Undoing diversity: knowledge and neoliberal discourses in colleges of education

Abstract

In this article we analyze discourses of ‘diversity’ in colleges of education in Chile. We contend that the use of discourses of diversity, as reproducing the separation between mainstream subjectivities and those uncontained by the category of normal, is one of the ways universities align themselves with the rules of a democratic society, based on ideas of multicultural understandings and tolerant communities proliferated by inter-governmental institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and others. Our interest is to question the marginalization of cultural politics through the intensification of these discourses. At the same time, we explore the relations between the advancement of neutral discourses of difference and the value-free practices expressed in neoliberal educational agendas. We use discourse analysis to read interviews with future teachers. We understand students’ narratives as perpetuating normative ways of thinking and legitimating those knowledges promoted by institutional curricula.