ comments an identification of varieties of theoretical and methodological relationalities.

Phumzile observed: the variety of forms of knowledge (teaching ob-servation, interviews, essay) gathered by Juliet was broad and therefore likely to uncover more of the nuances of the intersections between femi-nist teaching theory and praxis. Her reference to the various data sources (teaching observation, interviews, essay) essentially testifies to the value which triangulation as a research practice has in unearthing and synthe-sising data. Phumzile suggests that the application of the suite of data sources yielded a synergetic and illuminative praxis among the research methods. By constantly drawing from the various data sources, I was able to stage a conversation among them, thus promoting a more nu-anced understanding of the complexities of theorising and teaching from a feminist perspective.

The second variety of praxis that Phumzile mentions emerges in her reference to the intersections between feminist teaching theory and praxis. This observation refers to the relation between received theories on feminist pedagogy (drawing from existing theoretical knowledge forms) and teachers’ pedagogical interpretation and enactment thereof

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(teaching methods that contribute towards feminist knowledge construc-tion and deconstruction in the classroom).

Cumulatively, her perception of the relational value of the study at a methodological and theoretical level is captured in this comment: Thestudy was methodologically innovative, and genuinely grappled with mutual interdependence of praxis and knowledge production.

A third variant of relational value surfaces in Jennifer’s comment: Your exploration of different features of individual autobiographies is very detailed and I particularly like the way you link them to theoretical texts and viewpoints. Jennifer draws attention to the link between re-ceived theories (theoretical texts), participants’ personal theories (view-points) and the data (individual autobiographies). I interpret this observation as a reference to the theory-theory/theory-data interplay,which is a feature of grounded theory that I adopted as an analytical de-vice to compare and contrast the participants’ espoused feminist and pedagogical theories with their theories-in-use. In employing the theory-data interplay as an analytical technique, my intention was to create a dialectic referential circle among the participants’ views and the body of received literature. In order to achieve this objective, I drew on my pre-understanding of concepts, which I had assembled into a theoretical toolkit (see Chapter 2) and then employed as sensitising agents against which to analyse participants’ views. In this regard, the relational value of the study emerged on three levels:

(i) the utility existing theory has in informing data analysis; (ii) the power of data to challenge existing theory; and (iii) how personal theories can either legitimise or de-legitimise received

theories and thereby contribute to theory elaboration, recontextuali-sation and reconceptualisation.

The fourth variant of praxis (relational value) – that of data-data inter-play emerges from Thembi’s comments: I am impressed by the way you brought the different participants’ situations and personal experiences together; the manner in which you identified our common beliefs and positions and analysed the full range of details; and how you still iso-lated, in a very critical way, the differences between the participants’ sensibilities. The data-data interplay facilitated comparing and contrasting participants’ views, experiences, and contextual differences,

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as portrayed in the essays, interviews and lecture observations. This comparison helped to highlight differentiation within the research sample, while also showing their interconnectivity by virtue of teaching English from a feminist perspective. Comparing and contrasting partici-pants’ views and experiences has created a sense of belonging to a community for Thembi, which is encapsulated in her comment: yourcomparison and contrast approach has made me feel very close to the other participants even though I have never met them before, and alludes to the dialectic referential circle forged from the particularities and generalities of their project identities.

Cumulatively, the respondents’ comments suggest that the relational value of the study emerged through methodological and theoretical praxis. The methodological value was achieved through the staging of a conversation among the various data sources, and theoretically through permutations of theory-theory interplay, theory-data interplay and data-data interplay, whereby the study created a dialectic referential circle to enhance multi-perspectival analysis and inter-relational understanding of the feminist teacher’s epistemological stances and her epistemological labour.

The auto-reflexive value of the study refers to evidence that participating in the study impacted positively on the participants’ per-sonal and/or professional lives. In this regard, the respondents reported that participating in the study prompted them to reflect critically on the nuances of the theoretical and practical dimensions of their teaching and theorising. Confirming that auto–reflexivity combines cognitive and affective dimensions, Phumzile comments that participation in the study forced me to think through my praxis more consistently/explicitly. ForVijay, the study offered the opportunity to reflect on the events that tran-spired in [her] lectures. For Carol, it afforded the chance to summarisenot only [her] personal growth as a feminist and as a South African citi-zen, but also to relate these to [her] teaching practices as a feminist, andshe further observed: I’d never had the opportunity to think consciously about the connections between the two, and to articulate these.

The affective dimension of auto-reflexivity is captured in Carol’s declaration that the research process was exciting. Being able to reflect and make connections among her multiple identities (i.e. her personal identity, her professional teacher identity, and her national identity), and its evolution (growth) appears to constitute a critical episode for Carol.

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Thembi echoes sentiments which are similar to Carol’s when she writes: Participating in this study has not only been an exciting moment in my life but has also been a fulfilling exercise as you made me appreciate the value of my own life story. We see Carol and Thembi reflect on their participation in the research process in terms of its impact on their per-sonal identities and self-awareness. Jennifer’s response: it gave me a feeling of contributing to the broadening of knowledge, and especially in the sphere of feminist education, which I value very highly also captures the affective impact participation in the study has had on her. She, like Carol, also frames her feedback in terms of her feminist teacher project identity. There emerges a sense of Jennifer offering/contributing her per-sonal text to feminist and educational epistemology. That the debate on personal experience constitutes a valid source of knowledge is reiterated in Carol’s comment: It is seldom that anyone asks you to articulate practical aspects of your teaching within a multi-cultural environment,yet you know that what you’ve observed and learnt could be useful to someone else.

The catalytic value of the study refers to the demonstration of some form of resultant action. It represents the degree to which the research process re-orients, focuses and energises participants towards transfor-mative action. This emerges in Thembi’s comments: I never imagined that what I had perceived as an uneventful life story, such as mine, could in fact form part of an important study such as yours. … I am now pre-pared to write about [it] in more detail. For Thembi the study has been validating, and it has brought her to a personal appreciation of her life as well as of its audience-worthiness.

Runyan (1984:152) suggests the following criteria for evaluating narrative research:

effectively portraying the social and historical world of the person; by providing ‘insight’ into the person, and thereby clarifying and making connections to experiences and critical incidents that previ-ously remained seemingly insignificant, meaningless or incompre-hensible;illuminating the causes (and meanings) of relevant events, experi-ences, and conditions;

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helping to understand the inner or subjective world of the person, how s/he thinks about his/her experiences, situations, problems, life; thereby deepening our sympathy or empathy for the subject; and being vivid, evocative, and emotionally compelling to read.

Hammersley & Atkinson (1979) propose two very general criteria in terms of ascertaining the validity of a narrative study. The first criterion asks how truthful, plausible and credible an account is, and the second criterion – related to the relevance of the study – asks whether an account is important and contributes to the field, previous findings, methods, theory, or social policy. In varying degrees, the participants in my study refer to ways in which the study has satisfied criteria that pro-ponents of qualitative research have suggested.

Narrative Synthesis

A tidy ending would deny the partiality, incompleteness, and occasional incoherence, which is the fabric of teachers’ lives and work. Thus, rather than offer a conclusion to this study, I refer to Goodson & Hargreaves’ (1995) identification of the kinds of stories which teachers tell as a way of synthesising this narrative study.

The investigation into the lives of the five feminist educator pro-tagonists in my study confirms that socio-cultural contexts provide spe-cific types of plots for adoption by its members in their configuration of self. Although the content of each teacher’s life is unique, it can portray romantic, tragic, heroic and ironic emplotments which are consistent with the conventions of narrative genres. In this regard, the salient phi-losophies, events and nuclear episodes that the participants have pre-sented about their personal and professional lives reveal that their meta-narratives about teaching and learning resonate with the central tenets that frame the grand narratives of feminist pedagogy and multilingual-ism. Their teaching ideologies and practices embody the vision of social transformation, consciousness-raising, and the promotion of the co-exis-tence of the world of the classroom with that of wider society, sensitivity to race, class, gender, language and other issues that are related to iden-tity politics. Embedded in their pedagogic narratives are romantic, he-roic, tragic, and ironic thematic plotlines.

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Teaching as a quest for human fulfilment is implicated in matters of identity creation and in understanding teaching as romantic. Such peda-gogic narratives draw attention to the aesthetic aspects which are in-volved in acting on the idea of teaching as a moral craft. The romantic form centres on caring, connectedness and community in a morally laden world of love, hope, interpersonal engagement and social responsibility. Within these stories, we see high agency and high communion protago-nists who fit the image of teacher as healer, counsellor and humanist. There are several events in both the participants’ personal and professional narratives that foreground their disposition for caring and community connection. On a personal level, we see, for example, Carol engaging in relief work among flood victims, Vijay agitating for the unionisation of the university’s cleaning staff, etc. On a professional level, the participants realise that it is their task to be more than language teachers, and on this insight they found their decision to teach pedagogic content connected to the realities of their students. For example, Vijay engaged her students in an HIV/AIDS Assignment that would capture the voices of marginalised Other; and Jennifer explored with her students the social prejudice that is often levelled against those who live through alternative sexualities, etc. These teachers not only afford their students the opportunity to respond to social texts that reflect many of the con-cerns in their own lives, but they also create conditions for a critical literacy, where the world and the Word can co-exist. They champion situationally transcendent pedagogies which are critical of the status quo and oriented towards its transformation, as opposed to situationally con-gruent pedagogies that perpetuate discriminatory hegemonies.

Interwoven into their allegories of teaching as romance are heroic stories. These are narratives which detail the participants’ defiance of bureaucracy, racial, gender, etc. disenfranchisement. They are stories of the triumph of the human spirit. The heroism in the participants’ narra-tives is evident, for example, in the strategies which they employ against institutional barriers that attempt to relegate them to second-class citi-zenship.

Interspersed in the participants’ heroic stories of triumphing over political, social and education bureaucracies, there are occasions when such struggles take their toll on the human spirit. Herein lie the tragic stories, which speak of the marginalisation these teachers experience both on a personal and on a professional level. In this regard, the partici-

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pants reflect on the isolation and alienation that they endure from the administration and from colleagues because of their radical ideological and pedagogical stances, as well as their race and gender identities.

The participants’ ironic and paradoxical stories emerge when it appears that they are pursuing a project of pedagogic progressivism and enlightenment while, in the reality of their classrooms, technologies of control, surveillance, regulation, normalisation, lack of choice are to be found. Under such circumstances, we find images of the teacher sus-pended between good and evil, caught between the guilt of helping to maintain the existing conditions of educational bureaucracy, while si-multaneously speaking against it. This conflict surfaced, for example, during the negotiation of the HIV/AIDS Assignment in Vijay’s class, when some students requested to work on the topic from a different angle, using a different pedagogic strategy. Vijay, apart from motivating that students should work on the same topic to facilitate dialogue, also counterposed student resistance by informing them that the examination question had already been set. The combination of reasons which Vijay offered to her students for conforming to teacher pedagogic and episte-mological discretion is ironic in that it contradicted the apparent autonomy which the students believed to have when Vijay told them that the assignment topic had not been set, that it was their work and that they should formulate their own assignment question. Later, Vijay’s reflection on her normalisation of pedagogic content and strategy shows how, in many respects, teachers can become complicit in the bureaucratic vio-lence of examinations, administration deadlines and processes which grease the wheels of educational systems. Entwined in this ironic narra-tive is also a paradoxical narrative. Paradoxical narratives, which are by nature self-consciously contradictory, illustrate that Vijay is simultane-ously critical of, yet compliant with, the bureaucratic violence of exami-nations. Ironic and paradoxical stories confirm that a convenient parallel between consciousness and activity is premised on an assumption that attaining praxis is an unproblematic pedagogic pursuit. In other in-stances, the participants’ narratives show how deeply ironic and para-doxical the quest for teacher identity is in a society that is saturated with the contradictions of bureaucratic obligations, which are further compli-cated by race, class, gender, etc. variables.

This amalgam of romantic, heroic, tragic, ironic and paradoxical sto-ries captures the broad landscape of experiences that teachers constantly

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negotiate. Teachers’ varying degrees of success and failure, joy and sad-ness are tied to balancing their ideologies of care and social responsibil-ity, on the one hand, and their ideologies of justice and individual rights, on the other hand.

The implications of the participants’ pedagogic experiences are that the scenes which are being enacted daily on the smaller stage of their classrooms are being simultaneously played out with a different cast of characters on the larger educational stage, globally. The microcosm of their pedagogic and academic narratives helps to evoke other pedagogic worlds, where the differences between them and pedagogic Other, andbetween here and there, are differences more in degree than in kind. Thus, these teachers’ tales of teaching as romance, heroism, tragedy and irony offer a recognisable plotline into which many teachers can write their own contextually unique stories. The diversity of teachers and stu-dents’ contextual diversities means that studying pedagogic narratives is a continuous process of discovery.

In this study, I have indulged a narcissistic narrative in that the teachers’ voices that I have represented are voices in which I see images of myself – female educators with whom I share pedagogical and ideo-logical similarities. The narrative gaps and interpretational silences in the study suggest that other narratives – among them counter-narcissistic stories – are waiting to be told.

In as much as I have partially told the stories of the five feminist educators in an attempt to draw teachers’ worlds, words and work out of obscurity, their stories resist narrative closure, for – as Steedman (1987:22) reminds us:

Visions change, once any story is told; ways of seeing are altered. The point of the story is to present itself momentarily as complete, so that it can be said, it does for now; it is an account that will last for a while. Its point is briefly to make an audi-ence connive in the telling, so that they may say: yes, that’s how it was; or, that’s how it might have been. … Once a story is told, it ceases to be a story. It becomes a piece of history, an interpretive device. In this sense, a story works, works for us, when its rationale is comprehended, and its historical significance grasped.

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