Participation, technologies of the body, and agency: the limits of discourses of responsible citizenship

ABSTRACT

This article examines the way a group of Latina girls responded to instances of sexual harassment in a public high school in Madrid (Spain). I begin with a current event: educational reforms seeking to address the ‘problem’ of youth democratic disengagement. Drawing on ethnographic and genealogical modes of inquiry, I examine the subjective capacities (technologies of the body) that were being developed by these girls in the attempt to respond to instances of sexual harassment—silencing and under-sexualizing their bodies. This study steps back from any straightforward truth-claim about education, citizenship, and responsibility in democratic societies in favour of taking a longer view of how citizens are produced within its situated democratic culture—here, regime of conviviality. This article concludes that these girls’ bodily response to instances of sexual harassment in school cannot be dissociated from the historical production of the logics of conviviality that grounds this educational reform, where dissent is displaced from democratic culture. Ultimately, this article transcends notions of the political in human agency that parallels responsible citizenship with resisting social norms to conclude that notions of the political in human agency cannot be dislocated from the historically contingent discursive traditions in which they are located.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• responsible participation
• technologies of the body
• agency
• genealogical ethnography

Acknowledgments

I thank the editorial team and anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Curriculum Studies, as well as Thomas Popkewitz, Myra Marx Ferree, and Daniel Ares López to their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Francisco Franco’s dictatorial regime lasted from 1939 until his death in 1975.

2. When translated into English, convivencia speaks of a ‘living-togetherness’ or ‘cohabitation’ among many distinct but interconnected entities. While the words conviviality or coexistence convey a neutral, benign essence of what the term describes, convivencia has been taken up in Spanish education with ‘sacred’ and ‘salvationist’ overtones that refer to the heaven on earth of Spanish society (Hernando-Lloréns, 2019; Itçaina, 2006; Taha, 2013).

3. It is important to highlight that, while Butler’s theorization of subject formation draws on Foucault’s conceptualization of the paradox of subjectivization, they approach this endeavour differently. Specifically, Butler’s theorization of subjectivization—what she calls performativity—is a theory of agency and human action (Butler, 1997a). However, departing from prior feminist formalizations of how the social enacts the individual, Butler asks which discursive conditions sustain the edifice of modern individuality. For recent debates on the connections between, and juxtapositions of, Butler’s and Foucault’s theories of subject formation, see Davies (2006), Butler (1989, 1993, 1997a, 2004), Mahmood (2009), and Youdell (2006a, 2006b).

4. In response to this call to address the problem of participation among youth, in 2006 the Spanish Ministry of Education (MoE), at the time controlled by the social democrats, undertook an educational reform that created three new courses in the secondary curriculum: Educación para la Ciudadanía [Education for citizenship], Educación para la Ciudadanía y los Derechos Humanos [Education for citizenship and human rights], and Educación Ético-Cívica [Ethic and civic education]. Despite its great social and political controversy, this reform enjoyed great support from progressive groups and scholars, who saw the classes as an opportunity to educate students in secular ethical and moral values.

5. The 2006 Organic Law of Education established the need for the Education for Citizenship to learn about: ‘democratic regime’s fundamental characteristics and functioning, the principles and rights established in the Spanish Constitution and in the treaties and universal declarations of human rights, as well as the common values that constitute the grounding of democratic citizenship in a global context’ (Preamble; italics are mine).

6. School principals in Spain are part of the academic staff and are elected by the teachers’ councils. Once the school principal leaves her/his administrative position, s/he returns to her/his teaching position.

7. The 15-M was an anti-austerity movement that took place in Madrid and began with demonstrations and the occupation of the main public square in Madrid (Puerta del Sol) on May 15^th, 2011. This movement aligned with other international social movements like Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States or the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt. Also, the general movement created sub-groups that focuses on different topics and had different names. For example, those working on issues related to education were Marea Verde (Green Wave) or working on health care issues were Marea Blanca (White Wave).

8. Names of all participants are pseudonyms.

9. I do not approach the inquiry of why those teachers did not react to those incidents from a moral regime (if teachers were/did good or bad) or a suspicious standpoint to demonstrate how oppressive teachers are in these schools. On the contrary, my interest leans more towards the interrogation of why these kinds of incidents were made invisible to teachers, despite their interest in creating a safe school environment for girls and all students. In sum, I take an ontological and ethical stand: teachers want the best for students.

Additional information

Funding

I gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program, and the Graduate School, as well as from the Social Science Research Council in the early stages of this study; University of Wisconsin- Madison Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin- Madison, Graduate school, and University of Wisconsin- Madison, Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program [LACIS] [Dissertation completion funds]; Social Science Research Council [DPDF].

Notes on contributors

Belén Hernando-Lloréns

Belén Hernando-Lloréns is an Assistant Professor in teacher education at San Diego State University, with a joint appointment with the Imperial Valley campus. Her research is located at the intersection of curriculum studies, cultural studies, and race and language studies in education. Her work has been published in journals including Curriculum Inquiry and Bilingual Research Journal. Her dissertation received the American Education Research Association Division D recognition of Exemplary Work from Promising Scholars (2016). Dr. Hernando-Lloréns’ current research traces the production of the Bilingual Child of Color as a subject-object of scientific scrutiny and educational intervention.