Open AccessIgnite some agency: how teaching assistants engage whiteness at a South African university
Author(s) -
Marthinus Conradie
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
society register
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2544-5502
DOI - 10.14746/sr.2022.6.1.02
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , scholarship , narrative , proposition , sociology , subordination (linguistics) , pedagogy , experiential learning , white (mutation) , decolonization , focus group , gender studies , political science , politics , social science , epistemology , linguistics , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , anthropology , law , gene
Decolonial scholarship, although multifaceted, includes questioning how abstract theorisations could concretely reform department-specific pedagogies. This study builds on the proposition that decolonisation is served, at least partially, by department-specific pedagogies that oppose whiteness. It is grounded in a Department of English at a historically-white South African university. Using critical whiteness studies (CWS), I launch a discourse analysis of the experiential narratives expressed by Teaching Assistants during individual interviews. CWS equips me to examine how these contractually-employed educators manage their intersectional subjectivities as they facilitate small-group discussions among undergraduates in support of professors’ official lectures. I focus on their reactions to the way students explore experiences of subordination.