Brexit, 'Child as Method,' and the Pedagogy of Failure: How Discourses of Childhood Structure the Resistance of Racist Discourse to Analysis
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| Title: | Brexit, 'Child as Method,' and the Pedagogy of Failure: How Discourses of Childhood Structure the Resistance of Racist Discourse to Analysis |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Burman, Erica |
| Source: | Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies. 2018 40(2):119-143. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 25 |
| Publication Date: | 2018 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Cultural Influences, Children, Social Influences, Racial Bias, Social Attitudes, Teaching Methods, Social Class, Gender Bias, Generational Differences, Deception, Beliefs, Foreign Countries |
| Geographic Terms: | United Kingdom, European Union |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10714413.2018.1442082 |
| ISSN: | 1071-4413 |
| Abstract: | This article develops an emerging analytical approach, "child as method" (Burman 2018a, 2018b), to attend to the role played by "the child" and, by extension, children within the production of false beliefs and commitments. Specifically, "child as method" is applied to contemporary political discourse around immigration, in relation to current forms of racist discourse circulating in Britain, by mobilizing a critical reading of Octave Mannoni's (1969/2003) essay, "I Know Well, but All the Same." This influential essay explores the dynamics of (self and other) delusion and misrecognition, with corresponding exclusionary effects. In this, Mannoni proposes that cultural pedagogies involving the deception of children are pivotal to forms of socially shared, willful adherence to convictions that are recognized to be untrue. Extending his social psychoanalytic reading (or what would now be described as a psychosocial reading, Frosh 2010), the author highlights how this motif not only underlies racist discourse but also accounts for its intractable deniability, and so persistence; so also implicating practices around children, childhood, pedagogy, and education. An intersectional reading of Mannoni's essay attending to the mutual implications of class and gender, as well as generational relations is then offered that shows how Mannoni too, reflecting his own time and position, was subject to the same dynamics (including, but not only, racialized othering) that he discusses. Implications of this for his claims, alongside those of a key critic of Mannoni's other writings--Frantz Fanon--are discussed as part of a wider critical project of formulating pedagogies for decolonization via an attention to "child as method." |
| Abstractor: | ERIC |
| Number of References: | 68 |
| Entry Date: | 2018 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1175715 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | This article develops an emerging analytical approach, "child as method" (Burman 2018a, 2018b), to attend to the role played by "the child" and, by extension, children within the production of false beliefs and commitments. Specifically, "child as method" is applied to contemporary political discourse around immigration, in relation to current forms of racist discourse circulating in Britain, by mobilizing a critical reading of Octave Mannoni's (1969/2003) essay, "I Know Well, but All the Same." This influential essay explores the dynamics of (self and other) delusion and misrecognition, with corresponding exclusionary effects. In this, Mannoni proposes that cultural pedagogies involving the deception of children are pivotal to forms of socially shared, willful adherence to convictions that are recognized to be untrue. Extending his social psychoanalytic reading (or what would now be described as a psychosocial reading, Frosh 2010), the author highlights how this motif not only underlies racist discourse but also accounts for its intractable deniability, and so persistence; so also implicating practices around children, childhood, pedagogy, and education. An intersectional reading of Mannoni's essay attending to the mutual implications of class and gender, as well as generational relations is then offered that shows how Mannoni too, reflecting his own time and position, was subject to the same dynamics (including, but not only, racialized othering) that he discusses. Implications of this for his claims, alongside those of a key critic of Mannoni's other writings--Frantz Fanon--are discussed as part of a wider critical project of formulating pedagogies for decolonization via an attention to "child as method." |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1071-4413 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10714413.2018.1442082 |
