Textual space and its importance to school ethos and cultural pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This paper theoretically demonstrates the potential of textual space in making an important contribution to school ethos and cultural pedagogy. It demonstrates how culturally-inclusive (representational) textual space can be expanded throughout the school and could contribute to social justice and decolonisation efforts beyond the English Literature classroom. This is increasingly important in an age of culturally and politically securitised schooling, where government control exercised at the macro-level (colonial/neoliberal education policy) and micro-level (teaching and learning; the enactment of the formal curriculum) reproduces cultural inequality. This paper therefore argues for textual space in the English Literature classroom to be appropriated as a representational, dialogical, historical and connected space (in opposition to neoliberalism’s decontextualising and atomising agenda) for real-world political action and the democratisation of cultural production within the wider school environment.

KEYWORDS:

• English literature
• textual space
• cultural securitisation
• school culture
• colonialism
• inclusion

Introduction

This paper aims to make a conceptual contribution in regard to the (potential) role of English Literature within the school’s meso-level space. The meso-level space – as theorised in this paper – consists of institutional ethos, cultural pedagogy and social space, rather than the government-directed micro-level space (the enactment of the formal curriculum, teaching and learning) and macro-level space (neoliberal education policy). This paper highlights how the objective structures and spaces of the school’s meso-level – such as the institutional newsletter, libraries, the open social spaces, extra-curricular provision, assemblies, school websites, corridors, display boards and so forth – can be directly linked to the textual space. It is argued here, then, that English Literature – arguably unique among secondary school subjects – has great potential in developing an inclusive school ethos and cultural pedagogy within this meso-level space.

The international significance of this meso-level space is that it provides a rare opportunity for teacher and student agency within a globalising neoliberal policy discourse (Ball 2012; Lingard, Martino, and Rezai-Rashti 2013; Biesta 2015) ascribed to by many national governments in the turn towards authoritarian neoliberalism (Hursh 2019) and, consequently, democratic erosion (Kulz 2021; Gilbert 2022). As Apple et al. (2022, 246) write:

For as long as democracy and education have been considered in tandem, the tensions between realising the potential of democratic action and a commitment to civic participation and the public good have come into conflict with the structures, traditions and curriculum of schooling.

This seems to be especially true now, where room for staff and student agency has been greatly curtailed (Kelly 2009) during the transition into the discourse, practices and subjectivities of the neoliberal imaginary and a marketised education system (Ball 2012). This neoliberal imaginary promotes the view of education as a private economic benefit rather than a public democratic good (Thomson 2019). For teachers and students alike, this has resulted in ever-increasing standardisation, datafication and evaluation (Ball, 2003; Ball 2012; Holloway 2021). It is argued here that the meso-level space of school ethos and cultural pedagogy has the potential to resist cultural enclosure and democratic erosion; a space that moves beyond neoliberal market rationality and the rehearsal of discipline, where there is freedom to imagine humanity differently and for the genesis of a more authentic form of inclusive education to emerge.

It is therefore argued in this paper that textual space could be a fundamental driver of an emancipatory meso-level space. That is to say, textual space could be an important structure in developing an inclusive and democratic school ethos. This is because textual space has the potential to be a representational space (Lefebvre 1991). This paper therefore argues for English teachers to recognise the influence of textual space beyond the classroom; to recognise the meso-level space of school ethos and cultural pedagogy as a space that can be supportive of social justice through the development of an expanded textual space. In order for this to happen, teachers must have a clearer idea of the processes and conflicts involved in the production of textual space. It must be made clear that – just like the school’s meso-level space – the production of textual space is not some fait accompli. Rather, it is an ongoing process of production where there is room for agency, even within the present disciplinary/securitised school system. It must also be highlighted that in order to recognise the potential of their agency, students and teachers must recognise textual space as much more than the actual materialisation of the text itself. Above all else, students and teachers must recognise that textual space is fundamentally a political space and therefore a contested space. As Lefebvre (1991) argues, space is never “innocent”. As will be demonstrated later, this also applies to textual space.

The alignment between textual space and the school’s meso-level space of school ethos and cultural pedagogy has the potential to address a number of social justice issues through different perspectives, such as the lenses of social class, gender, sexuality, or neurodivergence. It is argued in this paper that there is an opportunity for a more democratic and dialogical pedagogy to emerge in regard to these issues through the alignment of textual space and the wider school environment. However, the limited nature of this paper does not allow for the detailed discussion of all these issues. Instead, a representative example is focussed on – cultural emancipation. Specifically, it looks to theoretically demonstrate how English Literature can contribute to cultural equality within global-heritage (multicultural) schools.

This is particularly important during an age when schools have been subjected to securitisation policy (Winter and Mills 2020), especially cultural securitisation in the wake of terrorism and the retreat from multiculturalism from the turn of the century onwards. This is where regular cultural and political issues have become de-democratised and enclosed within a discourse of increasing surveillance and control. That is to say, an issue is moved “from ordinary politics into security” (Khan 2016, 307). As will be demonstrated later, these issues are then securitised within a false “neutrality” of “objective knowledge”. This paper therefore highlights how the structures and spaces of the school’s meso-level (see above) can be directly linked to textual space as an alternative to what many scholars believe to be a colonial curriculum (Kanu 2006; Tomlinson 2019; Winter 2018; Winter and Mills 2020) that privileges whiteness (Bhopal 2018).

This paper focuses on global-heritage schools because these schools can be particularly vulnerable to cultural securitisation (Barnard 2022). They are of growing international significance as well, due to continuing international migration and the subsequent increase of cultural and racial diversity within the Global West. Within the USA, immigrant and refugee youth are the fastest growing segment of the nation’s youth (Amthor and Roxas 2016). In Canada, international migrants account for more than 80% of the population growth, where 39–49% of the total child population by 2036 is predicted to be constituted of first and second generation immigrant children (Guo-Brennan and Guo-Brennan 2021). In Australia, in New South Wales government schools for example, approximately one third of students come from a language background other than English (Ho 2019). In New Zealand, close to 30% of the population are classed within “non-European” categories (Stats New Zealand 2018). In England and Wales, 1 in 6 usual residents were born outside of the UK, equating to 10 million people. 6.4 million of these people were born outside of the European Union, the continuation of a longer-term trend (Office for National Statistics 2022). Government figures show that 30% of secondary school students are from an “ethnic minority” (DfE 2018). It is therefore important that spaces are developed that are inclusive of cultural diversity. An expanded textual space stemming from the subject of English Literature could be of key importance in this regard.

This paper therefore develops by, firstly, contextualising the cultural securitisation that has occurred within English schools. While this cultural securitisation has occurred in other countries as well (see, for example, Peterson and Bentley 2016; Peker 2021), England is a particularly striking example of how schools have been subjected to securitisation policy. Indeed, England is now seen as an important player globally in the development of securitisation policy (Jerome, Elwick, and Kazim 2019). Secondly, this paper will theoretically frame this securitisation using Lefebvre’s spatial triad and Bourdieu’s notion of embodied cultural capital before looking more closely at the securitisation of textual space within English Literature at Key Stage 4 (KS4 - the period of GCSE study leading up to high stakes summative assessment at the end of a student’s school career). This paper focusses on English Literature at KS4 because these texts are mandated and, therefore, have symbolic capital through their “official” status in relation to GCSE recognition. Thirdly, the idea of (lived/actively experienced and produced) textual space as a counterbalance to cultural securitisation will be developed; and fourthly, this idea will be expanded into the school’s meso-level space, where greater opportunities for democratic production of the text may exist.

Cultural securitisation

Schooling – seen as the dominant technology of our time in regard to the governance of the population (Flint and Peim 2012) – is an important site of cultural and political securitisation. This has been particularly evident over the last twenty years during the retreat from state multiculturalism and anti-racism (Gilroy 2005; Halstead 2010; Kapoor 2013; McGhee and Zhang 2017; Joppke 2017) in official policy discourse. Halstead (2010, 183) defines multiculturalism as ensuring that “a voice is given to all the different cultures represented in a country and ensuring that members of different cultural groups are treated with equal respect”. This has increasingly been replaced with a reductionist (Keddie 2014) and racist nativism (Smith 2016) across the global North (Winter and Mills 2020). During this period there has been a rise of the global countering violent extremism policy paradigm (Abbas 2018) as Western states have looked to take a more authoritarian and centralised approach in regard to the politics of culture. In England, with the loudly pronounced “death” of multiculturalism (Joppke 2017), a much more homogenised version of national culture has emerged.

We have seen this enacted through policies such as Fundamental British Values (FBV) and Prevent. FBV are to be promoted in English schools (DfE 2014a, 2014b). Furthermore, teachers must be careful not to undermine these values (DfE 2012). These values consist of “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”. The Prevent Duty (DfE 2015) places an emphasis on schools to identify and report those in danger of being drawn into terrorist-related activities. Both policies have been extensively critiqued (see, for example, Jerome, Elwick, and Kazim 2019; Lander 2016), with Winter and Mills (2020, 47) concluding that such policies are a continuation of “the much-older colonial education-security relationship” (Winter and Mills 2020, 47).

It is argued here that these securitisation policies – in collusion with wider neoliberal education policy – continue to promote a well-established colonial metanarrative (Bristol 2012) that disadvantages/disempowers students of colour through the silencing and “othering” (Said 2003) of their embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986). Bourdieu defines embodied cultural capital as existing “in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body” (Bourdieu 1986, 17), in the form of “what is called culture, cultivation, Bildung” (Bourdieu 1986, 18). By “Bildung” he refers to the cultural shaping of the human being, and he states that “the subject is not the instantaneous ego of a sort of singular cogito, but the individual trace of an entire collective history” (Bourdieu 1990, 91). This is important because it implies social and historical inheritance. People carry with them traces of a collective past whether they are aware of it or not and this has the effect of “positioning” them within the field of power.

The cultural securitisation of the school system can be theorised through Lefebvre’s spatial triad. This triad consists of: 1) Spatial practice, which is the perceived space and embraces production and reproduction and, in the terms of this paper, corresponds to the micro-level space of the formal received curriculum, teaching and learning. This includes the enactment of the English Literature curriculum; 2) Representations of space, which is the conceived (planned) space and takes the form of buildings, policy directives, and such like, and in the terms of this paper corresponds to the macro-level space of national – and colonial – neoliberal education policy; and 3) Representational spaces which are the lived, everyday spaces that for this paper could find their most authentic expression in the meso-level space of institutional ethos and cultural pedagogy. This space is “directly lived through its associated images and symbols” by “users” and “inhabitants” (Lefebvre 1991, 39). It is argued here that students of colour have their embodied cultural capital blocked and marginalised within the conceived representations of space (macro education policy) as well as within perceived spatial practice (the micro level of curriculum enactment). Barnard (2022) has argued that it is in the representational spaces of a school’s meso-level – the lived representational spaces – that students of colour have the greatest chance of having their diverse embodied cultural capital recognised as symbolic (and therefore important) capital within institutions that have been securitised at both the macro (representations of space) and micro (spatial practice) levels.

Conceptual (conceived) securitisation of culture within schooling can clearly be seen through David Cameron’s (2014) article on enforcing British Values tied to a particular version of British history, and his rejection (continued by subsequent Prime Ministers) of “wrong-headed” multiculturalism (Sparrow 2008), mirroring “the general rise of populist nationalism and the concomitant attempts to invoke a nativist, national identity” (Talbot 2022, 287). It is this white historical account of values such as “democracy” that implicitly disassociates non-whiteness from Britain’s “island story” (Gove 2010; Cameron 2014), where the singular path to “modernity” is intrinsically linked to “racial whiteness” (Dyer 1997; Bonnett 2000). But as Hall (1999) has argued, this type of selective remembering “foreshortens, silences, disavows, forgets and elides many episodes which – from another perspective – could be the start of a different narrative” (Hall 1999, 5). The overall effect of this is to form a policy of “cultural upgrading aimed at providing the dominated with access to dominant cultural goods or, at least, to a degraded version of this culture” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 82).

This is then translated into spatial practice of teaching and learning, where students of colour are presented with this “degraded” version of dominant culture through a basic white, middle-class cultural capital in the form of a monocultural curriculum as well as the imposition of “British” values and its implicit associations with white “modernity”; and are thus condemned to “the imaginary waiting room of history” (Chakrabarty 2000, 8). As will be detailed below, the English Literature curriculum has not escaped this cultural securitisation: “different narratives” have been excluded from textual space. As Talbot (2022, 287) states: “The result of this turn towards a state authorised conception of cultural knowledge has been a regurgitative pedagogical approach to literature in the classroom”. This will be analysed in the following section where it is argued that this turn towards a “regurgitative pedagogical approach” is a fundamental aspect of the securitisation of textual space.

KS4 English literature and the securitisation of textual space

The transformation of the English Literature curriculum over recent years – and the negative impact this has had for inclusion – is well-documented (Shah 2013; Yandell 2017; Iffath 2020), as is the backlash against multiculturalism within the subject (Nelson-Addy et al. 2018). This paper argues that this has formed part of a broader cultural securitisation of schooling. Within English Literature itself, there has been the promotion of authors originating from the British Isles (part of “our” island story – see above) and from a narrow “literary heritage” (Talbot 2022), centred on Shakespeare, the 19^th century novel, poetry including Romantic poetry, and modern novels by British authors (DfE 2013). While it is recognised that teachers do attempt to include diverse cultural capital, such as through poetry (Cushing 2018; Barlow and MacGregor 2022) and through the support of outside organisations (e.g. The Runnymede Trust and Penguin Books 2021), this curriculum has been widely critiqued as an exclusionary attempt at nation-building (Hodgson and Harris 2022), where children from some cultures will see “no centrally mandated space for them within the curriculum” (Mansworth 2016, 119). Indeed, what we have been left with is a monocultural English Literature curriculum (Mansworth 2016) that foregrounds an authoritarian and white nativist perspective (Hodgson and Harris 2022) within a broader educational agenda of cultural securitisation (Barnard 2022) that looks “to set forth the frontier between the sacred and the profane, good and evil, the vulgar and the distinguished” (Bourdieu 1985, 735). For Iffath (2020, 370), the English Literature curriculum “is perpetuating a narrative that is reminiscent of the colonial era whereby other cultures are forcibly excluded from what it means to be English and construed as indisputably inferior”.

As part of this critique, the English and English Literature curriculum has been closely aligned to conceived representations of space in Lefebvre’s spatial triad (McIntyre and Jones 2014; Mansworth 2016; Perry 2022). This paper agrees with this association but develops this further through the notion of textual space; that is to say, that each text positioned within spatial practice of teaching and learning has its own spatial triad; its own conflicts and contradictions. Each text is – or has the potential to become – a contested space or an appropriated space (Lefebvre 1991). This paper defines textual space as follows:

1. Textual spatial practice. This perceived space involves the production of the text. For the most part, this is simply reproduction of inequitable official knowledge. Therefore, it is the space where social/cultural injustice is reproduced. In our schools, it is also an atomised space – the individual reader requires this official knowledge about the text in order to pass individual examinations that empirically demonstrate their competence with regard to official knowledge/culture. It is the space where both teacher and student can find themselves alienated from their textual labour through the reproduction of securitised interpretations and securitised pedagogy. It is a dominated space.

2. Representations of textual space. This is the conceived ideological space that imposes “order” on textual space. It is where an official response/understanding of the text is conceptualised through a continuing historical process. It is the dominant space with regard to textual space.

3. Representational textual spaces. This is where there is the possibility to live textual space and for embodied textual meanings to emerge. However, for the most part this is a dominated and passively experienced space where students may become vaguely aware of their alienation from their textual labour. However, should this discontent/disconnect be recognised and developed further, it is where the “rules” and “official knowledge” of the text can be challenged through authentic dialogue and creativity regarding the text. It is a space where students/teachers could become self-aware of their embodied selves within and through textual space. The potential vastness of this space, and the possibilities of textual space, can become realised. It is where textual space becomes real, lived.

Representations of textual space

This analysis of the securitisation of textual space within GCSE English literature begins with the conceived space, the dominant representations of textual space. It is argued here that textual space is not “innocent” or free from political ideology (Lefebvre 1991, 2009a). It is clear that a number of selected texts – or categories of texts – have been selected for a particular purpose (Perry 2022); these texts form part of the security-curriculum ensemble (Winter and Mills 2020). They clearly form part of the dominant representations of textual space due to their canonised status (Shah 2013; Mansworth 2016). Like FBV, there is nothing inherently wrong or exclusionary about these texts per se. Rather, it is how and why they have been deployed that is of concern; with the intention of allowing a particular ideology to dominate textual space. They have been conceived of as having “objective” status. These texts have been selected as objective representations of British “Cultural Literacy” (Hirsch 1987, 1996) and “powerful (cultural) knowledge” (Young 2014): interpreted as “a relatively stable and fixed culture that students ought to acculturate to” (Talbot 2022, 287). This “Cultural Literacy” and “powerful knowledge” have been conceived of as objective cultural capital that will form part of Ofsted’s judgement of schools in regard to curricula that should “give all learners the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life” (Ofsted 2019, 8). Or, as Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) would argue, a form of imposed “objective” cultural “upgrade” at best, and at worst, a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) against global-heritage students as a particular (cultural) group looks to “appropriate the space in question” (Lefebvre 1991, 57) and erase multiculturalism/cultural diversity from textual space.

But herein lies the contradiction for these attempts at assigning “objectivity” and “powerful knowledge” to these texts, in looking to appropriate textual space: these texts have to be interpreted in a particular way in order to achieve the status of “powerful knowledge”. They could just as easily be interpreted in a different way (through, for example, a postcolonial lens, a Marxist lens, etc.). Despite this contradiction, Lefebvre suggests that the “planners” constructing representations of space are obsessed with “numbers”, homogenisation (Lefebvre 2009c), with an emphasis on positivism. This involves making English Literature “more like a natural science” (Eaglestone 2021, 20), and therefore the reading of the text as a “single story” (Barlow and MacGregor 2022), to be translated into spatial practice (teaching and learning) as a single understanding of textual space, into atomised units of knowledge (Eaglestone 2021; Talbot 2022). This corresponds to the wider atomisation of spatial practice within education, preventing any coherent alternative to neoliberal/colonial conceptions of modernity. Textual space is thus subject to “quantitative totalisation and systematisation” (Lefebvre 2009d, 205).

But textual space, by its very nature, and through the different embodied histories of each reader, has the potential to defy any such single reading and “totalisation”. It is argued in this paper that textual space is a process of continuing production – a multiplicity of processes rather than defined outcomes – an ongoing story. Textual space therefore reserves the possibility for multiplicity and different histories. Textual space has the possibility to expand beyond narrow notions of national identity to incorporate transnational identities and cultural capital. This means that texts deployed to create an “objective” “Cultural Literacy” do not in themselves fulfil the function that has been assigned to them. Those who plan the conceived space realise this: further measures need to be enacted within spatial practice if a particular interpretation of textual space is to be the dominant interpretation and textual agency is to be curtailed (see, for example, Marsh 2017 on the impact of closed book examinations).

Textual spatial practice

It has been demonstrated, then, that textual space has an assigned meaning, conceived of through the representations of space; that is to say, a dominant interpretation of the text. Textual space also involves spatial practice. This is where the text is “created”, as Rosenblatt (1938, 1978) has argued, or “produced” (Lefebvre 1991), in a transaction between reader and textual symbols. However, in reality, and within a securitised schooling environment, this “transaction” is between not reader and text, but between the dominant interpretation of the text (see above) and the isolated reader’s acceptance of this interpretation as symbolic cultural capital and legitimate “Cultural Literacy”. It is the passive acceptance – for many students – of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Textual spatial practice therefore involves a particular and inequitable reproduction of the text because this aspect of textual space is dominated by the conceived representations of space – “Cultural Literacy” and “powerful knowledge”. This is the space where enactments of conceived textual space materialise:

Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. In terms of social space, and of each member of a given society’s relationship to that space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a specific level of performance.

(Lefebvre 1991, 33).

This “competence” in regard to official cultural capital – and the official interpretation of the text – is tested in high-stakes examinations, where, like the students themselves, “knowledge” of the text is atomised and space for collective and dialogical/reciprocal (Gilbert 2022) learning approaches, between text and reader, between reader and other readers, between readers and teacher, are purposely blocked in favour of a ‘regurgitative pedagogical approach (Talbot 2022). Textual spatial practice – like wider educational spatial practice – has become an atomised space. The embodied (and therefore collective, historical) cultural capital of students of colour becomes alienated from the production of the text.

Therefore, relationships to this aspect of textual space advantage some (from the dominant cultural group) and disadvantage those who have been “othered” (Said 2003) from “our” island story. This is because the neoliberal/colonial representation of space makes demands on spatial practice, on teaching and learning, which are mirrored in textual space. These demands include homogeneity and conformity (Lefebvre 2009c), because this neoliberal representation of space is a conceived and planned “frontal” space which is “tied to the relations of production and to the ‘order’ which those relations impose” on textual space (Lefebvre 1991, 33). This results in “the tension between centralised, competitive accountability regimes and the idea that teachers should be able to exercise control over what and how they teach” (Watson et al. 2022, 34). The “production” of the text is therefore securitised through 100% terminal closed book examinations and an individualised/atomised approach to retaining “knowledge” from the text; through centralised accountability measures; through centralised requirements to “map” FBV into the text; and through a focus on technical aspects regarding “writer’s effects”. Textual spatial practice has been securitised not only by textual representations of space, but also through system (macro) level representations of space as well. As Lefebvre (1991, 26) states, the production of space, and therefore the production of textual space, “serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power”. This dominant production of textual space is presented as “natural” and “neutral” in the supposedly “post-cultural” educational sphere of modern neoliberal schooling. But to believe this is to fall into the trap of viewing space as transparent and innocent because “space is never empty: it always embodies a meaning” (Lefebvre 1991, 154).

Lived (representational) textual space and the meso-level space of school ethos and cultural pedagogy

The lived space of a text presents alternative possibilities, “where social actors can collectively re-appropriate space/time through which they can resist and/or oppose damaging stereotypes and create alternative identities, narratives and knowledges” (Thomson, Hall, and Jones 2010, 642). It is where “users” can actively “inhabit” the text. But this is also the space that is for the most part “experienced passively” (Lefebvre 1991, 39). As demonstrated above, it is an aspect of the text where multiplicity has been blocked through a linear and singular white supremacist narrative (Hodgson and Harris 2022) that excludes and historicises (Chakrabarty 2000) the cultural capital of students of colour from “our” island story.

Other writers have demonstrated the importance of lived representational space for an authentic and inclusive English Literature experience (see, for example, Mansworth 2016; Perry 2022). There have also been calls to introduce “culturally responsive pedagogy” (Sleeter 2012); for moves away from teacher-led interpretations (Cushing 2018) to encourage students to resist “single story” interpretations and a focus on “restorying” (Vasquez 2017; Stornaiuolo and Thomas 2018; Barlow and MacGregor 2022); as well as persistent arguments to decolonise the curriculum. For example, Kanu (2006, 5) has called for “changes in action at either the micro or the macro level”, but especially the micro-level of the formal, received curriculum. However, the micro-level of “spatial practice” (Lefebvre 1991), the enactment of the formal curriculum, has proven stubbornly unresponsive to calls for decolonisation, especially under recent governments.

Instead, textual space at KS4 mostly “ensures continuity” (Lefebvre 1991) in the unequal production of culture and cultural belonging (or cultural marginalisation). Textual space as a possible lived representational space has been blocked by the symbolic recognition of “official” cultural capital (see above). It is argued here, then, that “official” cultural capital is a form of deep-seated corruption passed on through textual space as art itself is co-opted into this corruption that benefits some and disadvantages many more. Any attempt at “levelling-up” in terms of “official” cultural capital is simply a form of inequitable cultural “upgrading” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; see above).

So while attempts to promote textual space as a lived representational space in the classroom are noble and valuable, they will ultimately terminate in frustration in the face of high-stakes GCSE examinations and other security measures. These measures include system (macro) level policies such as progress 8 scores and performativity requirements that shape the school’s classroom based spatial practice. Classroom-based attempts at recognising diverse embodied cultural capital within textual space are explicitly or implicitly undermined by these examinations and performativity measures that corral teachers and learners towards official interpretations of “Cultural Literacy” and “powerful knowledge” that have been assigned to the texts in question. Consequently, the symbolic recognition of global heritage is unlikely to be consistently sustained within the confines of the English Literature classroom.

Official knowledge/interpretations of mandated English literature texts then become – almost by osmosis – institutional cultural capital, which is closely linked to – and forms part of – the school’s cultural ethos and pedagogy. This capital “is a form of objectification which must be set apart” as it “confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee” (Bourdieu 1986, 17). Furthermore, it institutes a formally recognised capital that sets it apart from “simple cultural capital” which is a capital that is “constantly required to prove itself” (Bourdieu 1986, 21). Simple cultural capital is the embodied cultural capital of students of colour that remains embodied within individual agents and does not have the symbolic power of “institutional recognition” (ibid) that the official knowledge around these texts acquires. However, it is argued here that the institutional recognition of diverse cultural capital remains a possibility at the meso-level; a space outside of direct government control.

This paper therefore argues that attempts to promote textual space as a lived representational space within the classroom must be directly linked to the school’s meso-level space of ethos and cultural pedagogy. The meso-level space identified in this paper consists of institutional ethos, cultural pedagogy and social space, rather than the government directed micro-level space (the formal curriculum) and macro-level space (neoliberal/colonial education policy at the national level). This meso-level space corresponds with Lefebvre’s representational spaces which are the lived, everyday social spaces of the institution. It is argued here that the meso-level space vacated by neoliberal/colonial policies (that establish relations between central government and micro-level institutional control; see Lingard, Martino, and Rezai-Rashti 2013; Sobe 2015) can be leveraged as a way of recognising and valuing diverse cultural capital in order to create an institutional ethos/cultural pedagogy based on shared cultural production, a collective global multicultural capital (Matas and Bridges 2008) within global heritage (multicultural) schools. The objective structures of this meso-level space – such as the institutional newsletter, the open social spaces, extra-curricular provision, fieldtrips, assemblies, school websites and so forth – could be extremely important in the democratic production of space as an alternative to cultural, political and historical securitisation. It is a space where history continues, for “there is history only as long as people revolt, resist, act” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 102).

There is therefore a real possibility for an extended representational textual space to flourish here if English teachers recognise this meso-level space as a space for cultural production, for student and teacher agency. It is here that mandated cultural capital communicated through mandated texts can be transformed into the symbolic – and institutional - recognition of embodied cultural capital. It is here where there is the possibility to escape the securitised and “instrumental” (Lefebvre 2009d) spatial practice of teaching and learning, to nurture lived textual space into a lived institutional textual space.

English teachers should therefore ensure that there is an axis of cultural emancipation between textual representational space and meso-level representational space. The genesis of lived textual space my well be in the classroom, but it should not end in the classroom. This is because, as stated above, this paper identifies the school’s meso-level space as a space of possible resistance, of staff and student agency, and a space that could potentially be harnessed by English teachers and their students as a way of expanding lived textual space. It is a space that could be activated for resistance to political, epistemic and cultural securitisation. The axis between representational textual space and representational meso-level space could act as an institutional counter-balance to culturally hegemonic policy such as Fundamental British Values. It could act as a counterbalance to “single story” cultural narratives (see “our” island story, above) by translating lived textual space in to real-world political action through institutional cultural pedagogy. Representational (lived) textual space could be produced socially through the school’s meso-level structures.

What would this involve in practice? As mentioned previously, it could begin with a dialogical/reciprocal (Gilbert 2022) approach to textual space, where students learn from each other, through shared embodied meanings, through the wider community. It could develop further through “restorying” (Vasquez 2017; Stornaiuolo and Thomas 2018; Barlow and MacGregor 2022) and reimagining textual space. These reimaginings, these textual diversifications, could be shared through the school’s meso-level structures, such as the institutional newsletter, websites, corridors, to be commented on, adapted, critiqued, restoried or repurposed, and developed further within a meso-level textual “commons”, in an escape from the enclosure of textual spatial practice. It could involve something as simple as shaping relevant text/quotations into othered (Said 2003) cultural symbols in order to create visual juxtapositions for public display. It could involve having the book cover and blurb of mandated texts translated into versions from othered cultures, using othered languages, set in othered locations, so that textual space becomes a transnational cultural space. It could also involve bringing marginalised and/ or othered texts intoconversation with mandated texts.

Textual space within the school’s ethos and cultural pedagogy could be developed still further, with greater complexity, with connections made to activist movements, and so that a fuller realisation of textual space as political space can be achieved. For example, could certain texts be linked to wider decolonisation movements such as Rhodes Must Fall? Could certain texts be critiqued as having been deployed as textual colonial statues (for more on controversies around colonial statues, see for example BBC 2020; Elias, McCandless, and Chordiya 2019) that inflict symbolic violence? This in turn could be linked to embodied colonial histories and struggles to belong within “our island story” and thus to belonging within “our institutional story” through the meso-level structures of the school (see above). It is hoped that English teachers will recognise this space as a more expansive space for subverting mandated texts in order to enrich readings of these texts (Shah 2013); and to bring their expertise and creativity to this space, along with interested (action) researchers.

However, it is also recognised here that teachers may need to (re)discover this knowledge and cultural expertise after more than a decade of multicultural erasure that continues to position students of colour as the “absent presence” (Apple 1999). That is to say, a bodied and datafied presence rather than an embodied presence. Therefore, fundamentally, it is students themselves who will produce this space through the concept of embodiment. It is their embodied and diverse cultural capital that will actively create lived textual space to be expanded and acted upon in regard to the school’s wider (potential) representational spaces. Students and teachers can transform conceived, abstract and instrumental cultural capital into a lived multicultural capital. This is because a lived textual space is also a social space, a dialogical space, a historical space, a connected space, in opposition to neoliberalism’s decontextualising and atomising agenda (Lefebvre 2009b). Knowledge generated through lived textual space would therefore not be atomised units of knowledge (Eaglestone 2021; Talbot 2022) residing in atomised individuals, but rather contextualised knowledge produced and shared through embodied cultural capital, through a social anthology of our connected island stories, within the school’s ethos and cultural pedagogy.

Conclusion

The subject of English Literature arguably holds a unique position within the English National Curriculum. It has the potential to unlock diverse cultural capital and to therefore facilitate within students a confident and shared sense of cultural belonging. Unfortunately, in an age of cultural and epistemological securitisation, this potential for the most part goes unrecognised; or it is purposely blocked. It is perhaps worth revisiting Johnstone’s (2011) criticism of the way a large selection of GCSE poetry and prose had been branded as “from different cultures and traditions” at that time of writing. He rightly identifies a process of “othering” through unnecessary cultural labelling and compartmentalisation:

‘The Cox Report’s brand of liberal multiculturalism ultimately maintains a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, rather than recognizing the fluidity and intermingling of cultures and identities in contemporary multicultural societies. It denies the validity of the truly multicultural’

(127).

Now, however, in the turn towards “Cultural Literacy”, “official” cultural capital and “powerful knowledge”, that section of the GCSE poetry anthology has been removed, and with it almost all other multicultural voices, as evidenced in the AQA GCSE poetry anthology Past and Present (2015). Even the staple American novels such as To Kill a Mocking Bird did not escape the axe. We have moved very far away from a culturally-just curriculum. Johnstone was right in issuing this warning:

What is at stake is less the understanding of different cultures, than the ongoing forging of our own multicultural society and the very survival of multiculturalism itself in this country

(132).

Multiculturalism – in the sense of an education that promotes the value for society of cultural diversity – may well be “dead” (Joppke 2017) within this age of “Fundamental British Values”. Cultural multiplicity, however, most certainly is not; suppressed, marginalised and silenced, yes – but far from dead.

This paper has attempted to provide a reminder to English teachers about the potential of English Literature in regard to lived textual space as a representational and emancipatory space that, if expanded into the school’s meso-level, could help facilitate a socially-just cultural ethos and pedagogy. As Lefebvre (1991, 41) writes of such a space: “Redolent with imaginary and symbolic elements, they have their source in history – in the history of a people as well as in the history of each individual belonging to that people”. Textual space expanded into the school’s ethos and cultural pedagogy has the potential to rewrite “our” island story (Gove 2010; Cameron 2014) into a much more inclusive story – or multiplicity of stories.

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Correction Statement

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

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Notes on contributors

Mathew Barnard

Mathew Barnard is interested in the sociology of education, especially around cultural issues within diverse educational settings.