Review of Educational Research

Spring 2000, Vol. 70, No. I, pp. 25-53

Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education

Kevin K. Kumashiro
Swarthmore College

This article reviews the developing literature on anti-oppressive edu-

cation (i.e., education that works against various forms of oppression)
by summarizing and critiquing the four primary approaches that edu-
cational researchers have taken in conceptualizing (I) the nature of
oppression and (2) the curricula, pedagogies, and policies needed to
bring about change. These four approaches to anti-oppressive educa-
tion are Education for the Other, Education About the Other, Educa-
tion that Is Critical of Privileging and Othering, and Education that
Changes Students and Society. Engaging in anti-oppressive education
requires not only using an amalgam of these four approaches. In order
to address the multiplicity and situatedness of oppression and the
complexities of leaching and learning educators also constantly need
to "look beyond" the field of educational research to explore the
possibilities of theories that remain marginalized, including post-struc-
turalist and psychoanalytic perspectives. This article concludes with
implications for future research.

In an attempt to address the myriad ways in which racism, classism, sexism,

heterosexism, and other forms of oppression play out in schools, educators and
educational researchers have engaged in two types of projects: understanding
the dynamics of oppression and articulating ways to work against it. Whether
working from feminist, critical, multicultural, queer, or other perspectives, they
seem to agree that oppression is a situation or dynamic in which certain ways of
being (e.g., having certain identities) are privileged in society while others are
marginalized. They disagree, however, on the specific cause or nature of oppres-
sion, and on the curricula, pedagogies, and educational policies needed to bring
about change. Collectively, they point to what I see as four ways to conceptual-
ize and work against oppression. In this article, I describe and critique each
approach, noting how different approaches are helpful for achieving different
goals. I argue that though educators have come a long way in detailing ap-
proaches that address different forms and different aspects of oppression, they
need to make more use of poststructuralist perspectives in order to address the
multiplicity and situatedness of oppression and the complexities of teaching
and learning. Broadening the ways we conceptualize the dynamics of oppres-
sion, the processes of teaching and learning, and even the purposes of schooling
is necessary when working against the many forms of social oppression that
play out in the lives of students. Doing so requires not only using an amalgam
of these four approaches (which many educators already do), but also "looking

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Kumashim
beyond" the field to explore the possibilities of theories that remain marginalized
in educational research.
Before turning to my analysis, I should explain some of my terminology. I
use the term "Other" to refer to those groups that are traditionally marginalized
in society, i.e., that are other than the norm, such as students of color, students
from under- or unemployed families, students who are female, or male but not
stereotypically "masculine," and students who are, or are perceived to be, queer
(I will define this term in a moment). Although my analysis focuses only on four
forms of oppression, I believe it extends to other forms of oppression and to
other traditionally marginalized groups, such as students with disabilities, stu-
dents with limited or no English-language proficiency, and students from non-
Christian religious backgrounds. Future research should further explore these
connections.
I use the term "queer" to refer to persons who are "gay, lesbian, bisexual,
transgender, intersexed—i.e., neither male nor female (Chase, 1998; Kessler,
1998)—or in other ways 'queer' because of [their] sexual identity or sexual
orientation." Although I mainly use "queer" to refer to sexual orientation, I do
not limit its definition to "gay, lesbian, or bisexual," partly because of the
interconnectedness of sexuality and sex/gender (Butler, 1990) and partly be-
cause of the interconnectedness of heterosexism and gender oppression (Wilchins,
1997). The term "queer," after all, like "fag" and "dyke," derogates and polices
not only people who feel attraction for members of the same gender, but also
people who exhibit physical and behavioral traits that society deems appropri-
ate only for those of a different gender (e.g., boys who act "like girls" and girls
who look "like boys"). In addition to its inclusiveness, I choose to use the term
"queer" for its pedagogical effect and political significance. As I will later ar-
gue, the term "queer" is discomforting to many people because it continues to
invoke a history of bigotry and hatred. For many queers, however, it has come
to signify a rejection of normative sexualities and genders, a reclaiming of the
terms of their identities, and a feeling of self-empowerment (Capper, 1999; Pinar,
1998; Tierney & Dilley, 1998). This disruptive, discomforting term, with its
multiple meanings and uses, seems appropriate for an essay on changing op-
pression.
Education For the Other

What is Oppression?
The first approach to addressing oppression focuses on improving the experi-
ences of students who are Othered, or in some way oppressed, in and by main-
stream society. Researchers taking this approach have conceptualized oppres-
sion in schools in two ways. First, schools are spaces where the Other is treated
in harmful ways. Sometimes the harm results from actions by peers or even
teachers and staff. For example, numerous researchers have documented the
discrimination, harassment, physical and verbal violence, exclusion, and isola-
tion experienced by female students (Kenway & Willis, 1998), by queer stu-
dents or students perceived to be queer (P. Gibson, 1989), and by students of
color, such as Asian American students (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1992).
Sometimes, however, the harm results from inactions by educators, administra-

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tors, and politicians. For example, a number of researchers have documented the
shocking, shameful, and substandard conditions, such as insufficient instruc-
tional resources and unsafe buildings and classrooms, of many urban schools
serving economically poorer students and students of color (Kozol, 1991), while
others have pointed to the lack of attention female students receive by teachers
who simultaneously give too much of their attention to disruptive male stu-
dents (Orenstein, 1994). The first way, then, that researchers have illustrated
oppression is by pointing to the recognizably harmful ways in which only
certain students are treated in and by schools, i.e., to the external ways in which
Otherness is marginalized.
Oppression, however, is not always easy to recognize. The second way that
researchers have conceptualized oppression is by looking at assumptions about
and expectations for the Other—especially those held by educators—that influ-
ence how the Other is treated. In particular, they look at the internal ways of
thinking, feeling, and valuing that justify, prompt, and get played out (and even
reinforced) in the harmful treatment of the Other. Sometimes, these disposi-
tions—both conscious and unconscious ones—are about whom the Other is
and/or should be. For example, researchers have pointed to various racial and
ethnic prejudices and stereotypes that influence how teachers treat their stu-
dents of color (Miller, 1995), or the sexist ideologies and stereotypes that influ-
ence how teachers differently treat their female and male students and how
students treat one another (Kenway & Willis, 1998; Mac an Ghaill, 1994). Some-
times, however, these dispositions are about whom the Other is not but should
become or about whom the privileged must be in order not to be the Other. For
example, researchers have pointed to the assimilationist ideology that students
of color should conform to the mainstream culture and become more like middle-
class White Americans (Miller, 1995) or to the sexist and heterosexist assertion
that all boys should exhibit hegemonic masculinity in order to be "real" men
(Askew & Ross, 1988).
Students have responded in a variety of ways to these oppressive treatments
and dispositions. Some have "overcompensated" by hyperperforming in aca-
demic, extracurricular, and social activities (Friend, 1993); some have accom-
modated enough to succeed academically but have maintained a sense of con-
nection to their ethnic culture and community (M. Gibson, 1988); some have
resisted the dominant values and norms of school and society (Fordham, 1996;
Willis, 1977); some have experienced an array of "hidden injuries," such as the
psychological harm of internalizing or even resisting stereotypes (Osajima, 1993);
and some have endured depression, turned violence onto themselves by abus-
ing drugs, starving and scarring their bodies, even attempting or committing
suicide (Orenstein, 1994; Uribe & Harbeck, 1992). Thus, to the onlooker, some
of these students "succeed" in school, whereas others are marginalized, fail, and
drop out, while still others exhibit no signs that distinguish them from the
majority of the student body. But despite the apparent differences between
those students who "succeed" and those who "fail" or simply fail to distinguish
themselves, all experience oppression.

Bringing about Change

Researchers in this first approach to anti-oppressive education have suggested
two ways in which to address oppression. First, responding to the notion that
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Kumashiro
schools are "harmful spaces," many researchers have argued that schools need
to be and to provide helpful spaces for all students, especially for those students
who are targeted by the forms of oppression described above. These "spaces"
have been conceptualized on two levels. On one level, the entire school needs
to he a space that is for students that welcomes, educates, and addresses the
needs of the Other. For example, the school needs to be a safe space, where the
Other (such as queer or Asian American students) will not be harmed verbally,
physically, institutionally, or culturally (Governor's Commission on Gay and
Lesbian Youth, 1993; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1992). The school
needs to be an affirming space, where Otherness (such as racial difference or
queer sexuality) is embraced, where "normalcy" (cultural or sexual) is not pre-
sumed, where students will have an audience for their Othered voice(s), and
where the Other will have role models (Asante, 1991; Malinowitz, 1995). The
school also needs to be a financially and materially sound space where build-
ings are safe, instructional materials are available, and programs and personnel
are sufficiently funded.
On another level, the school needs to provide separate spaces where students
who face different forms of oppression can go for help, support, advocacy, re-
sources, and so forth. For example, the school needs to provide therapeutic
spaces where harmed students can go to work through their trauma, such as that
resulting from harassment or assault; to receive the affirmation provided by
support groups; and to come to know and accept who they are by learning
about their racial and sexual differences (Crystal, 1989; Reynolds & Koski,
1995). The school also needs to provide supportive spaces where the Other can
receive advocacy, such as that provided by teachers willing to serve on commit-
tees that address sexual discrimination and harassment and to signify their ad-
vocacy by, for instance, putting pink triangles on their classroom doors (Kenway
& Willis. 1998). Student alliances that engage in political action, such as gay-
straight alliances (Woog, 1995) and Asian American student organizations (Lee,
1996) should also occupy such a space. Finally, the school needs empowering
spaces, where the Other can find resources and tools to challenge oppression
themselves, such as informational pamphlets by various organizations, and a
wide variety of literature in libraries and resource rooms (see, e.g., the lists of
queer resources in Besner & Spungin, 1995; Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and
Bisexual Issues, 1997; Unks (Ed.), 1995). Many have even argued that schools
should be. or at least provide, learning spaces exclusively for the Other, such as
single-sex schools or classrooms (Salomone, 1997).
The second way researchers have suggested that oppression may be addressed
responds to the harmful dispositions of the teachers, and involves teaching to
all students. Researchers have argued that educators need not only to acknowl-
edge the diversity among their students, but also to embrace these differences
and to treat their students as raced, gendered, sexualized, and classed individu-
als. For example, researchers suggest that rather than assume that students of
color are intellectually inferior to White American students or culturally defi-
cient. educators should incorporate the students' home cultures into their class-
rooms and pedagogies, teaching in a "culturally sensitive" or "culturally rel-
evant" way (Ladson-Billings, 1994; Philips, 1983; Sheets, 1995; Vogt, Jordan,
& Tharp, 1993), or even teaching students about the "culture of power" so that
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 Anti-Oppressive Education
they will know what it takes to succeed in mainstream schools and society
(Delpit, 1988). Rather than employ traditional and, as many have argued,
masculinist pedagogies that tend to benefit boys and marginalize girls (as. for
instance, does that practiced in teacher-centered lectures or competitive debates
where teaching/learning is rational, abstract, and detached from personal expe-
rience), educators should teach in ways that are equitable (American Associa-
tion of University Women, 1992; Sadker & Sadker, 1994), are traditionally
"feminine"—such as by personally "connecting" and constructing knowledge
with their students (Belenky. Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986)—or are
sensitive to the differences between how boys and girls think and evaluate
(Gilligan, 1982). Furthermore, educators should teach in a way that challenges
the sexism—and its concomitant heterosexism (Epstein, 1997)—prevalent among
boys (Connell, 1997) and young men (Sanday, 1990).
Concerning queer students: rather than assume that all students are hetero-
sexual and sexually "innocent"—which is not to say asexual but rather fragilely
heterosexual (Watney, 1991)—and for that matter, that students can, should, or
do leave their sexuality outside of school, educators need to acknowledge and
address the fact that students do bring sexuality into schools for a variety of
reasons, such as to resist norms (Walkerdine, 1990) and to denigrate Others
(Epstein & Johnson, 1998), and that students are not all heterosexual (some are
queer, some are questioning). Finally, rather than assume that a student's class
background or community has no bearing on how he or she engages with school-
ing, educators should acknowledge the realities of day-to-day life that can hinder
one's ability to learn—as Johnson (1997) did when she addressed the death of a
classmate in an inner-city school—and should draw from the student's own
knowledge, experiences, and outlooks (as Sylvester (1997) did when he trans-
formed his classroom of predominantly working-class students of color into a
"mini-society" in which students ran their own businesses).
In short, these studies suggest that educators should not ignore the differ-
ences in their students' identities, nor should they assume that their students are
"normal" (i.e., expect them to have the normative, privileged identities) or neu-
tral, i.e., without race, sex, and so forth (which is often read as "normal" any-
way). Rather, educators need to acknowledge and affirm differences and tailor
their teaching to the specifics of their student population.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of this approach is that it calls on educators to recognize that
there is great diversity among the student population, and, more importantly,
that the majority of students—namely, all those who are not White American,
male, hegemonically masculine, heterosexual, and middle-class or wealthy—are
marginalized and harmed by various forms of oppression in schools. Educators
have a responsibility to make schools into places that are for, and that attempt
to teach to, all their students. To fail to work against the various forms of
oppression is to be complicit with them.
This approach alone, however, has its limitations. There are at least three.
First, educators cannot focus only on the treatment of the Other, and ignore
other ways in which oppression plays out in schools. In fact, by conceptualizing
oppression in terms of the marginalization of the Other (and not in terms of the
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Kumashiro
privileging of the "normal"), and by focusing predominantly on the negative
experiences of the Other in schools, this approach implies that the Other is the
problem; it implies that, without the Other, schools would not be oppressive
places. One weakness, then, of this first approach to anti-oppressive education is
its emphasis on individual prejudice, cultural difference, the interpersonal, harm-
ful treatment of the Other, and its failure to attend to other causes and manifes-
tations of oppression. The dynamics of oppression are not confined to the ways
in which certain students are treated by educators and other students; therefore,
disrupting oppression requires more than preventing harmful interpersonal in-
teractions.
Second, a form of education that is "for the Other" requires defining and
addressing groups whose identities and boundaries are difficult to define be-
cause they are fluid, contested, and constantly shifting. Difficulties and ques-
tions arise in at least three situations. First, when developing safe spaces, sup-
portive programs, and resources that work against homophobia, one might ask,
who is the Other that these spaces, etc. are for? Are they only for students who
identify as gay, lesbian, and bisexual, and perhaps are questioning their identi-
ties as well? What about students harassed because they are perceived to be
gay/lesbian/bisexual based on their gender expression, or children of gay/les-
bian/bisexual parents? They are all harmed by homophobia, and they all de-
serve support, but one could argue that they need different kinds of support.
Second, when implementing feminist pedagogies that strive to teach in femi-
nine ways or to empower girls to enter non-traditional fields, one might ask, is
the goal of these pedagogies to challenge gender oppression? If so, who is the
Other that these pedagogies are targeting? Only girls, and perhaps non-
hegemonically masculine boys as well? What about other people oppressed on
the basis of their gender, such as transgender and intersexed people? Without
ignoring the need to address the history of patriarchy and sexism against women
and girls, educators must also break down gender categories in order to work
against the oppression of people who do not fit the normative categories of
"boy" and "girl" (Bornstein, 1994; Chase, 1998). Third, even when the Other is
named, spaces, resources, and pedagogies often succeed in reaching only a
portion of the targeted population and fail to address students who are
marginalized on the basis of more than one identity. Students who are both
queer and of color do not always feel "safe" entering multicultural student
centers. Culturally relevant pedagogies that challenge racism often operate within
a heterosexist discourse that silences people of color with queer sexualities.
Thus, the situated nature of oppression (whereby oppression plays out differ-
ently for different people in different contexts) and the multiple and intersect-
ing identities of students make difficult any anti-oppressive effort that revolves
around only one identity and only one form of oppression. Perhaps what is
needed, then, are efforts that explicitly attempt to address multiplicity and keep
goals and boundaries fluid and situated. In other words, what is produced or
practiced as a safe space, a supportive program, a feminist pedagogy, or a cultur-
ally relevant pedagogy cannot be a strategy that claims to be the solution for all
people at all times, but rather, is a product or practice that is constantly being
contested and redefined. Rather than search for a strategy that works, I urge the
participation in efforts that address the articulated and known needs and indi-

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viduality of the students, but that constantly look to the margins to find stu-
dents who are being missed and needs that have yet to be articulated. Educators
should create safe spaces based on what they see is needed right now, but they
should also constantly re-create the spaces by asking, whom does this space
harm or exclude? They should create supportive programs, but should also
constantly re-create the programs by asking, what practices does this program
foreclose and make unthinkable? They should engage in equitable and relevant
pedagogies, but should also constantly rethink their pedagogies by asking,
whom does this pedagogy miss or silence? Without constantly complicating the
very terms of "the Other," an education "for the Other" will not be able to
address the ways it always and already misses some Others.
A third weakness of this approach is its assumption that educators can accu-
rately assess the needs of their students, especially their Othered students. As I
will later argue, teaching involves a great degree of unknowability. Ellsworth
(1997), for example, points out that there is always a "space between" the teacher/
teaching and learner/learning, between, for instance, who the teachers thinks the
students are and who they actually are, or between what the teacher teaches and
what the students learn. What does it mean, then, to give students what they
need if we acknowledge that we cannot know (1) what they need and (2) whether
our efforts are received by students in the ways that we want them to be re-
ceived? This is not to say that educators should not try to teach, but that the
very notion of what it means "to teach" needs to change. I will discuss this
factor of unknowability when I turn to the fourth approach to working against
oppression. I will, at that time, link the notion of "working through trauma"
with another psychoanalytic notion, that of "learning through crisis." For now,
my point is that the first approach is necessary to work against the harmful
effects of oppression, but in helping only the Other (and in presuming to know
the Other), it alone is not enough.
Education About the Other

What is Oppression?
Educators cannot focus exclusively on the treatment of the Other and ignore
other ways in which oppression plays out in schools. Turning from the school
environment to the school curriculum, some researches have attempted to work
against oppression by focusing on what all students—privileged and
marginalized—know and should know about the Other.
Researchers have pointed to two kinds of knowledge (or, perhaps more accu-
rately, two ways of thinking) that can lead to the harm of the Other by others
(through, for instance, the interpersonal interactions and educator inaction de-
scribed earlier) and by him- or herself (such as when an individual internalizes
negative messages). The first kind of knowledge is the knowledge about (only)
what society defines as "normal" (the way things generally are) and what is
normative (the way things ought to be). In this case. Otherness is known only by
inference, and often in contrast to the norm and is therefore only partial. Such
partial knowledge often leads to misconceptions, such as the notions that "au-
thentic" Americans are the White New England settlers and their descendants,
meaning people of color are not real Americans (see Giroux (1997) for a discus-

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Kumashiro
sion of Whiteness and racial "coding"); or that normal and moral human beings
fall in love with, marry, and procreate with members of the opposite sex, mean-
ing same-sex attraction reflects an illness, a sin, and/or a crime (Sears, 1987); or
that there are two genders/sexes and that members of each gender exhibit only
certain behaviors, appearances, feelings, occupations, etc., meaning anyone who
deviates has an unnatural or inappropriate gender (Chase, 1998; Connell, 1987).
Schools often contribute to this partial knowledge through the selection of
topics for the curriculum, such as the celebration of industrial inventors and the
relative absence of any discussion of labor exploitation in U.S. history text-
books (Anyon, 1979).
The second kind of knowledge is about the Other but encourages a distorted
and misleading understanding of the Other that is based on stereotypes and
myths. In other words, the second kind of knowledge is partial, i.e., biased.
Students learn or acquire this second form of knowledge both outside and in-
side of school. Outside of school, for example, students are learning about queers
from sensationalist and stereotypical accounts in the media and popular culture
(Lipkin, 1995); they are learning about Asian American men and women from
exoticized portrayals in films and television (Okihiro, 1994); and they are learn-
ing about the "proper" roles for girls or women and boys or men from their
family, their communities, the popular press, and so forth (Willis, 1977;
McRobbie, 1978). But even inside school, students learn little that challenges
these stereotypes and misrepresentations. For example, students learn little if
anything about the gay liberation movement in history textbooks (Lipkin, 1995);
they see few portrayals of queers in health textbooks, and many of these only in
the context of sexually-transmitted disease (Whatley, 1992); they hear and/or
engage in few discussions about queers, except when making jokes or disparag-
ing comments, and since these often go unchallenged by the teacher, they con-
sequently learn that it is acceptable to denigrate queers (Unks, 1995); boys in
particular learn that normalcy does not include queer sexualities (Epstein, 1997;
Mac an Ghaill, 1994).
In short, researchers have suggested that the "knowledge" many students
have about the Other is either incomplete because of exclusion, invisibility, and
silence, or distorted because of disparagement, denigration, and marginalization.
What makes these partial knowledges so problematic is that they are often
taught through the informal or "hidden" curriculum (Jackson, 1968), which
means that, because they are taught indirectly, pervasively, and often uninten-
tionally, they carry more educational significance than the official curriculum
(Jackson, Boostrom. & Hanson, 1993).
Bringing about Change
Researchers who adopt this second approach, Education about the Other,
have argued that schools and teachers need to work against these two harmful
forms of knowledge that are reinforced in school. They have suggested two
ways to teach about the Other. One, the curriculum needs to include specific
units on the Other, such as curricular units on labor history and resistance (Apple,
1995); feminist scholarship, or any of a number of fields in women's studies
(Schmitz. Rosenfelt, Butler, & Guy-Sheftall, 1995); literature by and/or about
queers (Sumara. 1993) or the representation of queers in films (Russo, 1989);

32
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and various topics in Asian American studies (Hune, 1995) and ethnic studies
(Chan, 1995).
The second strategy for teaching about the Other is to integrate Otherness
throughout the curriculum. Educators should not limit their lessons about the
Other to once or twice a year when this topic is exclusively addressed but
integrate lessons and topics about the Other throughout the curriculum. For
example, educators can teach about gay resistance movements when talking
about the civil rights movements of the 1960s, when talking about the impact
of changing the boundaries of voting districts in local elections (which helped
activist Harvey Milk get elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in
the 1980s), when talking about grassroots mobilization around the AIDS epi-
demic and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and so forth. More routine opportunities to
integrate diversity include: the wording of math problems; lists that suggest
possible topics to cover for science research projects; discussions of the per-
sonal lives of historical figures, authors, political leaders, and celebrities; and
the use of guest speakers (Loutzenheiser, 1997).
By integrating lessons on the Other throughout the curriculum educators can
move away from merely adding on a lesson here and there. Such integration can
work against the notion that teaching and learning about the Other can be
achieved with a day's lesson, say, on Native Americans, and then another on the
physically disabled. In addition, the movement away from discrete lessons about
the Other can work against the tendency to treat different groups as mutually
exclusive. Such an approach enables educators to address the intersections of
these different identities and their attendant forms of oppression, examining, for
instance, queer themes in ethnic literature (Athanases, 1996); queer sexualities
in communities of color (Sears, 1995; Wilson, 1996) or critiques of feminist
movements and feminist spaces by women from working-class backgrounds,
women of color, women with queer sexualities, and so forth (Anzaldua, 1987;
Maher & Tetreault, 1997; Schmitz et al, 1995).
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of this approach is that it calls on educators to bring visibility to
enrich their students' understandings of different ways of being. In fact, by
trying to treat other ways of being as something that is as normal as the norma-
tive ways of being, this approach attempts to normalize differences and Other-
ness. Working against incomplete and biased forms of knowledge that students
have about the Other, and working against the harm that often results from
partial knowledges, this approach aims not merely to increase the students'
knowledge but to develop the students' empathy for the Other (Britzman, 1998a).
If individuals know more, they will not oppress the Other and one another.
Thus, rather than targeting only the Other (which is the case with the first
approach), this approach reaches to all students.
Like the first approach, however, this second approach does not bring about
change unproblematically. There are at least three reasons for this. First, teach-
ing about the Other could present a dominant narrative of the Other's experi-
ence that might be read by students as, for instance, "the queer experience," or
"the Latino/a experience." Otherness becomes essentialized and remains differ-
ent from the norm. Second, teaching about the Other often positions the Other
33
Kumash¡ro
as the expert, as is the case when students of color are asked to explain the
African American (or some "minority") perspective (hooks, 1994). Such a situa-
tion reinforces the social, cultural, and even intellectual space/division between
the norm and the Other. Third, the goals of teaching about the Other and work-
ing against partial knowledge are based on the modernist goal of having full
knowledge, of seeing truth, of finding Utopia. Some have argued, however, that
partial (i.e., "situated") knowledge is the only form of knowledge that is pos-
sible and desirable (Haraway, 1988). Furthermore, practically speaking, there is
only so much time in the school year, and it is literally impossible to teach
adequately about every culture and every identity, especially given the multi-
plicity of experiences within any cultural community (e.g., a straight Jewish
woman's experiences often differ significantly from a straight Jewish man's
experiences).
All of this is not to say that teaching about the Other and amplifying voices
of the Other should be avoided. Rather, the uses of such lessons should be
reconsidered. Learning about and hearing the Other should be done not to fill a
gap in knowledge (as if ignorance about the Other were the only problem), but
to disrupt the knowledge that is already there (since the harmful/partial
knowledges that an individual already has are what need to change) (Luhmann,
1998). As I will later argue, changing oppression requires disruptive knowledge,
not simply more knowledge. Students need to learn that what is being learned
can never tell the whole story, that there is always more to be sought out, and in
particular, that there is always diversity in a group, and that one story, lesson, or
voice can never be representative of all. According to Ellsworth (1997), teachers
need to get students to always ask, what has not been said (by the student, by
the teacher, by the text, by society)? Lessons about the Other need to include
learning to resist one's desire to know, to essentialize, to close off further learn-
ings. The goal is not final knowledge (and satisfaction), but disruption, dissatis-
faction. and the desire for more change.
To put it another way, lessons about the Other should not aim to tell students
the truth about the Other. Rather, lessons about the Other should be treated as
both catalysts and resources for students to use as they learn more. Disruptive
knowledge, in other words, is not an end in itself, but a means toward the
always-shifting end/goal of learning more. For example, novels from writers of
color have traditionally been used to teach students about different cultures, or
to give students entry into different cultural experiences (O'Neill, 1993). The
problem with such a use of novels comes when students believe that, after
"understanding" the novel, they will "understand" the represented culture or
group. Yet every novel has silences and every novel privileges certain ideolo-
gies over others; every novel, in other words, provides only a partial perspec-
tive. Therefore, using novels to learn the truth about Others is problematic.
However, rather than ask, "what does this novel tell us about, say, Native Ha-
waiians," what if teachers were to ask, "how can this novel be used to learn more
about Native Hawaiians, or about racism against Native Hawaiians, or about
Native Hawaiians in the mainstream-U.S. imagination?" Rather than ask, "what
do we know, based on this book, about Native Hawaiian cultures and people,"
what if teachers asked, "which stereotypes of Native Hawaiians does this novel
reinforce, and which ones does it challenge?" Rather than ask, "according to

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 Anti-Oppressive Education
this book, what is it like to be Native Hawaiian," what if teachers asked, "what
is not said in this book about being Native Hawaiian, and how do those silences
make possible and impossible different ways of thinking about Native Hawaiian
peoples and experiences?" The value of lessons about the Other comes not in
the truth it gives us about the Other, but in the pedagogical and political uses to
which the resulting (disruptive) knowledge can be put.
I should note that even when this is done the second approach to anti-oppres-
sive education nonetheless has limitations. One, the assumption that informa-
tion and knowledge lead to empathy does not account for times when feelings
do not reflect intention, and, for that matter, when neither feelings nor intention
gets played out in behavior. Two, even if empathy were achieved, it could be
argued that it simply reinforces the binary of "us" and "them." As Britzman
(1998a) has argued, the expectation that information about the Other leads to
empathy is often based on the assumption that learning about "them" helps a
student see that "they" are like "us"; in other words, learning about the Other
helps the student see the self in the Other. Such a perspective leaves the self-
Other binary intact, and allows the self (i.e., the normative identities) to remain
privileged. Three, consequently, teaching about the Other does not force the
privileged students to separate the normal from the self, i.e., to acknowledge
and work against their own privileges. Teaching about the Other does not nec-
essarily illuminate, critique, or transform the processes by which the Other is
differentiated from and subordinated to the norm.
My point is not to argue that empathy has no social value. On the contrary, I
believe that students need to have empathy for others (especially Others), and
pedagogies that aim to cultivate such a sensitivity are important components of
anti-oppressive education. However, the problem lies with privileging empathy
as the final goal of anti-oppressive education. As I argued earlier, the root of
oppression does not reside solely in how individuals think about, feel towards,
and treat one another, and thus, empathy cannot be the panacea. It is necessary,
but not sufficient.
In sum, this second approach to challenging oppression, like the first, works
against the marginalization, denigration, and harm of the Other. However, while
such efforts do help the Other, they do not bring about structural and systemic
change, they do not change the norm, and thus, they do not disrupt the process
that differentiates the Other from the Normal. In addition to the approaches that
address Otherness, approaches are needed that address normalcy—approaches
that work against the privileging of certain groups, the normalizing of certain
identities, and that make visible these processes. The next two approaches do
just that.
Education that is Critical of Privileging and Othering

What is Oppression?
Many researchers have argued that understanding oppression requires look-
ing at more than one's dispositions toward, treatment of, and knowledge about
the Other. Educators and students need to examine not only how some groups
and identities are Othered, that is, marginalized, denigrated, violated in society,
but also how some groups are favored, normalized, privileged, as well as how

35
Kumashìro
this dual process is legitimized and maintained by social structures and compet-
ing ideologies. Schools, after all, are part of society, and understanding oppres-
sion in schools requires examining the relationship between schools and other
social institutions and cultural ideas (Stambach, 1999). For example, under-
standing the marginalization of female students (and faculty) requires looking
not only at sexist interactions and cultures, but also patriarchal structures (such
as a male-dominated administration with a female-dominated workforce) and
phallocentric (i.e., male- or masculine-centered) ideologies (Luke & Gore, 1992).
Similarly, understanding social and economic reproduction, and oppression on
the basis of class, requires looking at structural factors, in particular, at the
imperatives and contradictions of capitalism, to see how such things as the
commodification of culture, the paradoxical nature of working-class resistance,
and the technical control of teachers all contribute to the legitimization and
maintenance of the existing socio-economic order (Apple, 1995). Understand-
ing the underachievement of Hmong American women in higher education re-
quires looking not only at cultural differences, but at "economic, racial, and
other structural barriers to educational persistence and success" (Lee, 1997).
And understanding the oppression of queer students requires moving beyond
"homophobia" and its "humanist psychological discourse of individual fear of
homosexuality as contagion," to consider heteronormativity and "how the pro-
duction of deviancy is intimately tied to the very possibility of normalcy"
(Britzman, 1998a, p. 152).
Researchers have also noted that schools do not stand outside of these struc-
tures and ideologies, innocent of the dynamics of oppression, but are institu-
tions or "apparatuses" that transmit "ruling ideologies" (Althusser, 1971), main-
tain "hegemony" (Gramsci, 1971) and reproduce existing social order. Researchers
have argued that schools (and other social institutions) serve two functions:
they privilege certain groups and identities in society while marginalizing oth-
ers, and they legitimize this order by couching it in the language of "normalcy"
and "commonsense." Thus, the role of the school in working against oppression
must involve not only a critique of structural and ideological forces, but also a
movement against its own complicity with oppression.
Bringing about Change
The third approach to working against oppression advocates a critique and
transformation of hegemonic structures and ideologies. This process begins
with more knowledge, especially knowledge about oppression. As Ladson-Bill-
ings (1995) argues, students need to be able to "recognize, understand, and
critique current social inequities" (p. 476). What is significant here is that,
unlike the first two approaches to challenging oppression, this approach does
not argue that working against harmful forms of partial knowledge entails only
learning more about the Other. It also requires learning that that which society
defines as "normal" is a social (and contested) construct (Apple, 1995) that both
regulates who we are supposed to be and denigrates whoever fails to conform to
"proper" gender roles, for instance, or "normal" sexual orientation (Greene, 1996).
Thus, educators should teach not just about the Other, but also about the pro-
cesses by which some are Othered while others are normalized.
Furthermore, the path to developing a critical consciousness involves not
only learning about the processes of privileging/normalizing and marginalizing/

36
 Anti-Oppressive Education
Othering, but also unlearning (Britzman, 1998a) what one had previously learned
is "normal" and normative. The thinking, here, is that privilege is often couched
in other discourses. For example, as I noted earlier, the privilege of Whiteness is
often disguised as "authenticity"; and heterosexuality is often privileged as
normalcy or morality. Thinking critically, then, involves recognizing this couch-
ing and masking of privilege, and teaching critically involves unmasking or
making visible the privilege of certain identities and the invisibility of this
privilege (Giroux, 1997).
I should note that the process of learning about the dynamics of oppression
also involves learning about oneself. Students need to learn two things about
themselves. One, that some of their identities and experiences may be those
they are studying about, and thus, that they may be privileged in some ways.
Two, that they (often unknowingly) are complicit with and even contribute to
these forms of oppression when they participate in the privileging of certain
identities. Thus, teachers should engage in a "pedagogy of positionality" that
engages both students and teacher in recognizing and critiquing how one is
positioned and how one positions others in social structures (Maher & Tetreault,
1994).
Thus far, I have argued that teaching students to be critical of oppression
entails helping them recognize both the privilege of certain identities, includ-
ing their own, and the processes of normalizing and Othering, in which they are
complicit. This third approach to bringing about change, however, does not
have as its sole goal knowledge about oppression. As I argued earlier, "critical"
education involves both the critique and transformation of structural oppres-
sion (Giroux & McLaren, 1989). Knowledge is but the first step of a larger
process. Also necessary are thinking skills that students can use to formulate
effective plans of action. Ellsworth (1992) describes the assumptions underly-
ing critical pedagogy as "the teaching of analytic and critical skills for judging
the truth and merit of propositions, and the interrogation and selective appro-
priation of potentially transformative moments in the dominant culture" (p. 96).
Thus, when students have both knowledge about oppression and critical think-
ing skills they will be "empowered" to challenge oppression.
As Freire (1995)—whose work on "liberatory education" has become the
foundation of "critical pedagogy"—and feminist researchers influenced by him
(hooks, 1994; Weiler, 1991) have argued, critical education or "consciousness-
raising" (what Freire calls conscientizacao) entails learning "to perceive social,
political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppres-
sive elements of reality" (Freire, 1995, p. 17, my emphasis). Similarly, Maher
and Tetreault (1994) have argued that, "if the classroom setting can help stu-
dents to understand the workings of positional dynamics in their lives, . . . then
they can begin to challenge them and to create change" (p. 203). Thus, critical
knowledge and thinking is what impels students toward action and change,
toward resisting and challenging oppression. This emphasis on knowledge and
resistance is characteristic not only of many critical and feminist pedagogies
(such as those listed above), but also of queer (Malinowitz, 1995) and
multicultural pedagogies (such as that suggested by McLaren (1994), who ad-
vocates a "critical and resistance multiculturalism," and by Sleeter & Grant
(1987), who advocate a "social reconstructionist" multiculturalism).

37
Kumashiro
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of this particular approach is that it calls on educators not only
to teach about oppression but to try to change society as well. It is important for
students to develop the knowledge and thinking skills necessary to understand
not only the processes of Othering and normalizing, but also their own complic-
ity in these processes. Further, this understanding should lead not only to empa-
thy for the Other, but also to the ability and the will to resist hegemonic ideolo-
gies and to change social structures.
There are, however, several difficulties with this approach. First, the notion
that oppression is structural in nature implies that oppression has the same
general effect on people. My critique does not deny that members of any par-
ticular group share common experiences with oppression, or that certain groups
have historically been subject to the same general form of oppression. However,
because all individuals have multiple identities, not all members of the same
group necessarily have the same or even similar experiences with oppression.
Structural explanations cannot account for this diversity and particularity. Ex-
periences with oppression involve many contradictions (Apple, 1995). For ex-
ample, in her research on nursery classrooms, Walkerdine (1990) argues that
females who at one moment were able to exert power over males, at another
were rendered powerless by them, because in each situation a different dis-
course was being recreated or "cited. “ Specifically, several female students
were able to control the toys and limit the activity of the boys while playing
"house" by citing (i.e., calling up and working within) the discourse of domes-
tic labor (woman-as-housekeeper). The female teacher exerted little control over
a few of her male students during a particularly sexist and demeaning conversa-
tion because the boys cited the discourse of women-as-sex-object. This same
teacher in turn excused their behavior by invoking the discourse of normal
childhood sexuality. Such fluidity of identity and power relations cannot be
explained by patriarchal structures that position males over females (and teach-
ers over students). A framework that allows for a more situated understanding of
oppression is needed.
Second, the goals of "consciousness-raising" and "empowerment" assume
that knowledge, understanding, and critique lead to personal action and social
transformation. There are two problems with this assumption. One, awareness
does not necessarily lead to action and transformation. A student may learn all
the knowledge and skills needed (theoretically) to engage in subversive politi-
cal action, but may not choose to act any differently than before. Consider
Britzman's (1998a) argument that all learning involves an unlearning. If the
unlearning involved in learning the necessary knowledge and skills leads the
student into a state of "crisis" or paralysis (such as feeling emotionally upset),
the student will first need to work through the crisis before being able to act
(Kumashiro, 1999a). I will explain the notion of crisis in more detail in the next
section, but my point here is that rather than lead to a desire for change, crisis
can sometimes lead to more entrenched resistance. Two, as I argued earlier, the
teacher can never really know (1) whether the student learned what he or she
was trying to teach, and (2) how the student will be moved by what was learned.
The goal that students will first learn and then act "critically" is difficult to
achieve when there is much that the teacher cannot and does not know and
control.

38
 Anti-Oppressive Education
The recognition that they can neither know what students learn nor control
how students act based on what they learn, leads many teachers to feel para-
lyzed. In fact, many teachers do not want to enter these unknowable places and
do whatever they can to maintain a sense of control over what and how students
learn (Lather. 1998), even over how they behave. After all, educators are trained
to delineate what they want students to understand, plan a lesson to get them
there, and then assess whether they indeed came to this understanding. Al-
though the alternative may seem disconcerting, according to Ellsworth (1997),
it is promising for anti-oppressive education. Recognizing that this commonsense
notion of teaching is impossible allows educators to rethink what it means to
teach. Rather than try to get students to think and act in a particular way,
Ellsworth urges educators to help transform the way teachers and students think,
to always look beyond what the teacher is teaching and what the student is
learning. Such an unpredictable, uncontrollable, and unforeseen goal is not
unlike what I described in the previous approach as a way to work against the
essentialization that so frequently occurs when teaching and learning about the
Other—both involve looking beyond. Critical pedagogy needs to move away
from saying that students need this/my critical perspective since such an ap-
proach merely replaces one (socially hegemonic) framework for seeing the world
with another (academically hegemonic) one. Rather than aim for understanding
of some critical perspective, anti-oppressive pedagogy should aim for effect by
having students engage with relevant aspects of critical theory and extend its
terms of analysis to their own lives, but then critique it for what it overlooks or
for what it forecloses, what it says and makes possible as well as what it leaves
unsaid and unthinkable.
One of these unspoken assumptions of critical pedagogy points to the third
difficulty with this third approach to anti-oppressive education: its goal of con-
sciousness-raising puts into play a modernist and rationalist approach to chal-
lenging oppression that is actually harmful to students who are traditionally
marginalized in society. As Ellsworth (1992) argues, the "key assumptions, goals
and pedagogical practices fundamental to the literature on critical pedagogy ...
are repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domination" (p. 91). In particu-
lar, the rationalist approach to consciousness-raising assumes that reason and
reason alone is what leads to understanding. However, rational detachment is
impossible: one's identities, experiences, privileges, investments, and so forth
always influence how one thinks and perceives, what one knows and wills not
to know. To accept the possibility of such detachment is really to perpetuate a
"mythical norm" that assumes a White, heterosexual, male perspective. Those
who are traditionally marginalized remain outsiders, called upon as "experts" to
speak with their own voices and educate the norm, and then finally deemed not-
rational because they speak from a visible (i.e., a non-dominant) standpoint.
Furthermore, the life experiences of traditionally marginalized students, such as
those of students of color with racism, can bring a historical and personal con-
nection to the lessons on oppression that those who fit the mythical norm typi-
cally do not have. Personal experiences as people not privileged on the basis of
race can exceed the expectations of a pedagogy that relies on rationality and
that represses other ways of knowing and relating. Such lessons serve to Other
students who cannot be engaged by a pedagogy that presumes to address the
mythical norm.

39
Kumashiro
Thus, critical pedagogy has worthwhile goals and helpful insights; if used
uncritically, however, it can also be harmful.
Education that Changes Students and Society

What is Oppression?
Some researchers have turned to poststructuralism to help formulate
conceptualizations of oppression that center around notions of discourse and
citation (Britzman, Santiago-Valles, Jimenez-Munoz, & Lamash, 1993; Butler,
1997; Davies, 1989; Kumashiro, 1999a, 1999b; McKay & Wong, 1996;
Walkerdine, 1990). Earlier, I mentioned Walkerdine's (1990) study on nursery
classrooms. Her analysis suggests that oppression and harm originate in (or are
produced by) not merely the actions and intentions of individuals or in the
imperatives of social structures and ideologies. Rather, oppression originates in
discourse, and, in particular, in the citing of particular discourses, which frame
how people think, feel, act, and interact. In other words, oppression is the citing
of harmful discourses and the repetition of harmful histories.
To understand this notion of citation, consider the "model minority" stereo-
type of Asian American students, that they are all smart and hardworking "aca-
demic superstars" (Lee, 1996). As I discussed above, researchers have explained
the harmfulness of stereotypes by turning to individual prejudice and discrimi-
nation (Miller, 1995) and to a White-dominated racial order that claims to be
meritocratic and non-racist by pointing to the "success" of "model" minorities
(Osajima, 1988). They have argued that the power of a stereotype to harm either
exists inherently in the stereotype (so that an individual using a stereotype is
like an individual wielding a weapon) or derives from social structures and
ideologies (so that using a stereotype is like assisting in the maintenance of the
structures/ideologies). They have also argued that this stereotype has tangible
consequences, that it may cause differential treatment of students by teachers
and even psychological harm (Crystal, 1989; Lee, 1996; Osajima, 1993). These
theories imply that in order to challenge oppression educators should prohibit
the use of the stereotype—as well as the voicing of hateful, harmful speech
(Butler, 1997)—or strategize ways to "resist," "challenge," or dismantle an al-
ready-existing structure (through critical pedagogy).
Post-structuralism offers a different view. As I have argued elsewhere
(Kumashiro, 1999b), iterating a stereotype can cause harm because every such
iteration cites past iterations of that stereotype. In other words, the power of a
stereotype to harm derives from a particular history of how that stereotype has
been used and a particular community of people who have used that stereotype
and who constitute that history (Butler, 1997). If someone was to tell me that I
should be a better student because I am Asian American, I would likely con-
clude that the speaker is making racist assumptions about me because I have
heard other people talk about and generalize about Asian Americans in similar
ways before. The speaker's words would have racist meaning to me because I
would read them as constituting part of the history of how the model-minority
stereotype has been and is being used. Furthermore, if I believed that the speaker
was judging me based on this stereotype and I valued the speaker's judgment,
the speaker's words would likely produce in me feelings of failure or abnormal-

40
 Anti-Oppressive Education
ity. I should note that the model-minority stereotype plays out not only in
individual thoughts and interpersonal interactions, but also in institutional prac-
tices. Affirmative action offices and policies, or advisory commissions on race,
for example, that fail to address the racism experienced by Asian Americans or
otherwise ignore Asian Americans, are doing so because they are buying into
the model-minority stereotype. In these institutions and ideologies the associa-
tion between "Asianness" and "success" (or, the process in which Asianness
cites success) gets repeated over and over.
As one might imagine, there are many other associations that characterize
oppression: Whiteness and authenticity, femaleness and weakness, heterosexu-
ality and normalcy, queer sexualities and sinfulness, limited-English-language
proficiency and lack of intelligence, to name just a few. What is harmful is when
people have to live through the repetitions of these histories, as everyone must
through interpersonal conversations and interactions, and through institutional
and economic and legal imperatives, and through moral and religious doctrines.
Indeed, oppression itself can be seen as the repetition, throughout many levels
of society, of harmful citational practices.
The notion of citationality provides insight not only into the cause of harm,
but also into the relationship between different forms of oppression. In particu-
lar, conceptualizing oppression as discursively produced is helpful for under-
standing how oppression can play out differently in different contexts. Research
on queer Asian American males, for example, reveals that the forms of oppres-
sion they experience in traditionally marginalized communities are both similar
to and different from those in mainstream society (Kumashiro, 1999b). In Asian
American communities, queer Asian American males often experience a form of
heterosexism that cites the heterosexism in mainstream society but differs slightly
from it insofar as it racializes it. In particular, Asian America, like mainstream
society, defines queer sexuality as abnormal and sinful, but unlike mainstream
society, often assigns it a racial marker: heterosexuality is marked as an Asian
virtue, queerness as a "white disease." Similarly, in queer communities, queer
Asian American males often experience a form of racism that cites the racism of
mainstream society (namely, Orientalism, in which racism is gendered and a
deviant femininity attributed to Asian American men). However, rather than
define the feminized Asian American male as sexually undesirable, many queers
consider him "exotic" and, thus, sexually hyperdesirable. The racialized
heterosexism in Asian American communities and the queered racism in queer
communities point to two things: 1) the ways in which different forms of op-
pression often supplement one another, i.e., cite one another but add something
new (Crowley, 1989), and perhaps more important, 2) the ways in which oppres-
sion is multiple, interconnected, and situated.

Bringing about Change

I have argued throughout this article that the situatedness and complexity of
oppression make problematic any attempts to articulate a strategy that works
(for all teachers, with all students, in all situations). Yet, as my critiques of the
first three approaches suggest, poststructuralism (and other marginalized ap-
proaches) can be helpful to educators trying to engage in anti-oppressive educa-
tion. Educational research has yet to offer many concrete examples of educators
making use of these insights in their classrooms. In what follows, I point to

41
Kumashiro
some of these insights, not only to help educators rethink their current practices,
but also to suggest where future research might explore.
Perhaps the most important contribution poststructuralism has to make is its
insistence that the very ways in which we think are framed not only by what is
said, but also by what is not said (Marshall, 1992). Critical theorists made this
explicit in their analysis of school curriculum (e.g., Anyon, 1979) and the "hid-
den" curriculum (Jackson, 1968). But what about the field of educational theory
itself? Are "education," "teaching," and "learning" framed by theories, disci-
plines, and perspectives that make only certain ways of thinking possible, only
certain kinds of questions askable? Ellsworth (1997) argues that educators try-
ing to address oppression have conducted research primarily within the social
sciences and have theorized primarily within "critical" frameworks. Drawing on
the humanities (film studies, in particular) and such marginalized theoretical
frameworks as poststructuralism and feminist psychoanalysis, she offers radi-
cally different ways of thinking about anti-oppressive education. Echoing her
poststructuralist call to look outside the field to frameworks that remain
marginalized in educational research, the remainder of this article examines
insights that, I believe, have much to contribute to anti-oppressive educational
research and practices.
First, the poststructuralist notions of citation and supplementation suggest
different ways to think about what it means to bring about change. In contrast to
prohibiting harmful words and actions, or to developing a critical awareness of
harmful structures and ideologies, some have argued that change requires be-
coming involved in altering citational practices (Butler, 1997; Kumashiro,
1999a). They suggest that the prohibition and/or the critical awareness of the
repetition of harmful associations/histories do not actually change them. What
does is a particular kind of labor. When activists labor to supplement harmful
associations they are participating in altering them (i.e., are constituting a re-
worked history, are performatively reworking history). When enough members
of a community participate in this kind of labor citational practices (especially
the repetition of harmful citations) change.
One example of this kind of change is the ongoing work among queers to
disrupt the harmfulness of the term "queer." People often associate certain iden-
tities with certain attributes because over time those associations have been
repeated and thus naturalized. In the case of sexuality, for instance, heterosexu-
ality is defined as "normal," whereas queer sexualities are treated as a form of
illness. However, when many members of a community begin to supplement the
meanings of identities or structures in the same way, the associations change
(e.g., it is less common for queers to be treated as sinners or criminals). Many
queers have supplemented the term "queer" in such a way that, though it still
cites a deviation from the norm, when used with other queers, rather than carry-
ing a hateful sentiment it often carries a feeling of self-empowerment. More than
merely psychological, this change has contributed to the increasing institution-
alization of queer studies in higher education.
The importance of laboring to stop repetition and rework history/discourse
can also be seen when this type of effort is attempted in the classroom. For
example, in one of my teaching experiences, my students wrote and presented
to other students a skit about the harmfulness of stereotypes. In their perfor-
mance, they voiced a range of stereotypes, and although their point was to show

42
 Anti-Oppressive Education
how stereotyping (as they were doing in the skit) is harmful, not all members of
the audience heard the stereotypes being used in this critical way. One in par-
ticular said that he found the stereotypes of his own group offensive. I argue
elsewhere (see Kumashiro, 1999a) that the reason the audience member was
harmed by the skit was because he heard the students using the stereotypes as
they have traditionally been used, in other words, as a repetition of the same
harmful meanings and effects they have historically perpetuated. However, for
my students the stereotypes had a different meaning because they cited not only
the harmful meanings these stereotypes traditionally carry, but also the history
of their own labor over the previous two weeks to disrupt, critique, and rework
these stereotypes. Had they included in their skit this process of laboring to
change the power of the stereotypes to harm, perhaps the audience member
would have heard the stereotypes in the skit as a disruption, reworking, and
supplemention (rather than a repetition) of the same harmful histories. While
not a panacea for eliminating oppression, such an activity is one way to put the
notions of citation, supplementation, and repetition to use in the classroom.
The recognition of the harmfulness of repetition and the imperative to repeat
with a difference are also aspects of a second body of theories that remains
marginalized in the field of educational research but that gives many helpful
insights to anti-oppressive education. This body of theories is what I call con-
temporary feminist and queer readings of psychoanalysis (e.g., Britzman, 1998a,
1998b; Ellsworth, 1997; Felman, 1995; Luhmann, 1998; Pitt, 1998). Drawing
on such thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Jacques Lacan, these
theorists put to use aspects of psychoanalysis that help educators rethink the
processes of teaching, learning, and change. They point to at least four insights.
First, coupled with the poststructuralist notions of repetition and supplemen-
tation, is the notion that a formidable barrier to anti-oppressive education is the
unconscious desire for repetition and the psychic resistance to change. As I
noted earlier, the "problem" that anti-oppressive education needs to address is
not merely a lack of knowledge, but a resistance to knowledge (Luhmann, 1998),
and in particular, a resistance to any knowledge that disrupts what one already
"knows." Britzman (1998a), for example, suggests that we unconsciously desire
learning only that which affirms what we already know and our own sense of
self. In fact, it could also be argued that we unconsciously desire to learn only
that which affirms our sense that we are good people and that we resist learning
anything that reveals our complicity with racism, homophobia, and other forms
of oppression. For example, many people desire a repetition of the silence that
normally surrounds the term "queer," preferring instead the less confrontational
terms "gay" and "lesbian," which do not contest the very meaning of "normal"
(Tierney & Dilley, 1998).
Anti-oppressive education, then, needs to involve overcoming this resistance
to change and learning, instead, to desire change, to desire difference. Earlier, I
suggested that anti-oppressive education must involve learning to be unsatis-
fied with what is being learned, said, and known. What this entails, I believe, is
the ongoing labor to stop the repetition of harmful "knowledges" (both partial
knowledges like stereotypes, and presumably whole knowledges like neo-Marxist
grand narratives), and to construct disruptive, different knowledges. In other
words, to participate in the ongoing, never-completed construction of knowl-
43
Kumashiro
edge, students must always look beyond what is known; they must ask, "what is
not said?" and then go to places that have, until now, been foreclosed.
Of course, such a process is antithetical to the ways we traditionally think
about teaching and learning. Teachers cannot determine ahead of time what
students are to learn. This means that they cannot plan a lesson that will get
students to that predetermined place and that, hence, they cannot then assess
whether or not students got there (Ellsworth, 1997). Teaching, in other words,
like learning, cannot be about repetition and affirmation of either the student's
or teacher's knowledge, but must involve uncertainty, difference, and change. I
should note that the goal here is not merely any difference, since not all changes
will be helpful. Rather, the goal is a change informed by these theories of anti-
oppression, a change that works against oppression.
Often, this change does not come easily, which leads to the second insight
from feminist/queer readings of psychoanalysis: anti-oppressive education in­
volves crisis. Earlier, I critiqued critical pedagogy for its reliance on rationality.
Talking about one's own experience with and complicity in oppression and,
perhaps most importantly, learning things that force one to re-learn or unlearn
(Britzman, 1998a) what one had previously learned cannot always be done
rationally. Drawing on the work of Felman (1995), I argue that learning about
oppression and unlearning one's worldview can be upsetting and paralyzing to
students, and thus, can lead them into what I call the "paradoxical condition of
learning and unlearning" (Kumashiro, 1999a). Students can simultaneously be­
come both "unstuck" (distanced from the ways they have always thought, no
longer so complicίt with oppression) and "stuck" (intellectually paralyzed so
that they need to work through feelings and thoughts before moving on with
the more "academic" part of a lesson). Though paradoxical and in some ways
traumatic, this condition should be expected: by teaching students that the very
ways in which we think and do things can be oppressive, teachers should expect
their students to get upset.
Consequently, educators need to create a space in their curriculum for stu­
dents to work through crisis. Felman (1995) discusses how her students worked
through a crisis they experienced by giving testimonies of (i.e., by revisiting in
different ways) their experiences of the crisis. She argues that teaching and
learning really take place only through entering and working through crisis,
since it is this process that moves a student to a different intellectual/emotional/
political space. In noting that both teaching and psychoanalysis involve "liv[ing]
through a crisis," she explains that they both "are called upon to be performative,
and not just cognitive, insofar as they both strive to produce and to enable,
change. Both . . . are interested not merely in new information, but, primarily, in
the capacity of their recipients to transform themselves in function of the new­
ness of that information" (p. 56). How so? In revisiting the crisis through testi­
mony, students are not merely repeating the crisis, but are supplementing it,
giving it new readings, new meanings, and new associations. This is not unlike
the way in which my students supplemented the stereotypes when they wrote
and performed a skit about the harmfulness of stereotypes (Kumashiro, 1999a).
Laboring to alter citational histories can help students work through crisis.
The recognition that anti-oppressive education involves entering and revisit­
ing crisis in different ways leads to the third insight from feminist/queer read-

44
 Anti-Oppressive Education
ings of psychoanalysis, namely, that anti-oppressive education also involves
self-reflexivity (and the change of the individual). I argued earlier that learning
about Others is an important step in changing oppression, but that alone this is
not enough. Learning about the Other with the goal of empathy often involves
seeing how "they" are like "us" (and that, deep down, we are all the same), i.e.,
it involves seeing the self in the Other, and thus, maintaining the centrality and
normalcy of the self. Learning about the Other and about oppression, then, can
serve to reinscribe sameness by allowing the privileged Self to see itself no
differently than before. In contrast, Britzman (1998a) argues, efforts to chal­
lenge oppression need to involve changing the self, rethinking who one is by
seeing the Other as an "equal" but on different terms. It should not be the case
that a student "looks for [his or her] own image in the other, and hence invests
in knowledge as self-reflection and affirmation," but that, "in the process of
coming to know, [the student] invests in the rethinking of the self as an effect
of, and condition for, encountering the other as an equal" (p. 81). Thus, a stu­
dent should engage not only in self-reflection (in which the student asks how he
or she is implicated in the dynamics of oppression), but also in self-reflexivity
(in which the student brings this knowledge to bear on his or her own sense of
self). In order not to reproduce normalcy schools should engage students in the
process of separating the normal from the self, significantly changing how they
see themselves and who they are.
To put it another way, schools need to queer our understanding of ourselves.
By this, I do not mean that we should see the Self in the Other, or the Self as the
Other, but that we should deconstruct the Self/Other binary. We might look, for
example, at how our sense of normalcy needs, even as it negates, the Other, as
heterosexuality does the homosexual Other (Fuss, 1991) or literary Whiteness,
the Black shadow (Morrison, 1992). Or, we might look at how the normal is
dangerously close to the perverse, as homosociality is to homosexuality, a con­
tiguity that causes "homosexual panic" (Sedgwick, 1991). And then we might
ask, how does this knowledge come to bear on my sense of self? By changing
how we read normalcy and Otherness, we can change how we read Others and
ourselves.
The change this pedagogy will produce cannot, of course, be not known
beforehand. Its goal is not, think like this, but think differently (and not different
in any way, but different as informed by these theories). This brings me back to
a central theme of this article, namely, that teaching involves unknowability,
which is the fourth insight from feministΛļueer readings of psychoanalysis that
I find useful for anti-oppressive education. Ellsworth (1997) has argued that the
teacher addressing his or her students is not unlike a film addressing its audi­
ence, for
no matter how much the film's mode of address tries to construct a fixed
and coherent position within knowledge, gender, race, sexuality, from
which the film "should" be read; actual viewers have always read films
against their modes of address, and "answered" films from places different
from the ones that the films speaks to. (p. 31)
Working against oppression, therefore, should not be about advocating strate­
gies that are always supposed to bring about the desired effect. Consider, for
45
Kumashiro
example, Khayatt's (1997) discussion of the role queer teachers play in chal-
lenging heterosexism and homophobia. Critiquing the notion that queer teach-
ers "should" come out (i.e., should disclose their sexual orientation to their
students), she points to the different, contradictory ways that students—queer
and straight—can read that supposedly empowering act. She does not tell edu-
cators not to come out, but argues against making the common assumption that
that act has the same meaning to all students. Strategies to bring about change
must be situated and must recognize that teaching involves unknowability and
that learning involves multiple ways of reading.
In other words, teaching is not a representational act, an unproblematic trans-
mission of knowledge about the world to the student, but is a performative act,
constituting reality as it names it, while paradoxically acknowledging that the
teacher cannot control how the student reads what the teacher is trying to en-act
(Ellsworth, 1997). There is always a space between the teaching and the learn-
ing, and rather than try to close that space (and control where and how the
student is changed), the teacher should work within that space, embrace that
paradox, and explore the possibilities of disruptions and change that reside
within the unknowable (Lather, 1998). I argue elsewhere (1999a) that we are not
trying to move to a better place; rather, we are just trying to move. The aspect of
oppression that we need to work against is the repetition of sameness, the ongo-
ing citation of the same harmful histories that have traditionally been cited.
Although we do not want to be (the same), we also do not want to be better
(since any Utopian vision would simply be a different and foretold way to be,
and thus, a different way to be stuck in a reified sameness); rather, we want to
constantly become, we want difference, change, newness. And this change can-
not come if we close off the space-between.
Often, what resides in that space-between is the unconscious, which is what
makes teaching and learning unknowable. Just as Ellsworth (1997) suggests
that students always need to look for what is not said/known/visible/thinkable
(by/to the student, teacher, text), Britzman (1998a) suggests that educators al-
ways need to look for ways in which what we do not consciously know (and
what we desire not to know) influences our teaching practices. In particular,
educators need to consider the multiple ways in which what we (unconsciously)
repress hinders teaching and learning. She begins by arguing that resistance to
knowledge is often an unconscious defense mechanism, like the ego's tendency
to repress. Rationalist approaches to teaching cannot address this unconscious
desire to ignore. Ironically, what can is exactly what pedagogy typically re-
presses. Like the ego, pedagogy is never in control of itself, and "like the ego[,]
subjects itself—in ways it does not notice—to its own unpedagogical anxieties
and defenses" (p. 327). In other words, like the ego, pedagogy often does what
is harmful to itself, such as by privileging rationalism and repressing other ways
of knowing an drelating, such as "touching" (which is what Britzman suggests
can lead the ego to desire to know, change, and make reparation). Furthermore,
pedagogy traditionally attempts to control and to grasp the knowable, leaving
no space open for what is really uncontrollable and unknowable in education;
and it attempts to do so out of desire for self-affirmation, desire for sameness and
repetition. Education, then, needs to explore the difference produced in the
unknowable, such as the uncanny (i.e., the strangely familiar). A pedagogical

46
 Anti-Oppressive Education
example would be reflecting on and revisiting one's own desire to ignore; such
an act might bring an uncanny return of the repressed, or allow one to familiarly
yet differently revisit how one harms oneself (Kumashiro, in press).
There are, of course, many more helpful insights from psychoanalysis (see, for
example, works by such theorists as Derek Briton, Terrance Carson, Madeleine
Grumet, Maria Morris, William Pinar, Paula Salvio, and Peter Taubman). Simi-
larly, there are many other theories and frameworks yet to be embraced by many
educational researchers (or, perhaps more accurately, by educational researchers
in contemporary Western societies). Thus, in addition to further research on the
issues raised in this article, researchers need to consider theories and philoso-
phies yet unexplored by the field of educational research. For example,
Britzman's discussion of the ego, desire, and uncertainty reminds me of certain
aspects of Buddhism, and makes me wonder whether there are insights from,
say, Asian philosophies (and African philosophies, indigenous philosophies)
that might help us think differently about what it means to teach, to learn, and
to engage in anti-oppressive education. This is not to say that we should fully
embrace Buddhism in U.S. schools, especially since there are many oppressive
aspects within the different Buddhist religions, such as sexism against women.
However, just as feminist and queer theorists made use of certain aspects of
psychoanalysis (while troubling its weaknesses, such as its sexism and
heterosexism), so too can researchers make use of certain aspects of Buddhism
(and trouble its weaknesses, such as its sexism or the prescriptiveness of the
"eightfold path," described below). Summarizing Buddhism, Hane (1986) writes:
The founder [of Buddhism] taught that the way to overcome suffering
was to rid oneself of the sense of the "self." The self that we think of as
being real, permanent, and absolute is merely an illusion. Rather, all
things are in a constant state of flux; all things are ephemeral. Our suffer-
ing comes from the cravings of the self, to gratify the ego. To extinguish
the ego one must follow the eightfold path as taught by the Buddha—
that is, right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right
livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. In this
way we will become free of our illusion and thus able to achieve the state
of bliss known as Nin>ana. (p. 13)
The different ways Buddhism conceptualizes oppression, the self, desire, and
change remain relatively unexplored by educational researchers (exceptions
include Smith, 1997). So too with Confucianism (exceptions include Wang,
1999). With so much of educational research drawing on European philoso-
phers and thinkers (including the ones I have embraced in this article, namely,
poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theorists), I cannot help but wonder, what
is yet unthinkable in this Eurocentric field of study? While Buddhism (or Con-
fucianism) will not be the panacea, I imagine it can offer new ways of thinking
about anti-oppressive education. Future research should further explore these
possibilities.
Conclusion
As I call on educators to make use of an amalgam of the four approaches
outlined in this article, as well as on researchers to explore more implications of
traditionally marginalized or yet-unexplored perspectives on anti-oppressive

47
Kumashiro
education, I acknowledge that engaging in such efforts presupposes a commit-
ment on the part of educators and researchers to subversive views of the pur-
poses of education, of the roles and responsibilities of teachers, and of how we
want students and society to change. I also acknowledge that, even with this
commitment, the difficulties in implementing changes in our present educa-
tional system and in today's political climate are substantial. Yet, I believe this
article shows that more and more educators are educating themselves of the dire
need to engage in anti-oppressive education, and that more and more educators
are making a positive difference in the lives of their students. I expect this trend
to continue, and hope that this article helps in this effort.

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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Stacey Lee, Amy Stambach, Elizabeth Ellsworth,
and the RER editors and anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback,
suggestions, and support as this article was drafted and revised.

Author
KEVIN K. KUMASHIRO is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy Studies at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a 1999-2000 Minority Scholar-in-
Residence at Swarthmore College. Correspondence is welcome at Program in
Education, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, 19081. His research inter-
ests include "queer" activism and Asian Americans in education.

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