Towards a postcolonial politics of appearance: unsettling lifelong learning as a racial contract

ABSTRACT

In the context of flexible capitalism, lifelong learning has been posed as a pathway for individuals to accumulate skills and actualise potentials. What is overlooked, however, is that the process of accumulation and actualisation is embedded within the culture of recognition. People who are historically constructed as the anthropos, a legacy of the colonial history struggle to appear as equals vis-à-vis the gaze of the humantias. With this critique in view, I reviewed the field of immigrant and lifelong learning in relation to a postcolonial politics of appearance. I sought to understand how lifelong learning settles itself in immigrant consciousness, and how it shapes immigrant experiences in the West. My review points to three metaphors that speak of the challenges and possibilities for immigrants to appear: fixation of the Eurocentric gaze, re-credentialing as precarious investment, and lifelong learning as trans/formation. Together, these metaphors suggest that lifelong learning has conjured a racial contract, which ironically binds immigrants to the labour of learning and yet continuously suppresses their appearance. To unsettle this racial contract, borders need to be reimagined and crossed/vexed by recentring immigrants as knowing subjects.

KEYWORDS:

• Lifelong learning
• immigrant education and learning
• postcoloninal politics of appearance
• racial contract
• metaphor

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Hongxia Shan

Dr. Hongxia Shan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia. She specializes in immigration and adult learning and education and has  published in the areas of lifelong learning,  gender and work, and politics of skill/recognition in the context of immigration and transnationalism. Her empirical research focuses in part on immigrants' professional experiences and the social policies and practices conducive to their epistemic articulation and ontological appearance in the host societies.