I’m currently writing a book with two fabulous colleagues, Sophie Rudolph and Jessica Gerrard, which explores how education systems and practices produce and sustain structures of whiteness. Our argument is that whiteness is ‘learned’ through three interconnected dimensions of education: the epistemic, the material, and the affective.

A number of FreshEd speakers have helped me think through these interconnected dimensions, and here I recommend a few episodes that I hope you’ll also find thought-provoking. The first is by Suhanthie Motha who discusses how English language education is predicated on race and empire. To me, it is an example of how education is steeped in epistemic hierarchies that serve whiteness. The second is Leigh Patel’s discussion on settler colonialism which tunes us into the materiality of education systems; these are systems that rest on ongoing colonial extraction and dispossession. (It got me thinking about how we need to analyse the global education industry, the subject of Gita Steiner-Khamsi’s episode, through the lens of racial capitalism).  And finally, I found Irving Epstein’s discussion of the role of affect in forming hegemonic approaches to education policy and practice fascinating. The episode helped me think about the numerous affective registers that sustain whiteness in education, from the anxieties and fears of ‘too much’ diversity in institutions to the denial and defensiveness of whiteness in curricula, policy and so on.

I hope you enjoy listening to these episodes and connecting the many ideas contained in FreshEd’s archives to your research and practice.

September 20, 2020