Resisting discourse in debate is key to change

This textbook study helped contextualize the notion that discourses of education, in this case the discourses found in textbooks, shape our thinking and constitute subjectivities, whether we are aware of it or not. Subjectivities that are partly constituted by the discourses of science education are specific and can be traced, but also reworked and reformulated. Reworking these discourses, and the subjectivities they help constitute, is possible when educators endeavour to make the invisible visible through analytical engagement with discourses, and shift these discourses toward the promotion of an ecologically and socially just future.

Disruption of subjectification is always possible at the site where discourses and ideological practices that constrain and afford choices for students are repeated. Ironically, it is this site of repetition where resistance is possible because subjectivities, identities, and ways of being are sustained through constant, iterative performances at multiple sites. Taking the example of (the performance of) white(ness), male(ness), heterosexuality, able-bodied(ness) in educational settings, we must rework the repetitive practices and discourses that divide males and females, silence all other sexualities, and mask the Eurocentric, patriarchal image of science that becomes the assumed ‘subject of science’ (like the one alluded to in the epigraph to this chapter). Although power is exercised through discourses and their accompanying apparatuses (schools etc.), freedom is always possible because power can be “exercised over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free” (Foucault 1982, p. 790). Education is co-extensive with the production of subjectivities, and remains a site of resistance precisely because it can effect change. Subjectivity is central to modern struggles for justice, and in new informational, ‘immaterial’ economies, essential for social and political change.

Because people are attached to their subjectivities, reworking them is a radical project that can render people ‘changed’ (Butler 2004). As will be discussed in Chaps. 4 and 5, we may not have a choice. With growing social inequality and climate change unchecked, we may be reaching a point where we can no longer hold onto the subjectivities, beliefs, and worldviews that sufficed in the twentieth century. As such, there is a need to reformulate how we relate to ourselves, the world, and others through science.