Crossing the Borders of Critical
Pedagogy and Creative Process: A Rationale and Practical Application
Using Improvisational Theater and Interactive Television with
Semi-Rural Teenagers
Janet
L. Mittman
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Abstract
Within the debates about what is or
isn't emancipatory teaching, much of the literature has critiqued
positivist, either/or thinking, calling instead for alternative kinds
of learning that embrace ambiguity and multiple truth perspectives.
This approach to knowledge is quite similar theoretically to
what I have learned experientially in creative improvisation.
Although several writers make mention of the need for artistic
expression (e.g. Narayan, 1989) and "engaged pedagogy"
(hooks, 1994, p. 15) involving healing, love and spirituality,
there is not, in the literature, a major focus on creative
expression as a tool for developing pedagogy that includes these
other ways of knowing.
Drawing on literature in several disciplines, this paper
presents a theoretical framework for the relationship of creative
process to pedagogies for change. My purpose is to establish
a conceptual linkage between epistemologies rooted in postmodern
feminist and critical pedagogy and knowledge derived
out of creative process. The discussion is presented within
the context of both my own personal discovery and in the design
of an educational program specifically developed to encompass
postmodern feminist concerns. The program, a participatory theater
project with semi-rural teenagers, included interactive public-access
television and improvisational drama techniques, largely drawn
from the work of Augusto Boal (1979), author of Theater of
the Oppressed.
In
the Forward to Popular Culture: Schooling and Everyday Life,
Henry Giroux and Paulo Freire write,
In this world new challenges present themselves not only to educators but
to everyone for whom contingency and loss of certainty do not
necessarily mean the inevitable triumph of nihilism and despair
but rather a state of possibility.
(Giroux
and Simon, 1989, p.vii)
I
am grateful to the many critical and feminist educators who
have struggled with the "new challenges" of postmodern
and poststructural theory. Within this literature, the essentialist,
patriarchal and rationalistic foundations of liberatory
educational theory have been closely scrutinized and questioned
(e.g., Ellsworth, 1989; Giroux and Simon, 1989; Gore, 1993;
hooks, 1994; Lather, 1991; Luke and Gore, 1992; McLaren, 1988).
These discourses have helped me to stretch and sometimes break
through the limiting frames of my own perspective. In particular,
I have been struck by the extent to which postmodern feminist
epistemology, as it has been embraced by feminist and critical
pedagogy, resonates with my own embodied learning through creative
improvisational work in dance and theater.
Within
the debates about what is or isn't emancipatory teaching, much
of the literature has critiqued positivist, either/or thinking,
calling instead for alternative kinds of learning that embrace
ambiguity and multiple truth perspectives. This approach to
knowledge is quite similar theoretically to what I have learned
experientially in creative improvisation. Although several writers
make mention of the need for artistic expression (e.g. Naryan,
1989) and "engaged pedagogy" (hooks, 1994, p. 15)
involving healing, love and spirituality, there is not, in the
literature, a major focus on creative expression as a
tool for developing pedagogy that includes these other
ways of knowingpractices that, for example, embrace both/and
approaches to knowledge, encourage a plurality of voices, and
attend to daily life, beliefs, and feelings. Having personally
encountered the difficult but freeing experience of such "engaged"
learning, I want to emphasize the significance of creative process
as a means of doing empowering teaching.
Drawing
on literature in several disciplines, this paper presents a
theoretical framework for the relationship of creative process
to pedagogies for change. The point is not to extol the importance
of creative activities; creativity is certainly a common emphasis
in traditional liberal education. My purpose is, rather, to
establish a conceptual linkage between epistemologies rooted
in postmodern feminist and critical pedagogy and knowledge
derived out of creative process. The discussion is presented
within the context of both my own personal discovery and in
the design of an educational program specifically developed
to encompass postmodern feminist concerns. The program, a participatory
theater project with semi-rural teenagers, included interactive
public-access television and improvisational drama techniques,
largely drawn from the work of Augusto Boal (1979), author of
Theater of the Oppressed.
The
focus of this paper is not on the program itself, but on the
rationale for its design based in postmodern feminist and critical
educational theory. And, in keeping with Patti Lather's (1991)
insistence that, above all, we closely scrutinize not only what
we do but also the position from which we do it, a rationale
for deconstructing the teaching design is also included.
Why
Theory?
In
Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom,
hooks (1994) writes,
I came to theory because I was hurting....I came to theory desperate, wanting
to comprehendto grasp what was happening around and within me.
Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in
theory then a location for healing. (p. 59)
I
too have found healing in theory. Despite critiques of postmodernism
as an obscure and pedantic (but fashionable) discourse, I found
this thinking to be helpful in providing a bridge between the
academic and artistic worlds I moved within, a means of "naming"
in the Freirian sense, my own personal struggle as a woman,
not willing or able to fit comfortably into rationalistic and
male dominated hierarchies. Postmodern feminist theory (at least
my reading of it) gave me an intellectual foundation for legitimizing
my experience and interest in teaching that engages creative
imagination, love, and healing.
Hidden
'Borders'
Many
writers have questioned how we can truly accomplish border
crossings as most of us do not often venture outside of
familiar territory. According to Maxine Greene (1991):
Even those of us aware of...the significance of paying heed to multiple
voices spend too little time thinking about how to engage in
authentic dialogue with those outside our professional circles.
(p. 543)
My
experience suggests that more involvement in creative expression
may be one means of moving, more easily, into unfamiliar places.
However, there may be a hidden bias against this in (even feminist)
critical pedagogy. As I have said, although feminist and critical
educators recommend using arts experiences they rarely focus
on these activities. It seems these "artsy, experiential"
kinds of education are still quite marginalized in academic
settings, even among feminists.
Stanley
and Wise (1990) remind us that women are always "actively
constructing as well as interpreting the social processes and
social relations which constitute their everyday realities"
(p. 34); however, they are constructing within a gender-biased
world and the knowledge is therefore, a product of that bias.
Lowe and Benston (1991) write that "we internalize our
most fundamental ideas without being aware that we have them
and it is extremely difficult to become aware of the assumptions
behind our thinking" (p. 59). For this reason, feminist
thinking is always steeped in the subtle pervasiveness of patriarchy.
I suspect that creative and experiential practices in education
remain marginalized partly for this reason. I would like to
see this change.
My
primary purpose is to share my story and my thinking about pedagogy
with others who have similar desires. I do not offer these thoughts
as prescribed strategies. In accordance with feminist efforts
to embrace multiplicity, I position myself within discourses
that advocate a "determined conjoining of dichotomies"
(Stanley, 1990, p. 11) and approaches that are more like "recipes
for practice" (Stanley and Wise, 1990, p. 41) instead of
set programs for change. Such approaches do not presume right
answers but are more like a "cookbook" and "modest
in their claims to applicability" (p. 41). I refer to creative
process in this wayas but one recipe that might contribute
to what bell hooks (1994) calls, "building a teaching community"
(p. 129).
The
following sections include, 1) some background on my own experience
that is relevant, 2) feminist critique of critical pedagogy,
3) a conceptual framework for the relationship of creative process
and social change, 4) a short description of the television
theater project, and 5) a rationale for the project based in
postmodern theory related to creative expression and critical
feminist pedagogy.
Note: I am using the terms 'critical pedagogy' and 'critical feminist pedagogy'
somewhat interchangeably. Although feminist pedagogy is naturally
focused on gender studies, it is the additional focus on feminist
teaching practices that I refer to when using the term. And,
despite the many feminist critiques of patriarchal foundations
within critical pedagogy, for the purposes of this paper, I
am largely ignoring the distinctions.
My Story: Moving Between Worlds
I
entered graduate school with an interest in certain forms of
art, particularly performance and public ritual, as a means
of providing societal critique. I was influenced by modernist,
particularly avant-garde notions of art's transformative role
in challenging hegemony and the dehumanizing aspects of late
capitalist society. Much of this influence was rooted in Frankfurt
School conceptions of the "subversive truth of art"
in its ability to give "word, tone and image to that which
is silent, distorted, suppressed in the established reality"
(Marcuse cited in Held, 1980, p. 85) and I was critical of mass
culture as perpetrating "one-dimensional" consciousness
(Marcuse, 1964, p.63). My interest was in art forms that countered
media images and I had for some years been involved in promoting
alternative community-based, experimental, ethnic and feminist
art forms.
I
then became interested in understanding what was happening in
creative process itself and I immersed myself in a number of
intensive improvisational dance and theater experiences with
that focus. At the same time, I was also very much involved
in what felt like another world; largely made up of people in
education for social change with interests in Freirian education,
class and structural analysis, and critical educational theory.
In this world, I primarily found (at the time) neatly
packaged analyses of the structural roots of oppression (usually
generalized and not attending to difference) and an emphasis
on dialogue.
In
the other world of artists, dance/theater and movement/bodywork
professionals; analysis and theory were rarely acknowledged.
Instead what was emphasized was imagination, learning from impulses
within the body, and allowing the unexpected by defying logic
and celebrating the ability to not know--in the rational
sense--in order to allow for another way of knowing. And, although
much of my thinking and interests were rooted in critical approaches
to education, I found this other way of knowing to be deeply
meaningful. Somehow, letting go of the need to have the right
answer and adopt a more fluid, less rigid perspective--on anything--allowed
an openness to change that felt personally transformative. Since
I had begun to see the significance of this approach to knowledge
in my own life, it disturbed me that it was not often acknowledged
or used by educators for change. At a certain point, I began
to experience what I would now call a paradigm clash as I moved
between worlds.
As
my studies moved into postmodern and feminist critiques of critical
pedagogy, I began to see what seemed like a merging (somewhat)
of these worlds or perspectives. For example, the literature
began to look at matters of "heart and body" and emotions
(Laurie McDade in Giroux and Simon, 1989, p.7), intuition, creativity,
and the notion of multiple realities as important for critical
education. (e.g., Giroux and Simon, 1989; Gore, 1993; Lather,
1991). My hope is to contribute to this body of work, what I
see as the beginnings of a synthesis of perspectives. The following
is a summary of the (sometimes disparate) voices that informed
my thinking. This literature generally involves the intersections
of critical and feminist pedagogy, the study of creativity,
and postmodern thought.
Feminist Critiques of Critical Pedagogy
Feminists,
in particular, have critiqued what they perceive to be rationalist
and foundationalist assumptions underlying much of the literature
in critical pedagogy. There have been numerous debates about
this including charges of "separatism" (Giroux cited
in Lather, 1991, p. 45). However, the critiques have resonated
with my own experience and have provided me with a foundation
for developing pedagogy that includes embodied creative expression.
In "Why doesn't this feel empowering?: Working through
the repressive myths of critical pedagogy", Ellsworth provides
a critique of the "rationalist assumptions" underlying
the literature. She points to the repressive quality of the
abstract language and implicit "shoulds" of "empowerment",
"student voice", dialogue and "even the term
'critical'" (p. 298) that do not adequately attend to the
lived experience of people with different histories and needs,
thoughts, fears, pain, confusion, and pleasure.
Drawing
on her own teaching experience, Ellsworth (1989) challenges
critical pedagogy's reification of dialogue and critical reason
when dealing with issues of difference. She points out that
rational deliberation falsely assumes "universalized capacities
for language and reason" (p. 302). In addition, Ellsworth
emphasizes that what needs to be said may not come out of dialogue
or rational debate.
Calling
for what she terms a "pedagogy of the unknowable"
(1989, p. 318), Ellsworth recognizes the need for problematizing
the partial, self-interested, and contradictory knowledges that
each individual or group holds concerning its own 'side' of
an issue. According to Ellsworth, it is exactly these voices
that need expressionall the things that are "not being
said" but are being thought and felt (p. 316). She
advocates for an acceptance of partiality and limitation because
it is always present and "a recognition, contrary to all
Western ways of knowing and speaking, that all knowings are
partial, that there are fundamental things each of us cannot
know" (p. 310).
According
to Ellsworth, although critical pedagogy recognizes that teachers
can and should learn from students, it does not acknowledge
that there are many things that the teacher of a different race,
gender, class, and history can never know about students' experiences.
The acceptance of so much uncertainty and unknowability is risky
and engages issues of trust.
As
long as the literature on critical pedagogy fails to come to
grips with issues of trust, risk, and the operations of fear
and desire around such issues of identity and politics in the
classroom, their rationalistic tools will continue to fail to
loosen deep-seated, self-interested investments in unjust relations.
(p. 314)
Ellsworth
makes several suggestions for dealing with these issues. Among
these she recommends experimentation with alternative modes
of communication, classroom practices that acknowledge uncertainty
and multiplicity of knowledges, and, a recognition that the
results of these projects are always "unpredictable and
uncontrollable" (p. 320). Quoting Audre Lorde, she insists
that "'difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen
as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity
can spark like a dialectic'" (p. 319).
Creativity and Social Change
B.
Theorists and activists in various disciplines have pointed
to the importance of non-rational knowledge for change. Fantasy
and imagination, for example, have always been at the center
of feminist thinking (Morawski, 1988, p. 191). Without the ability
to imagine a world that is not male dominated, there would be
no feminist movement. Feminists also stress the importance of
creativity, body awareness, feelings and vulnerability for empowerment
(Morgen, 1983, Starhawk, 1987). Educators voice concern over
practices that employ an over-emphasis on left-brain critical
skills to the exclusion of a creative imagination that seeks
alternatives (Greene, 1990; Purpel, 1989; Walters, 1990). In
participatory research theory, the hierarchy of knowledge imposed
by dominant ideology is challenged in favor of renewed interest
in "people's knowledge" that includes ritual, magic
and intuition (Park, 1991). Futures research promotes creativity
and intuition as requirements for a scientific practice that
can deal with a world of rapid change (Domzalski and Southern,
1984). Peace educators argue against the predominance of technical
reason in favor of a "moral imagination" for understanding
intersubjective views (Rivage and Marguerite, 1987, p. 153).
However,
the process of creativity seems to defy definition. Literature
in the study and research of creativity is consistently ambiguous.
Eileen Pickard (1990) acknowledges that "because creativity
cannot be anticipated and controlled, it is notoriously difficult
to research" (p. 1). The literature therefore spans a wide
range of material. For example, Silvano Arieti (1976) delineates
social factors that contribute to the development of creativity.
Interactionist approaches identify elements of personality,
cognition and social psychology (Woodman and Schoendfeldt, 1990).
However, there is no single definition that fully explains the
experience, or rather experience s . No single kind of
experience is fully representative of creativity either.
In
Trefor Vaughan's 91987) article, "On not predicting an
outcome: Creativity as adventure", he suggests an "interplay
of opposites" to describe the creative process. Vaughan
discusses at length the inability to control the process of
creative work but he also acknowledges the need for concentration
which requires control. These kinds of tensions reveal what
Vaughan calls a "rebellious aspect" of creativity
in its resistance to manipulation (p. 303).
In
order to talk about creativity in connection to social change,
it is useful to look at two primary aspects of the creative
process; 1) allowing the unexpected and unknown, which
encompasses an openness to experience, willingness to risk,
flexibility, and an ability to act without predictable outcome,
and; 2) making connections and tolerating ambiguity which
includes an acceptance of contradiction, disorder and unconventionality
(Shallcross, 1981, p. 10).
Allowing the Unexpected and Unknown
Commitment
to process is a fundamental element in creativity, especially
in improvisation as I have learned myself.
The
Latin root of the word, "improvisation" is "improviso"
which means to "not see before" (Steinman, 1986, p.
77). Improvisation is an immediate, spontaneous art of the present,
requiring full attention and awareness in the moment. It is
not a refinement of technique but a turning inward and an ability
to listen to oneself, others, and one's surroundings on a very
deep level in order to allow the flow of intuitive responses.
It is not something that can be learned analytically or outside
of the moment of the experience.
The
strength of creative expression is in its on-going openness
to change, a resistance to control that allows originality and
transformation. Starhawk (1987) calls creation, "the ultimate
resistance, the ultimate refusal to accept things as they are.
For it is in creation that we encounter mystery: the depth of
things that cannot be wholly known or controlled" (p. 26).
As
in creative work, this commitment to processa kind of blind
faith is required in social change work since answers are not
knowable in advance. Feminist educators and others have recognized
the importance of providing students with situations for encountering
the unknown and even the unknowable; in doing so, requiring
students to trust in themselves and others with whom they are
working.
To
get students to think creatively, a teacher must convince them
that they should not try to figure out the 'right' thing to
say. Those most oriented toward politics seek the 'correct line',
while those oriented to the academy seek the 'correct answer'.
The effect is usually the same. Concentrating on what is 'right'
or expected stymies creative thought. I often create situational
assignments and give examples in my lectures where there is
clearly no right answer, but rather a number of options that
depend on deciding between different approaches and values instead
of finding the so-called truth. (Bunch, 1983, p. 259)
Promoting
knowledge that generates trust and allows for unplanned alternatives
is a way of beginning to deal with the painful mistrust
and competition for power that happens when dealing with issues
of difference.
Making Connections and Tolerating Ambiguity
One
of the most pervasive definitions of creativity includes discussion
of "connection-making processes" (Londner, 1991, p.
20). Londner cites fourteen writers who talk about creative
discovery as a process of connecting and combining, often seemingly
unsimilar entities (p. 20-21). Arthur Koestler (1964) calls
this intuitive process, "bisociation" (p. 35) and
sees it as the fundamental basis of creativity. Natalie Shainess
(1989, June) describes the connecting and combining elements
of creativity as fundamental in allowing "a greater sense
of the gestalt of things" (p. 127). Making new combinations
also requires an ability to mess up old ones which means tolerating
disorder, chaos and ambiguity (Thompson, 1991). These kinds
of experiences break down positivistic approaches to knowledge
because they embody contradiction and a balance of opposites
that cannot be controlled. The end result is always new and
not predictable. According to Koestler (1964) and others, creative
process is integral to any discovery. For this reason, "it
is an act of liberationthe defeat of habit by originality"
(p. 96).
Feminist Theory: Embracing Ambiguity.
There
is considerable scholarship in feminist theory that embraces
notions of ambiguity and uncertainty as legitimate ways of knowing.
Numerous writers (e.g., Crimshaw, 1986; Flax, 1990; Fraser and
Nicholsen, 1990, Gergen, 1988; Harding, 1990) reject theories
of an objective known social reality that can be studied without
reference to context, "the purposes, meanings and intentions
of those who are the object of study" (Crimshaw, p. 91).
New kinds of knowledge and theory are also needed for dealing
with the often ambiguous and sometimes paradoxical circumstance
of feminist struggle. In response to this complexity, feminists
encourage a tolerance for ambiguity and tentativeness. Jane
Flax (1990) suggests that we give up the "search for closure,
the right answer, or the motor of the history of male domination"
(p. 52-53) to expose the oppressive "roots of our needs
for imposing order and structure" (p. 56). According to
Flax, "if we do our work well, reality will appear even
more unstable, complex, and disorderly than it does now"
(p. 57).
We
live in both/and worlds full of paradox and uncertainty where
close inspection turns unities into multiplicities, clarities
into ambiguities, univocal simplicities into polyvocal complexities.
As but one example, upon close inspection, 'women' become fragmented,
multiple, and contradictory both across groups and within individuals"
(Riley cited in Lather, 1991, p.xvi).
A
philosophy of multiple truths brings with it a myriad of complications,
ambiguities, and paradoxes. Gatens advocates a new focus "on
becoming rather than being, on possibilities rather
than certainty, and on meaning or significance rather
than truth" (p. 194). She acknowledges the difficulty of
such focus and in fact sees the role of the feminist philosopher
as continually in the position of "posing riddles that
have no answer" (p. 197). In response to these difficulties,
J.G. Morawski (1988) calls for "deconstructive practices"
(p. 190) that can "enable reconstructive efforts"
(p. 190) in order to see the world differently in ways that
can include imagination and fantasy.
Postmodernism
and the Imagination
In
Richard Kearney's (1988) book, The wake of imagination: Toward
a postmodern culture, he cites Foucault's call to "'renounce
the will-to-knowledge' and be prepared instead to 'revere a
certain practice of stupidity'" (p. 271):
Foucault celebrates those visionary 'fools' and insane 'artists' who reveal
that other order of the unconscious which the modern
age of humanism has sought to confine within the order of the
same (ie. the familiar system of knowledge). It is the
madness of art which, he suggests, may finally deliver us from
the modern tyranny of man. (p. 271)
In
the nature of creativity and art lies an effective resistance
against modernist notions of certainty, 'true' representation,
universal maxims, progress and systematic logic, and general
scientistic forms of knowing. Most elements of creative process,
like tolerating ambiguity and letting go of controlled outcomes,
are not compatible with these humanist views. Kearney looks
to the creative imagination as "a fitting response"
(p. 363) to the nihilistic dangers of the postmodern condition.
But he stresses that we must "radically reinterpret the
role of the imagination as a relationship between the self and
the other" (p. 363).
If
the self is a socially created construct, then the image s/he
creates is a construct of a constructan image of an imagewhich,
according to Kearney, therefore falls into an endless "parodic
play of empty imitation", mirrors of mirrors (p. 361).
However, the "ethical demands" (p. 361) one is presented
with in confrontation with the 'other',
breaks through the horizontal surface of mirror-images and, outfacing the
void, reintroduces a dimension of depth. The face of the other
resists assimilation to the dehumanizing processes of commodity
fetishism. Contesting the cult of imitation without origin,
it presents us with an image which does indeed relate to something:
the ethical existence of the other as an other the inalienable
right to be recognized as a particular person whose very otherness
refuses to be reduced to a mimicry of sameness. (p. 361)
And
so, an ethical imagination seeks to imagine a situation "otherwise"
(p. 364) in ethical response to the other. According to Kearney,
this is the liberatory power of the imagination and creativity
to imagine a world otherwise and to seek alternatives out of
a caring relationship to others. But, he warns, in contrast
to a humanist view, this imagination, "no matter how ethical,
needs to play"..."to ensure it is ethical in a liberating
way, in a way which animates and enlarges our response to the
other rather than cloistering us off in a dour moralism of resentment
and recrimination" (p. 366). As in the character of the
fool and the clown, who represent a "both/and" as
opposed to "either/or" logic, a creative imagination
that is playful, able to laugh at itself "when the controlling
censorious ego is off-guard" and "having the humility
to go on playing even when its consciously intended meaning
is humiliated" (p. 368) subverts the humanist master narratives.
For Kearney, an ethical imagination is a "poetical imagination"
(p. 368):
A creative letting go of the drive for possession, of the calculus of means
and ends. It allows the rose--in the words of the mystic Silesius--to
exist without why. Poetics is the carnival of possibilities
where everything is permitted, nothing censored. It is the willingness
to imagine oneself in the other person's skin, to see things
as if one were, momentarily at least, another. (p. 368)
And
so, playful, creative imaginationwith an ethical focus on othersis
a postmodern program for change.
The
following is a one attempt at designing a playful pedagogy directed
at the imagination.
Project and Rationale: Attempting a Postmodern Feminist Pedagogy
Project Description
The
project provided an opportunity for teenagers in a small low-income
community in western Massachusetts to dramatize skits about
what was important to themand to then broadcast those skits
live on public television. The project also included an interactive
component in which viewers were encouraged to call-in their
responses to the skits. Dramatizations were then improvised
differently according to these responses.
The
initial purpose of the project was two-fold: 1) I wanted to
create an educational experience that provided teenagers with
a public voice about their own concerns and issues; and, 2)
I wanted to design the experience in a way that addressed feminist
and postmodern critiques of rationalistic and essentialist approaches
to pedagogy. Very generally, I wanted to address postmodern
challenges to rational knowledge, representation, and universalized
meta-theories for change; and, to embrace multiple truth
perspectives. I tried to do this by creating an opportunity
for participants and viewers in a particular community to publicly
voice their (many) perspectives on issues presented, and in
ways not limited to dialogue or rational debate.
The
teenagers met for weekly rehearsals to learn theater games and
improvisation skills that eventually enabled them to create
performances. The subject of the dramatic presentations were
identified by the youth and then broadcast live on public access
television. Parents, youth, and other community members were
encouraged to call-in their own ideas concerning the issues
presented, including thoughts about what should or could be
done about the situation. A counselor/interviewer took telephone
calls about these suggestions and the theater group then improvised
new scenarios accordinglyin order to actually try-out the ideas
suggested. Discussion concerning the viability of those alternatives
followed dramatizations.
The
project was intended to provide teens with a forum for articulating
their stories, their reality, their needsto have a public voice
through the television/theater medium. For the first four months,
I directed theater games and exercises that led to improvisations.
Eventually the teenagers developed and directed their own skits.
In the second year, the teenagers, to some extent, ran much
of the program themselves.
Theoretical Rationale for the Project Design Based in Postmodern
Theory
In
order to talk about the project in the context of postmodern
theory and pedagogy, I refer to Pauline Rosenau's (1992) overview
in her recent book, Post-modernism and the social sciences:
Insights, inroads, and intrusions.
Rosenau
distinguishes between two general postmodern approaches "skeptical"
and "affirmative". The affirmative postmodernists
are more optimistic and,
oriented toward process. They are either open to positive political action
(struggle or resistance) or content with the recognition of
visionary, celebratory personal non-dogmatic projects....Most
affirmatives seek a philosophical and ontological practice that
is nondogmatic, tentative, and nonideological. These post-modernists
do not, however, shy away from affirming an ethic, making normative
choices, and striving to build issue-specific political coalitions
(p. 16).
Since
my interest in postmodernism lies within the "affirmative"
perspective, the following comments reflect what Rosenau describes
as tenets of affirmative postmodernism only.
What
is generally most attractive to me about postmodern thought
is its transient elusiveness that is so much like knowledge
derived out of aesthetic and creative experience. Lather (1991)
draws on the influence of French postmodern feminists to assert
a "constantly moving subjectivity" in terms of her
own thoughts and writing (p. xix). The following overview, accordingly,
reflects not hard and fast rules but general trends of postmodern
thought that have influenced my own thinking and work.
Critiques of Rationalism and Teachers' Knowledge Authority
Postmodern
feminist pedagogy critiques solely rationalistic and dialogic
approaches to learning. Efforts are called for to deconstruct
the knowledge-authority of the teacher and start with where
the students are at in ways that encourage "play, fantasy,
and desire" (Lather, 1991, p. 39)and to avoid imposing
a teacher-centered 'critically-correct' perspective.
By
allowing the choice of topics and issues to come out of improvisations,
I not only wanted participants to choose the content (breaking
down the knowledge-authority of me, the teacher), but to do
so by drawing on other kinds of knowledge beyond critical inquiry,
such as intuition, impulse, and visceral knowing. In addition,
the improvisational process allowed resistance to be voiced
in a way that was playful and safe. I particularly wanted participants
to feel safe challenging me, and to avoid teacher-pleasing as
a primary motivation.
The
use of television was also a way of starting where the teenagers
were at, and the community as well. This seemed to be the real
draw of the project initially, for both participants and audience,
since watching television is what they already do and enjoy.
To acknowledge and use this in my design was an endeavor to
recognize their 'desires'.
Patti
Lather (1991) cites Foucault's warning "'of the violence
of a position that sides against those who are happy in their
ignorance'" and she suggests that we reduce this violence
by "focusing less on disturbing cultural self-satisfaction"
and more on the "frustrations" that "already
penetrate" (p. 141). I wanted to use the television media
because that is what seemed to give these individuals pleasure,
but to use it in a way that focused on their "frustrations."
Challenging Universal Truth Claims
Postmodern
theory challenges "grand narratives" and overarching
theories, advocating instead, attention to local and specific
truths (Rosenau, 1992, p. 52). Feminists also call for practices
that are centered on the individual, daily, and routine experiences
of women, the "knowledge from below" (Fonow and Cook,
1991, p. 6). Postmodern feminists talk about a returning or
decentered subject, "focused not on the 'Great Men' of
history, but rather, on daily life at the margins....[s/he]
"seeks to construct a new identity by appealing to life,
personal freedom, and creativity....at once, sexual, emotional,
political and spiritual"...."in touch with 'impulse
and process'" (Rosenau, 1992, p. 57-59) but not at the
center of anything.
Lather
(1991) refers to feminism as "the quantum physics of post-modernism"
(p. 27), borrowing the metaphor from Kroker and Cook to highlight
feminism's political contribution to postmodern thought and
according resistance to 'death of the subject' discourses.
Just
as quantum physics opened up another world beyond 'Newtonian
linearity, subject-object duality and universal covering laws',
feminism has likewise displaced the original notions of postmodernism
into a political discourse by utilizing uncertainty, contradiction,
and multiplicity to the purpose of, still, creating action and
solidarity. (p. 27)
Literature
in critical and feminist pedagogy urges teaching practices that
allow different realities to be simultaneously demonstrated
(e.g., Ellsworth, 1989; Lather, 1991). In this way, resistance
can be voiced without presuming 'mastery' of an assumed known
or indisputable truth. This encompasses an attempt to replace
dichotomous either/or thinking with an acceptance of multiple
realitiesa "both/and" approach to knowledge and learning.
Lather suggests teaching practices that allow differing realities
to be "performed" and embraced, rather than debated.
The emphasis is on presentation instead of winning or losing
an argument (Lather, 1991, p. 150).
I
tried to create a setting that allowed for contradiction, complexity,
and multiple perspectives to be expressed by using theater techniques
largely based in the work of theater educator, Augusto Boal.
Boal (1979), author of Theater of the Oppressed, develops
theater as an embodied intuitive approach to social change that
encourages multiple perspectives and multiple identities. This
is best exemplified in the technique he calls, "Forum Theater",
the technique we used in the broadcasts.
In
Forum Theater, scenes are improvised about the participants'
daily lives; individuals from the audience then jump into the
scene on impulse. This happens when someone thinks s/he has
a good idea (again, from gut feelings and impulse) about how
a specific character's actions and behavior could improve in
order to change the situation favorably. The individual replaces
that character and plays the scene again. In this way, the improvisations
become "rehearsals for action" as Boal would say,
and all the participants become what he calls "spect
actors ". Many perspectives are demonstrated. There
is no single right or wrong course of action although solutions
are evaluated.
In
the original Forum design, everyone participates in both spectator
and actor roles and all have the opportunity to literally rehearse
(instead of talking about) change in their lives. This was,
of course, not possible; the television audience obviously could
not join the actors. But, when viewers called in ideas, the
teen actors tried them out in the scene. By having the scenarios
acted out, instead of only discussed, I hoped a fuller understanding
of perspectives would be encompassed. And, although I was aware
that not all perspectives could be understood by everyone, I
wanted to allow for their expression in keeping with Ellsworth's
call for giving voice to all "sides" (p. 316).
Challenging
Representation.
Modernist
assumptions concerning representation assume that "words,
images, meanings, and symbols" have some degree of fixed
meaning in that "everybody understands them more or less
the same way" (Rosenau, 1992, p. 96). Postmodernists dispute
these assumptions and point to ways in which words and images
have been used to distort and manipulate. If all meanings are
particular and truths are multiple, one cannot accurately and
consistently represent another's words or meaning. In response
to these problems, some have advocated for greater public participation
where people can publicly speak for themselves. However, not
only is public space increasingly difficult to find but Ellsworth
and others have also pointed out that simply providing a space
for speech does not ensure equal opportunities for speech.
I
intended for the theater/television project to be one way of
creating a public space that could provide more equal opportunities.
I thought to accomplish this by getting the participants familiar
with responding on "intuitive impulse", and in doing
so, to overcome some of the unequal chances for "speech
acts" (Narayan, 1989, p. 261) presented by social difference.
In
addition, the television program was presented by a small local
group for a specific local audience in an effort to avoid some
of the misrepresentation that would undoubtedly occur in a wider
endeavor. There was no one speaking for and about the teens'
problems. They spoke for themselves. The responses from the
community were immediate and direct also. In this way, I tried
to create a public space for exchange through the cable television
and theater medium.
Deconstructing Humanist Views of Time, Space and History.
Postmodernists
deconstruct humanist views of time, space, and history and they
question linear conceptions of time and history viewed as progress.
The focus is turned to local and decentered 'micro-narratives'
instead of "grand meta-theories of progress" (Rosenau,
1992, p. 66). In addition, they dispute the "superiority
of the present over the past" and rekindle new interest
in "all that modernity has left behind" including
tradition, the sacred, intuition, extreme emotion, personal
experience, custom, magic, and mystical experience (p. 6). Postmodernists
also point out that space and time can be manipulated by institutions
and the media to hide power while effectively restraining and
controlling the people they "'supposedly serve'" (p.
70).
By
using community cable television, I wanted to appropriate electronic
media in order to concentrate on the actual lives of teens in
the community and to provide opportunities for voice. The interactive
component was also meant to break out of conventional time and
space boundaries. And, by choosing not to do the project in
the schools (this had been an option), I tried to create an
alternative space for expression, one that included an element
of ritual. The theater process exercises, conducted weekly in
a theater auditorium outside the school, were facilitated in
a way that was decidedly outside traditional institutional practices.
For example, activities included walking and dancing around
the space, experimenting with how perspective changes with shifts
in focus, ritually placing objects of significance around a
lighted candle, improvising with these objects without words,
and using bodies to "sculpt" images of feelings and
events. I hoped these kinds of out-of-the-ordinary experiences
which broke with traditional time and space constrictions would
inspire expression.
Peter
McLaren (1988) talks about an ideal teacher model, the "teacher-as-liminal-servant"
(p. 164), who consciously approaches teaching as a social construction
of rituals. Liminality is a concept anthropologists use to describe
a ritual rite of passage in certain cultures - a sort of in-between-time
- when the old is over but the new has not yet begun. Values,
customs and symbols no longer carry their earlier meaning; it
is a "nowhere" state that Timothy Thompson (1991)
likens to the "incubation" period in creative process
when everything is uncertain and ambiguous. This 'space' allows
for the brewing of something new, although the creation has
not yet emerged (p. 47). According to McLaren, this leaving
of the old but not yet new uncertain space, is the ritual space
that teachers-as-liminal-servants should be creating in their
classrooms.
I
was trying to create this kind of ritual space in the project.
I wanted the regimented familiarity of institutional time and
space structures to be undermined and replaced with new rituals,
including rituals of resistance, that involved participants
fully, bodily, and impulsively in the experience.
Preliminary Observations and Next Steps
Very
generally, the program seemed to be quite successful in terms
of my intentions and there were clearly indications of students'
exhibiting empowered voices. Since the program was one of liberatory
intent, I was naturally interested in what the teenagers felt
and expressed about themselves in terms of power, both individually
and as a social group. I looked at themes that emerged out of
dramatic improvisations, and in what seemed to be expressed
about participants' feelings of self-efficacy, power and authority.
With the young women particularly, I noticed a lot communicated
about stress and depression and not feeling heard in their daily
lives. In addition, as rehearsals progressed, I became interested
in the power dynamics going on in the project itself, particularly
between myself and the teen participants. It seemed that the
playful atmosphere allowed not only intimacy but also a space
within which resistance to me could be expressed in a safe and
creative way. I began to notice what might be called a "creative,
productive resistance" to authority.
These
initial observation prompted a research interest that will examine,
1) what the teen women in the project expressed about themselves
concerning powerboth individually and as a social group, and,
2) an analysis (my own "reading") of what was happening
during the project itself in terms of power, particularly in
regard to voice and resistance as expressions of power. Having
carried out an attempt at doing pedagogy informed by feminist
postmodern thought, I have become interested in what happened
in terms of voice and power and also to look at what was going
on in regard to these assumptions. What were participants able
to express about power and authority in this process? What,
in addition, may have been silenced by the process? What
was going on between myself and the students, according to my
perceptions, according to theirs? In other words, how well did
the project in fact attend to feminist postmodern critiques?
Although the research analysis is beyond the scope of this paper,
I mention it here because I see this analysis as a necessary
component of postmodern pedagogy. My immediate impressions concerning
its success are not sufficient.
Lather
and others have suggested that teachers de-emphasize the focus
on "more effective transmission strategies" and instead
"analyze the discourses available to us" (Lather,
1991, p. 143). Lather insists that, above all, we closely scrutinize
not only what we do but also the position from which we do it,
and that we foreground the "relation between knower and
known, teacher and taught, from an embodied perspective"
(p. 143) Like Lather, Luke and Gore (1992) also insist on looking
at the "unexamined assumptions underlying critical pedagogy"
(p. 1) and they warn against "single-strategy pedagogies
of empowerment" (p 7).
Gore
(1993) uses a Foucaultian analysis to deconstruct her own pedagogical
"regimes of truth" (p. xii). Drawing on Foucault's
warning that there are "no inherently liberatory practices"
(p. 58), she maintains that it is always necessary to question
our own practices. According to both Luke and Gore (1992), "a
poststructuralist feminist epistemology accepts that knowledge
is always provisional, open-ended and relational" (p. 7).
In
keeping with these concerns, the program design includes plans
for deconstructing the teaching "regime" (Gore, 1993,
p. 63) I have created based on methodology suggested by Gore
in her book, The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feminist
discourses as regimes of truth. Using Gore's methodology
as a springboard, my data analysis will deconstruct the pedagogy
and examine the power relations exhibited in the project. The
deconstruction will also encompass feminist critiques of Boal
theater process. This information will hopefully provide more
insight into what it means or doesn't mean to create a postmodern
pedagogy and what directions are called for.
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