A Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance Theory Author(s): Kathleen Knight Abowitz Reviewed work(s): Source: American Educational Research Journal,

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AmericanEducationalResearch Journal Winter2000, Vol.37, No. 4, pp. 877-907

A PragmatistRevisioning of Resistance Theory

Kathleen KnightAbowitz
Miami University Resistancetheorists education urge educatorsto evaluatethe moral and in in calls politicalpotentialof opposition schools.Thescholarship resistance of us to examine oppositional acts of studentsin schoolsettingsas moraland Resistance political expressions oppression. of theorizingoverthepast several decades has not, however,adequatelyexploredthe idea that resistanceis communication;that is, a means of signaling and constructingnew meanings, and of buildinga discoursearoundparticularproblems exclusionor of inequality.In thispaper, I usepragmatisttheoriesof inquiryand communication to interpretand critique resistancetheoriesin education. Using (1946), I presenta theoretDeweyand Bentley'snotion of transactionalism icalframework into school opposition. resisforfuture inquiry Interpreting tance theorythrougha pragmatistlens leads to a morerelationalreadingof and can promoteschool-based resistance, inquiry(ratherthan simpleavoidance orpunishment) directedtowardacts of resistancein schools.

KNIGHT is KATHLEEN ABowITZ an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, 350 McGuffey Hall, MiamiUniversity, Oxford, OH 45056. Her areas of specialization are philosophy of education, political theory, ethics, and cultural studies in education.

Abowitz

esistance theories, emerging in the last several decades from neoexaminations Marxist, neo-Gramscian, postmodern,and post-structural of power struggles,have raised importantideas for educators.Resistance theorists' have attemptedto explain why the opposition of some groups and where againstothersis politically morallynecessaryin social institutions mainstream ideologies dominate to discipline participants and social norms. Resistance,in these theoreticalformations,is differentiated from mere oppositionto authority, resistanceis understoodto contribhowever; of ute, in some way, to progressivetransformation the environmentby atto undermine"thereproduction oppressivesocial structures of and tempting social relations" (Walker,1985, p. 65). Resistanceis widely defined as opposition with a social and politicalpurpose. Relatingto schools, resistance theories attemptto explain the ways in which working class and other of marginalized youth struggleagainstthe norms or authority schools that often seem to work againsttheirperceivedinterests.In educationalcircles, the introduction the concept resistancein the1970shas produceda veriof tablelandslideof scholarship. Theoriesof resistancehave contributed the to of knowledge in social theoryconcerningthe issues and meaningsof body individuals groupsin or oppositionand conflictpresentwhen marginalized schools speak or act out regarding theirstatus,treatment, relativeposition or in the institution. Resistancetheoryin education,taken as a whole with its many nuanced and sometimescontradictory conclusions,has done a commendablejob in not only exposing the subtle and overt exclusions within theoretical for schoolingprocesses,but in formulating explanations why and how individuals groupsresistoppressiveor threatening and strucsituations, tural arrangements, and ideologies (Fine, 1991; Fordham& Ogbu, 1985; Giroux,1983a,1983b;Hall&Jefferson,1993;Hebdige,1979;McLaren, 1999; McRobbie, 1991;Willis,1977). Whatremainsto be understoodin more depth, however, are the ways in which resistance,as a communicative is interpreted educatorsas act, by well as researchers, and accordinglyassigned meaning within school setin tings.As an impetusof social and politicaltransformation a school, resistance communicates;that is, it is a means of signaling, generating,and Albuildingdialogue aroundparticular power imbalancesand inequalities. though there are some notable exceptions that I will discuss later in this article,educationaltheoristswho have studiedresistancehave not regarded or inquiredinto the communicative potentialof resistance.In this paper, I use Dewey's theories of inquiryand communicationto re-interpret resistance theories,with the aim of showing how resistancecan be understood of and throughtransactionalist understandings communication social life. between self-action,interacDewey and Bentley(1949) distinguished tion, and transactionas three modes of inquiry:Self-actiondescribesthe state in which things are viewed as acting under their own power, and interaction refersto the state in which a thing is balancedagainstanother in causalinterconnection. Transaction the conditionof seeing things is thing not in isolation,nor in termsof their"true" natureor essence, but in termsof

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Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance

status as points of their systemic context, their tentativeand preliminary their places in an organic world of expanding space and time. inquiry, Dewey and Bentley used past explanationsof scientific phenomenon to illustratethese distinctions.Druids believed spiritswere in trees, or that creamwas turnedsour by fairies;self-actionwas the view thatunderstood these objectsas possessingan "essence" inherentnature,whetherthatbe or or Newtonianmechanical magical,spiritual, metaphysical, "natural." physics in was interactional thatit explainedhow the actionand reactionof objects areequaland opposed-space and timewere treatedas fixed,particles were treatedas unalterable. wroteDewey, took a transactional Einstein, approach, to bringingspace, time, and particlevariability bear on the problem:"the [italicsadded],when researchrequiresit, of what beforehad seeing together been seen in separations held severallyapart... to breakdown the old and rigidities:what is necessary when the time has come for new systems" (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 112). Just as Dewey viewed scientific inquiry as having moved through has phases, I believe thatour inquiryinto resistance slowly moved alongthe perspectival continuum of self-actional,inter-actional,and infrequently, transactional. bent shaped his view that these three Dewey's naturalistic modes of inquiryrepresented developmentalmovementthroughtime and a context, as Bushnell(1993) points out: Interaction Transaction historically to is based.Eachperspective is theproduct itstimeandassuch,appropriately andreflected of served the prevalent of thinking thathistorical period.... Becauseeach method remains context, dependent uponits historical Deweycauto Dewey contendsthat the progressionof inquiryfromSelf-Action

tions us againstputtingtoo muchstockin transactional as inquiry "we

we work."(Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 69, cited in Bushnell,1993,

do notpresent procedure beingmorerealor generally this as valid thananyother, as beingtheone nowneededin thefieldwhere but p. 9)

Transactionalism not represent"truth" Dewey as much as a needed does for insight for contemporarysocial theorists strugglingto make sense of an increasingly complex human environment.Dewey, who in his long career witnessed a great many drasticsocial changes and movements, strongly believed that all inquiry,to be helpful to human social progress,should reflectthe complexityof humantransactions communicative and life. In this paper, I argue that resistancetheoriststoo often conceive of school communications communityin interactionist and ways, and thatthis limitsthe ways in which we practically resistancetheoryto use perspective understandand respond to studentresistancein schools. Interactions take place between two independent entities in causal reaction;transactions, however, more holisticallyaccount for the symbioticchange in both or all partiesinvolved in the experience.A transactional theoryof inquiryand of communication broadenand deepen the inquiryinto opposition,pushcan
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and ing researchers educatorsto more fully examine relevantactors,histoand contexts. Ratherthan viewing persons or groups as animatedby ries, or of iden(self-action), "culture," by similar explanations "self" metaphysical formations,in isolationor in causal behaviorwith others (interaction), tity the entire context of the communicative experience is examined.Transacview that process as more than a tional understandings communication of causal exchange of information between two or more people or groups, more than the stimulus and response reactions between oppressed and oppressor. The idea of transactionsignals how communicativeactions change all actorsundergoinga communicative experience,despite the fact that communication never "pure" constantlymoving throughand in is but and changes all parsubjectiveinterpretations culturalcontexts. Resistance ties involved,bringingactorsinto greateralignmentor even more disparate I opposition.Resistance, argue,is a complexformof humancommunication. I begin by examiningthe theoreticaltools that will be used here to will critiqueresistancetheories.Dewey's notion of transactionalism be presented in the next section of the paper. Pragmatism's potentialtheoretical contributions resistancetheorizing be explainedand defended,and a to will of democraticeducationwill be describedas the normapragmatist theory tive basisfor thiswork. Followingthis theoretical I introduction, then turnto the body of resistancescholarship education.Using the pragmatist in lens, I examine some of the majorworks in the resistanceliterature education, in contributions the field as well as questo describingsome of its significant tendenciesof muchof thatliterature. the In tioningsome of the interactionist finalpartof this paper,I outlinea pragmatist of revisioning resistance theory as understoodthrougha transactional model of inquiry, and communication, community.

Theoretical Groundingsof Transactionalism Democracy and

In "TheReflexArc Conceptin Psychology," Dewey2 broke away from the of Kant,Locke,and Hume in his critiqueof the faultypsychology language of his day(1973/1981).In thisarticlepublishedwhile Dewey was a professor at the Universityof Chicago,he criticizedthe popular conception of the reflexarcas a representation behavioral of notion unityusing a transactional of experience. The concept of reflex arc, wherein sensory-stimulus predicates motor-response, was introducedin Dewey's time as a unifyingconception of human psychology but was, according to Dewey, "not a comprehensive,or organic, unity, but a patchworkof disjointedparts, a mechanicalconjunctionof unalliedprocesses"(1973/1981,p. 137). Dewey argued that psychologicaldiscussionsof reflex arc failed to representthe subsumed under the reflex arc concept; that is, how the "co-ordination" variousstimuli,connections,and responsesare not "separate complete and entitiesin themselves,but ... divisionsof labor,functioningfactors,within the single concretewhole"(Dewey, 1973/1981,p. 137). Dewey's argument of regardingthe reflex arc can be understoodas a reinterpretation then880

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popularconceptions of human psychology, from a disjointedand interactionist view of the ways in which one reaction triggers another to a transactionalist view of humanbehaviorwhich seeks to interpret phenomena as coordinatedwithin a largerwhole. Dewey's developmentof a transactionalist perspectiveis linked to his the naturalism, idea that humanityand natureare dynamicand continuous with one anotherrather than separateand unrelated.Note thatthe concept of transactionalism servesas a "bookend" sortsto his life-longinquiry: of The Arc Conceptin Psychologywas originallypublished in 1896, and Reflex Knowingand the Known, in which the concept is more developed, was publishedin 1949, 3 years priorto Dewey's death. Influencedby this perspective (and inspiredby Einsteinian physics),in Knowingand the Known, view: Dewey and Arthur Bentleyfully developed the transactionalist Ourposition ... thatsinceman[sic] an organism evolved is as has other in called"natural", arewillwe among organisms an evolution advanced as not alone,noreven as knowings, activities of himself of his, primarily but as processesof the full situation organismenvironment. (1949,citedin Biesta, 1995,p. 279) The idea that groundedDewey's critiqueof the reflex arc concept of psychologyin the late 1800swas the concept thathe, with Bentley,named transactionalism towardthe end of Dewey's career.Dewey's conceptualization of transactionalism firstinspiredby Hegelianideas of organicunity, was and philosophyas "thesearchfor the realwhole"(Backe, 1999,p. 318). By the end of his life, as the Hegelianinfluencehad receded, he had reformulated the idea of transactionalism, revealedin Knowingand the Known, as as a centralidea within his naturalistic The experimentalism.3 basic idea of as he developed the concept with Bentleyand as I present transactionalism, in this paper, was not to renderdistinctionsbetween subjects,actions, or but operationsunimportant, to instigatesocial inquiryinto how and why these distinctionswere identifiedand what roles they served. Such social in inquiryis not to renderabsolute"truth" a Hegeliansense, but to help us understand social relationsfrom a more holistic,ecological perspective. To apply transactionalism resistancetheory,let us take a simple act to of what many would label resistanceand provide an analysisto illustrate of self-action,interaction,and transactional interpretations opposition in schools. In a largelyWhite, middle-classhigh school, a group of boys of WestIndianimmigrant and heritagehave formeda subculture organizetheir identitiesand actions aroundtheir beliefs that school is irrelevant their to and needs, that educatorsmisunderstand talk down to them, and thattheir immigrantculture is not receiving the acknowledgment it deserves in school.4These studentsconstructan identityof style (clothing,body decoration,attitude)and action (speaking patois aroundteacherswho cannot understandthe language,cuttingclass, yelling at teachers,breakingmany school rules) to oppose school authority.
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ing underhypothesisto treatall of his behavings,includinghis most

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Viewed as self-action,this groupof studentsis understoodto be acting out theiressentialor true, inneridentities.Whetherthis essentialidentityis based on ethnicity,race, gender, or theirworkingclass status,or perhapsa combinationof these identity-markers, culturalidentityoperates as an this "internal" truedesignationof who these studentsare, and why they are and drivento oppose school authority. Thus,fromthe perspectiveof self-action, educatorsoften blame school problemson cultural differenceseen as internal and unchanging.AfricanAmericandrop-outrates in a districtmay be American cultureas one explainedawayby educatorswho perceiveAfrican thatinherently does not value educationalsuccess;alternately, AsianAmerican perceived (inner and foundational)values of hard work and learning may explain for many educatorsthe reasons why these childrenin their schools mayexperiencerelativesuccess. Culture, conceivedas self-action,is the internaldrivingforce that guides youth and shapes all theirchoices. As Bushnellnotes, "theconcept of Self-Action limitingas it does not is recognize the influencesthat events and entities have upon one another," and a model of interactionis the next logical step of inquiryas Dewey understoodit (Bushnell,1993, p. 6). In this view, opposing culturesin the school areclashing,as two opposingobjectsor forcesinfluenceone another by theircollisions.The cultureof the WestIndianimmigrant boys is clashing with the Whitemiddle-class cultureof the high school teachersand administrators. These two cultures'collide, and like two marbles,fly off into opposing directions. The educators represent a culture of authority and legitimatedknowledge;the student subculturerepresentsa cultureof opposition and unofficial,marginalized knowledge. The two culturesinteract but remainfundamentally unchangedby the cultural collisions,thoughperand researchers haps even more opposed than before. Educators takinga more interactionist view of resistancewould directinquiryinto the ways in which school authoritiescome into conflict with the subculturesof their school. They would not isolate the problem simply within the subcultural between authorityand subcultureas group, but would see the interaction opposing forces that must be somehow reconciled. over self-action,interaction still represenis Althoughan improvement tative of a closed system of two or more opposing cultures that do not change, do not share any identitymarkersor overlappingculturalbackgrounds,do not relateto otheractorsin the socialcontext,nor influenceone anotherin theirsocial arenas.In a transactionalist readingof resistance,the closed system is opened up to recognize multiple and shiftingidentities. Cultureis likewise viewed as an organic,living entity that must change or die; culturalinstitutionsare consequentlyseen as complex, shiftingsocial settings that contextualizeour social dramas.Humanrelationsare understood to shape self-perceptions actions,and our largersociety is recogand nized as the socio-economicand historical backdropupon which opposition is enacted and shaped. The subcultural formationof the boys is set against theirWest Indianparentcultureas well as theirnew Canadian cultureinto which they have assimilatedto a degree; the boys' (West Indian,working
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PragmatistRevisioningof Resistance class Canadian, masculine)culturalinfluencesare examinedfor varyinginfluence upon subcultural values and rules.The identitiesof the boys in the subcultureare opened up to more complex interpretations, such as those boys who are both members of the subcultureand members of various often paradoxical identitiesof sportsteamsat the school, therebynegotiating and loyalty to the school. The encounters between authority opposition are figuresand the subculture understoodnot simplyas oppositionalbut as both futureencountersand the natureof the conflict itself. Each shaping conflictshapes the ongoing relationship between subcultural membersand educators,and is based on the historyof past encounters.The resistanceof subcultural membersin the schools is located in the largerhistoricaland socio-economic sphere as well, wherein the experiences of West Indian are parents and grandparents mined to better contextualizethe cultural memoriesof assimilation exclusion,success and failureas experienced and by elders who immigrated. Transactionalism refersto the process of inquiryand communication thatDewey believed is most encompassing-at this time and in this stage of human development of knowing and inquiry-of the complex nature of human encountersand human knowing. Inquiryand communication are Ourworld is processes that denote changingforms,roles, and motivations. not staticbut a changingand often chaotic ecology of interdependent systems. Transactionalistic of inquiryand interpretations communicationare developed in lightof this ecologicalworldview, which, like Deweyanpragmatismas well as manyformsof postmodern post-structural and inquiry,are antifoundationalist perspective.Withoutfirmfoundationsin an unchangin ing view of identities,cultures,knowledge,or socialtheory,transactionalism offers a differentlens with which to guide and interpret resistancescholarIt offersa perspectiveon resistancethatcan help frameoppositionin ship. more communicative terms,thus enhancingthe practical capacitiesof educatorsto respondto resistancein ways thatenhance its coordinating, communicativepotential. Communication not the act of expressionand exchange of views by is individual actorswho are simplyencoding and decodinglinguisticsymbols, fromthe pragmatist's interactionist interpoint of view. Sucha mechanistic, leaves out the sharedprojectof meaning-making which is inherent pretation in communication. Communication the makingof somethingin common is (Biesta, 1995),in which two or more humansmodifytheirindividualexperiencesthroughjointactivity.This jointactivitycan be chieflylinguisticbut need not be solely defined as language dependent. The teacher who is to attempting make one of the West Indianboys talk to her in English,and his own clowning refusalto do so as he continues to speak in his island a patois,represents jointactivitymodifyingall partiesinvolved.Althoughthe transactiondoes not result in common aims for teacher and student, but more likely furtherfrustrates such movement,the communicative is asact signed meaningand makesan impactupon both the actorsinvolvedand the futuretransactions teachersand subcultural of members.Whatever comthe
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municativemedium,both or all partiesare modifiedthroughthe process of makingsomethingin common. Theiractions are not necessarilymore coin the in ordinated this communication; act-in-common, thiscase, is one that further propelsthe identitiesof teacherand studentsinto more oppositional stances. Ironically,resistancetheoristsmay label such acts of opposition definitionsof this termrequireopposieven though theoretical "resistance" effects on actorsor institutional actionsto have some revealing,liberatory tions. For example, the work of Willis (1977) and others highlightedthe mightappearto be genucomplexitiesof resistance suggestingthat"what by at ine instancesof resistancehave had the long-termeffect of reproducing, order.. ."(Munro, a deeperlevel, the dominant 1996).Opposition,however, acts help modify can becomeresistancewhen oppositionalcommunicative all partiesinvolvedso thattheirsocial positionsare in betteralignmentand more coordinatedto meet each group's social and academicaims. In our to with example,the teachermustbe moved, in her frustration communicate the boys, to inquireinto why it is thatthe boys speak patoismorefrequently aroundher. She must not only seek to understandopposition as an act of for meaning-making herselfand others,but to use the act as a springboard to inquiryinto her own classroomand educationalsite. is notions of community Communication at the heartof pragmatist and Unlikecontemporary which implyor rely ideals of community, democracy. on a minimizingof individualor group differencesto build civic society conceives of community as somethingnatunot (Etzioni,1993),pragmatism but rallyor culturally acquired, as somethingwe makeor construct, together. For Dewey, communitydid not requirea common metaphysical belief sysnor tem among participants, specifictraditions community,nor unchangof ing proceduresor norms that providedstabilityat the expense of growth. for Communities, therefore,are less distinguishable theirunchangingtraditions or rules than for their communicative processes induced by change, and growth.Community pragmatists createdand maintained for is conflict, the processof communication understoodnot as peaceful,perfectly through coordinatedexchanges of views which resultin common purposes,but as human webs of relationand meaningthat undergo the inherentconflicts, and bondings of shared life (see KnightAbowitz, 1999a). contradictions, is Communication thus at the cornerstoneof pragmatist definitionsof communityand of democracy. In CreativeDemocracy--The TaskBefore Us, Dewey (1940) outlined three tenets of democraticfaith,or beliefs that "ifdemocracyis to re-create mustcontinueto hold and to practice" & (LaCelle-Peterson itself,individuals VanFossen,1999,p. 4). These tenets are, among otherthings,necessaryfor the progressiveeducatorwho seeks to make use of studentresistanceas a act. (potentially)communicative The firstof these is "aworkingfaithin the of notions possibilities humannature" (Dewey, 1940,p. 223).Antidemocratic of racial,ethnic,gender, or sexual prejudice would be examplesof contemporaryhindrances upon this faithin the possibilitiesand endowmentsof all The second tenet of democratic faithis "thefaithin the capacityof persons.
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Revisioningof Resistance Pragmatist human beings for intelligentjudgmentand action if proper conditionsare furnished" (Dewey, 1940, p. 224). Closely following the faith in the possibilities of human nature,this representsa belief in human capacitiesfor reflection and judgment-an idea not widely accepted, for example, by "democratic of and realists" the early20thcenturywho doubtedimmigrants' or abiliother "common" (read:poor, immigrant, workingclass) Americans' in ties to intelligently 1991).Studentsin participate governance(Westbrook, schools are often controlledand managedin ways that communicatevery little faithin theirendowmentsor possibilitiesfor intelligentjudgment. The third faith for democrats,and the one most significantfor our currentexaminationof resistancetheories,is the "personal commitment to of co-operativeactionrootedin the convictionthatconsideration conflicting claimsand views is not only rightbut personallyand collectivelyenriching." actionis not the erasureof conflictingclaimsbut the cultivation Cooperative of differences."Tocooperateby giving differencesa chance to show ... is not only the rightof the otherpersons,but is a meansof enrichingone's own life experience ... "(Dewey, 1940,p. 226, cited in LaCelle-Peterson Van& actionthus inherently involvesconflict-of opin1999).Cooperative Fossen, ions, perspectives, and persons-which Dewey and later pragmatist thinkers6 viewed as centralto democraticcommunity. can Dewey's notion of transactionalism be seen as implicitwithin notions of communication do (wherein those who participate not simply exchange meanings but create multiple meanings in common), community and (not inherited throughcustombutconstructed throughcommunication), democracy(enacted and re-createdthrough democraticfaith, habit, and practices).These transactionalist, progressivetheoriesof inquiry,social acand democracyarenot necessarily tion, community, likelylenses withwhich to critiqueresistancetheory. Resistancetheorists,as a whole, may share views often situate Dewey's passion for democracy,but their neo-Marxist theirwork deeply within structurally embedded conflict.But so embedded are the conflicts described in resistancetheory that the theoreticalstrides made by these thinkersare at times hinderedby a stagnancy,a failureto see and groups or individualsas changing,multifaceted, partof largerwebs of Resistance theoristsin educationhave moved meaningand communication. fromself-actionto interaction theirmodes of inquiry,but have not always in transactional developed understandingsof inquiry and communication,7 such theorieshelpless to explainthe kind of potentialcoordination leaving thatis embeddedin conflict.In the next section, I describethe variedbody of work I label resistancetheory,and use Dewey's transactionalist theoryof to inquiryand communication critiquethis body of work.

The Contributionsand Limitationsof ResistanceTheory

Concepts of cultural reproduction (Bowles & Gintes, 1976), emerging from Marxist perspectives in the sociology of education, follow the correspondence theory which states that schools integrate students "into the capitalist 885

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economic orderby tailoringtheirattitudesthroughthe daily experience of of classroomauthorityrelationsto the requirements the workplace"(Harof theory reproduction greaves, 1982, p. 107). One of the criticisms cultural was that these models ignored the fact that, in some cases, students and economic order(workingclass students, othersdisciplinedby the capitalist or teachers, for example) actively and passively resisted accepting their "place"in that order (McRobbie& Garber, 1993; Willis, 1977). Human agency, or the abilityto shape one's own life path or actions,was a factor ignored by reproductiontheorists who believed resistance to be either and uselesslyemployedagainststructural ideolargelyabsentor, alternately, Giroux(1983b) statedthat logical forces of capitalism.
the and that By ignoring contradiction struggles exist in schools,these

theories onlydissolve not human agency, unknowingly they provide a rationale not examining for and students concrete in teachers
school settings.Thus,they miss the opportunity determine to whethfolding and effects. (Giroux,1983b,p. 259)

er thereis a substantial difference between existence various the of structural ideological and modesof domination theiractual and un-

Resistance theoristsset out to understand degree to which the corthe orderwas comrespondencebetween school classroomsand the capitalist pletely determinedor, as they suspected, only partiallyrealized due to humanstruggleand conflict. Thus, neo-Marxist critiquesof schooling and their role in culturalreinfluencedmany early works in resistancetheory, notably,the production scholars associatedwith the Centrefor Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University(CCCS)in the 1960s and 1970s as well as North American theoristsworkingin the same traditions, followingin the 1980s.In this section, I discuss the last three decades of scholarshipon resistanceas it relatesto education,examiningthe work centeredat the CCCS, moving into scholarship NorthAmerican educational and theorists, finallyturning by to more postmodernand post-structural analyses of resistance.Whereas neo-Marxist resistancetheories constructa formulawhich tied modernist, resistance to an interruptionof the forces of social reproductionbased largelyon class structures, postmodernanalysisframeresistanceas a strategy-rather than a theoreticalconstructwith an accompanyingmetanarrative-for contesting multiple forms of domination."This move to an antifoundationalist approachto examiningrelationsof authorityand resistance in schools opens doors to moretransactionalist modes of inquiry,thus prodding a field beset by many interactionist assumptionsand habits of inquiry.
British Cultural Studies: Marxist Analyses of Youth Subcultures The CCCS,established in 1964, made significant strides in linking Marxist

theoriesto actualschool practicesthroughethnographic methods and cul886

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tural critique.9In their work on the particular as category of "youth," a were collectiveCCCS researchers and forms caldimensions") form, the particularly spectacular adopted
... preoccupiedwith the relationsbetween ideologies(or "ideologi-

by youth subcultures,mods, Teds, skinheads,punks, and so on. Theirwork turnedto the distinctive"look" these subcultures; of but the primary was to locate them in relationto three broaderculaim turalstructures, workingclass or the "parent the the culture," "dom83-84)

and & inant" (Gelder Thornton, culture, the massculture. 1997,p.

Resistance subcultures referred the collectiveactsof workingclass to by youth to win space in the dominantand mass culturesof the society, alof though researchers resistancein schools widely acknowledgedthe limitationsof studentresistanceof winninglegitimatepower and the tendency of resistanceeffortsto furthersolidifythe statusquo of social reproduction (see Willis,1977). CCCS scholarsviewed class struggleas more organic than the deterministicversionsof Marxist between dominantand subortheory.Relations dinatecultures,for CCCS were activelyoppositionalrather than researchers, passivelygiven. "Thesubordinateclass bringsto this 'theatreof struggle'a of repertoire strategiesand responses-ways of coping as well as of resisting"(Clarkeet al., 1975/1997,p. 103). These responses are not necessarily formsof rationalproblem-solving thatthey representattemptsto directly in which createtheirconditions:combatingunemployment, change structures dead-endjobs, or miseducation, example.Resistance for often is the performance or enactment of imaginary,symbolic, and aesthetic solutionsstrategiesof style, language,and other symbolicexpressionstied to group identity-rather than "reasoned" structural critiques (Brake, 1985). and they are often and "[Counter-cultures express] profane articulations, defined as 'unnatural.' . . " (Hebdige, 1979/1997,p. 130). The . significantly punk subculturesof GreatBritain,studied by Hebdige (1979) and others, a represented classiccase of class-based,countercultural resistance,derived fromworkingclass parentcultureand reactingto the dominantconservative political culture of Great Britainin the 1970s and 1980s. The outlandish aesthetic,distinctstyle and expressivelyloud, angrymusic associatedwith punks made them a wonderfulobjectof study for scholarsin the Birmingham Centreinterestedin resistance. One of the most cited studies of resistancefrom this period is Willis' Learningto Labor(1977), an ethnographicstudy of a group of boys in a British school servinga working-class town in the early 1970s.The Lads,as the groupof boys is called,were of interest Willisfor theirresistance the to to curriculum's aimsto channelthem into white collar,professional jobs.Willis noted how the Lads'opposition did not liberatethem from their assigned but place in the social class structure, instead helped to ensure that they would assume the places of theirfathersand grandfathers the shop or on
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were assimifactoryfloor. Otherboys in the school, notablythe 'Ear'oles, lating into school norms (in passive ways like listening;thus their name bestowed by the Lads)in ways thatwould guaranteetheirschool and economic success as managerial-level workers.The Lads,however, reactedto school in moreactiveways, and "construct theirown day fromwhat virtually is offeredby the school,"using tacticsrangingfromtruancyto ... beingfreeoutof class,beingin classanddoingno work,being in the wrongclass,roaming corridors the lookingfor excitement, The these beingasleepin private. coreskillwhicharticulates possibilities beingableto getoutof anygivenclass: preservation is the of
personalmobility.(p. 27)

The oppositional activitiesof the Lads will not sound unfamiliar to educatorsin classroomsinhabitedby working-class other or contemporary kinds of marginalized youth. The Ladscreatedfor themselvesa school culturederivedfromtheirhome cultureand the (hyper-masculine) work-world of adultsin theirneighborhoodcultures(see also MacLeod, 1987).The Lads' oppositionwas neitherpoliticallynor morallyenlighteningto educators-it did not serve as a tool of progressivesocial change. School educatorssaw of thanas a sign oppositionas merelyan outgrowth the Lads' deviancyrather of politicalor moralcritique. in Resistance, Willis'study,turnedout to be the strugglebetween class culturesto the ultimatesuccess of statusquo arrangements ratherthan the undermining socially reproductive of schooling patterns. Interactionist of narrowedthese CCCS understandings communication into Renditions resistance of inquiries resistance. theorycontributed CCCS by scholarsrightlyacknowledgedoppositionalformsof communication exas These largelyclass-basedexpressionsof exclusion,anger,and frustration. and pressionswere viewed as strategic often creativeengagementswith and and if not dismissedas deviancyby those in instiagainstauthority figures, tutionalpower,valuablein theircritical functions.Yet such critical functions notion of humansociety, in that it is only in depend upon a transactional communication a social process alteringall partiesinvolved thatexpresas sions of oppositioncommunicatein a mannerthatmightdisruptpatterns of social reproduction.Neo-Marxists the CCCS in concentratedon revealing studentoppositionas a creativelyexpressivemicropolitical focusingon act, the actors and acts of expression ratherthan the larger communal (not simplyeconomic)contextof these transactions. Willis,for example,focused so exclusivelyon the Lads'experiencesand views in his study,that he has been accusedof failingto develop, as an ethnographer, critical a perspective on the counter-schoolculturecreatedby the Lads.Such a perspectivemay have enabled him to understand social dynamicgoing on between the the and Lads,Ear'oles, the educatorsin the school (Walker, 1985).He also makes errorscommonto an interactionist view when he characterizes Ladsand the the choices they make in resistingschool. Willisidentifiesthese choices as of logicalwhen set againsttheircultural background workingclass, macho,
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Revisioningof Resistance Pragmatist manual-labor culture;Walkerpoints out, however, upon studyingthe Lads' own commentary, that these boys may simply see theirway of life as one othersopen to them,takingon a superiority theirlanguage in option among as a way to continuetheirdominationof less macho boys and girlsat only school. Such mistakesare interactionist, labelingthe Lads'struggleas "culturalopposition"ratherthan examininga wider rangeof factorsthatmight contribute theiractions.Lookingbeyond the interactionist to view, however, potentiallyundercutsthe Lads'resistance,for if they simplyoppose school authorities withouta moralor politicalintent,theirresistancedoes not earn its name.Willistoo easily mistakessimple oppositionfor resistance, Walker Willis'study,Walkerpoints out some of the relationships argues.By mining and perspectivesthatwere not examinedbecause of the author's theoretical and focus on the Ladsto the exclusionof otherschool playersand rigidity1o dynamics. Overtime,the CCCS of subcultural studieswould paradigm neo-Marxist be alteredsignificantly, these alterations and helped move resistancetheorealmsof inquiry. Feminist researchers such as rizinginto moretransactional McRobbie (1991) would expand the narrowfocus on class and masculinity thathad dominatedmuchof the theoretical empirical and work of the Centre in its firstdecade. Classwould be less likely to be privilegedas the only factorto considerin social analysis,and thus class or statuscould be consideredagainsta numberof other identitymarkers (gender,race, sexuality) that help shape social behaviors.Furthermore, over time the notion of resistancewas considerably weakened in termsof its purity; subcultures were no longer purely criticalor even necessarilyunderminingthe dominant values of the largerculture.Subcultural activitywas seen as "muchmore with commerceand convention" (Gelder dependentupon and co-operative &Thornton, thus as 1997,p. 148).Subcultures becameresubmerged, objects of study,in theirsocialmilieuand examinedforthe ways in whichthey resist and assimilate,and deny and accept the variousculturalnormsof the society. We can begin to see a patternthatwill be repeatedin the NorthAmerican studies of resistance.Interactionist analysisgraduallygives way, over time, to a largercanvas of inquiry.We see similarpatternsin the North American scholarlywork on resistancein schooling.
North American Studies of Reproduction and Resistance North American critical theorists interpret the public sphere (and especially the American public sphere11) as structurallydominated by the instrumental logic of capitalism, a sphere in which the have's control, albeit incompletely, the structure and culture-and therefore the consciousness--of the havenot's. Like the CCCSscholars, Giroux (1983a) stressed the importance of "a dialectical notion" of human agency; that is, he emphasized that citizens are not completely dominated by the logics or institutions that organize their 889

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lives (p. 108). Giroux'sformulation questionedthe ways in which teachers and administrators commonlycategorizeoppositionalbehaviorsin schools. behaviorsare most frequentlyseen as deviant,caused by inOppositional dividualor social pathologies (he is "learning disabled"[LD]or "atrisk"), learnedhelplessness(she has no "self-esteem"), genetic factors(Giroux, or 1983a,p. 107).The concept of resistanceoffersus a way to see beyond such "deviant" students labels, providingus with a lens with which to understand as (or teachers12) as pathological not but, potentially, political,moralactors. Oppositionalbehaviorsin school have "agreat deal to do, though not exwith the logic of moraland politicalindignation" (Giroux,1983a, haustively, scholarsand theircriticswho noted 107).Buildingon the insightsof CCCS p. thatall oppositiondoes not qualifyas resistance,Girouxsoughtto make the labelmoredefinitive.Girouxcautionedagainstlabelingall actsof opposition in school as resistance,but urged educatorsto examine more carefullyall or oppositionalbehaviorfor its "revealing function," its abilityto focus attentionon a social criticism. Resistance for Giroux,an expressedhope for is, radicaltransformation unjustsocieties. of Giroux'sinsightshere representan important made early contribution by resistancetheories to the field of education:pushing the field from a self-actionmodalityto an interactionist perspective.Whenstudentsare seen as deviant,the cultureand structure school and society are off the hook, of so to speak, in theiraccountability studentfailureto succeed. Deviance for suggests an internalfailure,either biologicalor cultural,that has no meaningfulcontext or inscribingcircumstances. helping to challengethe disBy course of deviance with that of resistance, Giroux and other American resistancetheorists(Apple, 1980;Anyon, 1981)helped to move the field into more interactionist modes of inquiry,wherein oppositionalstudentsare indignantand acting out againstthe opposing forces, culturalforms, or authoritiesin theirschool world. Likethe CCCS resistancestudies,NorthAmerican theoristsemphasized thatacts of resistanceare performed with at least some degree of intentionality,by actorswho are conscious of a publicproblemas they perceiveand experience it, and who express theirhelplessness,despair,or rage through oppositionalbehavior.Studentopposition would be frequentlyexpressed verbal throughsymbolicexpression(style of dress,linguisticcodes, graffiti, that silences), or embodied action (teachingcurriculum is insubordination, unapprovedor banned for politicalreasons,absence fromclasses or meetings, physical insubordination, dropping out of school13) (see McLaren, 1999).Solomon(1992),forexample,documentshow a groupof WestIndian working class boys, the Jocks, communicatedopposition to teachersand administrators a Toronto secondary school. Solomon articulates"how in these students resortto, and elaborateon, culturalforms from their West Indianheritageas a response to the authority structure the school"(Solof omon, 1992, p. 33). Studentsused a varietyof practicesto position themselves againstthe administration teachers,includingthe selectiveuse of and theirnativedialectto mystifyand conceal meaningsof theirconversations.
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scholarsof criticaltheorywould unGirouxand other NorthAmerican fold the oppositional potential of micropoliticalacts in schools. A good embedded in his study of "clowning" example of this work is McLaren's ethnographyof reproductionand resistance in a Toronto working-class Catholic school (Scbooling as a Ritual Performance). Clowning was McLaren's designationfor the ritualizedoppositionalbehaviorof working class boys; he argued resistanceactivitieslike clowning must be cast in terms(McLaren, the 1985).Employing work of symsymbolicand ritualistic bolic anthropologists such as VictorTurner,McLaren probed the symbolic of resistance and its linksto largersocio-economicstrucimportance activity tures. Describingthe clownish performancesof "Vinnie," McLaren noted how the clown disrupts: As he mocked, scoffedat, lampooned, parodied foiblesof and the bothteachers fellowstudents, classclownmaybe saidto and the have"played" the internal with and of inconsistency ambiguity the ritual and a zeal symbols metaphors. Possessing disproportionate for an Vinnie undidor refracted the inwhat "being ass," symbolically structional rituals workso hardto buildup--schoolculture its and concomitant reification the cultural of order. 1985, (McLaren, p. 91) Clowning consistentlyunderminedthe authorityof the teachers and instruction,as well as the norms of the school itself. "Hegemonyis both sustainedand contested throughour 'style'of engaging the world and the ways in which we ritualizeour daily lives; our gesturalembodiments,our rhythmical (McLaren, practices,and our lived forms of resistance" 1985, p. focus here remainson the clowns, or the mar92). Again,the researcher's ratherthan on a more ecoginalized groups who are opposing authority, from kids, from parents' points of logical exploration-from teachers', view-of the phenomenonof oppositionin school. As was truewith CCCS resistance theoristsoften focused inquiryupon the scholars,NorthAmerican individualor group engaged in oppositionalacts and on the structural critique believed to be encoded in opposition.14 Althoughthis strategywas to resistance somethingdistinctfrom"deviancy," as important understanding it often left unexploredthe many other school actors and contexts which were in relationship the resistantgroup, as well as other possible explato nations for oppositional school acts besides the desire for socio-political transformation. 15 Some of the more transactional work on resistancein education has fromthe field of cultural methemerged anthropology. Usingethnographic in and ods, researchers thisdisciplinehave investigated analyzedthe relative success of oppressed groups within public schooling. Fordhamand Ogbu (1986), for example,examinedcultural systemsrelevantto Blackcommunities in the United States, and forwardedthe idea that Black students are forcedto choose between assimilation the construction an oppositional or of social identity(Fordham Ogbu, 1986;Fordham,1988). Studentsmust ei& ther become "raceless" reinforcetheir indigenousculturein the school or
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theirsuccess16in school and beyond (similar context,therebyjeopardizing to Willis'findings).In her work at CapitalHigh School in Washington,DC, Fordham finds thatmanyof the high-achieving studentsmustbecome raceless, like one studentshe calls Rita. Despiteher verbalclaimsthatshe does not view being Blackin America a negative as her of factor, constant disparagement those activities eventsgenerally and associated Black with Americans nea for instead, preference thoseactivities gatesherclaims, suggesting, her familyand some of her friendsview as "White activities." (Fordham, p. 68) 1988, Blackstudentsat CapitalHigh must move between two cultures,"the indigenous Black Americanculturalsystem and the individualistic, impersonal culturalsystem of the dominantsociety"(Fordham,1988, p. 79). Because Black students are denied opportunitiesfor high achievement in in schools, they perceive that they must give up their "Blackness" orderto succeed in the dominantsociety. Deyhle (1995), also workingin the disciplineof cultural anthropology, has studiedNavajoyouth, families,and schools on one reservation over for a decade.Herworkchallengessome of Ogbu'stheorieson resistance. Rather than assumingthatall caste-likeminorities have similarexperiencesof culturalexclusionand resistance, Deyhle assertsthatindigenousgroupslike the in Navajorepresenta specific case of "racial warfare," which Anglo values competewith Navajovalues both in the Anglo-run publicschools and workplaces. cultural characteristics-a of secondary reinterpretationtraditional
culture that is developed after contact with the dominantWhite psychologicalhistory of rejectionby the dominantgroup and its institutions. Schools,as sites of conflictwith the dominantgroup,are Ogbu argues that castelikeminoritiesface schooling with a set of

and group--tohelpthemcope withthe social,economic, political,

seen as a threat theircultural to Thesecastelike minorities identity. havedeveloped cultural to as oppositional responses schooling they a that them.(Deyhle,1995, 27) reject system hasrejected p. but Deyhle accepts Ogbu'sgeneralframework argues that Navajoare differentfromothercastelikeminoritiesin American culture,havingplayed distincteconomic roles than other minoritygroups. Only a small part of be Navajoculturecan appropriately called oppositional,however;"Navajos face and resistthe dominationof theirAnglo neighborsfrom an intactcultural base that was not developed in reaction to Anglo subordination" (Deyhle, 1995, p. 28). Resistance,for Navajoyouth, serves not to merely but oppose Anglo authority to affirmNavajoculturalidentityand integrity. educational youthwho resistschool are in factresistingthe district's "Navajo out goal of takingthe 'Navajoness' of theirNavajostudents" (Deyhle, 1995, p. 40).
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PragmatistRevisioningof Resistance Cultural have helped to move some of the more interanthropologists actionisttheoriesof resistanceinto more transactional modes of inquiry,at least where methodologyis concerned.Anthropological field methodsmay look at culturalcontexts in a more holistic and extensive help researchers of way, thus enablingthemto often go beyond simplistic labeling17 complex social phenomenon. Resistance(and accommodation)of both Black students and Navajostudentsis understoodas a reactionto historicand structural oppression, not as a cultural manifestationof inherent qualities. Resistance the Navajois seen as a reactionof cultural of and self-protection sustenance.Cultural us understand resistanceas a reanthropologists help action to oppression,conditioned,mediated,and sustainedover time. Yet culturesare, all too often, representedas pure forms in these accounts. In Fordham'swork, the analysis focuses on two kinds of Black people-the raceless and resisters-and one dominantWhite culturethat dictatesnormsof success and failure.In Deyhle's account,there is Navajo cultureand there is Whiteculture.Cultureis rarelyrepresentedas multifaceted or as experiencinghybridforms.Therefore, individuals the withinthese culturesare usuallystrugglingto negotiatea bicultural positioning,almost cultural normsandvalues.AlthoughI do alwaysto the defeatof the minority not wish to deny the strugglesof these studentsas depictedby Fordham and accountsin our contempoDeyhle, how are we to make sense of bicultural rarycultural spheres?Is the bicultural oppositioning,forwarded some of by the interactionist assumptionsof culturalstudies of conflict,the lone interpretationof these human relationswithin diverse social groups?No doubt these accounts possess importanttruths,but what more could we understand about resistanceif these interactionist assumptionswere themselves Postmodernand post-structural theoriesof power are in a pochallenged? sition to assertsuch challenges.
The Influence of Postmodem and Post-StructuralThinking on Resistance Inquiry Critiques raised by those researchers influenced by postmodern and poststructuralmovements focus on Marxism'snotions of class-based structuresas the absolute basis for reproduction and resistance theorizing. One Foucaultian scholar sums up this critique: One of the ideas in radicaleducationand progressivepolitics that needs to be interrogated seriouslyis the idea of the chief contradic-

tion, a central notion in Marxistpolitics. According to this notion, it is necessary to find the chief contradiction in a society and reverse that contradiction before other work (e.g., reform in education) is likely to give desired results. The chief contradiction in Western societies is ... between bourgeois and proletarianclasses. This contradiction is supposed to have a status that could, and should, guide other progressive work. For example, Giroux in his early work ... emphasized the importance of teachers building up counter-hegemonic and emanci-

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Abowitz patorywork in schools, as opposed to doing hegemonicand oppressive work.... From a Foucaultianperspective, no discourse is inherentlyliberatingor oppressive.... Thus, it is not possible to invent an antiposition,freed from the authorityfrom which we soughtfreedom-as Giroux's positionseems to entail.(J6hannesson, 1998, pp. 306-307) Postmodern critiques of dualistic Western philosophical traditions have revealed how "grandnarratives" (Lyotard, 1984), such as Marx'sdrama of the class conflict, confuse and conceal the multiple dimensions of social conflict and power struggle. Instead of searching for the "true" liberatoryagenda that will free disadvantaged students from their future positions in America's underclass, the postmodern challenge is to conceive of resistance as waged in everyday struggles across multiple axes of domination and influence such as gender, technology, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and knowledge. Thus, we can see how the influence of postmodern and post-structural theories help to move resistance theorizing into potentially wider theoretical spheres and possibilities for more transactionalist inquiry. A good example of such theoretical movement is Lather'sGetting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/in the Postmodern (1991), a work exploring the resistance of university students to the women's studies curriculum that she teaches. Resistance, in this volume, is not limited to the working class subverting the dominant class; Lather's work demonstrates how all forms of (classroom) authority, even those that proclaim to be liberating, are actively resisted (see also Shor, 1996). Lather advocates the exploration and challenging of dominant norms and cultural beliefs in the classroom but acknowledges "the danger [of] ... substituting our own reifications for those of the dominant culture"(Lather,1991, p. 75). The solution to structuraloppression is not simply to reprogram students, for "[r]eproducing the conceptual map of the teacher in the mind of the student disempowers through reification and recipe approaches to knowledge" (Lather, 1991, p. 76). Ratherthan seeking to simply oppose student ideology with her own, and often more critical, views-an interactionist interpretation of the communicative potential of shared meanings-Lather conceptualizes the intricacy of communicating across ideological divides. Not only does Lather's work reveal how resistance can be used by middle-class university students to reject knowledge that they do not understand or find politically suspect; she offers a definition of resistance that is broader and perhaps more directly applicable for educators. According to a graduate student who helps teach the course, resistance is A word for the fear,dislike,hesitancemost people have aboutturning theirentirelives upsidedown andwatchingeverything they have ever learneddisintegrate lies. "Empowerment" be liberating, into may but it is also a lot of hardworkand new responsibility sortthrough to one's life and rebuildaccordingto one's own values and choices. (Lather, 1991,p. 76) 894

Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance Lather's definition challenges the idea that critical pedagogy involves the replacement of one (incorrect, oppressive) belief system with another (liberatory, democratic) belief system. Like McLaren,she links student resistance "to knowledge forms that render them passive and render their own experience meaningless" (McLaren, 1989, p. 198), but unlike earlier critical theorists, she acknowledges that any curriculum, regardless of its liberatory intent, can render students into passive objects. As Munro argues, "the concept of knowledge as resistance/emancipation still assumes an inherently human essence waiting to be liberated from an unjust, imposed power structure."On the contrary, she argues in concert with Latherand following Foucault's (1977) insights, "there is no archimedean point or privileged site of power" (Munro, 1996, p. 19). Another assumption regarding resistance that has recently been questioned by feminist post-structuralistresearchers is the aspect of "consciousness" that is so central to North American resistance theorizing. Recall that Giroux (1983a) speaks of the resistance of moral actors as "conscious" and "intentional"(see also Bullough, Gitlin, & Goldstein, 1984) in order to differentiate between simple opposition, with no liberatory intent, and the political agency behind acts of resistance. But as post-structuralismhas undermined the idea of a unitary subject, resistance becomes far more pluralistic in form. "Because power is decentered and plural, so, in turn, are forms of political struggle," and this requires, Munro argues, the re-envisioning of resistance and agency (Munro, 1996, p. 20). In her study of women teachers, she found models of resistance that were far less politicized and conscious than in previous resistance inquiry. In the discussion of her study of women teachers using life history methodology, she argues that Women teachers resist traditional notions of career, success, and commitment which separate,dichotomizeand establishhierarchical levels.... In continually"becoming," naming and renaming,in in women activelysubvertand movingbackandforthinto the margins, decenterdominantrelations.(Munro,1996,p. 25) Other researchers, exploring the myth of the unitary subject, use psychoanalytic insights to understand how resistance is not simply a sociological concept, but "a process of managing psychic conflict" as well, a method of learning and not learning new knowledge (Pitt, 1998, p. 536). Pitt reflects on how participants in research may tell their resistance stories or moments in ways that "conceal a much more ambivalent story of implication in the very knowledge that one is at pains to refuse." She maintains that "the problem is that psychoanalytic theories complicate all of our stories of engagement with knowledge by insisting upon the role of unconscious processes in the making of such stories" (Pitt, 1998; see also Britzman, 1998). Resistance is not simply a product of a conscious self, nor is it is a product of disembodied persons. Building on Foucaultian insights, postmodern feminist scholars have attempted to expand ideas of resistance that reflect individuals at work against the embodiment of cultural norms. Bor895

Abowitz do's (1993) feminist critique focuses on how Western bodies have been disciplined to correspond to certain narrow norms of beauty and desirability. She uses the theory of Foucault to describe how power relations are "never seamless but are always spawning new forms of culture and subjectivity, new opportunities for transformation." So, for example,the womanwho goes intoa rigorous weight-training in program orderto achieve the currently stylishlook may discover thather new musclesgive her the self-confidence enablesher to that assertherself more forcefullyat work. Modernpower-relations are thus unstable; resistance is perpetual and hegemony precarious. (Bordo, 1993, p. 27-28) Munro (1996) describes the work of Davis and Fisher (1993), who theorize resistance in a similar vein of embodiment and discipline as they describe the dispersed, diffuse paths of power, "circulatingthrough the social body and exerting its authority through self-surveillance and everyday, disciplinary micropractices"(Munro, 1996, p. 19). Feminist post-structural and postmodern insights explore the fields of resistance both on and inside our bodies and minds.18 Educational researchers in critical theory have, in light of postmodern and post-structuralinfluences, attempted to bring the insights of modernistic reproduction theories into sync with notions of a fragmented, partially conscious, and contradictory subject. Criticaltheorists have attempted to recognize the complications of the postmodern self while not wavering from the economic focus and historical materialism of Marxism. McLaren'swork on resistance (1993) challenges monolithic cultural norms while emphasizing the unwavering goal of material transformation of unjust conditions. For McLaren,diverse citizens do not all need to think the same way (as is true in Bordo's work, wherein diverse citizens need not all look the same way); all citizens do need, however, to be educated in ways that will enable constructive dialogue, conflict, and public work that is built on multiculturalalliances of all kinds. McLaren'spedagogy of "resistance postmodernism" (1993, p. 138) encourages teachers and other cultural workers to resist dominant forms of teaching, learning, and knowledge, transforming their work environments, curricula, and interactions with students. These transformations demand that cultural workers "take up the issue of 'difference' in ways that don't replay the monocultural essentialism of the 'centrisms'Anglocentrism, Eurocentrism, ... and the like" (McLaren, 1993). In his latest works, McLaren'smarriage of Marxismand postmodernism is more heavily weighted in favor of the revolutionary transformations of Marxismthan in previous accounts of reproduction and resistance (McLaren, 1998). This trend in McLaren'swork reflects the dilemmas of critical theorists who are witnessing the global downfall of socialist alternatives as the injustices of market logic ravage the promises of critical democracy in our time. The call to class struggle in McLaren'smore recent work is therefore revived. He laments that, at present, "when social class is discussed, it is usually 896

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viewed as relational, not as oppositional" (McLaren,1998, p. 439). McLaren wants educators to contest "the unconstrained domination of capital that masquerades as freedom," without laying claim to any universalizing positions on liberation, as more modernist versions of critical pedagogy sought to do (McLaren, 1998, p. 447). Teachers can develop lessons of resistance against late capitalism, as Bigelow describes in his curriculum on global sweatshops for high school students (in McLaren,1998, p. 456). Resistance is used, in McLaren'svision of critical pedagogy, to pursue the ideal communicative democracy through the development of criticalreflexivity, critical knowledge, and sociopolitical action. As McLarenreturns to Marxist interactionist notions of oppressed/oppressor and justice, his critics note that Marxist metanarratives are less likely than ever to inspire the kind of revolution desired by some critical pedagogues.19 Although postmodern forms of resistance often attempt to retain the justice-oriented goals of neo-Marxist work in this area, the works of Lather, McLaren,and others helpfully move resistance theorizing into a number of promising transactional realms of inquiry and understanding. First, the field is pushed to move "beyond the 'either-or' logic of assimilation and resistance" (McLaren,1993, p. 131). Ratherthan treating cultures as closed, intact entities with which we must both identify and assimilate or resist from a distance, we are urged to seek the complexities rather than the closures of interculturalrelations. Second, resistance inquiry influenced by postmodern and post-structuralworld-views also acknowledges that individual subjects are not of one cultural context or orientation, but are hybrids-moving through cultural spaces and times, not essentializable to a set of character traits, beliefs, or political stances. Identities of persons and cultures become more complex, reflecting the view of persons and cultures as organic, changing, fragmented, living entities. Third, we are urged to see power relations not as predetermined, but with both hegemonic and transformative potential. In sum, these "post" researchers use some of the antifoundationalist lessons of postmodern and post-structural critique, combining them with a vision of democratic practice. In the process, resistance inquiry takes on more transactional understandings of power, social relations, and conflict. Lather's scholarship, for example, examines the transactional nature of teacher/student relationship in a critical classroom and questions how her intentions for liberation are understood and resisted by students. She begins to focus not simply on those resisting and their critique, but on the relational, communicative context of that critique. As we conclude this critique of resistance theory in light of pragmatist notions of transactionalism, we see how postmodern and post-structural thinking has helped to tear down and reconfigure the notions of power and resistance in schools. In the last part of the paper, I illustratehow pragmatist notions of communication and community can be usefully employed in resistance theorizing and its application by educators. How can resistance work in schools be employed to more directly transform public spheres of education? I will discuss the antifoundational concepts of community and 897

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that are centralto the argumentthat resistancerepresents communication sense. I will furtherargue that these communicative acts in the pragmatist and communitycan be useful to resistance conceptionsof communication that work;indeed, I hope to demonstrate withoutcommunalformsof relaresistancefor its communicative tions, we are unlikelyto understand potential. Resistancehas little power as social critiquewithout a communityto and respond to its enactment. read, interpret,

Resistance, Communication,and Community

in have certain to Resistance theorists,fromMarxist Foucaultian orientation, limitednotions of communityinscribedin theirdiscoursesand theorizing. for when it is explicitlyrevealedin any formas a notionrelevant Community, is resistanceconceptualizations, discussedas the bondingbetween persons is tied who suffertogetherand resistin solidarity. Community intimately up in the experienceof oppression,in these accounts.Communication preis between two distinctcommusented as a conductorof limitedinformation of nities,oppressorsand oppressed;the communication resistanceis largely understoodin both modernistand postmodernist renderingsof resistance, determinedactions or behaviors beas interactionist: therefore, causally tween opposed forces for whom communication at best, an exchange of is, information at worst,a competitivestrugglefor control.Forexample,in and Mullard's should be seen as an expressionof power relaview, "resistance each possesstionshipswhere sociallydistinctgroupsinteract competitively, alternativeconception of ing intereststhat are 'anchoredin diametrically social reality'"(Mullard, 1985,cited in Soloman,1992,p. 12). Evenin more postmodernrenditionsof resistancetheory,such competitive,oppositional and groups imply thatcommunitiesdesigned to pronotions of individuals vide for intercultural are meaningor communication wholly absent,appearin false forms which disguise institutionalpower wielded by ing only authorities. such formulations resistance,complex identities,alliances, In of and social webs are completelyerased;multipleidentitiesand the contexts of the actorsand the situationare frozen in time. In conceptions of resistance, communityis most often seen as a term reflectingdominant discourses of normalization hegemony.20 and the notions of community, Communication, foundationof pragmatist involvesthe sharingof experience,not the sharingof certainphysicaltraits, or world-views, or metaphysicalbeliefs. Communitiescertainly can be formedfromsharedexperiencesof marginalization, especiallyif oppression and exclusionhave historically victimizedthe group.Suchcommunities provide the networksand relationsin which collective politicalactions might and develop. However,these foundationsof solidarity samenessare not are only experiencesof community,for we are membersof multiplecommunities with amorphous,shifting boundaries.An example might provide an illustration the web-like ties of communityin a school. A working-class of female teacher is potentiallyaligned with a number of communitiesthat
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Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance might command her loyalties and commitments. As a working class person she may be deeply involved with class-based struggles in her school against the administration and school board, but may simultaneously feel a deep allegiance to many of the female administratorsin her school. These administrators, let us imagine, were people to whom she turned on several occasions for help in building a formal sexual harassment case against her former chair. Though her working class community is engaged in resistance to school policies and norms that exclude working class interests, she simultaneously considers herself allied in certain ways to administrators,and these alliances mark both the acts of resistance as well as the ways in which these acts are received, understood, and acted upon by those involved. In speaking of resistance as persons or communities aligning against one another to combat oppression or marginalization, notions of more complex communal ties and relational webs are dismissed. In light of considerations of multiple identities--credited to postmodern theorists but acknowledged by pragmatists at the turn of the century-no one person belongs only to one community. Nor do historic experiences of marginalization solely determine identity and communal bonds in the present. The interactionist nature of most resistance theory sheds no light on the multiple cultural meanings of community, ignoring the complex relational ties of participantsas well as the fact that resistance takes place in institutional communities21 of various types. There is often a larger community within which both those who resist and those who are in authority live together and share some meaning. Dewey's transactionalism can be useful in expanding the limited accounts of both communication and community that we find embedded in much of the current theory. Dewey offers us conceptual beginnings for understanding the communication process. Students and/or teachers who are engaged in opposition are taking the first steps toward the creation of a shared social enterprise. In actual fact, these first steps of opposition signal the interruption of old meanings-meanings that occupied primary position in the shared enterprise, whether through domination, historical acceptance, or a combination of factors-to signal that new meanings are in the making. Opposition, simply put, presents a problem; it presents a change in conditions that furtherdemands inquiry, reflection, discussion, and action. Gouinlock has this to say about Dewey's notions of inquiry: he Inquiry, says, is initiated because the situationis problematic just in some crucialway. Priorto inquiry,the statusof relevantevents in the environmentis somehow puzzlingor uncertain; otherwise,inquirywould not occur. The very process of inquiryis inseparable from manipulating organizingovert events, and its intent is to and it producethe full-fledged object.Clearly, is not reducibleto conversation.(Gouinlock,1995,p. 78) Resistance can be viewed as a productive step toward inquiry. Inquiry, the experimental approach to problem solving, necessitates communication-a concept that Dewey insists is not simply conversational in nature but 899

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involves sharedwork (mind and body, mental and physical,materialand discursive).Throughthis work, Dewey believed that the partiesinvolved could be reoriented towardsthe initialproblem."Inorderto produceobjects of perception(as of knowledge) suitableto the peculiarities the problemof atic situation,some sort of intentionalreorientation toward the troubling conditionsmustbe undertaken" (Gouinlock,1995,p. 78). Thatreorientation takes place in acts of communication, which modify all partiesinvolved in resistance: To be a recipient a communicationto havean enlarged of is and One in has and changed experience. shares whatanother thought felt andin so far,meagerly amply, hisownattitude or has modified. Nor is the one who communicates unaffected. left (Dewey,1916,p. 5) Dewey defines communicationas the sharing of experience which "modifiesthe dispositionfor both parties" who engage in the experience (Dewey, 1916,p. 9). The act of oppositionproducesgrowthand changesin the currentsituationamong all involved throughinquiryand communication. In recentyears,however, communityis a notion summonedto enforce moralorderratherthan set intersubjective inquiryinto motion.The idea of assimicommunity,unfortunately, signals homogeneityand normalization, lation and closure, forces which do nothing to illuminateresistanceas a valuable impetus for inquiryand dialogue. Is any notion of community reconcilableto postmodernnotionsof fragmentation, power, and fluidityof identities? example,does a pragmatist For and conceptionof communication as communityrequire"shared subjectivity," some criticsof communitarianism argue (Young, 1990, p. 230)? Shared subjectivityis the idea that in individual needs, wants, and selves are-if not completelythen community, at least significantly-assimilated into common ends and a common,single vision of sharedexistence. Young believes that the communityideal is inShe extricablyand dangerouslylinked to the ideal of shared subjectivity. arguesthat"theideal of community expressesa desirefor socialwholeness, a because affirmed symmetry, securityand solid identitywhich is objectified by others unambiguously" (Young, 1990, p. 232). Such a wholeness and it the securityis an illusion,but morecritically, is one thatthreatens pluralism of a democracy,instillingracism,classism,and variousother exclusionary norms. ideals of communityare often Young is correctthat neo-Aristotelian constructed aroundour desiresfor intersubjective understanding, solidarity, and communionwith like others; the ideal of communitysummoned in fromsuch a dreamby its experipragmatist thinkingis to be distinguished mental methods of inquiryand reflection,and by its democraticantifoundationalism and faith in human freedom. The idea of community in pragmatism requiresactive citizenshipin which sharedexperience creates the bonds of members.These bonds of experience help to constructthe of shiftingstructures consensus on which sharedlife is continuouslybuilt
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and rebuilt.The life that is sharedby membersdoes not inherentlydestroy nor individuality assimilatepersons into one solid identity.If we are members of multiple communities,as pragmatists insist, then we must retain individual and narratives meanings,symbols, important throughour various of communallife. Ourvariousexperiencesof community act life experiences to resistclosure onto any one communalnarrative identity. or communication,and Although Dewey's theories of transactionalism, communityall resista normalizing, homogeneous view of communitylife, his theoriesmust certainlybe put in a dialecticwith postmodern,feminist, and othercriticaldiscourseson power. Dewey's thinkingon differencewas hampered,for instance,by a focus on pluralism,or as Fraserdescribes it (1997, p. 185), a view of differencethat "isviewed as intrinsically positive and inherently cultural." also notes thisweakness in classicalpragSeigfried matismwhen she notes that"[p]ragmatists more likely to emphasizethat are is significantly valuablyOther,while feministsoften expose and everyone the controlling forceexercisedby those who have the power to construct the Otheras a subjectof domination" is 1996,p. 267). Feminism one (Seigfried, frameworkthat helps pragmatism constructa more insightfulanalysis of on power, and feministas well as othercritical perspectives pragmatism help to interrogate and reconstruct criDewey's ideas in light of contemporary tiques of power.22 notion of community,am I turninga blind By arguingfor a pragmatist to power, and arguingfor an end to conflict,a closure to the constant eye fissuresin humanrelations? Conflictin the formof challenginginstitutional afterall, is at the heartof resistancetheorizing; belief thatsuch the authority, can produce new understandings participants of power of and challenges relationsdrivesthe ideal of resistancein criticaltheory.Community often is rhetoricallysummoned in both popular and academic discourses as a a smoothing-over, healing band-aidto chaotic institutionsand worlds. By borrowingfromDewey'sphilosophy,however,my emphasison community deliberately depends on the idea of conflict.Because communitymembers do not dissolve in communities, because membersare both individuals and membersin important ways, differenceand conflictare not only unavoidable, they are enrichingto common life. A progressive counts individual variations precious as sinceit society findsin themthe meansof its own growth. Hence,a democratic must... allowforintellectual freedom theplayof diverse and society in measures. giftsandinterest itseducational (Dewey,1916,p. 305) Central this idea of community the erasureof the binaryopposition to is between individual community. and Resistance the pointwhere individual is meets communal norms; communication,in the Deweyan sense, agency implies that all parties are altered in the experience. Although Dewey's theory does not sufficientlyilluminatecontemporary problems of institutionalhierarchy hegemony,transactionalism and offersus a theoretical per901

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resistancein a communicative framework. Although spective to understand is lens Dewey's transactionalism an important with which to read resistance and readagainst scholarship work,as I arguehere, it too mustbe continually and critiquedby contemporary criticalpragmatists, criticaltheorists,postmodernist,feminists,and others. and community communication, Dewey's notions of transactionalism, are at the heart of my argumenthere, but it would be unwise to limit a renderingof educationalcommunityto only Dewey's views on the topic. Postmodern theoristsand otherswill find faultwith much of Dewey's pragcritical theoristswill find him matism,includinghis naturalistic metaphysics; as feministsand otherswill find his wantingfor his shortcomings a radical; work lackinginsightfulanalysisinto power. All of these critiquesshould be used to reconstruct classicalpragmatist philosophy for our own times, as Dewey would havewanted.Yet, as I arguehere,it will benefitcontemporary resistancetheorizingif scholars of power and differencemight also look back at classicalpragmatism a conceptualresource.In turningback to as of transactionalism, find an idea relevantto current we Dewey's concept resistancetheoriesas they continueto unfold. In interpreting resistanceas a potentiallyvaluableexpression,conflict can be a firststep in the inquiryrequiredto formulate commonpoliticaland moralaimsin schooling.Yet it is oftentreatedas "anobstruction be beaten to down, not as an invitationto reflection" (Dewey, 1981, in Seigfried,1996, p. 166). A numberof factorsin progressiveeducationalpracticecan influence the success of resistanceas a source of inquiryratherthanthe impetus for further educators silencingand exclusionof certainstudents.Progressive can cultivateconditionsthat are rightfor sharednormsof inquiry,critique, and deliberation currentpracticesand ends. If these conditionsare right on in an educationalinstitution, communication fostermore sharedmeancan ings and aims. Suchconditions-a willingnessto question,critique,investigate, and learn in the search for clarityand multipleperspectives-require both moraland intellectual habitsnot easilycultivated today'sassessmentin happy schools. The challengeof this work is considerable, especiallywhen we consider that it compels educatorsto truly listen and respond to the needs of some of our schools' most marginalizedstudents, students for whom quick solutionsof "zerotolerance" disciplineare increasingly popular.Communal aroundresistance, suggestedhere, could limitor as practices halt the objectification resistant of studentswho are, at present,more easily seen as "other" shuttledoff to special schools, programs, the streets and or ratherthan affirmedand acknowledged. To theirvast credit,resistancetheorieshave servedto enlighteneducators regarding potentialrelevanceof oppositionfor students.Yet acts of the resistanceare not self-revealing politicalstatementsthattake place in social vacuums.They occur in the social sphere-in educationalcommunities, for example-and as such, resistantacts take on complex and often contradictory meaningsfor those who experience them, includingthose authorities who reactin officialand unofficialways to these acts. Resistance,like any
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communicative changes all those involved in the experience, and can act, open up possibilitiesfor dialogue, communication,and even community between unlikely parties.These possibilitiesare opened up in institutions and that fostercriticalreflectionamong practitioners students,an open atwith communalnorms of trust,dialogue, and sharedwork. Remosphere we grettably, have muchwork to do before manyour schools can be places where people are encouragedor even allowed to cultivatethese normsand practices.
Notes
II have included, in this category, a wide varietyof educational and social theorists who may or may not label themselves "resistancetheorists."What these theoristsand Marxists,neo-Marxists,poststructuralists, feminists alike-hold in common are their contributionsto the analysis of resistance or opposition exhibited in schools or other social institutions. here to critique and revise resistance using Dewey's theory of transactionalism "2In theory, I do not claim perfection or absolute truthin Deweyan pragmatism(neither, for that matter,did Dewey himself); rather,pragmatismis employed here as a tool which, though importantto the task at hand, must itself be read critically.One primaryexample of how Dewey's pragmatismmust be read with and against more contemporaryand critical perspectives concerns pragmatism'ssilence on relations of power. Although Dewey acknowledged conflict as an inherent part of the coordinationof human experience, he, like other pragmatists,did not fully emphasize or theorize the power dynamics attachedto human conflict. Communication,as contemporarycriticaland feminist pragmatistthinkerspoint out, is a process conducted within, and shaped by, relationsof power (KnightAbowitz, 1999b; Seigfried, 1996, Cherryholmes,1988). Although some might argue that Dewey's conceptions of dominationmay have crippledhis social theory, I do not believe thatthis flaw damages my argumentthatresistance,while typicallysolely analyzed with a conception of power and domination,is fundamentallya communicativeact, thus requiringa theory of communicationin which to ground its meanings. "3Garrison (1999) notes that "earlyin his career Dewey adhered to neo-Hegelianism, but eventually driftedaway .... Having abandoned Hegelianismhe also abandoned the idea of the Absolute, of ultimate cosmic purpose (telos or entelecheia), or any ultimate eschatology, fulfillingitself in history"(p. 362). Garrisondoes note that by 1916, Dewey had formulatedhis naturalisticmetaphysics that is a reconstructedversion of Aristotle's metaphysicsof the actual and the potential (p. 365). This example is based on Solomon's "Jocks" his 1992 study of a Toronto high in school. 5Forpurposes of illustration,I limit my example here to two opposing cultures,but interactionist views do not magicallylimitthis numberof groups or individualsin any way. 6Criticalpragmatists,in particular,have emphasized the importance of conflict in democraticcommunal constructions(see KnightAbowitz, 1999a). 7Resistancetheorists are not alone in their affinityfor an interactionistperspective. Colwell (1993) notes that "the prevailing outlook in science, philosophy, and human affairsis still largely interactional." delineationand categorizationof modern and postmodernresistancetheories is, "8My of course, a constructionfor my own purposes, but my rationaleis simply to distinguish those resistancetheoristsmore indebted to a Marxist theoreticalparadigmfromthose who conceive of resistance as a strategyor action more or less separate from any one theoreticalnarrative. of provideonly a briefsketch of this work here, because the contributions the CCCS "9I are well documented in the literature.See, for example, Gelder and Thornton(1997). (1982) has a more damning name for this: theoreticalclosure. 10Hargreaves 903

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School scholars found America in (1992, chap. 3) reveals how the Frankfurt "11Joas particularto be a wasteland of Western capitalism. 12Resistance here, have been theorists, especially those I have labeled "modernist" especially interestedin student resistanceof authorityin school, but resistanceis a strategy also utilized by teachers in school to assert their agency for the purposes of progressive social transformation (see Munro, 1996; Filax, 1997). 13 Fine (1991) argues that dropping out is a final (and perhaps the ultimatelyselfdefeating) form of resistance:" .. . it is often the academic criticresistingthe intellectual and politicalgirdles of schooling who drops out or is pushed out of low-income schools" (p. 50). in McLaren's articleon "clowning" Journal of Education (1985) rendersthis "14Reading limited impression of his resistance theorizing. A more thorough examination of the practicein the largerwork, Schoolingas a Ritual Performance,provides a more complex new view of the resistance practice. This is especially true when considering McLaren's introductionand coda which positions his work as much more influenced by both postthan when he originallystudied the TorontoCathomodernismand historicalmaterialism I lic school for Schoolingas a RitualPerformance. discuss this more fully laterin the article. an "15As example, HargreavescriticizesAnyon'sstudy for using resistanceas "atrawling device which, like a finely meshed fishing net, sweeps the oceans of pupil activityfor examples, allowing only the smallest and most insignificantitems of pupil 'appropriate' activityto get away"(1982, p. 113). Similarto Walker'scritiqueof Willis,Hargreavessees Anyon's work as creditingall pupil opposition with resistance. here "16Used to mean completing school and moving on to post-secondarytraining/ education and secure employment with a fair wage. (1998) refersto this tendency to label resistanceas stories of "good"and "bad" "17pitt resistance-the good resistance occurs when the oppressed becomes conscious of their plight and mindfullyexecutes successful opposition againstthe statusquo. The bad forms of resistance serve ultimatelyto reproduce the status quo. Pitt (1998) and other feminists influenced by psychoanalyticinquirywish to complicate these good and bad stories of resistance. act 18Inmy own conception of resistanceas a communicative,transactional that must be accounted for in progressiveeducationalpractice,I utilize a social interpretation the of term. In doing so I do not wish to ignore the insights of psychoanalytictheorists, but consider a sociological interpretation more "visible" educatorsand more available for for the types of inquiryand problem-solvingpracticesthat might be possible and necessary in school settings. Educatorsshould always keep in mind, however, that socialized resistance is only one aspect of the conflicts at play in classroom opposition. rebuttalsto McLaren's "19Several 1998 Educational Theoryarticlemake use of some of the postmodern and post-structural insights mentioned previously in this article.Lather objects to "the assumptions McLarenmakes about the possibilities of a universalizing discourse of truthtelling, and correct readings in the face of ambiguityand uncertainty" (1998, p. 492). Biesta strikesa similarpostmodern note in his rebuttal,using a Derridean concept of justice to argue that "a criticalpedagogy committedto justice will, therefore, have to articulatethis commitment out of a recognition of the impossibility of justice" (1998, p. 510). (1997) labels such constructionspart of a "normalizing 20Carlson community"discourse which, associated with culturalneoconservatism, seeks to recapturea "romanticized lost American community." "In unsettling times," Carslon notes, "such hypernormalizingconstructionsof community have a wide, popular appeal"(p. 100). 21This not to suggest that all institutionsare communities;schools can, with a great is deal of intention and work on the part of adults and students, constructpublic forms of are communityin which norms of interdependenceand democraticparticipation normed. I pose this construction as an ideal of the democratic education envisioned by Dewey (1916) and more contemporaryauthorson the subject (Shor, 1996). 22Forelaborationon this point, see KnightAbowitz (1999a). Other hybrids that are potentially well-positioned for the work of critiquingand reconstructingclassical pragmatisminclude the propheticpragmatism West [see, for example, West (1993a, 1993b)] of or criticalpragmatism[see Cherryholmes(1988)]. 904

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Manuscript received May 13, 1999 Revision received October 20, 1999; February 29, 2000 Accepted August 24, 2000

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