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QUALITATIVE INQUIRY/December2001Lincolnetal. /RESPONSES

RESPONSES

An Emerging New Bricoleur:Promises and PossibilitiesA Reaction to

Joe Kincheloes Describing the Bricoleur

Yvonna S. LincolnTexas A&M University

AN EMERGING NEW BRICOLEUR

This article was so rich and full of ideas that it is difficult to sort them allout. Consequently, I will simply comment on what I believe to be the workshighlights, and where we might fruitfully wish to pursue bricolage-as-praxisand/or bricolageas a theoretical concern.Clearly, either direction canandwillinform the other; where we enter the ongoing methodological dialogue willeventually be inconsequential.

First, we are talking about an expansion in the definition of bricolage ofundreamt-of proportion.WhenGeertz (1988) picked up Levi-Strausss(1966)useoftheterm bricoleur,Ibelievehewasrespondingtotheideathatmethodiseven less preordinate than we might have imagined fromthegeneral tenor offieldworktraining that has gone onin theUnited States. This is what I call theHere are your tickets and your notebooks, Margaret [Mead]; Ill see you intwo years! school of fieldwork training. Levi-Strausss idea of bricolage

viewed fieldwork as a far less systematic process, a process far more akin tothe handymans, jack-of-all-tradess, use of what materials and tools areavailable and which seem sensible. Anthropologists have typically referredto bricolage as the assembly of mythic elements, motifs, allusions, character-izations, allegorical bits and pieces, narrative techniques and other stockmaterials to form stories that are nevertheless newandparticularized for thelocal context. Fieldworkincluding both method and representationmight be viewedas a jerryrigged operation.1 The appropriate metaphor hereis Mad Maxs car:parts andpieces assembledfromscrap, fromwhat comestohand, which nevertheless runs across inhospitable and dangerous terrain.

Kincheloes (2001 [this issue]) bricoleur is far more skilled than merely ahandyman. This bricoleur looks for not yet imagined tools, fashioning themwith not yet imagined connections. This handyman is searching for the

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nodes, the nexuses, the linkages, the interconnections, the fragile bondsbetween disciplines, between bodies of knowledge, between knowing and

understanding themselves. This is not your father s bricolage. It is bound-ary-work taken to the extreme, boundary-work beyond race, ethnicity, sex-ual orientation, class. It works the margins and liminal spaces between bothformal knowledge, and what has been proposed as boundary knowledge,knitting them together, forming a new consciousness.

Kincheloe proposes that this interdisciplinearity equals a kind of collabo-ration between and among border workers in thedisciplines. It is a bold pro-posal, but I believe its realization is a long way off. We have few models toshow us how such interdisciplinarycollaboration might work. Suchcollabo-ration is neither well understood, nor is it well rewarded in the academy,where many knowledge workers make their home. Both the academicreward structure and the socialization process in graduate study create anenvironmentwhereonly themost senior canaffordto collaborate (the excep-tionis inthehard sciencesandbiomedical sciences,wherecollaboration isnot

onlynecessary, butmandated). Usually, by then,it is toolate. Patternsof workhave been established that reify the bench-scientist, Lone Ranger model ofresearch, withindividual researchersworkingin solitude, or at best,workingwith graduate students.

The best forms of border work being done today are frequently beingundertaken by feminists and race-ethnic theorists, for example, Sandoval(2000), DeVault (1999), Hurtado (1996), Prez (1999), and Wing (2000). If criti-calraceand criticalrace feminist work furnishesthe modelsfor such interdis-ciplinary border-crossing, then we have at least a place to begin. The some-what narrow readership, however, for womens border workand that ofwomen of color, in particularis not heartening. Narrow readership sug-gests that those who would do this work are not accessing the models thatwould lead to sound archaeological and genealogical work.

Finally, Kincheloes (2001) suggestion that we might use Foucauldian

genealogy(Foucault, 1972) as the foundation of an interdisciplinary architec-ture or genealogy of disciplines is a bridge much farther for qualitativemethodologists. Foucauldian genealogical analyses are not well laid out, asmethod, with the best and most accessible proposal having been made byScheurich (1994, 1997). It is unclear how we might train graduate students toengage in this form of analysis, or what we might utilize to determinewhether the analyses have been systematic, disciplined, rigorous, orinsightful.

Where does this leave us? With many intriguing methodological, practi-cal, and theoreticalquestions. Is this what we want a bricoleur tobe? Does thissuggest that bricoleurs might come in two distinct forms: those who are com-mitted to methodological eclecticism, permitting the sceneand circumstanceandpresenceor absence of coresearchers to dictate method, andthosewhosefunction is to engagein a genealogyarchaeology of thedisciplineswith some

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larger purpose than ethnography in mind? Is there likelihood that disciplin-aryarchaeology willleadto thegenealogyof disciplinesthatKincheloe(2001)

proposes? How would we use such knowledge? What is the nature of therelationship(s) between bricolage and interdisciplinarity? William Pinar (thisissue) hasproposedthat thisbricoleuris a proletarianimage,a kindof intel-lectual-as-amateur. As attractive as thisimage is,doesit makesense thatama-teurs would care whether interdisciplinarity exists? Or know enough aboutthe structure of universities or disciplinary-knowledge organization to beable to undertake this task? What is proposed, is, after all, as Pinar noted, aconceptual architecture of staggering complexity. Given the restraints ofcurrentacademicorganization,what arethe possibilitiesfor interdisciplinarycollaboration?

Furthermore, we should ask what the relationship is between disciplinesand method. Although policy archaeology might be readily explained andgrasped by those in the social sciences or humanities, it is not at all clear thatthose inthehard sciences wouldbe eitherinterested orcomprehendingof the

proposedtask.Andfinally, wemight askagain, howdo we know when a res-urrection (archaeological) project is complete? Done systematically, rigor-ously, with some clear framework?

By raising questions, it is not my intention to disparage this work. Quitethe opposite. This piece may well have the power to shift the direction ofmethodological inquiry for the present and foreseeable future. Most assur-edly, anyone who reads Kincheloes (2001) proposal for bricolage will neveragain think of it in the same way.

NOTE

1. It should be remembered, however, that Levi-Strausss intention in recommend-ing bricolage was, in part, a structuralist project, requiring structuralist analyses.

Kincheloes (2001) adaptation appears very much a poststructuralist project, or at thevery least, a combination structuralist and poststructuralist analysis.

REFERENCES

DeVault,M. L. (1999).Liberating method: Feminism and social research. Philadelphia: Tem-ple University Press.

Foucault,M. (1972).Thearchaeologyof knowledgeand thediscourse on language. NewYork:Pantheon Books.

Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

Hurtado, A. (1996). The color of privilege: Three blasphemies on race and feminism. AnnArbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Kincheloe,J. L. (2001).Describingthe bricolage:Conceptualizing a newrigorin qualita-tive research. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 679-692.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. New York: Free Press.Prez, E. (1999). The decolonial imaginary: Writing Chicanas into history. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press.Sandoval,C. (2000).Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota

Press.Scheurich, J. J. (1994). Policy archaeology. Journal of Education Policy, 9(4), 297-316.Scheurich, J. J. (1997). Research method in the postmodern. London: Falmer Press.Wing, A. K. (Ed.). (2000). Global critical race feminism: An international reader. New York:

New York University Press.

Yvonna S. Lincoln is a professor and program chair, Higher Education Pro-gram Area, at Texas A&M Universitys Department of EducationalAdminis-tration andHumanResource Development.Her interests lie in policydevelop-ment for higher education, media representations of higher education, andqualitative research methodologies. She is the coeditor of the 1st and 2nd edi-

tions of theHandbookof QualitativeResearch, andthe coeditor, with Nor-man K. Denzin, of this journal.

The Researcher as Bricoleur:The Teacher as Public Intellectual

William F. PinarLouisiana State University

The French word bricoleur describes a handyman or handywoman,JoeL.Kincheloe (2001 [this issue]) explains early on in his 2001 Egon Guba lecture.This is an intriguing description, and in it I hear echoes of Edward Saids(1996) model of the intellectual: The intellectual today ought to be an ama-teur (p. 82). Both notions imply risk for us1 in the field of education duringthistime of assault onourprofessionalism,especially from theright. Afterall,forthosewhowish to deregulate teacher educationto breakthe ed.schoolmonopoly on teacher certificationisnt this the admissionfrom us theyvewanted all along? That we dont know what were doing, that educationcourses are just hurdles delaying or even preventing competent subject-matter specialists from entering the profession?

Of course, Kincheloes (2001) definition of bricoleur as handyman or

handywoman and Saids (1996) notion of amateur take for granted the



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researchers professional status. Kincheloes notion takes for granted disci-plinary knowledge and competence, and Said means by amateur that the

intellectual is more than a competent professional. Of course, she or he is acompetentprofessional, butmore than that, she or he is also someone who iswilling to raise moral issues at the heart of even the most technical andprofessionalized activity as it involves ones country, its power, its mode ofinteracting with itscitizens as well as with othersocieties (Said,1996, pp.82-83). To engage with such issues, fidelity to one discipline is a likely casualty.And it is a casualty in Kincheloes characterization of the bricoleur.

At the core of the deployment of bricolage in the discourse of research,Kincheloe (2001, p. 680) tells us, rests the question of disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity. Bricolage,of course,signifies interdisciplinarity. But notethat such a signification does not imply the absence of disciplinarity. On thecontrary, in Kincheloes analysis before one can engage successfully in the

bricolageit is importantto develop a rigorous understanding of the ways tra-ditional disciplines have operated. I maintain the best way to do this is to

study the workings of the particular discipline. . . such a disciplinary studywould be conducted more like a Foucauldian genealogy (p. 683).

Such a historical and hermeneutical view of our work as scholars, and asteachers, is anathema to those conservatives who demand, in Louisiana atleast, that Sylvan Learning Centers and other private providers competewith colleges and universities to produce teachers in abbreviated teacherpreparation programs. The conservativetends to commodifythe disciplines,andin so doing, suspends key curriculum questions. The conservative tendsto focus on instructionand learning,especially the latter, as it is quantified intestscores. In splittingcurriculumfrom instructionthis conservativepoliti-cal move in the public sphere is reflected in the organizational restructuringof a number of Colleges of Education where the historical designationDepartment of Curriculum and Teaching2 has been replaced with titlessuch as Department of Teaching and Learning or Department of Instruc-

tion and Learning.In highereducation, most of us remain clearthat curriculum andteaching

are profoundly linked, that to perform our complicated professional obliga-tions as scholars and teachers wemust retain theacademic freedomtochoosethosetexts we deem,in ourprofessionaljudgment, mostappropriate. Mostofus also appreciate that our professional labor requires that we decide how toexamine our students, sometimesby research papers, other times by essay orshort-answer tests, andevenon occasionby a standardizedexamination. Thesituation in higher education is, of course, hardly idealthe general educa-tion curriculum in many public research universities is more a political thancurricular arrangementbut my point here is that the inseparable relation

between curriculum and teaching remains intact, more or less, at many uni-versities.(Why it wasneverfullyhonoredin elementary, middle,andsecond-ary schools is a historical and, for me, gendered question.3)



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In the university we understand that we occupy a scholarly world withfaded disciplinary boundary lines (as Kincheloe [2001, p. 683] nicely points

out), thatour intellectualactivity (i.e., research and teaching)quicklybecomesinterdisciplinary, a concept still under construction, as Kincheloe explains,

Afuzzy concept atbest, interdisciplinarity generallyrefers to a process where dis-ciplinaryboundariesare crossed and theanalyticalframes of more than onedis-cipline areemployed by theresearcher. Surveyingthe useof theterm, it quickly

becomes apparent that little attention has been paid to what exactly inter-disciplinarity implies for researchers. Some uses of the concept assume thedeployment of numerous disciplinary methodologies in a study where disci-plinary distinctions are maintained; other uses imply an integrated melding ofdisciplinary perspectives into a new methodological synthesis. (p. 685)

Surelythesecondisconsiderablymoreambitiousthanthefirst,andthefirstishardly obvious, as my own attempt at such testifies (see Pinar, 2001 [thisissue]).

Kincheloes (2001) characterizationof bricolage embraces a deep form ofinterdisciplinarity . . . [that] seeks to modify the disciplines and the view ofresearch brought to the negotiating table constructed by the bricolage(p. 685). Moreover, the bricolage understands that the frontiers of knowl-edge work rest in the liminal zones where disciplines collide. Thus, in thedeep interdisciplinarityof thebricolageresearchers learn to engagein a formof boundary work (p. 689). Such deep interdisciplinarity and boundarywork seem to me precisely the labor of educational scholarship generallyandcurriculumtheory in particular, currently I would argue, a radical site ofinterdisciplinarity.4

Rejecting colonization by the hegemonic disciplines such as psychology,curriculum theory demands hybrid interdisciplinaryconstructions, utilizingespecially fragments from philosophy, history, literary theory, the arts, andfrom those key interdisciplinary formations already in place: womens and

gender studies,AfricanAmericanstudies,queer theory, and studies in popu-larculture, among others.Employingresearch completed in otherdisciplinesaswellas ourown, curriculumtheorists constructtextbooksthatinvitepublicschool teachers to reoccupy a vacated public domain, not simply as con-sumers of knowledge, butas active participantsin conversations theythem-selves will lead. In drawingpromiscuously but criticallyfrom variousacademic disciplines and popular culture, curriculum theorists work to cre-ate conceptual montages for the public-school teacher who understands thatpositionality as aspiring to create a public space.By so working,we curric-ulum theoristsamateurs in Saids (1996) sense, bricoleurs in Kincheloes(2001)are working to resuscitate the progressive project.

Our task asthenew century beginsis nothing less than theintellectual for-mationof a public sphere in education, a resuscitationof theprogressive pro-

ject in which we renew and perform our commitment to the democratization

of American society, a sociopolitical, economic, and intellectual process that



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requires thatwe retainand helppublic-school teachersgain controlof thecur-riculum, including the means by which teaching and learning are evaluated.

Only then do we have a chance of engaging our students and ourselves ininterdisciplinary conversations organized, for example, around questions ofnation, self, and the historical moment.5

Such efforts to reconstitute ourselves from merely competent profession-als to public intellectuals is far from risk, as Joe Kincheloe (2001) himselfpoints out, andnot only for our students. In a field whose academicstandingremainsfragile at best, to claim identities such as thebricoleur or theamateuris to invite criticism if not ridicule from our more disciplinary-wed, hard-discipline colleagues, not to mention right-wing politicians and othereducation-is-a-business advocates. Butthis is a risk,as Kincheloeknows, wemust take. Your provocative article, Joe, has clarified what is at stake in suchdeep interdisciplinarity. I am grateful to you for that.

NOTES

1. All of us: elementary, middle school, secondary school teachers, and college anduniversity faculty.

2. Recall that the first Department of Curriculum and Teaching was established atTeachers College, Columbia University, in 1937. See Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, andTaubman (1995).

3. For a historical analysis, see Cuban and Shipps (2000); for a (terse) gendered onesee Pinar (1999a). Norwould I defendteacher educationprogramsas they tend nowto

be structured. In fact, despite the disaster the deregulation agenda threatens for publiceducation, it might, perversely, serve university-based teacher education well, forcingus positioned in the university to cultivate the academicnot vocationalstudy ofeducation. See Pinar et al. (1995, p. 759) for a succinct statement of the distinction.

4. For an overview of contemporary curriculum scholarship, see Pinar (1999b).5. A public school curriculum as conversation would not, of course,be limited to

these questions.

REFERENCES

Cuban, L., & Shipps, D. (Eds.). (2000). Reconstructing the common good in education:Coping with intractable dilemmas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kincheloe,J. L. (2001,April). Describingthe bricolage:Conceptualizinga newrigorin quali-tative research. The 2001 Egon Guba lecture delivered at the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association.

Pinar, W. F. (1999a). Gracious submission. Educational Researcher, 28(1), 14-15.Pinar, W. F. (Ed.). (1999b). Contemporary curriculum discourses: Twenty years of JCT. New

York: Peter Lang Publishers.Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. (1995). Understanding Curricu-

lum. New York: Peter Lang.



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Said, E. W. (1996). Representations of the intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. New York:Vintage.

WilliamF. Pinar is theSt. Bernard ParishAlumniEndowed Professor at Loui-siana State University. He hasalso servedas theFrankTalbott Professor at theUniversity of Virginia and the A. Lindsay OConnor Professor of AmericanInstitutions at Colgate University.

Bricklayers and Bricoleurs:A Marxist Addendum

Peter McLarenUniversity of California, Los Angeles

I am honored to be a participant in this distinguished panel of respon-dents. I amespecially pleasedtobe offeringin brief compassthiscommentaryat an event that honors the stellar contribution of Egon Guba to educationalresearch. It is indeed fitting that Joe Kincheloe was chosen to present the dis-tinguished lecture this evening. Joe is oneof themost prominent educationaltheorists in North America, and I am proud to call him a brother in the strug-gle against social injustice. There is a joke circulating about Joe and I really

being biological brothersour Scottish ancestors hailing from Appalachia(Joes are from the mountains of Tennessee and mine are from rural Ontario,what some have describedas Canadasversion of Appalachia)but I will let

thatone gounremarkedtonightbecauseitmight takeus intountestedwaters.I promisedJoe thatafter hepresentedhis provocativeand stimulating presen-tation of the bricoleur and his nuanced rendering of what qualitative brico-lage might offer educational research, I would attempt to deliver (under thesign of comradeship) a spiritedcritique notso much of what he actuallysaid,

but of what I feel he has underemphasized in his talk. My distinguishedcore-spondent,BillPinar, will, I amsure, doa spiritedassessment ofwhat Joeactu-ally developed in his talki.e., the architectonics of Joes critical bricolageand his reinvention of the term as a heuristic device to deepen and to expandqualitative research in the field of education. I will give Joes presentation acautionary reading in the spirit of I like what you said, Joe, but I think it isimportant to inflect what you said in another direction. The inflection I amreferring to is decidedlyMarxist, and since Joe likes to joke about me as TheHollywood Marxist, I think he half expected this from me.



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I want to limit my response to a reading of Joe the bricoleur both againstandwiththefigure of Joethe bricklayerthatis, I want toread Joes questfor

transdisciplinaryrigor in the spirit of hisongoingconcernwithworkingclassstruggle, social transformation, and social justice in contemporary capitalistsociety. Joes work reveals how transdisciplinary rigor and social justice can

be complimentary processes animating a world-historic mission of resistingexploitation in all of its hydra-headed manifestations. So what follows aresome cautionary warnings to those bricoleurs-in-the-making. In Joes postu-lation ofa desideratumoflegitimacy forbricolageinthis case,the linkageofdiscourse, society, and powerit is essential to specify further how power isrelatedto a more generalized political economyof social relations andspecifi-cally to clarify what power signifies within such an economy. Unless this isaccomplished, qualitative researchers aspiring to become critical bricoleursrunthe riskof juxtaposing formalisticconceptsor merely refurbishinga stan-dard empiricist demand that ideas be framed by social and historical con-texts. I think there is a danger, too, of the bricoleur in the thrall of deep

interdisciplinarity lapsing into a form of epistemological relativism, espe-cially if ones multiperspectival approach(meaningthat sometimesyou wantto have yourcakeand eat it or that you are tempted to act according to errorseven after you have seen through them as errors) is underwritten by aNietzschean perpectivism. Joe guards against this tendency in his own work

by trying to gain insights from postmodern theory while avoiding apostmodernist ecclecticism. He achieves this by refusing to abandon theagent of struggle as she faces a cultural landscape of sheer heterogeneity andcultural fragmention. But preventing the historical agent from being acasuality of history is not an easy task. Whereas Nietzschean perspectivismprohibits the critic of Cartesian rationality from appealing to a normativeframework for criticizing that rationality and its power, Joe seeks to shatterepistemological frames not to escape from rationality but to deepen ourunderstanding of it. Embracing multiple perspectives for the critical brico-

leur does not mean that each perspective is to be equally valued.I know that Joe would agree that onereason the critical bricoleur needs to

be cautious as she negotiates her postmodern turn into the mine-infestedwatersof interdisciplinarity is that oftentimes thematerial worldcan slip outof view. We need to keep the economic structure of society squarely in ourhermeneutical sights because the forces of and relations of production shapethe social character of our ideas. Marx denied an independent historicaldevelopment to ideas that impact history by arguing that ideas are alwaysshaped by the mode of production in material life; yet he also stressed thatideas are not passive reflexes of the environment but have a reciprocal effecton theeconomic base. JoeKincheloe possessestherequisite skills forkeepingthe materiality of human existence squarely in sight. But this is a hard-wonskill at a time when so many disciplinary practiceswork at eclipsingtheveryobjective conditions that produce the systems of intelligibility on which they



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restnot to mention displacing objective social relations linked to capitalslaw of value in an attempt to capture the object of analysis somewhere in the

semiotic hinterlands between presence and absence.Capital as the central force structuring social relations is systematically

obscured by many poststructuralist and antifoundational conceptions ofpoweras diffuse,variegated,and contextuallyspecific andhasrenderedinvisi-

ble the objective conditions that have produced the bricoleur by locating thesubject as a fractured yet mobile discursive positionalityin short, as aneffectof texuality. In this instance, thearchitecture of desire displaces thefor-mations of scarcityandhuman need. A focus on identity and difference as aneffect of desirecould reflectif thecriticalbricoleuris notcarefuladualisticmetaphysics thatelidesthe complicity of thesystemicaccumulationof capitalwithinculture asa mode ofproduction. Toooftena focusonthe productionofmeanings within discourse and representation leads not to resisting andtransforming the existing conditions of exploitation linked to the division oflabor, but rather to an endless self-reflexive interrogation whose politics are

rendered impotent in the face of the current global capitalist juggernaut.Oncea criticalbricoleur begins to seriously interrogate the existing liberal

consensus, she is accused of abandoning scientific objectivity for outdatedideological positions. Or else she is accused of speaking truth to power at atime when truth presumably is always already shadowed by its constitutiveimpossibility. Although it may be the case that Marxist theory is in somerespectsstill wantingas a toolfor an understanding currentmanifestations ofglobalized capitalist exploitationincluding the capitalization of humansubjectivityand for fully challenging it, the idea here is not for the brico-leur to abandon Marxism but to deepen itsproject.Marx himself haspointedthewaytoa materialistontology ofemergenceand itis the taskofthecritical bri-coleur tofollow thisleadand joinexplanatorycritiquetorevolutionarypraxis.

In the bricoleurs embrace of a hermeneutics of difference, she must becarefulnot to levelthe contradictions ofrace, gender, class, andsexuality, or to

swap an historical materialist mapping of geopolitical locations rooted inclass consciousness and political action for an anti-dialectical intuitionism.Strollingthedank alleys of socialscience research, many a bricoleurhas beenattracted to thesparkleandglitterof knock-off deconstructivemethodologiesthat line the trenchcoats of contraband researchers. A poststructuralist focuson discourse and difference via Derridas and Nietzsches corps, paradoxi-cally can have the effect of homogenizing all struggles and identities as theyproceed further into decadence(equality of all values) in thename of prog-ress in order to accelerate the process of self-destruction, which leads to thenecessity of founding new modes and orders (Joines, 2001, p. 7). As Rick

Joines (2001)has argued,Derridais a Nietzscheanand Schmittianrevolution-ary whose New International is comprehensively nihilist . . . [and] . . . morethreateningthan anymere fascism(2001, p.9).Thedenunciatorycry of someDerridean inspired poststructuralists (see Lather, 2001) of Ten Years Later:



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Yet Again (which raises the issue of why Marxist pedagogues still workwithin supposedly received and exhausted masculinist categories after

poststructuralists had10 years earliershown them how to be less self-assured and to adopt a less transparent analysis under the theoreticaladvance guard of teletechnic dislocation, rhizomatic spreading and acceler-ation, and new experiences of frontier and identity) should be read againstanother cry in the face of the barbarianized academy: One Hundred andFifty years after the Communist Manifesto: Ruling Class PedagoguesDefending the Capitalist Class, Yet Again. In the interpretive sallies of thepost-Marxists, the politics of class struggle is replaced by a jaccuzzi leftistpedagogy of unknowability and impossibilityludicrously described asontological stammering.As political activistRaphaelRenteria puttheissuerecently, For me, the issue surrounding people who advocate that reality isunknowable is that they have things they dont want known. . . . I think it isimportant toask: Whois servedby theunknowabilitythat these peopleclaimis liberatory (personal communication)?

Derridean messianicity without messianism that marks so much ofpostmodernist educational theorizing today and that makes use ofesotericism, sigetics, acroamatics, proleptics, and illocutionary andperlocutionary acts in the disguise of a new pedagogy of the unknowable,wasnt the answer 10 years ago. Nor will it be the answer 10 years hence.According to Joines (2001),Derridasappeal foran international whoseessen-tial basis or motivating force is not class, party, or practice of citizenshipshould be read and understood as a threat to any potential internationalorganized around such concepts (p. 12).

I would notwant to seethecriticalbricoleurrejecting thedialectic in favorof themore fashionablevarieties of ludicpragmatism,poststructuralist nomi-nalism,andobscurantist idealismfor salein therag-and-bone shopof todaystheoretical marketplace. On this point, I am sure Joe would agree. Althoughthe bricoleur should mine the richness of the multidisciplinary trajectories

that appear on Joes listthose that are used to capture the variegated land-scapeof identityand representationit is important thatthe bricoleur recog-nize the dilemma put forward by Wood (1994), namely, that Once youreplace the concept of capitalism with an undifferentiated plurality of socialidentities and special oppressions, socialism as the antithesis to capitalismloses all meaning (p. 29). Here the critical bricoleur importantly challengestherelativismof thegender-race-classgridof reflexive positionality by recog-nizing that class antagonism or struggle is not simply one in a series of socialantagonismsrace, class, gender, and so onbut rather constitutes the partof this series that sustains the horizon of the series itself. In other words, classstruggle is the specific antagonism that assigns rank to andmodifies the par-ticularities of the other antagonisms in the series (Zizek, 1999). In the face ofattacks on critical ethnography and theory as universalist and totalizing, Ithink it wouldbe prudent for thecriticalbricoleur to refuse to evacuaterefer-



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ence to historical structures of totality and universality by recognizing thatclass struggle itself enables the proliferation of new political subjectivities.

Class struggle canbe seen to structure in advancethe very terrain of politi-cal antagonisms. Thus, according to Slavoj Zizek (2001b), class struggle isnotthe last horizon of meaning, thelast signifiedof allsocial phenomena, butthe formal generative matrix of the different ideological horizons of under-standing (pp. 16-17). In Zizeks terms, class struggle sets the ground for theempty place of universality, enabling it to be filledvariously with contents ofdifferent sorts (ecology, feminism,anti-racism). Henotesthat theeconomyisatoneandthesametimethegenusandoneofitsownspecies(2001a,p.193).

Although the attack on Eurocentrism and masculinist master narrativeshasproved important, thecritical bricoleurneeds to be cautious not to throwout theconcept of universalism altogether. As Zizek(2001b) notes,an experi-ence or argument that cannot be universalized is always andby definition aconservative political gesture: ultimately everyone can evoke his uniqueexperience in order to justify hisreprehensibleacts(pp. 4-5). Here he echoes

Wood (1994) who maintains that capitalism is not just another specificoppression alongside many others but an all-embracing compulsion thatimposes itself on allour social relations (p.29).His positionalsoreflects criti-cal educators such as Paulo Freire who argues against the basism of theposition,which claimsthatexperiencesspeakfor themselves. Allexperiencesneed to be interrogatedfor their ideological assumptions and effects, regard-less of whoarticulates them or from wherethey are lived or spoken. Thepref-erential option, of course, is given to theoppressed,as our comradesworkingin liberation theology would put it. The critical interrogation of experienceson thepart of thecritical bricoleur is notto panderto theautonomous subjectnor to individualistic practices but to see those experiences in relationship tothe structure of social antagonisms andclass struggle.If critical bricoleurs arenotattentive to thelaw of motion of capital and thesocial relations of produc-tionand choose to replacea dialectical readingof economicexploitationwith

anoverlydiffusenotion ofpower, then they run theriskof helping thecapital-ist class manage the ongoing crisis of the humanist subject rather than con-fronting the universalizing effects of finance capital as it appears in newforms. The critical bricoleur asks: How are social agentsreal peoplehistorically located in systematic structures of economic relations? How canthese structuresthese lawless laws of capitalbe challenged by bothresearchers and the researched and transformed through revolutionarypraxis into acts of freely associated labor, where as Marx argued, the freedevelopment of each is the condition for the free development of all? Theseare tough questions. But by situating ones research in the context of classstruggle, is oneabdicating thestruggleagainst racism or sexism?To drawthisconclusion would be a serious error. The critical bricoleur is ever attentive tothe imbrication of multiple forms of oppression but recognizes how the divi-sion of labor withinthe social universe of capital works as one of the greatest



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totalizing forces in history, theconsequencesof which leadto an exacerbationof oppression on thebasis of race andgender. Racismandsexism are equally

important as outcomes andmanifestations of class relations thathave extendedback in history. This is not to say racism or sexism are epiphenomenal out-comes of class relations. It is to claim that within capitalist society they areinformed by the relations of class. Racism, sexism and class exploitationreciprocally shape each other. This is something that has consistently beenargued by Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, and others.

If researchers only loosely adhere to thecapillary details of thedeep brico-lage developed by Joe in his talk this evening, especially his focus on etymo-logical insight and the historical formation of subjectivity and agency, it ispossibleeven probablethat many will purge race, class, and gender rela-tions of their determinate content and reduce them to incommensurable lan-guage games ratherthansee them as newforms ofcollective laborpower thatintensify the contradictions at the unmolested core of globalized social rela-tions of capitalist production. The results could be an unwitting tendency

toward nominalism, subjectivism, and discursivism and the development ofanti- racist struggles and struggles against patriarchy that are unable tosmash the foundations of racial and gender oppression within todays whitesupremacist capitalist patriarchy. The revolutionary praxis of the critical bri-coleur entails freeing ourselves from the prison house of esoteric theoriesdetached from forms of class struggle. It is this insight that must be recap-tured if critical research is to be regenerated. I want to thank JoeKincheloe forproviding the space for this Marxist addendum to his wonderful article.

REFERENCES

Joines, R. (2001). Derridas ante and the call of Marxist political philosophy. In Culturallogic [Online].Available: http://eserver. Org/projects/clogic/3-1%262/joins.html

Lather, P. (2001). Ten years later, yet again: Critical pedagogy and its complicities. InK. Weiler(Ed.), Feminist engagements: Reading, resisting, and revisioning male theoristsin education and cultural studies (pp. 183-195). New York: Routledge Kegan Paul.

Meiksins Wood, E. (1994, June 13). Identity crisis. In These Times, pp. 28-29.Zizek, S. (1999).Theticklish subject: Theabsent center of political ontology. London:Verso.Zizek, S. (2001a). Did somebody say totalitarianism? Five interventions in the (mis)use of a

notion. New York: Verso.Zizek, S. (2001b). Repeating Lenin. Unpublished manuscript.

PeterMcLarenisa professor at theGraduate School ofEducation andInforma-tion Studies, University ofCalifornia,Los Angeles.He is theauthorandeditorof 35 books on topics that include critical ethnography, critical social theory,

Marxisteducation,and the sociologyof education.His most recent book is CheGuevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution (Rowman andLittlefield, 2000). His works have been translated into 15 languages.


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