[ Abstract for this presentation ] [ Proceedings Contents ] [ Schedule ] [ Abstracts ] Chineseness at the crossroads: Curricula and pedagogical considerations for the educational context Agnes May Lin Meerwald School of Education, Murdoch University

Chineseness at the crossroads examines how diasporic Chinese women negotiate Chineseness in Australia. I deploy Homi Bhabha's theory of liminality, the concept of being neither here nor there, to question essentialist notions of Chineseness in the women's ambiguous experiences. It disrupts the binarisms that divide the old from the new, and recognises instead the past and present in new but familiar versions of Chineseness.

I argue that essentialist Chinese norms are communicated through cultural semantics or fictions of Chineseness. I assert that liminality disrupts normalised Chineseness to expose the power structures that inform the cultural semantics. Awareness of these interdependent processes politicises the women.

In mirroring my theoretical framework, I use an auto-ethnographic technique to collapse the divide between the researcher and the researched, creating a liminal space between them. This subverts the norms of the researcher, as the archaeologist of knowledge, and the researched as passive artefacts. This methodological frame is a prism to examine the intersections of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, language, education, class, age, and religion with Chineseness in the lives of the 39 women interviewed.

Introduction

Framing the fictions: Theoretical framework

My friend said to me, "You're Australian."
Having been quite comfortable with being an in-between person in the past, I was suddenly confronted with a new pigeonhole. I felt unusually unsettled by his statement and found myself asking, "Why am I Australian?"
"You are, aren't you? I mean, you're not typically Chinese, are you?"
"I'm not?" I thought to myself. "But why? How not?" I asked.
He couldn't quite explain how I was Australian but the point of the exchange is that it made me feel uncomfortable. (Agnes, auto-ethnographic narrative)

I further argued that this context is complicated by the cultural semantics that are subscribed to or imposed on us. These cultural semantics are the fictions of Chineseness, and others, or "essentialising master narratives" (Meerwald, 2001, p. 388) that impact on our negotiations of Chineseness in practical terms. I borrow from Weedon's (1997) idea of common sense to elaborate on my notion of cultural semantics. Like common sense, cultural semantics consist of various social meanings and ways of reading the world that reinforce these meanings. These meanings, which serve the interests of particular groups, become fixed and accepted as truth, disguising their contradictions and changeability according to contexts. The power of cultural semantics, like common sense, comes from "its claim to be natural, obvious and therefore true" (Weedon, 1997, p. 74). In short, cultural semantics are similar to Foucault's discourse in that they are "ways of constituting knowledge" (Weedon, 1997, p. 105). Thus, these cultural semantics, I argue, impact on who we think we are as Chinese women.

Researcher -- researched: Methodological framework

• I wanted it to upset the traditional notions of the thesis genre. The use of autobiographical voices, though still controversial in more positivist circles, reminds the reader of the constructedness of the text, and quoting Gilmore here, as its mark "indicates a disruption in genre, an eruption or interruption of self-representation in genres in which it has not been previously legitimated" (Gilmore, 1994, p. 7). This controversy has a dual function. First, I argue, it unsettles the notion of the genre as an over-arching framework governing the ordering of details in the text, and then it leads the reader to the corresponding idea of the constructedness of culture.

• I wanted it to upset the traditional notions of the researcher and the researched to then reflect my theoretical framework of liminality. The auto-ethnography enabled me to interrogate positivist notions of the omnipotent researcher who mines the participants for data. I argued that both the researcher and researched stand on par to create knowledge together. My narratives served as a prism to understand theirs and vice versa. The researcher and researched then enter a liminal space. Who is the researched, one asks?

• I wanted to politicise my participants' voices. By placing my narratives alongside my participants', I erased their marginalised positions. I borrow from Carolyn Ellis (1997) who states that academics who tell their stories may encourage the disempowered to speak their silences, and lead to a discovery of the researcher's own silenced parts. Ien Ang (1994b) also argues "the narrating of life as lived [rescues] notions of 'experience' and 'emotion' for cultural theorizing" (p. 4).

Results revisited

Relocation

Secondly, some spoke of the different geographical spaces in seamless ways. I argue that the geographical boundaries used to refer to home artificially segment their lives. If we can acknowledge that we fluctuate in the interstitial spaces of liminality, even if it is initially just between two cultural locations, then we will begin to imagine that our present is complexly interrelated to our past. It is then that we will be able to interrogate past and present politics that construct the cultural semantics that we ascribe to rationally and/or non-rationally.

The constant reference to place as the women narrated their lives indicated that the politics of space continues to impact on them because identification is a process that:

Occurs in situ, in relation to a symbolically and physically constructed "home", "place". ... Identity is thus place bound both conceptually and geographically to specific localised contexts of domination and resistance, and has "no being outside the asymmetrical contact with dominant categories." (Luke & Luke, 1998, pp. 732-33)

Ritual

The data also showed that those who had access to liminal theories were still bound by the strength of the cultural semantics governing Chineseness. I found that Confucianism is so absorbed into the Chinese psyche that many of the Chinese women often did not know why they practised or held certain customs and values. I theorised that perhaps essentialist thinking simplifies life as one looks to existing cultural semantics to inform and explain one's ethnic performances. However, the reality is that "Chinese culture is indeed not different from other cultures [in that] culture is either negotiated or assumed, challenged or revered, rejected or carefully guarded against alien contamination" (Pieke 1997). Ang (1998a) says we can say no to Chineseness for:

Not only does the moment of pure Chineseness never strike; there are also moments-occurring regularly ... in which the attribution of Chineseness does not make sense in the first place. The liberating productivity of the diasporic perspective lies "[in unlearning] that submission to ... 'Chineseness' as the ultimate signified" [citing Chow]. ... to break out of the prison house of Chineseness ... to construct open-ended and plural "post-Chinese" identities. (p. 241)

Race

Similarly, the women's partner choice is very much influenced by the cultural semantics that suggest that non-Chinese men are more attractive. Chinese men were seen by many participants as chauvinistic misogynists with tendencies towards infidelity. Chinese men who did not conform to this stereotypical image were seen as westernised exceptions, instead of Chinese men who practised alternative forms of Chineseness.

To cross the race divide, some women adapted their speech styles or accents to enable membership into different groups. They would thus speak with an Australian accent to gain employment or you-know-lah, speak like a Malaysian or Singaporean so I get better service in a Chinese restaurant, you know.[1]

The problematics raised by the biological fiction, and our inability to activate a politicised liminality, are perhaps because our modern mind metes mutually exclusive ideals. It precludes the possibility that some seemingly mutually exclusive facts are in fact not mutually exclusive, but that they dwell in that indeterminate space of being both and not both. There is still the prevailing hegemonic assumption that Australian and Asian cultural identities are, and I quote Ang here, "mutually exclusive, antagonistic categories: the two cancel each other out; they are a contradiction in terms. One cannot ... be Asian and Australian at the same time" (Ang, 2000, p. 126). The Chinese and Australian remain distinct in the Australian psyche according to the differences in skin colour.

However, Ang (1994a) argues that it is impossible to be anti-essentialist either. Although Australia's current idea of multiculturalism particularises Chineseness and other ethnicities in essentialist terms, and in so doing marginalises them, a position of liminality enables this multiculturalism to be a site of struggle to affirm and undo all ethnic subjectivities.

Thus, my results indicate that the various cultural semantics of geography, culture, and biology continue to impact deeply on the psyche of both the diasporic and mainstream communities. However, I posit that our ethnic identity, which is based on the biological markings on our bodies, can be untied from our cultural and geographical identities through the politics of liminality.

Ramifications: Educational implications

I also posit that a single event or educational session will not invoke a change that is lasting or transforming, and suggest that our educational institutions appropriate the liminal framework into their curriculum and pedagogy, so that we are infused with this alternative concept to inform thinking. I present the educational implications by proposing certain curricula changes and a re-examination of present pedagogical practices.

Curricula changes

Recently there was much debate about the inclusion of film texts such as Star wars and Natasha Stott Despoja's first parliamentary speech into the NSW HSC English syllabus. The debate focused on the political agenda underpinning such inclusions. Bond (2002) sums up the argument as such:

It seems to assume that teaching the Western canon is not political, has no political or other agenda, and is a purely objective intellectual exercise. ... They are [in fact] filled to the brim with cultural norms and expectations and social propaganda. Much as I love the "Great Books" I can see that to impose them on students and to expect those students also to uphold them as "great" is in itself arrogant. A great number of English students do not share our love of the canon, no matter how much time you spend studying them and their merits as great works of literature. (Bond, 2002)

Lionnet also argues that "the ambiguities and indeterminacies inherent in the literary texts prevent the articulation of rigid or universalizing theoretical conclusions" (p. 186). Thus, I explore the possibilities opened up by using texts that challenge normalised portrayals, paying particular attention to how subjects engage with texts that disrupt the essentialist readings of ethnic subjectivities, and how this may then challenge their own negotiations of who they are. We see how educational moves to do so validated Vanessa's experiences:

The pivotal event I experienced in Year 12 was studying the three-unit English option, New Voices, for the HSC. Dealing with post-colonial writing, the texts we studied made me aware that I was not alone in the alienation I had so often felt, and that the feeling of being somewhere between two very different worlds was not a condition unique to my small being.

More significantly, perhaps, was the fact that it was text, literature. To find that writers beyond the "canon" could be studied for writing with literary merit about things I had experienced first hand made my personal experiences, in a way, legitimate, real. Issues that had always been pushed away into the background and/or ignored were actually being discussed and analysed as a part of somewhat esoteric literature. (Vanessa: 106-118; 124-131)

Educational awareness will give birth to the beginning of a hybrid discourse that encourages a reading of ethnicity from the interstitial spaces that recognises the inequitable socioeconomic layers, and other geopolitical and historical factors, that create difference. Such readers will develop critical capacities to realise that texts, including non-fiction and non-print texts, are constructed with a political agenda in mind, and that information and language are selectively appropriated to foster the prevalent attitudes within a particular historical and geographical setting. Such an invasive reading of texts helps us to dare to imagine a new Australia.

The politics of liminality, as applied to the use of texts, also influences the students' composition. If all we read is from the Western canon, then all we reproduce will be copies of the Western canon. Just as students produce gendered readings by drawing on what they already know about gender (Martino & Cook, 1998), they likewise produce readings of ethnicity based on existing knowledge about gendered ethnic stereotypes. An awareness of the cultural semantics governing how their experiences are formed will enable the students to further interrogate the powered forces that shape how they perceive themselves, and to develop their own political positions.

Pedagogical practices

Discrimination by teachers also manifests itself in practices such as lowered academic expectations, differential discipline measures, sex-role, and ethnic group stereotyping (Garcia, 1984). In 1998, while I was supervising students on their teaching practical at a local high school, I was appalled by the assumptions held by the staff members towards students of different ethnic backgrounds. The staff members naturalised certain behaviours to certain ethnic backgrounds.

"You have your Asian gang in there, you know, kids who have been breaking and entering - activities outside the school. There is one Aboriginal boy and a bully in there as well," the teacher said.

"I live in this area," I thought to myself, "but I haven't seen these Asian gangs terrorising the neighbourhood. Do they come out after hours? Are they members of triads? Who runs these triads? Their parents? Why haven't they approached me for support since I am Asian too?" (Agnes, auto-ethnographic narrative)

Lortie (1975) argues that student-teachers learn through an "apprenticeship-of-observation" (p. 65), embracing influences intuitively or imitatively, often without reflection. Hatton (1998b) adds these adoptive attitudes may not change with teacher education. She argues that "teachers often engage in mimicry of existing practices rather than involving themselves in reflective consideration of what might be more appropriate" (p. 7) [5].

Hatton (1998a) states that "teachers ... need to critically examine cultures and cultural responses, including their own, to assess which of their cultural practices and responses are flawed, even oppressive" (p. 6), to monitor the intended and unintended effects of these (1998). Attention to the specific nature of their individual students should be given so that diversity and social inequalities can be factored into their classroom.

Dent and Hatton (1998) suggest that to better understand cultural diversity, student-teachers should engage in ethnographic activities to immerse themselves in different cultural sites. This would be ideal if it could be carried out. In practice, I feel, few would have the opportunity to be so immersed in a variety of cultures as to move from merely knowing about a culture to the position of knowing a culture experientially. Teacher-training time would need to be significantly extended for this immersion to be effective. Further, this strategy does not address the prevailing attitudes of existing teachers. The liminal space is a paradigm shift that enables understanding without necessarily going through this ethnographic process[6].

Reverie

I borrow from Ang to sum up the tensions within Chineseness: "If I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent" (Ang, 1993, p. 14). I find this statement problematic as consensual power is determined by the specific context that one is in. Although Ang later adds: "When I say I am Chinese it is a choice, but it is not a completely free choice" (Ang, 1998c, p. 155), that freedom to give consent to Chineseness may not be present at all in certain contexts. I quote Ang here to elaborate:

Traffic through a crossroads is never free flowing and uncontrolled: there are traffic lights, road signs and rules that all road users must obey, for example, those approaching the crossroads from a minor road are supposed to give way to those passing through from the main road. Consequently, borderlands (which are spaces where the condition of crossroads traffic is normalised) are generally heavily policed and patrolled, and it depends on your identity card, your credentials, what you own, or simply the way you look [italics added]. ... These interstitial spaces are pervaded by power structures of their own. ... It matters who you are in borderland encounters, just as it matters which borders ... are being crossed. (Ang, 1998b, p. 16, Ang's italics)

Where consent can be given, it is in terms of how we may choose to practise our versions of Chineseness. This is where we find ourselves at the crossroads, and I stress crossroads that are junctions of multiple trajectories. Here, we decide which versions of cultural practices and values we want to subscribe to as we adapt our practices to our current changing contexts.

I question if such differences will cause confusion since nobody knows how the other may act or respond to situations any more. I borrow again from Ang (1998b) who questions how we can communicate meaningfully in the context of the differences met at the crossroads, which should not be ignored to keep the trajectories visible and the heterogeneity alive, when meaningful dialogue paradoxically comes with shared commonalities that we understand. To effect understanding, the appropriate rhetorical strategies need to be employed, according to Ang. I thus return to my application of liminality as the cultural semantics framing ethnic subjectification as the discourse in the English classroom, to teach us how to rethink sameness and difference. Thus, in our reappropriation of present cultural semantics, we need to realise that the existing cultural semantics are not naturally fixed fictions. We can thus critically construct new narratives from these cultural semantics to reduce the inequities experienced at the crossroads without further paralysing Chineseness, and other ethnicities, to impotent and subjugated sites.

Ang (1998b) calls for an increase in the discursive crossroads traffic. I transfer this to the crossroads encounters at the micro level of everyday experiences, to avoid producing bourgeoisie theory that is decontextualised and with little reg ard for the pragmatics in the particular and concrete contexts. Students who begin to exercise their political positions within the school setting may one day enact governmental policies necessary to provide the infrastructure for this traffic, which we cannot escape, for meaningful meetings can only be experienced in this spatial tension, through the gaps of recognition.

Although this research has enabled me to appropriate the road rules according to the contexts faced within the politics of liminality, to arrive at a point where I am comfortable with my versions of Chineseness, it does not assume the absence of tensions that continue to make this journey complicated, complex, and sometimes even confusing. However, it matters that tensions are no longer perceived as a deficit. Instead the tensions arising from the gaps exposed are positive signs of an awareness of the power relations that impact on the cultural semantics that govern the diasporic Chinese woman's subjectivity.

While this research is not conclusive, it opens up the road for further exploration on how ethnic subjectification is perceived. It is no longer just black or white but both, and "we need to substitute an 'and' for the 'either/or' logic [which can only breed] polarised destructive conflict" (Bretherton, 1998, p. 9). May we then learn to further appropriate these road rules for ethnic subjectification in contemporary Australia.

And there in front of us is the crossroads and choice. (Trinh, 1991, p. 21)

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

1. This section of the research can be found in a forthcoming book by The Office of Multicultural Interests, WA. See (Ryan & Meerwald, Forthcoming).
2. This is part of the Access Asia Schools project.
3. Biggs (1996) outlines the paradox of the Chinese learner who is presumed to use superficial learning strategies such as rote-learning, yet outperform Western students who supposedly use deeper level strategies. The clear binaric delineation of learning strategies according to ethnic background is problematic.
4. Dent and Hatton (1998) illustrate the significance of thinking beyond the beyond through the liminal space by noting that Vietnamese students in an Australian primary school were given positive treatment despite belonging to the lower socioeconomic strata. Though now economically poor, their parents were once middle class professionals in Vietnam who retained middle-class attitudes and values towards education when they came to Australia. The teachers considered these students' historical background and recognised them as having the potential for academic success. While class and gender intersect with ethnicity to impact on our subjectivity, we must caution against essentialising attitudes and behaviours according to these factors as well.
5. Tertiary institutions that produce these teachers also perpetuate these practices in the orientation programs that cater to the needs of students according to ethnic stereotypes.
6. While it must be acknowledged that, in certain cases, knowing about a cultural group would arm one with a set of strategies for dealing with students who behave in non-conformist ways, it must still be argued that the strategies employed need to be specifically tailored to the needs of the specific student for that specific context. For sometimes a student may fit one pigeon hole, at other times another, and at other times neither, none or both simultaneously.

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Author: Dr Agnes Meerwald has taught at the secondary and tertiary levels for over 15 years. Her research interests lie in cultural studies, postcolonial theories, diaspora studies and educational sociology. She has experience in qualitative and quantitative research methods, with a particular interest in postmodern methodologies. Dr Meerwald has been nominated for the Australian Association for Research in Education Doctoral Thesis Award (2003), and she received a Post Graduate Award from WAIER in 2004. Email: AgnesMeerwald@graduate.uwa.edu.au Please cite as: Meerwald, A. M. L. (2004). Chineseness at the crossroads: Curricula and pedagogical considerations for the educational context. Proceedings Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Forum 2004. http://www.waier.org.au/forums/2004/meerwald.html