Thursday January 7th 2016
Seminal World Literature
John Keenan
John.keenan@newman.ac.uk
By definition, the thinker is neither entirely
outside of the situation in question nor
entirely enmeshed within it without recourse
or options. [...] Thinking is the form given to
that motion of detachment, reflection and reproblematization.
(Rabinow and Rose, 2009, The Essential Foucault : Introduction, 14)
[Thought] is what allows one to step back
from this way of acting or reacting, to
present it to oneself as an object of thought
and to question it as to its meaning, its
conditions, and its goals. Thought is
freedom in relation to what one does, the
motion by one detaches oneself from it,
establishes it as an object, and reflects on it
as a problem.
(Foucault Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 117)
problematisation
critical dialogue
voice
Curriculum subject
Seminal world literature, written in English
introduction
1. Establish that the English National Curriculum used to have ‘other cultures’ in it but it
stopped in 2010
2. Establish that this is in spite of the figures about an increasingly multicultural society
3. Look at the nature of what has replaced it: seminal world literature
4. Problematise – what is culture/race?
5. (Later today) add in the dominant cultural force today
National Curriculum
1988 Education Reform Act
The National Curriculum was designed to fulfil four main purposes:
1. to ensure that every child, irrespective of social background, culture, race,
gender, differences in ability and disabilities received the same education
entitlement
2. to set down standards against which every child’s progress could be
measured
3. to ensure continuity between one school and the next
4. to establish an education system that could be clearly understood by all
http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2009-CSFC-national-curriculum.pdf
http://www.student-support.co.uk/parents-carers/what-is-the-national-curriculum/
3.2f
texts that enable pupils to appreciate the qualities and distinctiveness of
texts from different cultures and traditions
1.3
Key Concept, Cultural Understanding
https://www.books.rm.com/media/53867/RM-Books-KS3-New-English-Curriculum.pdf
1999 Macpherson Report
"National curriculum aimed at valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism,"
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/29/gove-history-curriculum-more-equality
2011 Census
20% of people in England and Wales identify themselves as being
other than ‘White British’
Black and minority ethnic (BME) children make up 23.2% of state-run
secondary schools
27.6% of those at primary level.
/
http://www.racecard.org.uk/education/whose-history-whose-story-is-our-school-history-curriculum-fit-for-purpose
Total number of pupils whose first language is other than English 1997-2010
1,000,000
900,000
800,000
700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
Total number of pupils whose first language is other than…
Source: NALDEC website 2012 http://www.naldic.org.uk/research-and-information/eal-statistics
2010
2011
EAL Good Practice
Engagement with pupils’ social, cultural, linguistic, religious
and ethnic background and traditions
(Bourne, J. & Flewitt, R. 2002)
White Paper 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-praises-rigorous-engaging-and-tough-national-curriculum-following-michael-goves-8694758.html
White Paper 2010
We are in a global race
H G Wells
History is a race between education and catastrophe
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-praises-rigorous-engaging-and-tough-national-curriculum-following-michael-goves-8694758.html
KS4
a series of “whole texts in detail”, including two complete plays by
Shakespeare.
They must also read:
• Romantic poetry by such poets as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Shelley, Byron and Keats;
• A 19th century novel
• Poetry of the First World War
• A selection of British fiction, poetry or drama since 1918
• Seminal world literature, written in English
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/seminal
KS4
read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through:

reading a wide range of high-quality, challenging, classic literature and
extended literary non-fiction, such as essays, reviews and journalism. This writing
should include whole texts. The range will include:
 at least one play by Shakespeare
 works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries
 poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry

re-reading literature and other writing as a basis for making comparisons

choosing and reading books independently for challenge, interest and
•enjoyment.
Seminal
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/seminal
Written in English
How the colonies have mastered the mother language
Response to critiques
http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/eng
lish/specifications/AQA-8702-SP-2015V1-1.PDF
According to OCR, pupils will be able to choose
from modern texts such as Anita and Me by
Meera Syal, Animal Farm by George Orwell, An
Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley and DNA by
Dennis Kelly.
For the first time, it also includes Never Let Me
Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born British
novelist.
OCR’s selection of 19th century prose includes
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pride
and Prejudice by Jane Austen, War of the Worlds
by HG Wells, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Pupils must choose one Shakespeare play from
Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice,
Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing
January 2006, Gordon Brown
‘liberty, fairness and responsibility’
‘British tolerance, the British belief in liberty and the British sense of fair play’
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3
80595/SMSC_Guidance_Maintained_Schools.pdf
Let us examine how Britain lives up to these definitions of its core values.
Historically, there is nothing much to substantiate Mr Brown’s claims. When
children were taken from the workhouses and marched up to the Lancashire
factories in the mid-19th century, was that ‘liberty’? Or when children on the streets
were picked up and shipped out to the colonies as cheap labour? Or when political
activists in Britain were exiled and those in the colonies jailed? …just how many
millions of enslaved Africans did Britain transport across the Atlantic and Indian
Oceans?
http://www.irr.org.uk/news/teaching-black-history-the-struggle-continues
Voice
We should have a national curriculum which values and includes
literature from all cultures.
‘race matters because teachers bring
to the classroom interpretations of
students and their communities, and
their location within a hierarchical
society, that are informed heavily by
assumptions about race and
ethnicity’
Sleeter, 2005: 243
How White Teachers Construct Race chapter 16 of Race, Identity and Representation in Education (2nd
edition) Cameron mccarthy, warren crichlow, greg dimitriadis and nadine dolby, nw york: routledge
The problems of race
Labelling
clothes
food
taboo
gender roles
culture
family
attitudes
beliefs
Identities are never unified and in late
modern times, increasingly fragmented
and fractured; never singular but
multiply constructed across different,
often intersecting and antagonistic
discourses, practices and positions
Stuart Hall
A paradox confronts anyone who tries to understand the perplexing and
persistent phenomena of ‘race and racism in Europe today. On the one
hand, in genetic terms, the physical or biological differences between
groups defined as ‘races’ have been shown to be trivial. No persuasive
empirical case has been made for ascribing common psychological,
intellectual or moral capacities or characteristics to individuals on the
basis of skin colour or physiognomy. Certainly, no good ethical case has
been made to justify differential or inequitable treatment on such
arbitrary grounds. And yet, on the other hand, it is all too clear that
racism still remains a widespread, and possibly intensifying, fact of
many people’s lives. Reiterating that ‘there is no such thing as “race”’
offers only the frail reassurance that there shouldn’t be a problem. It
cannot deal with the problems that do exist, because it fails to see them
for that they are.
Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005
One of the most telling strands in the antiracist critique of multiculturalism in the
1970s and 1980s, for example, was that it suffered from an overemphasis on culture.
We would give that a slightly different gloss: multiculturalism certainly as it was
translated into educational and political practice, often conflated the questions of
culture with a particular understanding of ethnicity. The positive achievement of this
tradition was that it allowed difference communities and their claims over their
members to be acknowledged and valued with a new, official respect. Its drawback
was that a multicultural celebration of diversity tended to reproduce the ‘saris,
samosas and steel bands syndrome’. That is, by focusing on the superficial
manifestations of culture, multiculturalism failed to address the continuing hierarchies
of power and legitimacy that still existed among these different centres of cultural
authority. By exoticising them, it even colluded in their further disenfranchisement.
Despite its apparent relativism, in practice, it defined alternative centres of cultural
authority primarily in terms of the difference from the norm of English culture, not in
their uniqueness and their discontinuities.
Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005
Mixed heritage pupils
Demographic data reveal that mixed heritage pupils are the largest growing minority ethnic group across England as a
whole. The 168,901 mixed heritage pupils make up 2.5% of the national school age population with large regional
variations. 22,327 or 7.3% of Inner London school children are classified as mixed heritage. The largest group nationally
are those of White/Black Caribbean background who number 60,635 and make up 0.9% of the school age population.
The analysis of performance data for mixed heritage pupils shows that the attainment of White/Black Caribbean pupils is
below average, the attainment of White/Black African pupils is similar to average in primary schools and slightly below
average in secondary schools, and the attainment of White/Asian pupils is above average.
Part of the reason for these differences appears to be associated with differences in relative levels of deprivation, as
measured by the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals. The proportion of White/Black Caribbean and
White/Black African pupils eligible for free school meals is around twice the national average. For White/Asian pupils, the
proportion is closer to the national average.
However, this is not the full picture. When differences in free school meal eligibility are controlled for by comparing the
performance of pupils not eligible for free school meals, White/Asian pupils still perform above average as do White/Black
African girls. In contrast, White/Black Caribbean pupils and White/Black African boys in secondary schools underachieve.
The case study research suggested that like their Black Caribbean peers, White/Black Caribbean pupils’ achievement in
school is negatively affected by low socio-economic status, low teacher expectations and behavioural issues related to
peer group pressure. However, these take on a specific form for White/Black Caribbean pupils. In the case of this group,
low teacher expectations are linked to stereotypical views of the negative effects of fragmented homes and identity
confusion on account of their mixed heritage. These can interact with low academic aspirations on the part of some
White/Black Caribbean pupils linked to peer group pressure in a mutually reinforcing downward cycle. Peer group
pressures are exacerbated by name-calling and forms of exclusion by both White and Black peers related once again to
their mixed heritage. These two barriers can lead to the adoption of extreme, rebellious behaviour by White/Black
Caribbean pupils. There are factors operating in schools and LEAs that affect the broader educational needs of all mixed
heritage pupils (White/Black Caribbean, White/Black African and White/Asian) i.e. needs relating to having their identities
recognised and understood in the curriculum as part of the overall diversity of society and to be protected from racist
abuse. These factors include the ‘invisibility’ at the level of LEA and school policy of mixed heritage pupils including the
lack of a common terminology to describe them and their absence from policies relating to race equality; the failure to
monitor and set targets for mixed heritage pupils; and, the absence of mixed heritage identities from the curriculum and in
the role models present in schools. Whereas these factors may not serve as a barrier to achievement for all mixed
heritage pupils, they form part of a climate in which schools are unable to effectively respond to the barriers to
achievement facing White/Black Caribbean pupils noted above.
Race, Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 2005
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identified the subject
Considered the situation through researched facts
Official sources
Experts
Voice – dialogue
…theory
The Discourse of Neoliberalism
Michel Foucault
THE POSITIONS TO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED
class
age group
ethnicity
gender
Labelled
Stereotyped
When we accept the
given discourse, we
stereotype ourselves
interpellation
Louis Althusser
The neoliberal discourse
None are more
hopelessly
enslaved than
those who
falsely believe
they are free
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A discursive framework
A paradigm
“stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values,
techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given
community”
Kuhn 1970 cited in Aldoory 2005: 669
‘The discursive formation is not therefore a developing totality, with its own
dynamism or inertia, carrying with it, in an unformulated discourse, what it does
not say, what it has not yet said, or what contradicts it at that moment; it is not a
rich, difficult germination, it is a distribution of gaps, voids, absences, limits,
divisions’
Gilbert 2013
Discourses are
‘governed by analyzable rules’
Foucault 1972 cited in Leitch 2007: 264
Discourses inform:
What can be said
Who can speak
The positions from which they can speak
Leitch 2007: 264
Neoliberal Discourse
Other cultural discourses
Keynesian
Communism
Feudalism
Modernism
Capitalism
Tribal
Neoliberalism
‘What is private is necessarily good
and what is public is necessarily bad’
Apple 2000: 59
Hegemony
becomes unquestionable
Hegemonic truths of neoliberalism
Freedom
Equality
Fairness
Choice
The End of History
Fukuyama
‘what is most strikingly novel about neoliberal theory
is its commitment to certain kinds of highly
individualistic egalitarianism, promoting programs
aimed at widening property ownership and
distribution and securing equality of access to the
competitive labour market for members of
disadvantaged social groups, irrespective of their
class or ethnic background’
Gilbert 2013
‘Put simply, neoliberalism, from the moment of its inception, advocates a
programme of deliberate intervention by government in order to encourage
particular types of entrepreneurial, competitive and commercial behaviour in
its citizens, ultimately arguing for the management of populations with the
aim of cultivating the type of individualistic, competitive, acquisitive and
entrepreneurial behaviour which the liberal tradition has historically
assumed to be the natural condition of civilised humanity, undistorted by
government intervention. This is the key difference between classical
liberalism and neoliberalism: the former presumes that, left to their own
devices, humans will naturally tend to behave in the desired fashion. By
contrast the latter assumes that they must be compelled to do so by a
benign but frequently directive state. This, according to neoliberals, is partly
because a certain habitual tendency towards collectivism, if left unchecked,
will lead commercial producers, workers, service-providers, managers and
government officials to act only in their selfish corporate interests.’
Gilbert 2013
Adam Curtis
The Trap
https://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/bbc-the-trap-what-happened-to-our-dream-of-freedom-f-kyou-buddy-episode-1#watch-film
47mins
http://freedocumentaries.org/documentary/bbc-the-trap-what-happened-to-our-dream-of-freedom-thelonely-robot-episode-2
Fear of collectivism
Fear of beliefs not connected to capital
Fear of inequality
‘The group that is best able to “fix” meaning
and articulate it for its own interests is the
group best able to maintain and reproduce
relations of power.’
Aldoory 2005: 676
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
• https://youtu.be/DBOINEXp0B8
problematise
Ideology is not imposed on ourselves…we
enjoy our ideology. To step out of our
ideology, it hurts…
Zizek
‘Hegemony is a process that results in leaks and
fissures and blokes such as Goodson
sometimes fall through the cracks if they are
lucky or if…their resistance is put into the
service of their own empowerment rather than
made complicitous with their own oppression’
(in Goodson 1992: viii))
Culture is always a struggle and ‘in process’
(Hall 1988).
Power
‘The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge
and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces
effects of power. The university hierarchy is only the
most visible…and least dangerous form of this
phenomenon. One has to be really naïve to imagine
that the effects of power linked to knowledge have
their culmination in university hierarchies. Diffused,
entrenched and dangerous, they operate in other
places than in the person of the old professor’
Foucault 1980 cited in Leitch 2007: 265
Garner 2010 405-9
‘We know that we don’t like neoliberalism, didn’t vote for it, and
object in principle to its exigencies: but we recognise also that
unless we comply with it, primarily in our workplaces and in our
labour-market behaviour, then we will be punished (primarily by
being denied the main consolation for participation in neoliberal
culture: access to a wide range of consumer goods), and will be
unlikely to find ourselves inhabiting a radically different social
terrain. This paradox is made bearable by a crucial feature of
neoliberal ideology itself: the insistent belief that it is our private,
personal beliefs and behaviours which define our ‘true’ selves,
whereas our public behaviour can be tolerated precisely to the
extent that it is not invested with any emotional significance.’
Gilbert 2013: 13