power through ritual

Before the Bleach Gets Us all, written by Fine et al based on a year of observation within a unique literature course, shows us the process by which students are guided towards freedom from “anti-immigrant, anti-public sector, pro-death penalty, anti-affirmative action, ‘national/maternal’ ideological milk,” and victim-blaming rhetoric that filled all spaces of communication in that time. Power creeps its little head out from within every action and observation in this reading. What the teacher is trying cure is a “disability of privilege” that without their knowledge has these children suffering from a severe condition of automatic compliance to their social power in everything that they do. She calls this standpoint theory and it goes like this: “…people think, feel, see, express, resist, comply and are silent in accordance with their social power and that a view from the ‘bottom’ may diverge dramatically, critically, and brilliantly from a view from the ‘top’.” There is a sense of inescapability here, at least if left to fester without intervention. That one cannot but function in a manner that is made to serve the preservation of itself. This is a compliment to Foucault’s idea that everyone’s existence keeps the giant machine working with every intention and action, we are stuck. Not even in the multi-ethnic multi-class classroom, (Fine adds people like Erika Apfelbaum and Jean Anyon to this Foucauldian concept,) can anyone escape racialized, gendered, classed, and homophobic elements in America.