Knowledge is heavily influenced by our positionality, or the “beliefs, attitudes, and habits of feeling” structured by a society, which privileges certain ways of being and knowing (Appleman 2011, p. 2). While ideological positions can certainly be informed by race, class, and gender, they are most commonly “enforced and concentrated” by the images and messages put forth by the media (Said 1980). Perhaps no group knows this better than the Middle East, a population of people who, since the age of imperialism, has been victim to inaccurate cultural representations. In this way, the West has always lacked an ability to productively engage with the world of the East, as "whole swatches of Eastern history, culture, and civilization" are replaced by rhetoric and images that define it through "crude and essentializing" caricatures (Said 1980). In our current socio-political context where truth has become an elusive concept and the perpetration of ‘isms’ are a normative part of our mainstream culture, it is crucial that students become vigilant about the knowledge they are exposed to and question how that knowledge may be perpetuating an incomplete image of reality.
Given that "reality is determined by what people read," English teachers are in a unique position to promote a particular version of the world through the literature they select (Said 1978, p. 32). Information that students are exposed to is often adopted as fact because they have not had exposure to other ideological paradigms that illuminate how theirs are limited in perspective. Narratives, then, are an ideal tool for teaching students how to question, and even “resist the ideology that surrounds them,” because the systems of beliefs laden in texts are likely to be incongruent with the ways of seeing the world that they are used to (Appleman 2011, p. 3).
Of course, the possibilities for interrogating positionality in the classroom are dependent on the types of texts teachers choose to introduce to students; when teachers center discourse around white hegemonic narratives, they become responsible for engendering a non-critical, passive relationship to the world. Rather, if teachers are committed to giving students the power to “investigate and determine cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and the biases [that] influence the ways knowledge is constructed,” they must center texts that offer insights into the perspectives and experiences of groups whose realities are largely left out of mainstream discourse (Banks 1993, p. 10).
In order for students to become critical consumers of knowledge, they should have access to a multicultural curriculum. By centering diverse voices, teachers can invite their students to develop “habits of informed skepticism” (Takacs 2003, p. 31) about the information they are constantly being inundated with. Indeed, world literature beyond the hegemony challenges people to “expand, enlarge, or reorder [their] sense of how things are” (Bruns, 2011, p. 18) and seeing outside the bounds of their own perspective may help them realize that what they believe they know about other worlds is actually “fundamentally premised upon a fiction” (Said, 1978, p. 52).
While using literature to challenge traditional knowledge paradigms seems overtly political, there is no such thing as an "innocent, value-free reading" (Appleman 2011, p. 7). In fact, teachers who choose to abide by the canon sends a message about what stories matter and whose knowledge counts, and robs marginalized communities of the space to speak for themselves. To teach "neutral" texts, then, is to silence other voices from being heard and engendering the status quo - a political act.
What is the value of narrative writing (like memoirs)?
How do our social positions bias our knowledge of different narratives?
How can reading memoirs about other people's life experiences impact our understanding of the world?
What narratives about the Middle East are pervasive in Western culture?
What role does the media mold those narratives?
To what extent can counter-narratives disrupt biases?
How do images influence our interpretations?
How can theoretical lenses influence our interpretations of texts & images?
How can applying theory help us to interrogate the knowledge we are exposed to?
Through their reading of Iranian diasporic memoirs, SWBAT:
Identify the stereotypes that characterize the Middle East and how those stereotypes are perpetuated by Western forms of aesthetic cultural production (the news, textbooks, literature, videos)
Analyze the extent to which their positioning in a community, culture, religion, and/or social class not only informs the knowledge they have access to, but how they may internalize or interpret the sources of their knowledge as conveyers of truth
Build visual literacy skills by way of their ability to read, critique, and reflect on images, and how certain visual elements can be used to advertise a certain message
Apply their understanding of postcolonialism/Orientalism and critical media literacy to make visible and interrogate the ideologies laden in the sources of information that they engage with
Appleman, D. (2000). Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Banks, A. J. (1993). The canon debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural education. Educational Research, 22(5), 4-14.
Bruns, C. (2011). Why Read Literature? Why Literature: The Value of Literary Reading and What It Means for Teaching (pp. 11-36). New York, NY: Continuum.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Said, E. W. (1980). Islam through western eyes. The Nation.
Takacs, D. (2003). How does your positionality bias your epistemology? Thought and Action, 19(1), 27–38.