Some Reflections on Brave Space
I find Boostrom’s idea of ‘brave space’, elucidated by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens (Arao and Clemens 2013, 141) particularly compelling in thinking about the issue of microaggression. Brave space is set up for accommodating/facilitating an open and assertive attempt at addressing the issues of discrimination and privilege in the pedagogical spaces. As most of the readings of this week stated, the category of privilege is deeply embedded in language, especially in the classrooms. Since education, primarily, is imagined to be an exercise in language/discourse, it is indeed important to tear down the embeddedness of racial, sexual and cultural prejudices and power. This arguably demands deep thinking and there is an emerging consensus about it as well.
However, my attempt in this blog is to ask some question in relation to some of the suggestions made by Arao and Clemens, which are premised on the imagination of brave space. They advocate for reframing the existing rules of dialogue in a classroom by urging to address, instead of shrinking from, the forms of discrimination. Controversy with civility, own your intentions and your impact etc are some of the alternatives that they put forth with the purpose of foregrounding the need for assertive refinement of language. While these are indeed valid and generative in thinking about alternative discourse in the classroom, it is to be acknowledged that this embeddedness is also part of common identification process. To put in other words, the racial, sexual and cultural denominators are equally involved in the function of identification as well as discrimination, both of which are often interwoven.
So the question is, can we think about a language without such embeddedness imbued with race, gender, religion and culture? Or are the policies of refinement in the classroom capable enough to address the structural core of such embeddedness? If language is considered primarily as a means of communication and communication necessarily involves identification and identification is closely linked to the cultural, racial, religious and sexual categories, the deconstruction suggested by Arao and Clemens has to be examined in a much larger context with the foresight of a much deeper consequences. This however has to go beyond the process of refinement/correction at the level of policy to the level of social and institutional structure of pedagogical institutions.
October 3, 2020 @ 3:26 pm
I think we have been touching on some similar issues in our post, so, hopefully, we can continue to be in conversation and think creatively about these issues. I think the issue of ‘refinement’ is one that needs to be considered more. There is a manner in which classrooms operate as spaces of conditioning and what is being ‘learned’ above and beyond the assigned material, is a particular mode of conversating that simulates or models an idealized form of rational communication. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with this, but, oftentimes, it risks stopping short of having the student question identity production at a deeper level. I believe this is what you’re signaling towards as well with your provocation. The question becomes, for me at least, what sort of questions and texts concretely help us get at a deeper conversation in the ‘classroom’? What questions, texts, tactics, practices, and so on get students to hermeneutically engage themselves in relation to the text and to each other in such a way they question their own means of understanding and encountering the world? Many thanks for your provocation, I think it is one worth pursuing more.
October 4, 2020 @ 1:55 am
This is a good point. It makes me think about how Eskimos have 50 words for the word snow, while we only have one word. We are steeped in societal racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and classism. Thus, our words and language will fall short when we attempt to create ground rules for brave spaces.
I still think it is important to develop brave spaces. If we only live in our own bubbles, we will never learn new viewpoints. Michelle Nario-Redmond reported in her book, Ableism, that mutual relationships between disabled and non-disabled individuals reduces ableism. Thus, it is still necessary to use our imperfect language to create brave space.
October 4, 2020 @ 10:31 pm
I like the points you made on increasing communication about discrimination. I’m also glad that our society seems to be headed in that direction, as shown by the rejection of the “color blind” or “I don’t see color” argument. Our differences should not be ignored but rather they should be celebrated. After all, they won’t go away if we just pretend they don’t exist, and they make our existence brighter and more colorful. By discussing our differences, we’re able to learn different perspectives and nuances that we had been blind to before. And the goal of education is to remove our blinds and improve our insight.