The Subaltern Speak

Curriculum, Power, and Educational Struggles

Michael W. Apple, Kristen L. Buras

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136079061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The question of whose perspective, experience and history is privileged in educational institutions has shaped curriculum debates for decades. In this insightful collection, Michael W. Apple and Kristen L. Buras interrogate the notion that some knowledge is worth more than others. The Subaltern Speak combines an analysis of the ways in which various forms of power now operate, with a specific focus on spaces in which subaltern groups act to reassert their own perceived identities, cultures and histories.

III

The Subaltern Speak

International Contexts

8

Struggling for Recognition

The State, Oppositional Movements, and Curricular Change

JYH-JIA CHEN

Introduction

In recent years, the role that cultural struggles have played in interrupting dominance, be it rooted in the field of education or in broader society, has become part of a wider intellectual agenda in critical scholarship (see, e.g., Apple, 1995, 1996, 2003). In this regard, demands for the recognition of cultural difference may significantly undermine the very legitimacy of symbolic injustice, an injustice rooted in cultural domination, nonrecognition, or the misrecognition, disrespect, and devaluation of particular societal patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication (Fraser, 1997, pp. 11–39). Research shows that various fronts of collective actors strive, inside and outside schools, for a winning of symbolic recognition, for a reevaluation of social identities, and for a transformation of cultural structure, all of which suggest the effects of diversified social antagonisms and oppositional movements on educational change (e.g., Chen, 2003; Nozaki, 2005).

The struggle over cultural incorporation and identity formation was a distinguishing facet of the politics of educational policy in Taiwan as far as the production and change of legitimate knowledge were concerned. Cultural policy in postwar Taiwan involved an episodic process of “nationalizing Chinese culture.” Through this process, “Chinese tradition had been invoked, icons and narratives of Chineseness had been constructed, history and civilization had been reinvented, and rituals and etiquette had been domesticated, impeding subordinated ethnic groups’ equal participation in the making of culture and curriculum” (Chun, 1994, p. 55).¹ Over the past two decades, the emergence and the unfolding of curricular reform have revealed an ongoing process in which different versions of Taiwan-related knowledge in historical, geographical, cultural, and linguistic terms, have intertwined with the quest for cultural recognition and change. In particular, ideological articulations that have centered on issues of nativization and indigenous education reveal the presence of intricate relationships involving state power, cultural orientations, social relations, consciousness, and curricular change.

Existing accounts of state-education relationships, while tending to view the state as an absolute regulator, give the collective action of educational reform groups short shrift, let alone grasp the nettle of oppositional movements. In this chapter, I attempt to incorporate a sharper awareness of the role of oppositional movements into the analyses of both state formation and the pedagogic device. A key question addressed in this chapter is: To what extent do oppositional movements mediate the link between the state and curricular change?

My orienting assumption is that social movements and ethnic struggles operate as central motors of symbolic change and pedagogic reform with respect to the creation of official knowledge. I argue that oppositional movements mediate between the state and education and that the state in formation must be seen as a set of agencies and projects that, for the winning of consent, are institutionalized responses to oppositional movements of the past. The following pages will demonstrate that in the context of crafting a more liberal-democratic, native-led state, curricular change in Taiwan involves mass struggles over the control of ideological institutions such as schools, the appropriation of culture and language, and the construction of collective identity. The overall trends toward nativization in both political and educational spheres are, in effect, the result of struggles over the cultural politics of recognition.

This chapter begins with an introduction to a more dialectical approach, one that is derived from the perspective of New Social Movements (NSMs) and that draws the role of oppositional movements back into analyses of the state-education connection (see appendix for acronyms used in this chapter). I then elucidate the rebuilding of a settler state in Taiwan and how changes in political, economic, and cultural conditions have modified the boundaries of the state system itself. Finally, I shall examine three cases of struggle against symbolic injustice—the struggles over interpretations of history, representations of sovereignty, and the production of localized curricula—and illustrate how these struggles constitute vital and insistent efforts to win recognition and to define identity within the context of state formation.

Bringing the Oppositional Movement Back In

Researchers’ theorizing of state-education relationships has forcefully demonstrated that the specificities of the state’s role in education are embedded in different historical trajectories of state formation, ideological struggle, and cultural context, thus embodying different logics of state intervention in schooling (Ball, 1990; Carnoy, 1989, 1992; Carnoy & Levin, 1985; Carnoy & Samoff, 1990; Curtis, 1988, 1992; Green, 1997). Relatively little of the dialogue among theorists has centered on the impact of oppositional movements on the linkage of the state to education.² As Bernstein (1990, 1996) argues, the dominant group tends to control the pedagogic device that serves as the dominant principle of symbolic control, and that regulates the production, reproduction, and transformation of culture. Yet the pedagogic device is never a stable set of rules imposed on the ruled, but an arena of struggle where the agents and agencies of civil society and the state compete with one another for the appropriation of the device. Indeed, the struggle for the appropriation of the pedagogic device among rival forces surfaces over time and exposes the unstable equilibrium structuring the state-education nexus, suggesting that various collective actions play a central role in the intermediary relationship between the state and curricular change (Chen, 2003).

Some insights arising from the perspective of NSMs are significant to one’s consideration of the cultural and cognitive factors of oppositional movements and their relations to the production and the transformation of official culture and knowledge. First, the NSMs have been emanating from and aiming to expand civil society where hegemonic apparatuses (schools, cultural institutions, voluntary associations, and so on) are located and where ideology, identities, cultural codes, and social relations of domination and resistance are created and transformed. Second, a certain segment of the NSMs is involved in counterhegemonic struggles that contest or undermine structures of domination by reorganizing people’s cognitive structures in ways that support alternative ways of perceiving the world (Charles, 2000, pp. 3–53; Cohen, 1985).

The framing theory in NSM research furthers a focus on the role of culture in social change. A frame is defined as a shared interpretative schema that not only makes sense of a reality, but also operates as the articulation principle by which social movements identify problematic situations, who or what is to blame, and alternatives that bring about desired change. The frame alignment processes of collective action involve acts of cultural appropriation through which movement organizers seek to articulate resonant cultural values with the cognitive frameworks of the masses in order to galvanize protest activity. Master protest frames—that is, shared cultural or ideological understandings legitimating collective action—thus serve as the sources that movement actors draw deeply on in order to mobilize potential participants and to expand cultural opportunities (Hunt, Benford, & Snow, 1994; McAdam, 1994). Finally, the identity dimensions of the NSMs bring our attention to symbolic issues and belief systems associated with “sentiments of belonging to a differentiated social group; with the members’ image of themselves; and with new, socially constructed attributions about the meaning of every-day life” (Johnston, Larana, & Gusfield, 1994, p. 7). The construction of ethnic identities is therefore viewed as the initial kick that prompts movement participants to “name themselves” in ethnic or nationalistic movements.

NSM concepts contribute to a deeper understanding of collective action, mass mobilization, ethnic struggles, and social change, which are at the center of state formation and pedagogic reform. The intermediating between the state and educational transformation hinges on social antagonisms in which ethnicity has been a fundamental axis of nation building, political representation, and cultural meaning, as has been the case in postwar Taiwan. In the 1980s and 1990s, political and social opposition movements proliferated as attempts to politicize civil society and to appropriate master protest frames fueled the development of oppositional education reform. It is particularly worthy to note that the demands of oppositional movements eventually bring about policy and curricular change through the generating of new entitlements, the legitimating of subordinate culture, the creating of collective identities, and to a certain degree, the incorporating of the perspectives of the oppressed into curriculum. It is thus crucial to show how the process of institutionalizing cultural recognition really works. To provide some context for exploring this process, I first turn to a brief discussion of the history of state formation in postwar Taiwan.

The State in Formation

After World War II, China assumed control over Taiwan as a result of a complete transfer of power from the Japanese government to the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang, or KMT). The KMT introduced into Taiwan’s political structure an explicit preference for mainlanders who governed Taiwan as a colony. The vast majority of government posts were staffed by mainlanders, and the lowest positions by Taiwanese. Given the financial difficulties underlying the KMT’s war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Taiwan’s government agencies emphasized the importance of exporting state-owned resources to China. Mainlander dominance in Taiwan, coupled with fierce economic inflation, rising unemployment, and declining living standards, soon resulted in Taiwanese demands for self-governance and the opening up of state-owned enterprises (Zhang, 1988). During the February 28 Massacre in 1947, which followed an islandwide revolt against KMT mismanagement, thousands of civilians were slaughtered by mainland troops. The traumatic February 28 Massacre and the notorious mass-scale purge in the ensuing decade have since symbolized the ethnic cleavage in post-war Taiwan.

While at war with the CCP, the KMT enacted the Temporary Provisions in 1948 to substitute for the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC). Decades of emergency orders had legitimized the exercise of emergency presidential powers, restricted the establishment of new political parties and newspapers, and outlawed demonstrations. The KMT later fled to Taiwan and declared martial law when the CCP gained control of the mainland.³ Among other policies, the KMT established a fa tong regime (literally, ruling the nation by means of the constitution) in order to stabilize its hold on the island. First and foremost, the KMT declared itself the sole legitimate government of all China while treating the CCP as a rebel regime. Taiwan was thus viewed as a temporary seat of the ROC state for the mission of mainland recovery. Second, regional elections were prohibited so as to prevent the emergence of native authorities. Another aspect of the fa tong regime was a mainlander-dominated Congress. Elections for the three chambers of the parliament were suspended in order to indefinitely extend the tenures of representatives who had been elected in China, until they could return to their constituencies. The mainlander-dominant Congress had long been criticized by the opposition as the perennial parliaments.

External threats, such as diplomatic setbacks in the 1970s, prompted opposition forces to question the legitimacy of the KMT’s rule. In turn, the KMT modified itself by instituting a Taiwanization policy,⁴ economic upgrading, and cultural reconstruction. The convergence of international and domestic crises in the 1980s forced the KMT to further transform itself by moving toward democratization—a political liberalization framed from a Chinese nationalist perspective. In line with the liberalization trend was a proliferation of social movements and a dramatic expansion of civil society. Segments of many social movements sought to appropriate counterideologies, offer alternative identities, and advance needs claims. Issues addressed included campus democracy and university reform (a student movement), academic autonomy (the teachers’ rights movement), the use of native languages in media and schools (the Hakka rights movement), to cite only the most relevant to educational reform. Highly sensitive issues, such as the February 28 Massacre, were no longer taboo topics of discussion and were greeted with sympathy by the public.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a transition from an authoritarian, mainlander-dominated state to a somewhat more liberal-democratic, native-dominated one. The KMT reconstructed itself under the leadership of Lee Teng-hui, who succeeded to the presidency in 1988 after the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo. Lee Teng-hui soon confronted challenges from mainlander elites who were still in power and who resisted popular demands for political liberalization. Additional challenges arose from mounting oppositional movements that exposed the contradictions of several state policies and discourses, including the state’s corporatist mode of domination, the fa tong regime, and Chinese nationalism (Wang, 1993, pp. 21–60). The legitimacy of the new ruling groups thus required not only capital accumulation, but also representative democracy and a unified national identity. Lee Teng-hui’s reformist faction and the oppositional party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), aimed to nativize state power and to democratize the fa tong regime, with the former adhering to an ROC framework, and the latter advocating Taiwan independence. Consequently, several political events concerning the democratization of the fa tong regime sparked conflicts between the divided KMT and the opposition.

Lee Teng-hui’s approach to parliamentary reform—in particular, his designation of a certain number of delegates as both nationwide representatives and overseas Chinese representatives in order to maintain the fa tong regime—galvanized the opposition in its efforts to mobilize street demonstrations, the principal function of which involved a complete reelection of the perennial parliaments and the compulsory retirement of their aged members. Later, the illegitimacy of the presidential election, which the National Assembly had manipulated, angered university students and civilians, inciting them to demonstrate in the streets. In March 1990, once docile university students staged a large-scale sit-down protest and hunger strike to vigorously urge the KMT to dismantle the National Assembly and to abrogate the Temporary Provisions. Discontent among the masses soon exploded across the island and more than 20,000 protesters rallied in Taipei, staging what became known as the March Student Movement. The militancy of the March Student Movement pressed the newly elected president Lee Teng-hui to completely reconstruct three national representative bodies through popular elections.

The opposition’s wrath increased when President Lee Teng-hui appointed a mainlander military strongman to the position of prime minister. University students, professors, social groups, and the DPP mobilized a massive antimilitary government movement. The number of demonstrators rose to 10,000 when the appointment gained the approval of the Congress. In May, Lee Teng-hui declared that the Temporary Provisions would be abrogated and the Constitution amended. The aim underlying this move was possibly to convert popular resentment of conservative mainlander forces into a reform agenda of greater nativization and political liberalization. The abolishment of the Temporary Provisions in 1991 was of particular importance to the termination of the “civil war” with the CCP. Domestically, decades of “emergency situations” that had legitimized the existence of the fa tong regime were ultimately over. Internationally, a pragmatic China policy began to prevail. The National Unification Guidelines promulgated in the same year officially recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a legitimate political entity and suggested a long-range process of rapprochement with the PRC, viewed as the “one China, two political entities” formula.

Lastly, the quest to replace the Chinese nationalist constitution with a constitution geared to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Subaltern Speak: Curriculum, Power, and Educational Struggles
• The Subaltern Speak: In Whose Voices?
• 1 Tracing the Core Knowledge Movement: History Lessons from Above and Below
• 2 “We Are the New Oppressed”: Gender, Culture, and the Work of Home Schooling
• 3 Can the Subaltern Act? African American Involvement in Educational Voucher Plans
• The Subaltern Speak: National Contexts
• 4 “In My History Classes They Always Turn Things Around, the Opposite Way”: Indigenous Youth Opposition to Cultural Domination in an Urban High School
• 5 Rethinking Grassroots Activism: Chicana Resistance in the 1968 East Los Angeles School Blowouts
• 6 Detraction, Fear, and Assimilation: Race, Sexuality, and Education Reform Post–9/11
• The Subaltern Speak: International Contexts
• 7 Subaltern in Paradise: Knowledge Production in the Corporate Academy
• 8 Struggling for Recognition: The State, Oppositional Movements, and Curricular Change
• 9 Creating Real Alternatives to Neoliberal Policies in Education: The Citizen School Project
• 10 Toward a Subaltern Cosmopolitan Multiculturalism
• 11 Speaking Back to Official Knowledge
• About the Contributors
• Index