Translating the Curriculum: Multiculturalism into Cultural Studies

By Susan Huddleston Edgerton and Huddleston Edge

Book Overview

Although recent theory in multicultural education has acknowledged what has been called "the new cultural politics of difference," problems concerning what actually passes for multiculturalism have been underexamined. Translating the Curriculum proposes that a new theoretical and practical lens through which to examine multicultural education is necessary and suggests that it may be found in cultural studies. Edgerton looks at pedagogy through structuralist and poststructuralist philosophy and social theory, literary criticism, literature, and autobiography. Using this interdisciplinary approach, notions of marginality, essentialism, identity and translation across difference are explored.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415914019
• ISBN13: 9780415914017
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Translating Tolerance to Love

Dr. Edgerton has done us all a great service by examining the philosophical foundations of multiculturalism and finding the support needed within the broader category of cultural studies. But what is the foundation of cultural studies? What is the point of recognizing difference, a perspective which seems so divisive to so many? Susan makes it clear: Identification is not the same as love; it is in fact narcissism. Only by recognizing difference & non-identity and accepting it deeply can love, as something new on Earth, be born. Thus both cultural studies and much of what we call multiculturalism are founded in the finest impulse the human species has yet created: the transcendental harmony of love. A truly fine book. Read it today or be marginalized forever.

Cutting through the binary oppositions

Dr. Edgerton has done us all a great service by examining the philosophical foundations of multiculturalism and finding the support needed within the broader category of cultural studies. But what is the foundation of cultural studies? What is the point of recognizing difference, a perspective which seems so divisive to so many? Susan makes it clear: Identification is not the same as love; it is in fact narcissism. Only by recognizing difference & non-identity and accepting it deeply can love, as something new on Earth, be born. Thus both cultural studies and much of what we call multiculturalism are founded in the finest impulse the human species has yet created: the transcendental harmony of love. A truly fine book.