Feminist Post-structuralism, Critical Media Education and School History Sources: A South African Experience of Deconstruction and Reconstitution

By Sonja Schoeman and Jill Vera Veley Fardon

Democracy demands that education pay urgent attention to the anomaly of gender inequity in socio-economic and political environments. This book aims to suggest ways in which realist, patriarchal discursive devices - such as binary language, naturalization and objectivity in texts - which are used to perpetuate such discriminatory meaning, can be "made strange," and therefore be undermined, in the interests of a transparent society. The feminist post-structuralist approach to History teaching (and to the teaching of other subjects) which is advocated in this book, offers textual deconstruction, and reconstitution as an exciting, alternative methodology of open interpretation and plural perspective. Language is viewed as preceding gender subjectivity; and gender identity is understood as being constituted by discursive meaning in language. Language is therefore seen as the site of struggle for power in relation to identity positioning. This book suggests that language be used to allow for the close observation of codes and conventions which support embedded patriarchal power relations. The feminist post-structuralist methodology is employed to investigate binary language within the framework of six aspects of critical media education, namely: agencies, categories, technologies, languages, audiences and representations. The main aim of the book is to investigate whether this approach can open up space for female voices, of the past and present, in order to reconstruct realist historical narratives. Suggestions for gender-fair History teaching and a lesson example for classroom practice are offered in the book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1612297897
• ISBN13: 9781612297897
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Common Ground Publishing
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.2"