Questions 2 and 3 of the Review Stage


Dear All,

Signing off from the e-seminar, I recall how in my posting of the 19th May 
I explained the purpose of my participation,

"I am participating in this e-seminar in order to evidence my commitment to
practitioner-research, to extend my understanding through participatory
experience, and to influence educational practitioner-researchers toward a
deeper and yet more tactile understanding of how practitioner knowledge is
raced."

I have received four interpersonally responsive postings that have 
enhanced my appreciation of how practitioner knowledge can be 'raced'. I 
am grateful to each of you for your personal(-ising) response.

Brian's candid, harrowing in parts, and profoundly self-reflective account 
is one I carry with me from this e-seminar with respect for entrusting the 
sharing. Harriet's warm, yet rigorous engagement with my ideas is another 
memorable posting. Mohamed's response to my posting in which he framed the 
theoretical construction of his practice was simply brilliant. While 
Jean's tough and robust challenge to the very roots of my thesis,

"Postcolonial literatures are (allegedly) literatures about non-
colonisation - well, this is where I beg to differ. While the rhetoric may 
be in the 'post', the reality is very much in the 'colonisation',

left me reeling! 


I am still not sure what to make of what felt like Jean's slur, 
nomothetically cast, on all postcolonial literatures.

I can't help juggling Jean's assertion with my reading of Professor 
Abdulrazak Gurnah's novels By the Sea, and Desolation, and the last 
sentence of an email Abdulrazak wrote to me: 'Salamia Asma na watoto 
wako' - My warm regards of peace to Asma and your family (Kiswahili). I 
did not feel 'colonised' by these words, they felt embracing. I have 
enjoyed Abdulrazak's novels, and his wonderfully gripping insights 
into 'colonial education' in Zanzibar when it was a British protectorate 
(up to 1964). I also think of Carlos Fuentes' El Viejo Gringo (The Old 
Gringo) and recognise the confusion of hope and nihilism woven by his 
seamstress like stitch through the text, but never recall a feeling of my 
being 'colonised' by his ideas, or his trope. 
Toni Morison's Beloved is a canonical contribution to 'a' postcolonial 
literature. Though it is written with a subdued aggression as a feminist 
criticism of sexism in life, Morrison brings a critical gaze to my 
phallocentric privilege, and I feel kind of got at, dirty, squalid in some 
ways, perhaps even vicariously guilty for those crimes against womanhood 
by males I have never even 'imagined' committing and which Toni insinuates 
into her narrative, I still cannot say I have once felt 'colonised' by her 
imprimatur of 'a' postcolonial literature. So I am unable to reconcile the 
tension raised by Jean's assertion. 

However, I am learning from the generative tensions I've carried through 
this e-seminar. Especially the tension for my thesis of Jean's robust 
critique. These tensions are helping my exploration of the postcolonial 
for education.

Three questions seem to be taking shape from these tensions:

1. Where can I find British teacher self study that accounts for teacher's 
influences in contributing to a 'Post-Race' future for citizenship in 
Britain, as I am trying to do in my doctoral thesis? [note - 'post-race' 
does not suggest that critical race epistemology can be ignored, and that 
the violence of racism in schools, among students and teachers can 
be 'wished away' - on the contrary]

2. How are teachers and educators placing the 'post' of postcolonial in 
curricula development activities and in classroom teaching practices?  

3. How am I improving my understanding through the communication of my 
meanings as I account for how I am pedagogising my postcolonial critical 
pedagogy?


[Please note - the ugly term 'pedagogise' has been given a specific and 
nested meaning by Basil Bernstein in his 1996  book, Pedagogy, Symbolic 
Control and Identity Theory, Research, Critique, London: Taylor and 
Francis,  and it is this usage and meaning, broadly speaking, I am 
deploying here. I am indebted to Jack's supervision for influencing my 
understanding of my practice through Bernstein's ideas to the extent that 
I am now concerned to explore in my thesis 'how I pedagogise my 
postcolonial embodied values and standards of judgment in my teaching 
practice. To this exploratory end (an oxymoron?) I am producing a series 
of video accounts with Steve Bridges, an ex-student who is continuing his 
action research enquiry informally for the time being. Through question 
and answer, and with Steve's voice predominant, I hope to co-produce with 
Steve a 'live' (i.e., critical theory based) and a 'living' (i.e. living 
theory based) account of his/my experiences of the influence of my 
travails and travels in 'pedagogising' my postcolonial critical pedagogy 
as 'critical gaze', as 'compassionate attention', and as anything else 
that emerges from our 'web of betweenness' (Maggie Farren, Ph.D thesis 
forthcoming, Bath University, 2005/06). I hope to be bringing, through my 
thesis, some innovative video material of the process of pedagogising my 
postcolonial practice that has 'relatability' in Bassey's (1995) sense for 
anybody interested in crafting their own educational theory.] 

Jean's critique of the legitimacy of the 'post' in postcolonial idea has 
been crucially important, and exciting for my education.  I particularly 
liked the way Jean handled her interest in widening the notion of 
colonialism. 

Jean wrote,

'I do not understand colonialism only in terms of the categories of colour 
and ethnicity'. 

Nor me. As a metaphor for oppression and what my friend, Chris Keeble 
refers to generically as 'injustice', I think the word 'colonial' can 
migrate well to other contexts, and in doing so poignantly convey meaning. 
However, in terms of my thesis (where I would appreciate an engagement in 
my own 'postcolonial' terms) 
I do take as my departure point the Western investment in slavery, the 
colonial holocaust and the imperial adventure. White supremacy, sadly, but 
also realistically, seems to inhere to all of these historical and 
material Western European activities. As a postcolonial practitioner, and 
diaspora, I am now writing back into whiteness from within the 
metropolitan heartland of that colonialism. This is the irony of the/my 
postcolonial condition.   

My fidelity to multiculturalism (after Ted Lumley, email exchange, 2005) 
takes precedence in my life. 

I appreciate that I am no longer taking such a possessively narrow view of 
colonialism. I thank Jean for shaking the ground beneath my feet! 

And I have been influenced by Jean in another key way, too,  

"I also do not believe it is always necessary to give specific definitions 
to practices, such as calling a practice 'postcolonial'. Throughout my 
work and writing I use terms other than 'postcolonial' to explain how I 
try to live in a way that honours others' freedom and capacity to think 
for themselves."

I agree with Jean. And I can also see that it's not always necessary to 
give specific definitions to embodied values, such as calling 
values 'postcolonial'. Rather than defining values as 'postcolonial' I 
would take Nigel's notion of virtue as character demonstrated as a 
disposition of her/his actions over time. One aspect of a person's virtue 
in a postcolonial praxis would be an ostensive disposition of the 
individual to a certain ethics and politics (Nyathi and Murray, 2005), and 
to a certain philosophy and politics (Young, 2000) that guides action over 
time, and in different spaces.

At this juncture, one final point. When Jean writes, 

"I am white, and white is a colour. As a person of colour, I need to 
interrogate my colour....",

I can see how my response was assertive but in being assertive it also 
lacked the tenderness of my humanity. 

While I am still unable to reconcile my cognitive dissonance arising from 
Jean's leap of logic in her construct,  'I am white, white is a colour - 
as a person of colour' (and I point this out with respect), I was much 
mistaken in suggesting that Jean is not a 'person of colour' (sorry, 
Jean). In terms of Steve Biko's Black Consciousness I believe that Jean 
can self-designate 'black' if she wishes, and by so doing I can show a 
solidary affinity with black consciousness and the struggle for it's 
decolonization, while simultaneously traitoring whiteness. I say this 
because 'blackness' and 'whiteness' are much more than 'skin-deep'. My 
point is that white subject positions are probably better explored from 
the intersections of a critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic, eds, 
second edition, 2000), and a critical white studies (Delgado and 
Stefancic, 1997).  Charles Gallagher's chapter, White Racial Formation, 
could be a starting point. So I accept Jean's statement as her commitment 
to traitoring whiteness. It is not being a white person that is an 
outrage, it is whiteness that is outrageous. I do become angry when white 
people deny whiteness or worse yet, implicitly recognise its dynamic 
features and then 'act' as if it has no material consequences. The psycho-
social dynamic of this arrangement is really infuriating. This is a most 
important distinction to draw. By teasing this distinction out, I am able 
to desecrate whiteness as a person of colour in a way that remains 
invitational, I hope, to Jean as a white person. How come? Because 
whiteness is a social formation that is monocultural. 

As a multiculturalist I do not want to contribute to social formations 
that are disaccomodating (after Ted Lumley). If I have in the past then I 
eschew this for the future. I know that some will find it difficult to 
appreciate the transformation of my Yaqub-writing from my Paulus-
scarification. But the burden of responsibility for this is no longer 
mine.  

Drawing lines under and moving on: 
I know that while Jean's words (in her posting) focus on the difficulties 
of perceiving the 'post' of  'postcolonialism', Jean is actually working 
in innovative, impressive, and significant 'postcolonial ways' as an 
educator. Jean's presence in higher education is a postcolonial presence. 
In deed! If Jean does/doesn't want to define or designate her work as 
postcolonial then who am I to argue with her? It is Jean's choice to 
account for her work in whatever language she chooses. I can still 
celebrate the affinity between Jean's work and the postcolonial project 

I believe the same of Moira Laidlaw's presence in her work in China 
through her recent AR Expeditions paper with her colleague (2005). I see 
the postcolonial 'deed'.

I have experienced the impact of Sarah's work within higher education as 
postcolonial, too. Through her unique filmic gaze, and her liberatory and 
empowering facilitation of a review process for an Action Masters 
programme. I see Sarah's postcolonial deeds. 

Pip's work with Maori is a praxis of decolonization in which, I 
understand, Pip is interrogating her white identity and subject position 
in respect of her Maori learners. This enactivist process - Pip with her 
learners - is what I understand to be 'postcolonial'. 

But I also know that these theorists have not as yet, and possibly may 
never, account for their work in the syntax of postcolonial epistemology. 
There is a welter of ostensive evidence in Moira's joint paper of a 
postcolonial relationship-in-action. Yet there is no lexical framing of 
this account in a way that I would/could recognise as postcolonial 
scholarship. And why should she?  


Explaining My Postcolonial Desire as Educative Influence:
My postcolonial desire to influence how my colleagues think about the 
postcolonial and their practice, and how they imagine their own work as 
creative contributions to postcolonialism, flows from a 'certain' view of 
the colonial aftermath:

'The colonial aftermath is marked by a range of ambivalent cultural moods 
and formations which accompany periods of transition and translation. It 
is, in the first place, a celebrated moment of arrival - charged with the 
rhetoric of independence and the creative euphoria of self-invention.' 

Yes, I want to write from the angle of the colonies. I would as a 
colonised person.

But Leela Gandhi's above description could, if detached from its colonial 
context, describe living educational theory - couldn't it? Do you see this 
too? Am I imagining a proximity and intimacy between  postcolonialism and 
living educational theory accounts? Please help me here. 

In a living theory account there is usually a very explicit celebration of 
epistemological independence, while the creative euphoria of self-
invention is key in Jack's supervision, and I am told (by Jack) in Jean's, 
too. I would only amend Gandhi's depiction by adding a most profound 
insight from Alan Rayner's epistemology of inclusion. 
That 'postcolonialism' is also concerned with a trusting interdependence, 
too, with others in a praxis of possible transformation. This is a 
conceptual channel of connection that I bring to my work, which I also 
practice in my 'pedagogy of the postcolonial particular'. 

I hold out for the importance of what Leela Gandhi calls the 'therapeutic 
retrieval of the colonial past' that is axiomatic to postcolonialism's 
future. As Gandhi puts it:

"Postcolonialism needs to define itself as an area of study which is 
willing not only to make, but also to gain, theoretical sense out of the 
past."

Perhaps it is because my past in colonialism is the heartbeat of a 
postcolonial future for my beautiful grandchildren, Layla and Zaki, that I 
become passionately and 'defensively' aroused about depiction, description 
and definition. In the anger and outrage suffusing my writing, it seems to 
me (and to others who have told me), that I occlude both my meanings and 
my channels of connection with some colleagues. And this will not do 
because the postcolonial future seems to be more acutely important and yet 
febrile for us all. 

For example: Xenophobia and Islamophobia in contemporary UK, at an all 
time high, is a facet of the 'postcolonial condition'. The novels of 
Abdulrazak Gurnah and V. S. Naipaul literature are features of the 
landscaping of the 'postcolonial condition', contributions to a 
postcolonial montage. 

As is the terror evoked by violence - the terrorism of suicide bombers 
whom we categorise as Islamic, the terrorism of state violence as racism, 
the terrorism of the subordination of employee and human rights in the new 
world ordering of global capitalism that determines the supply-chain for 
Nike, and the terrorism that is taking place right now as 'market values 
are replacing 'democratic values' in the shaping of British education. We 
are in a space of terrorism. 

Well, my knowledge of the 'postcolonial condition'  terrifies me, 
differently, but every bit as immediately, as the ironic awfulness of 
being a Muslim who could be bombed to bits by a Muslim 'brother/sister' in 
a misguided search for a mythic freedom from the yoke of Western hegemony 
and its devastating humiliations. 

I wonder what is so terrifying about the recent London bombings. Is it the 
terror of nothingness that is evoked when we think of death? Or the terror 
of Islam constructed as it is in a particular paradigmatic way within the 
social formation of whiteness? What concerns me is that I want to be 
complicit, in collusion, with the practice of death feeding life in a 
natural and organic sense. I do not want to 'feed' the perversion of life 
feeding death (respect to Alan R.). This is why I am a Muslim who is loyal 
to my faith by working in secular and de-colonizing ways with my students 
of all backgrounds and ethnicities. I am a Muslim multiculturalist. This 
is not an oxymoron because I position my Islam with Allah, and leave every 
other human being to make the choice that is as good for them as mine 
seems to be for me. This is why my expression of fidelity to Allah is a 
loyalty to humanity. 

There is good reason to be terrified by the terrorism that inheres to 
the 'postcolonial (and postmodern) condition'. Because it is often violent 
and can kill you, and me, without any observation of the sacred. And, 
sadly, Britain has been complicit with the US in creating a space in Iraq 
where life feeds death. And this has the hallmark of terrorism for me: 
state terrorism. This cacophonic confusion of violence seems to be central 
to the society of the spectacle (Guy Debord, 1967) and is what I 
understand (i.e., the very nature of what is 'under' my 'standing' in a 
world of cacophonic confusions) when I am guided in my writing to use the 
term, 'postcolonial condition'.

So back to my posting of the 19th May - How are we (am I) teaching into 
this understanding of terror as teachers and educators? 

When I use the term 'how are we' I am not trying to 'hide' within the 
plural in a propositional way. What I am expressing in this term is my 
hope for interdependence. My hope that teachers and educators are asking 
this question, and more appropriately their own formulations of my 
question, within the space of whiteness. And will our teaching and 
educational influences be inevitably 'raced' in the social formation of 
whiteness? 

Well, I have outlined a number of questions that have emerged for me in 
this e-seminar. 

Do you think I am angry and full of hatred because I ask these questions? 
I imagine it is my love of life and my love of my students' lives as a 
teacher, and a love of hope in a future citizenship better than we have 
now, and above all else a love of my family, and grandchildren after a 
weekend in the sun with them that valorises my life. It is from this 
tenderness of my being that I find the virtue of courage to persist 
in 'writing' these questions for my grandchildren, for now, 'into' the 
very heart of whiteness. A terrifying place indeed. 

Thanks to Jack I have to come to wonder about a relationship between the 
love of my grandchildren, my hatred of a monoculturalist terrorism, and 
the pedagogisation of my postcolonial critical pedagogy as a pedagogy of 
the postcolonial particular. A particular kind of critique (in the 
Enlightenment sense) and tender lovingness that is held, conjointly, in my 
educational gaze.

Terrorism angers me, yes. I have a hatred of monoculturalist terrorism, 
yes. But I don't hate white people, individually, for their complicity 
with whiteness as terrorism, just as I don't hate my own white heritage.  
I can't hate the individual terrorist in London last week. I feel remorse, 
sorrow, and sadness for us all: the killers, the dead, the dying, the 
grieving, and my grandchildren and yours, now and to come, because of the 
social formations of injustice (thank you Chris!) that are crimping us, 
gradually, and perniciously. Tragically, and ironically, the London 
bombings have had the backwash effect of filling up the reservoirs of 
hatred that is whiteness. 

This is effectively my statement of how I encounter the 'postcolonial 
condition' as the space in which I'm living, interdependently with you 
all, and others.

Yet, Jack and I agree that many Action Researchers do express embodied 
values that Jack likes to define as   'postcolonial values'. My preference 
is to refer to these as values of humanity that could underpin a generic 
desire for democracy, emancipation, social justice, and the virtue of 
equality. I agree with Jack that these values are also central to a 
certain ethics and politics of postcolonialism. And these values are 
crucial to various social pursuits. 


A Never-Ending (Research Story/ Fear and Loathing In Bath/The Spring of 
Gonzo Educational Theory:
During this e-seminar I have been held in the company of five very fine 
educators: David Boje (New Mexico State University), Lorraine Code (York 
University, Ontario, Ca.) Peter McLaren (UCLA), Henry Giroux (Montreal), 
and Ted Lumley ('our island', British Columbia, Ca.). 

These educators, some with vastly different backgrounds, have helped me to 
believe in my thesis. They have helped me to sustain belief in my thesis 
because their ideas have 'legitimated' the 'post' in postcolonial. 

And with this self-belief comes a responsibility to write in inviting, 
more tender, sensitised ways about whiteness in the presence of white 
people. White people are not the subject of my anger: it is the social 
formation of whiteness that is so hateful. 

Well, I have shouldered the burden of responsibility for  trying to 
explain this tension as a writer 'about' whiteness finding myself 
writing 'into' whiteness. But sometimes, as Walter Rodney says, taking 
this responsibility is still not enough. Franz Fanon wrote into whiteness 
and was ignored. I write into whiteness, tenderly and gingerly these days, 
and I am still ignored. This can cast a shadow of shimmering doubt on the 
value and worth of my research enquiry, my thesis, as well as my identity 
as a man of colour. But as my doctoral colleague and companion Nceku 
Nyathi says with a loving wisdom of the  'postcolonial condition', 

'Look Paulus, we have to teach into whiteness from who we are and this is 
a difficult challenge. But this is why we write and what we have to write 
is so important for a future beyond whiteness. People can make the excuse 
that your writing is scarifying, abusive even of their white identity, but 
sometimes whiteness prevents seeing and hearing. When they cannot stomach 
what you write, even though your ideas might be most important, this can 
be an excuse, a defense mechanism for their own guilt, their own 
paralysis.  I have seen you transform your writing, so have others. It is 
now clear and invitational. The burden of responsibility now rests with 
your reader: white and black. You have carried the postcolonial challenge 
to your colleagues - if they want the challenge they will pick it up, and 
pick you up in the process. If not....then it seems to be as Walter Rodney 
suggests. ...And I am getting similar problems here at Leicester, and I do 
not write like you." - (personal telephone conversation, 18th July 2005).

I agree with Nceku.  

Each of the above educators has, through their web pages, their texts and 
their educational theorising legitimated my thesis in the sense of 
recognising the postcolonial in their own very different disciplinary work 
as educators in the Academy. Lorraine Code, Peter McLaren, David Boje, and 
Henry Giroux each make reference to the 'postcolonial' and to 'border 
pedagogy'. 

Each refers to 'multiculturalism'. Each refers to their exploration of 
new, ecological spaces (not just propositionally, but as first person life 
commitments) influenced by some "critical theory" perspective or another. 
Lorraine Code by an epistemology of feminist critique. David Boje speaks 
to me clearly about the violence of capitalism and the importance of 
resisting this, teaching against it (after Peter McLaren) from non-
violence. This is echoed in Ted Lumley's fabulous notion 
of 'multiculturalism' though from within Ted's uniquely radical 
perspective. Henry Giroux refers to critical theory, border pedagogy, 
postcolonialism, and the postmodern notion of 'cyborgs'. David Boje 
describes his epistemology and praxis as 'Critical Postmodern Theory'.  
There are academicians and educators who are talking, writing and 
accounting for the 'post' in postcolonial.  They help me sustain my self-
belief in the importance of my thesis. They also point, obliquely, to the 
social and educational importance of accounting for how I pedagogise my 
postcolonial teaching practice.

It's been a valuable learning space. Thank you to Brian and Jack for 
setting it all up..... 

Yaqub