Working With and Through Difference in Antiracist Pedagogies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper argues that antiracism is confronted by particular contemporary challenges. The predominance of the notion of ‘difference’ illuminates starkly what some of these challenges are. I argue that, from the standpoint of antiracism, the notion of ‘difference’ that challenges powerfully theoretical assumptions of the fixed nature of Being, the projection of universalised singular versions of the Truth, and, essentialised understandings of people's identities. Using this as a basis, I show that antiracism, particularly in the contexts of South Africa and the United Kingdom, is confronted by challenges that call on antiracists to (a) ‘deessentialise’ their conceptions of the ‘black subject'; (b) to devise strategies that would acknowledge the ongoing development and sense of becoming of black people; (c) understand the various and varying ways in which ‘blackness’ is perceived, understood and experienced by blacks; and, (d) shift away from doctrinaire forms of antiracism. I then attempt to clar...