Nancy: The power to be free) community is. Josh: Openness) ... This poem was created by eight students participating in a spoken word workshop, Sounds of ...
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citizen artists. In her chapter title, Lessonsin Dialogue, Ethics, and the
Departure from Well-Laid Plans in the Cultivation of Citizen Artists, Collins describes the progression of the community engagement course and the culminating project that resulted while exploring ethic al impli cations. In sharing the opportunities and challenges of her findin gs, the author also asserts the value and necessity of departing from a well -laid plan in pursuit of authentic answers for an inquiry designed for peda-
CHAP TE R 19
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Spoken Wor d as Border Pe dagogy
wit h LGBTQ Youth
gogical discovery.
Susan M. Arai
·11 October morning at a community recreation center in a small Ona ch1 Y · l · • 10 · Ontario Canada, a group of high school students s1t on p asttc Cit}' ' . floo d s raychairs,around four square tables. Intense fluorescent 1·1gh tmg ~e room we occupy while two large windows reveal the overcast sk outside.The room is awash in tops and hoodies in every color of the rainbow,accented by blond, brown, black, pink, green, and blue hair. Rainbowbracelets dance on several wrists. Thirty-two students draw on paper,talk, laugh, and create. A table holding a mixing board, amplifier microphones,and a mess of black electrical cables sits at room center. Six ~dults,including myself, scuttle about. I stop for a moment, taking in th e scenearound me noticing how quickly we transformed the ener e space.I smile to myself as I remember this is why I was drawn to ac--. l . . :em1a.Wanting t h' ft o s 1 tra d'1t1ona classroom dynamics and thmgs we w_e_wamto call the group to attention (i.e., yelling to overpowe .edn ·n raising ·
ponsem ~~ a sign of order), I told the group the story of a call Y Jembe drumming
teacher uses when she wants us t
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together as a group. I call everyone's attention by sing -yelling "Ago'" and a call of "Amay!" comes back .across the room. In incre asing vol ume · . of call and response, we repeat t h 1s two more times bringin g simult aneously both silence and laughter to the room. I then ask for a grou volunteer to perform their spoken word piece. One group of eight r;• to · hands an d a m1crop . h one 1s . passe d to t h e1r . ta bl e. As they begin ises t h eir th record button is pressed on the mixing board: ' e Nancy: Community is a beautiful mingling of souls) comm unit y is Gary: Full of amazing friends) community is Chantel: Safe) community is Erin: Judgment free) community is Jordan: Support) community is Gary: Freedom) community is Erika: Acceptance) community is Josh: Trust) community is Erin: Loving) community is Nancy: Active) community is Gary: Full of love) community is Chantel: Respect) community is Erin: Understanding) community is Jordan: Belonging) community is Gary: Family) community is Nancy: The power to befree) community is Josh: Openness) community is Erika: A group of people) community is All [with sound of triumph]: Community allows us to be who we are! This poem was created by eight students participating in a spoken word workshop, Sounds of Change, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen dered and queer (LGBTQ) youth and their allies. Pseudonyms are used in place of real names to ensure confidentiality. In this poem, we hear the reproduction of dominant and modernist narratives that portray commu nity as supportive, freeing, and loving as often found in what Delancy (2003) critiques as idyllic and romantic accounts of community. In a more pointed critique, Culfk writes of the "kitsch" of community referring to "that beautiful lie" that hides the more challenging aspects of community life (cited in Blackshaw, 2010, p. 43). Critical theorists note that while modernity brought much advancement for society, it also er\ 0 ated and obscured a fear of the void where "the void was the absence
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. ally binding, unambiguou s and enforceable standard " (Bauman, a 11nivers ). Baum an ( 1991 ) describes this as a "1as ting in tell ectu al 2 52 scar left by the philosophical project and political prac 1991' P;tional a_oder rnodernity" (p. 252 ). As a consequence, in communi ty, we hear oce ~er set of narrative s arise which position LGBTQ youth in a co nt ext anot . . . of hatred, rnargina 1· '.ty, an d exc Ius10n, as t he~ attempt to nego tiate v10ly imposed, stanc, and tra dmonal categories of gende r, sexua lity, and Jent In this space o f nego tianon, . . t h ey encounte1 fear, confusion and race. . this. next set of spoken word poems performed' by . larion, as we hear m :~econd group of youth parti cipating in Suunds of Change . The group of nine divided into three smaller groups and these three poems were cre atedfrorn homophob ic messages they received or heard in their communities.This required them to recrea te those messages, reconstitute them in a collective poem, take the words into their bodies, and perform them forthe other groups at the workshop:
Tom: Whatup Faggots? Tom,Zack, Emily: Tom: Are you Retard ed? Tom,Zack, Emily: Excluded. Tom,Zack, Emily: Tom: That)s Tom,Zack, Emily: Gay! Tom: Don)t hang out with me) Tom,Zack, Emily: I don )t want to catch it. Tom: Fags are like blacks) Tom,Zack, Emily: No one likes them. Tom,Zack, Emily: Faggot! Mary [with dismissing tone]: That)s gay! Jenn[with derision]: I don )t like him because he)sgay. Nate [matter of factly]: He looksgay. Mary [with dismissing tone]: Don)t be soooooogay. Jenn[with derision]: Nice boots dyke! Nate [matter of factly]: She is so masculine, she must be a lesbian. Mary[with a tone of sadness]: Everyone assumes I am heterosex Nate [with derision]: You will never be a guy, or a person, itts tate [wit~ vengeance]: Stupid fucking butch! Skegan [w,th disdain]: I'm not wearing that, I' LLlook gay. S Ye [quietly]: Pm confused. ue [yelling]: Hey! Going to the fag club?
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Megan [with disdain]: If you hang out with him they)ll think you )re Sue [whispers]: It)s contagious? gay . Skye [quietly]: Pm alone. Megan [with disdain]: Fag! Skye [quietly]: But Pm afraid to tell everyone. As Giroux (1993) describes, "how subjects are consti tuted in language is no less important than how they are construct ed as subjec ts within the relations of production" (p. 465). I wanted to cre ate a worksh?p that_ w~uld address these narra~ives of hate that per m eate daily existence m high schools. These narraaves of hate are not iso late d to this group of youth. As Egale Canada reports from their nation wide survey of schools across Canada, 55-7 4% among LGBTQ stud ents ( com pare d to 26% non- LGBTQ) indicate experiences of verbal har assment (T aylor & Peter, 2011). Verbal harassment in schools not only origi nates from their peers, l 0-25% of students report hearing negative gen der, ho mophobic, and transphobic comments from teachers (Ta ylor & Pete r 2011 ). Further, rates of experiences of harassment are higher amo n~ nonwhite youth who, as Taylor & Peter (2011) describe , experie nce the "double whammy" of the intersectionality of LGBTQ and being of nonwhite race. Consequently, this harassment is set up in the power relations and language of not only their peer group but also in hierarchies of teacher-student dichotomies and race relations. Similar statistics are found in the USA. In 2009, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN, 2009) found that among the over 7200 LGBT high school students, roughly 85% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed; nearly 73% of respondents heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" and "dyke" frequently or often at school. However, modernist notions of community and fear of the void lead not only to the constitution of LGBTQ youth in language but also in the body. Consider how you felt in your body as you took in the text within these spoken word pieces. As I transcribed the poems about experiences of homophobia, my body stiffened when explosive words hit my skin, and my body felt heavy with sadness. I also felt nausea and a ripple of fear as my mind took in the hatred behind these words too often spoken in community. As evidence of this embodiment on a larger scale, 64% of LGBTQ students report feeling unsafe at school (Taylor & Peter, 2001). In contrast to their non-LGBTQ peers, they also report a higher rate of physical harassment (21-37% among LGBTQ students, 10% non LGBTQ) and sexual harassment ( 33-49% among LGBTQ students, 26%
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Ta lor & P~ter , 2011 ). Jo hn son, Singh and Gonzale wLGBTQ) h( b\ural mur der of ge n der nonconforming adolescent, oo ore t e . (2014) 0 . by his 14 -yea r-o ld classmate stating: wrence I(ing,
La d other youth programs continue to be unsafe for lesbian, fo say_sch~~ls:.nsgender , queer, and questi~ming (_LGBTQQ) students gay, bisex ' nt LGBTQ Q stud ents often navigate extremely hos -
derstateme · . . is an u? ts when they atten d schoo ls or other youth serving agencileenv1ronme&nDowdy 20 10· Jo hnson & Delgado- Rom ero, 2012), and th f. . (Johnson ' ' . . em sa e . cies few schoo l-ba sed intervent1ons designed to keep there are very . h Orpinas & Horn e, 2011) (p. 1) (Sing , ' exual minor ity youth are 1.5-7 times more likely to attempt c l . . d suicide is the numb er one cause of death 1or sexua mmonty
In Canad a, s
. .d su1c1e, an outh (Taylor & Peter, 200 1 ). y As these spoken word p erformances reveal, wor~s of fear and ha~e . r e~onate deeply in the body. A s Butler ( 1993) desc ri bes, perfo~mativit y 1s the "power of discourse to repro duce the p he nomenon that it regulate s and constrains" (p. 2 ); in this ca se, the po w er of discourse to marginal ize and diminish queer space in community. Performativity refers to the idea that language performs identity (Schwandt, 2007 ). This sparked a movement for this critical theorist to seek out another way of engaging language, power, and the body in researc~ and social action. It sparked a shift for me to explore performance as border pedagogy. As Pollock ~rgue~, perfor~ativity is "what happens when history /textuality see s itself1~ the _mirror-and suddenly sees double; it is the disorienting , ~the] disruptive" and it "derives its power and prerogative in the break ~ngand remaking of the very textual frameworks that give it meaning 10 the firs~ ~lace" (cited in Denzin, 2003, pp. 10 - 11). Performance an d p~rhformativitythen "intersect in a speaking subject" and "exist in ten sion Wlt one anoth · · and the done er, m a tension between doing, or performing, th ' e text, the performance" (Denzin, 2003, p. 10).
SOUNDS OF CHANGE:
DETAILS OF THE WORKSHO P
:efore proceeding, it is important to tell you a bit more about the ?Undsof Change workshop created in 2012, and how these spo ken wor pieceswere created. I was approached by Carrie Greig, a pu blic edu aotlcommunity activist with the OK2BME program, wh o provide Pon to gay-straight alliances ( GSAs) across publicl y funde d high
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in our Region. She was hosting a daylong conference Sounds of Change: Sharing Stories for students and teachers who were members of GSAs and asked if I would run an hour-long workshop for stude nts. We sa; the potential to engage spoken word to create transgressive spaces, undoing the effects of homophobia and violence LGBTQ youth face in our community. This essay recounts this performance workshop as a moment of border pedagogy; critical pedagogy and performance eth nog raphy were merged in a spoken word workshop with LGBTQ youth and their allies. The workshop involved 37 of us. Thirty-two were LGBTQ student s and allies from local public high schools, three were und ergradu ate students from my Department who helped to facilitate th e wor kshop (2 females, l male; all identify as straight allies), one was a Ph. D. student (male; straight ally) acting as our sound and video technic ian , and myself, an Asian Canadian, queer-identified, female, Associate Pro fessor. With one hour to work with, 32 students were randoml y divided into four groups as they entered the room. Each small group was assigned a different topic to inspire the creation of a spoken word piece. The four topics included "community is... ," "experiencing homop ho bia," "my GSA is... ," and "I am ... and I am also .... " Given these partial phrases as a starting point, we asked students to independently complete the sentences from their experience, writing each completed phrase on a separate piece of paper. The group then collaboratively decided how to bring these pages together to create a spoken word piece. In a flurry of creativity, within 30 minutes each group created and performed their spoken word piece while the other three groups engaged as their audience. In the final 15 minutes of the workshop, we engaged in collective conversation about our experiences of the performances. As described later in this paper, reflections also engaged a mashup, a replaying of two or more tracks at the same time to hear what happens when disparate voices come together in community. Practices were videotaped, performances were also audio recorded as separate tracks into a mixing board. Still photographs were taken throughout the workshop, and I kept a journal of field notes. With the short time we had to work with, it is important to acknowledge this workshop was made possible by our attempts to create safe space within the workshop, and as much as possible lessen the distance between us and students by: (a) engaging undergraduate students as co-facilitators so the age difference between myself and the high school students was bridged, and (b) our choice of wardrobe which included T-shirts and jeans to gain connection and reduce visible signs of disconnection through class and position. What truly made this possible was
our
ion ro Carrie who h ad established relationship s of trust and connec t , d with students and teachers through the OK2BME program an 0
suPxr}urther, the worksho p happened in the context of the GSA con GS s. students had volu ntarily chosen to attend. Morning activities at ference . . d conference establish ed the day as one of celebrat10n, acceptance, an th ;, cyfor LGBTQ youth and the ir allies. In addition, in the workshop we sa e hasized "voice and choic e" and encouraged both in students' deci ernp . d . c. c. . to contribute to wntten te xt an to engage in per1ormance. To 1ur0 s10 . fi h. h ther shift power dynami cs aw ay rom 1erarc y, as a facilitator I never ask in eople to do somethin g I am not wi!ling to do as well; consequently, fhis workshop I becam e facili tator-performer. By shi fting the meaning of "participatory" and contrib uting to the creation and performance of the second spoken wor d piece ( statements of homophobia), I engaged in the sharing of risk and vulnerability, and the blurring of boundaries as I was both audience and p erformer, object and subject, an d through out the workshop we all became teacher-students . PERFORMANCE AS BORDER
PEDAGOGY
Performance is necessarily engagement. It involves taking e~perience and words out of objective space; the mundane becomes heightened (Madison,2005a). It demands engagement with body rather than tak ing field notes, or describing what our bodies are doing. It asks us to be in our bodies. Performance is used in juxtaposition to text (being ableto take performance with us in our textually binded selves) making for a fuller and richer account of the experience. Performance theorists oftendescribe performance as movement from mimesis, through poesi s, to kinesis. Mimesis involves imitation. As Butler (1993) describes there 1 ar~no original performances or identities. Thus, every performance is an m1tation(Denzin, 2003). In our introduction, we shared with youth t he queerhistory of spoken word from the beat poets of the 1960s to cond tempo~ary poets such as Alix Olsen, Andrea Gibson, Slanty -Eyed M ama, au Climbing Poetree. Poesis then is the making something out of the and in doing so ' creatin aspace. spaceItO is f I"1the· construction • . . of . performance . mmahty. Kinesis is the motion or movement req uire re ki re;ak co- create an .,1aeng. ourPerformance rel t' h. allows . h us to struggle,. restructure, . socioPo11t1cal . . aa tions A Dips mt· e moment. This breaking and re makin_... a form f . ~ · s enzm (2003) notes, "every perform ance be througho kmesis, of motion, a decentering of human age nc \• an rnoveme t d'
.
.
.,
n , 1srupt:1on, action, a way of ques tionin1r
th
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quo" (p. 10). Together, Madison (2005b) writes, performance takes u into, "[t]he magic of our inspired oneness" (p. 542). s As performers)we were moved to put text in our bodies and experience the impact of performing homophobia, community, statement s of identity ("I am .. . and I am also... "), and statements about GSAs. We experienced the anxiety of performance, and of hearing the playback of our own voices. As audience) we were asked to witness and . hold people 's word s in our bodies, including words of hate, hope, inspiration, confu sion , and dete rmination. As words came together in the workshop, we were also called to hold space for these disparate messages in the room, and in ou r bodies. Border pedagogy then involves remaking self in the co mp lexities of micropractices of power. In this spoken word worksho p, in our roles as performer and audience, we collectively resisted or reclaimed labels and addressed silence, invisibility, isolation, and stressors that limit sel/ In this endeavor, we unfolded what Denzin (2003 ) refer s to "a performative, pedagogical politics of hope" (p. 5), creati ng possibilities for political and social change. This politics of hope attemp ts to move beyond traditional and hierarchical notions of research and teachingbeyond modernist notions of othering and reproduction of binaries separating us into researcher/researched, student/teacher, oppressor/ oppressed, and performer/audience. Giroux ( 1993 ) calls us to further critique liberal and radical discourses and "step beyond the modernist celebration of the unified self, totalising notions of history, and univer ~ salistic models of reason" to "explore the limits of the absolutist character of their own narratives" (p. 457). He challenges us, "to engage contingency, particularity, partiality and community within a notion of difference free from binary oppositions, hierarchical relations, and narratives of mastery and control" (Giroux, 1993, p. 457). This involved shifts in how the research unfolded, my claims to power in the research space, and the beauty and magic of our collective engage ment in the space. In postmodernist terms, it created space for localized, micropractices of power to unfold toward social change, engaging students in practices of unmaking and deconstructing modernis~s texts of community and messages of homophobia through the messiness, playfulness, irony, and pastiche of spoken word. Performances_ are fluid, ongoing events which "mark and bend identities, remake ume and adorn and reshape the body, tell stories and allow people to play with behaviour that is restored, or 'twice-behaved"' (Schechner cited in Denzin, 2003, p. 9 ). As a critical educator and researcher, I ro_ok up Giroux's call that critical educators must "raise more questions with
ect to how the dominant self is always present in the construction margins" (Giroux , 1993 , p. 460). Taking Giroux's (199 3) cri~que to heart, this work mov ed beyond, "otherness as site for objectifi n · 1· · " (p. 460) . cation and margina 1zat10n
r~5~he
DISR UPTI NG THE GRAND NARRATIVE
The third group rose to perfo rm, eight young women, each with a set of cue cards in hand. They assemb led themselves in a semi-cir cle placing the microphone and stand at the center of the group . They exchanged nervous smiles and inaud ible comments led to ripples of laughter across the group as they settled into place. When they indicated they were ready, the record button was press ed:
I am Catholic but my religion does not stop me from what I believe in and define who I am. Katie: Jam bisexual) but that doesn)t define me. . . Sarah: Jam me) never too afraid of taking chances and being different. Ginger: I am lost but I am strong enough to find my way. Julie: I am accepting and I am not afraid to express myself. Sam: I am a lesbian and I am a leader. Lynn: I am a leader, but I know how to follow. Karen: I am in a Catholic school but I am not afraid to stand up to administration. Joan: Jam straight but not narrow. Katie: I have been through everything, and I am here to help. Sarah: I am bisexual and very open minded about others>thoughts. Julie: I am attracted to guys and I am attracted to girls. Sam: J am a sister, and I am a listener. Lynn: I am straight but I support everyone. ~ren: I am a straight ally, and I am ready to fight for what is right. Gina: I am a planner and driven and never afraid to make any mistak es. All: We are together. Joan:
This was the spoken word piece performed by the "I am ... and I group. In this workshop, we attempted to confront and dis rupt grand narratives of the romanticized and idyllic communi Which centers heterosexual relationship and place s queer on the m gins and contribute to the decline of legitimatin g power. As (~imux
amalso"
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( 199 3) describes, border p~dagogy, "stress~s. the necessity for providing students with the opportunity to engage cnt1cally the stren gt hs and limitations of the cultural and social codes that define their own histories and narratives" (p. 482) As part of this critical e~gagemen~, the spoken word workshop provided space for the collect.J.veremaking of culture. D rawin g from the work of Dwight Conquergood, Denzin (2003) notes we can view, "culture as a verb, not a noun; fieldwork as .a collabo~ativ e pro cess, a performance; and know~edge as performat1~e, not m~o~mative" (p .28). Culture is not something out there to be discovered, 1t 1s co-created and co-performed. As Jones (2006) describes, "[p ]erform ance ethnogra phy rests on the idea that bodies harbour knowledge about cult ure, and that performance allows for the exchange of that knowled ge across bodi es" (p. 339). We perform the culture of community, and put into motion a different energy than that of the grand narrative; in do ing so, we move it and are moved by it, shifting center and margins and set in motion possibilities for change.
RECREATING SPACE IN GAY-STRAIGHT
This spoken wo rd pie ce reveals the complexities of pe rforming GSAs and brings forwar d instit utional politics of creating space for a queer pol itics of resistance in our public education system. Belonging to a GSA necessitates transg ressi ve performances as performi ng bodies contest gendered and sexu alized identities. Each line in th is spoken word reveals constant movement and acts of negotiation and resistance as GSAs attempt to create space for LGBT Q students and their allies to come together. This perform ance describ es GSAs as freeing, nerdy, welcom ing, nonjudgmental, accep tin g, and a space of friendship. GSAs are also described in the broader institutional context as being unique, nonexistent, growing, ostracized, and protesting against the system.
ALLIANCES
The fourth group was more subdued in energy. Eight youth, all female but one, sat around their table with cue cards in front of them. Perhaps, it was the topic they had been given, gay-straight alliances. It is possible they felt challenged to situate and make sense of GSAs amidst several tensions as their spoken word piece reveals. As performers, this may have contributed to a struggle with their own crisis of quality as they heard the power reflected in the performances of the other groups. With the microphone held in the middle of the table, we pressed the record button as they began: Rebecca: My GSA is non-existent. Loralee: My GSA isfreeing. Michael: My GSA is my friends. Beth: My GSA isgrowing. Melanie: My GSA is accepting. Louise: My GSA is teaching. Melissa: My GSA is expansive. Rebecca: My GSA is protesting against the system.
My GSA is nerdy . . LoraIe e · . . . hael: My GSA ts welcoming. Mic . My GSA ts. wor k.ing fior acceptance. Beth· . . d Melanie: My GSA_ ts os~ractze . •se·. My GSA ts. uniqu .e. Lolll Melissa: My GSA ts non-J udgemen tal. All: Our GSA is needed.
FRAGMENTATION
AND HYPERREALITY:
LISTENING ACROSS SOUNDS IN COMMUNITY
After the four performances were recorded, we played back each track one by one. After playing back the poem of homophobia, we ga_ve the performing group the beat poets' applause (snapping fingers). Gina commented how the words "went right through you" ( as she brought parallel extended arms rapidly toward her abdomen). Skye commented «Even if someone is just an ally, they can share in the pain other people feel." We then played back the "I am ... and I am also" poem, Sarah noted, "Even if people feel like they should be like dirt that audio showed you that you still have a voice) whether they make you feel like you don )t, ant your voice can trump them."
~ remaking culture, Sounds of Change created space for us to . egin to fray the grand narratives of idyllic community and the other ~g of LGBTQ through engagement in hyperreality and fragmentation . r/ferreali_ty refers to obliterating the distinction between imaginary and w~~tIn_this hyperreality and theorizing of voice, we were able to create Giroux ( 1993) refers to as a: b
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a historically specific cultural site from which one learns to create oppositional consciousness and identity, a standpoint that exists not ~n as that which also opposes domination, but also enables and ext~:{ individual and social capacities and possibilities .. f for making human c on ~ nections and compassionate communities o resistance and liberation. (p. 470)
This postmodern space of fragmentation and hyperr eality provid opportunity for remapping and rethinking the bord ers th at define one~: existence and place in the world. In the conversati?n .tha t u_nfolded, Gary began to speak about challenges youth have negoti atmg religion: Gary:
Sue: Gary:
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I think it really had some truth behind it, like people, the boundaries that people have to cross to get over who they are. You are who you are. You are not really going to be able to change that, right. Do you get what I mean? You can be both-and? You can both be Christian and you can be gay, you know just because the Bible, whatever, just because the Bibl e may say it is not right you can still be that right. If it is what you believe and what you feel.
Fragmentation involves creating local stories and struggles, each with their own irreconcilable truths. After we played back poems about community and GSAs, students had the following comments.
Gina:
Amanda:
If you all combine together with your community, with your GSA, there are a lot of people out there like you, your voice can trump them [gesturing toward the table where the spoken word of homophobia had taken place]. The two tracks are so kind of similar, you know like community and GSAs they just kind of go in together.
Our group began to compare and contrast different performances. In 0 m this conversation, Gina contrasted voices of homophobia coming outside of ourselves to the "I am ... and I am also ... " statements exiSting
fr
within our bodies:
Gina:
All that negativity over there [gesturing toward the table where the spoken word of homophobia had taken place], that your group did, very well I might say, it was very well done. [group laugh s] Som etimes those voices, like you guys were yelling, sometimes they sound a lot louder than your personal inside voice, that everyone like, identities on the inside weren )t as loud as the negativity on the outside, yet we will always feel that way [I am ... I am also}, we will always feel like this constant on the inside, but that [voices of homophobia} will go away. There are solutions, and sometimes maybe our own voices will be louder than those [ of] negativity.
Skye comme nted on the impact of homophobic comments, making reference to the recent suicide of Jamie Hubley, an Ontario youth who was iden tified as queer, and the importance of "I am ... I am also ... " statements: Skye:
It just mad e me kind of think that boyJamie died because of things .like this [points to voices of homophobia group], but if there had been more people who said things like that group did [points to I am ... I am also group] maybe he wouldn )t have committed suicide.
The energy in the room was weighted but with potential. In that moment, my mind recalled the news report I heard the week before recounting Jamie Hubley's suicide following a long period of harass ment by his peers. I swallowed hard to choke back tears welling up in my chest and to bring myself back to this present moment. In the brilliance of this moment, students were tapping into their own wisdom of how to remake responses to homophobia and remap community. In this statement, Skye naturally brought the group to the final component of the Sounds of Change workshop - the mash up. Here was my response: Sue:
You all are so brilliant! So what you are saying is that depending on the balance of voices, this group [ voices of homophobia ] versus this group [I am ... and I am also group], whichever one is loude we experiences things differently. So if we could hav e had Ja · voice come up [pointing to I am ... I am also group ] then . would have been a different outcome. So let)s hear what that w sound like.
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I then played back two tracks simultaneously with track 1 (homophob · ) starting at maximum volume, and track 2 ("I am ... .and I am also ... ") st~: ing at minimum volume. As the tracks played, usmg the mixing board 1 gradually reversed the volume on each track so that at the end "I am ... and I am also" statements ended up drowning out the sounds of hom ophobia. MASHUP! POLYPHONIC LAYERS AS REFLECTIONS ON C OMMUNITY What up faggots? Are you retarded? Excluded.
That's gay! Don't hang out with me, I don't want to catch it. Fags are like blacks, no one likes them. Faggot/ That's gay/ I don't like him becausehe's gay. He looks gay. Don't be soooogay! Nice boots dyke/ Sht Is JO masroUnt, sht must bt a ltsblan. Ellf!ryontassumeslamhtttras&ual . Youw/Onrm-Maguy,oraptrSOn,jvstafag . S(up/dfuclongbuttltl
I am Catha/lebut my rtlfglandMs not stop mt /ram what I Mllrvt In and dtf111•who/ am
/ am bistxual,but that doesn't defineme. I amme, nevertoo afraid of takingchances andbeingdifferent. I amlastbutI amstrongenoughtofindmyway.
I om acceptingandI am not afraidta expressmyself. I am a lesbfanand I am a leader. I om a leader, but I know how to follow. I am Ina Catholicschool but I am not afraid to stand up to administration.
I am straight but not narrow. I have been through everyth ing, and I am here to help. I am bisexual and very open minded about othe rs ' thoug hts, I am attracted too guys and I am attracted to girls. I am a sister, and I am a listener.
I am straight but I support everyone .
I am a straight al/Y, and I am ready to fight for what is right. I am planner and driven and never afra id to make any mistakes.
We are together.
At this point, our hour was at an end and youth in our group had to make their way to their next workshop. Over the years that passed I reflected on Sounds of Change. Working with sound, we were able to play in the remaking and remapping of community space; it pro vided opportunity for us to hear complexity. I remembered how Gary's statement, "we will never get rid of homophobia" stopped me in my tracks. Even as I write this now, I can feel my heart break, again. In that moment, as Sounds of Change unfolded around me, I was called to release my own modernist idea that we could rid our communities of hate and homophobia leaving in its wake a loving and idyllic community space in which people flourish. Together, we explored the complexity of our collective experience. We brought multiple tracks representing disparate messages we hear into community space and held them together in one moment in time. As a response to grand narratives which drown out other voices and keep us stuck in one way of knowing and feeling about an experi_ence, playing back each track separately allowed us to engage in linear h~tening. This made it possible to feel the movement and emotional difference as we moved from one poem to the next. As we played two track~ in sequence, or together in a mashup, the performer-audience is aske
hold the tension betwe en tracks: T hi s engages .us in, what Gary and I bout as a movin g from an either-or to ho lding both-and.
to k
sp~net:is space of hyperreality, as Gin a described we are able t_ohear the 'd e in communi ty. GSA s become the bridg e to community and to bn g We had th e pow er to switch up the play back and pl ay for change change. hoose whi ch tr acks we played back togethe r and adjusted the as we c d " n differe nt tr ack s in a mashup. As Skye co mmente , vve may vo1ume O . h neverget rid 0~+these voices in my head but at least. they become quieter fcw en h ther is turned up .)) As on outgrowth of this workshop, we re er to the :s filling ours elves up with other tracks. As Skye questi o ned, " wha t if t 1s h k ,, Jamie had been ab~e to hear these ot er trac s.7 Rather than q mck move m ent s for reso lve, the Sound s of Change ena bled us to feel and hold complexi ty and conflict in space, in a moment of resistance. In pe dagogical practices of performa nce , sites of oppres sion are visible and freedom is also possibl e. In th is space of hyperreality and fragment ation, acts of resista nce hold together what Giroux refers to as "mili tant utop iani sm and educated hope" (Denzin, 2003, p. 14). Drawing from Giroux, Denzin (2003 ) describes, "they affirm an oppositional politics that reasserts the value of self-deter mination and mutual solidarity. This pedagogy of hope rescues radical democracy from the conservative politics of neoliberalism" (p. 14 ). As such, it is an act of freedom. Drawing on Foucault's notions of power, Flyvbjerg (2001) reminds us that "freedom is a practice, and its ideal is not a utopian absence of power. Resistance, struggle, and conflict, in contrast to consensus, are for Foucault the most solid bases for the practice of freed_om"(p. 102 ). As Madison (20056) writes, performances of possibil ity aim "to create and contribute to a discursive space where unjust systems a~d processes are identified and interrogated" and "for those who bear witness to th · · · • e1r stones to interrogate actively and purposefull y those processes that limit their health and freedom" (p. 538). Perform ance th ~ nography reflects a return to a speaking communicating body; it ecomes an act of communicative interaction ( Conquergood 1991 ). We attempt b • . ' d. to nng the body back mto spaces and afford opportun ities for 0 ur ifferent · · · • . Und . . experiences to coexist with the potential to unveil the soc ial ass·18t er~mnmgs and complexities of queer experiences in communitv an c in a coll · · · · · moVe into . d1. Iectivebreimagining of the future. Through performance ,w · · forrn · a og, nngmg what we imagine into reali ty through a pe ance of possibilities.
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REFLECTIONS ON QUALITY
Reflecting back on this account of border pedagogy, what criteria are we to use to assess quality? In performance, we can never truly know the impact of this workshop. Can we really ever know the myste ry of experience? During the workshop, there was a magic, a sense of the unrepresentable - experiences I knew I would never be able to cap ture in words . When we think about quality, perhaps we can think about what it (bo rder pedagogy ) is, and what it does. This necessarily invoke s a conc ern with you, the audience, and the extent to which the text engages you unsettles and provokes you, makes you question, or leaves you feelin~ distant and unaffected. When we think about quality in relation to what bord er pedagogy is, or how it unfolded, I find Christians' (2000) notions of interp retive sufficiency, representational adequacy, and concerns of whethe r the engagement is authentically adequate as a helpful starting place. Interpreti ve sufficiency deems the research engagement should po ssess the depth, detail, emotionality, nuance, and coherence that permits a critical con sciousness, or what Paolo Freire ( 1993) terms conscientization) to be formed. Denzin (2003) adds that performance should be judged by the extent to which it "enables social criticism and engenders resistance" (p. 113 ). Did the textual representation of this performance provide enough depth, detail, emotionality, nuance, and coherence in the telling to stir reflection and movement? Does it leave you, the reader, moved? According to Christians, representational adequacy means engagement should be free of racial, class, or gender stereotyping. But what do we do when the performative pieces themselves reveal that stereotyping? In the second groups' performance of statements of homophobia, we also hear the sounds of racism and ableism tied into the slurs. This is representa tional adequacy and reveals the overlapping boundaries of categories of hate in the performativity around sexuality in community. . An engagement is authentically adequate when it meets three c0nd1tions: ( a) represents multiple voices, (b) enhances moral discernment, and (c) promotes social transformation. Multivoiced ethnographic texts should empower persons, leading them to discover moral truths about themselves while generating social criticism. These criticisms, in t~rn, should lead to efforts at social transformation. Combining consideratt~~s of ethics, politics, and power, engagement should engage cultural. c_n;cism and unsettle taken for granted assumptions. As cultural crittcis '
does it sufficientl y interrupt public life? As Denzin (2003) writes, it hould, "attack the dominant cultural ideologies connected to race, slass family and gender.. . Expose ruptures in the ideological seams in ~hes~ dominant cultural mythologies, both through political action and through their subject matter" (p . 11 ). In this text, I hoped to sufficiently disrupt idyllic notions of community and polarizing statemen ts of hate, the first obsc ures oppr ession and the second obscures possibilities for hope. It is in the se mic ropractices of power that resistance may occur to create movem ent and change through performance. These issues of quality, and in particular, the idea of interpretive sufficiency must be tied to a performance aesthetic which acknowledges there is "no complet ion, no perfection, no complete realization" in perfor mance (Schwandt, 2007, p. 223). This account is partial and incomplete. Each student and I engaged in our own experience of varied hermeneu tic moments of interpret ation and understanding of experience as performer and audience , subject and object, and knower and known. This essay remains as only one representation.
REFERENCES
Bauman, Z. (1991). Modernity and ambivalence. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Blackshaw,T. (2010). Key concepts in community studies. Los Angeles: Sage. Butler, J. (1993 ). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York, NY:Routledge. Christians, C. G. (2000). Ethics and politics in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 135 - 55 ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Conquergood, D. ( 1991 ). Rethinking ethnography: Towards a critical cultural politics. In D. S. Soyini Madison & J. Hamera (Eds .), The SAGE handbook of Performance studies (pp. 351 - 365 ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Delanty, G. (2003). Community. New York, NY: Routledge. ~enz(n, N. K (2003). Performance ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage . lyvbJerg, B. (2001 ). Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how_it can succeed again (S. Sampson, Trans). New York, NY: Cambridge Ulllversity Press. Freire, P. ( 199 3). Pedagogy of the oppressed ( trans. Myra Bergman Ramos ). Ne" G York, NY:Continuum.
ay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (2009). National school c·· survey. New York, NY: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
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Giroux, H. (1993). Postmodernism as border pedagogy: redefining the bounda ries of race and ethnicity. In J. Natoli & L. Hutcheon (Eds.), A postmodern reader (pp. 452-496). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Johnson, C. W., Singh, A. A., & Gonzalez, M . (2014). It's Complicated: Collective Memories of Transgender, Queer, an~ Questioning Youth in Hig h School. Submitted to the Journal of Homosexuality, 61( 3 ), 419-4 34. Jones, J. L. (2006). Introduction: Performance and ethnogr aphy, performing ethnography, performance ethnography. In D. S. Madison & J. Ha rnera (Eds.), The Sage handbook of performance studies (pp. 339 -346 ). Thousa nd Oaks, CA: Sage. Madison, D. S. (2005a). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and perf01Amance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Madison, D. S. (2005b ). Critical ethnography as street perform ance: Reflections of home, race, murder, and justice. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincol n, (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3 rd ed.) (pp. 537 -546). Thousa nd Oaks, CA: Sage. Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquir y (3 rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Taylor, C. & Peter, T., with McMinn, T.L., Elliott, T., Beldom, S., Ferry, A., Gross, Z., Paquin, S., & Schachter, K. (2011 ). Every class in every school: The first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools.Final report. Toronto, ON: Egale Canada Human Rights Trust.
CHAPTER
20
Lesson s in Dialogue, Ethics, and the Depart ure from Well-Laid Pla ns in the Cu ltivation of Citizen Artists !Cate Collins
What happens when young-artists learn to put dialogue and relationshipbuilding at the center of artmaking practice? What happens when these artists step away from the traditional practice of self-expression and become facilitators of communication and catalysts of change in commu nities? As a university arts educator specializing in community-engaged arts, working with both adolescent and undergraduate artists, I find that questions like these pose a notable departure from what is typically asked or offered in the education of most young artists. Still, I belie ve such questions hold promise and reflect an arts educator's desire to under~tand better how to foster the skills and capacities of engaged citizen artists_.1Dissatisfied with replicating the same methods for teaching young art~sts that have continued for decades, I pursued a doctorate in arts educa~on to contemplate more broadly, new teaching possibilities . My commitment to educating socially engaged young artists, my identification as
I
