“non-Western” litera- ture1 in the United States as embodied in my own experience teaching non-Western to a group of racially and ethni- cally diverse, mainly The from remains , what weston teruya working-class stu- dents at a large urban Difficulties comprehensive pub- lic university. 2 Given of Teaching that my students are themselves by and large future second- Non-Western ary school English teachers, the dilemma Literature in Kandaswamy articu- lates takes on particu- lar urgency, since they the United will soon be passing on their knowledge and learning strat- States egies to their own By Ian Barnard students. Although Kandaswamy is not specifically address- ing the teaching and In my experience, when confronted with studying of literature, she does point to the difference, students often adopt one of two difficulties that teachers and students face approaches to make that difference seem when confronted with difference in the less threatening. Either they try to reduce context of neo-liberal educational institu- difference to sameness by immediately tions in the United States. These educa- focusing on possible points of commonality tional institutions are bound to the history to their own experience or they treat of U.S. imperialism by cherished ideologi- difference as fundamentally disconnected cal imperatives that include binary con- from their own experience. structions of politics, morality, and culture; (Kandaswamy 9) humanism; and individualism. Humanist values embody liberal platitudes about how y goal in this article is to build everyone is really the same, a flattening out on Priya Kandaswamy’s discus- of difference that evacuates history and sionM of students’ response to difference power in order to assure the humanist that in Radical Teacher #80 by unfolding the his subjectivity is universal. (As feminism pitfalls of teaching and responding to has demonstrated, humanism is invariably

44 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 gendered as male, despite its pretensions masks critical, political, and moral relativ- to universality.) U.S. mythology about ism as respect for difference. individualism includes an implicit belief in These responses were enacted in - com the effectiveness and unlimited potential plex and telling forms in the particular of individual agency and an understanding class I am discussing here, an under- of conflict as struggle between individuals, graduate senior seminar designed for rather than as a product of history and English majors and future secondary material power relations. Frequently, it is school English teachers as a capstone the most well-meaning of teachers and college experience. The course requires students who collude in the imperial- the study of “world short fiction,” and the ist enterprise through their unconscious texts I chose to fulfill this component of adherence to these values. And often the the requirements included Taiwanese- personal is heavily invested in the politi- born author Chen Jo-Hsi’s short story cal, so the kinds of responses to difference “Chairman Mao is a Rotten Egg,” set in identified by Kandaswamy arise where China during the Cultural Revolution, multiple axes of subjectivity intersect, Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo’s post- including not only ideological condition- colonial narrative “No Sweetness Here,” ing and ignorance, but also simple devel- and an excerpt from Tirdad Zolghadr’s opmental immaturity, and anxiety around contemporary Iranian memoir/novel, A one’s own sense of self. As Masood Ashraf Little Less Conversation. My observations Raja points out, the “mere act of entering are based on students’ informal and for- a class can be quite mal written analyses (in some cases, first a challenging event, especially because of drafts, in other cases, revised essays) of the international, anti-foundational, and these texts following our class discussion anti-imperial nature of the postcolonial of them during my first experience teach- texts. Under such circumstances, where ing this particular configuration of the students are likely to perceive the class course. I framed the oral discussions in as a threat to their own personal identity, the contexts of postcolonial theory, femi- learning can be seriously hampered” (33). nist theory, and queer theory. In my facili- The two dichotomous responses to dif- tation of the class discussions, I attempted ference chronicled by Kandaswamy are to encourage students to question ste- equally troubling because, although dif- reotypes. However, despite these efforts, ferent from one another, they carry with and despite the great diversity in terms of them the same racist/colonialist under- ethnicity, race, age, and educational back- tones. In the elision of difference, the ground amongst the 20 students in the Western subject becomes the univer- class, in their own writing the students sal subject and Otherness is contained tended to read the texts in the same prob- through assimilation to that supposedly lematic ways, for I will attempt to universal Western subject. When differ- articulate in due course. ence is treated as absolute, the fetishized In the first response to difference noted Other becomes exotic and unknowable, by Kandaswamy, students “reduce differ- and could never be like “us”—a logic that, ence to sameness by immediately focusing however inadvertently, reinscribes colo- on possible points of commonality to their nialist stereotypes and paternalistically own experience” (9). Students may make

NUMBER 87 • RADICAL TEACHER 45 ...diffusing difference by a story familiar in stressing commonality and value some- order to under- stems partly from thing we do not stand it. So, for teachers’ pedagogical relate to? My stu- instance, they imperative...that students dents are wont to might show how should be able to “relate use the phrase “I the characters and to” something in order for can’t relate to it” situations are just learning to take place. as for dis- like those in the liking a particular United States. They usually feel that they text, whereas “I can relate,” whether in are contesting racism and colonialism reference to a published literary text or a by showing that “everyone is the same.” fellow student’s piece of writing, is auto- However, as feminist critics, postcolonial matically assumed to be a compliment. theorists, poststructuralists, and others While I recognize that we may inevitably have argued, this is a false universalism, experience texts in relation to the self, I since it merely validates the identities of also believe that we can learn and teach dominant groups by positing their expe- students that experiencing something as rience as universal, while continuing to alien to the self should not necessarily be erase the specificity of the experiences and grounds for denigration or dismissal. subjectivities of marginalized subjects. It But the construction of alienness is also encourages ethnocentric engagements itself another trap. In the second prob- with the Other, where students impose lematic response to difference, according their own values onto the texts/worlds to Kandaswamy, students “treat differ- they are reading and writing about, since ence as fundamentally disconnected from these values are “universal” and “everyone their own experience” (9). They frequently is really the same.” Thus, for example, in enact this type of response by treating writing about “Chairman Mao is a Rotten a story or the characters in it as totally Egg,” several of my students assumed that alien. The most obvious pitfall of this a character’s loss of individual identity in construction of non-Western literature, the story was a terrible thing, imposing in particular, is that students create an their own socially constructed hopes and us-them dichotomy. Because of their own desires onto the characters, seemingly often unconscious beliefs and disposi- oblivious to the ways in which other cul- tions about the United States, they often tures may, for instance, privilege com- end up positioning the United States as munity over individuality. This common more advanced, enlightened, democratic, reading and response strategy of diffus- etc. than non-Western countries. So, for ing difference by stressing commonality instance, some students in my class saw stems partly from teachers’ pedagogical Ama Ata Aidoo’s story about a Ghanaian imperative (that students now buy into) teacher’s alienation in the rural commu- that students should be able to “relate to” nity where she taught as an illustration something in order for learning to take of how sexist and homophobic Africa is place. As I have suggested, this episte- compared to the United States. My point mological and pedagogical axiom often is not to deny the prevalence of African encourages personal and political self- sexism and homophobia, or to silence centeredness. Why can’t we learn about students’ critiques of this sexism and

46 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 homophobia, but rather to gesture to the United States, they simultaneously police ways in which such binary constructions other individuals’ and cultures’ “authen- reproduce colonialist understandings and ticity.” So, for example, when we read attitudes, an argument that Chandra Tirdad Zolghadr’s evocation of middle- Mohanty has made at some length in class life in contemporary Tehran, stu- relation to Western feminism’s represen- dents were quick to determine what was tations of the Third World. “authentically” Iranian in the story and The overt demonization of the non- to usually read the story as condemning West, however, is a less common response what was not “authentic,” or to desire amongst my students, many of whom are that the story make such a condemnation. fairly politically sophisticated and quite The excerpt we read from A Little Less critical of U.S. state policies and ideolo- Conversation revolves around a cosmopol- gies. More often the disconnection they itan protagonist who has recently moved see between the literary texts and their back to Tehran, the city of his birth, and own experience leads them to patronize offers a mix of scathing and fond observa- the Other. So, for example, students may tions of the deposed Shah’s regime, of the romanticize the “rustic” way of life pre- Iranian revolution, of the cultural hybrid- sented in Aidoo’s “No Sweetness Here,” ity of contemporary Tehran, of the West, reading any intrusion into or change to it of the pretentions of the contemporary as lamentable. My students do not think Iranian bourgeoisie, and of himself, as he this romanticization is racist, since they travels around the city during the course believe that by steering clear of passing of a day. Not only does the text lampoon ethnocentric judgments on other cul- essentialist constructions of identity, but tures they are celebrating and honoring it directly mocks those who revere and cultures and characters that are different mystify such appeals to originality and from themselves. They think these types authenticity. The narrator notes of the of readings are flattering to the characters protagonist, “When asked about motives and cultures represented in the litera- for returning to Tehran, he refers to ture. However, although these responses childhood memories, to family, to his seem less pejorative than demonization, mother tongue. ‘Something about the they are equally as problematic. Johannes light, the landscape. Roots.’ The more he Fabian has written about the ways in makes himself sound like a palm tree, which the West constructs the non-West the more people are touched” (Zolghadr as always the same, as never changing, 40). Clichés about light, landscape, and and how this static view colludes with roots are self-consciously invoked by the colonialist binaries that equate the West protagonist in order to play to the com- with progress and modernization, while fort zones of other characters—and of the noble savages of the Third World are readers—allowing the narrator to mock eternally closer to nature. their simple-minded sentimentality. My students’ repeated demands of And although the protagonist is aware “authenticity” from the Other illustrate of the crassness and commercialization Fabian’s argument. While they want to of Tehran’s cosmopolitan postmodernity, enjoy the benefits of political, social, cul- he also does not romanticize tradition or tural, and identificatory hybridity in the the past: “Personally, he’d take Tehran

NUMBER 87 • RADICAL TEACHER 47 over Isfahan flower gardens and donkey except one were convinced that the story bridges any day, and finds a smug sense of was attacking “,” even satisfaction in the fact that there are many though the cultural hybridity depicted who would beg to differ” (40). in the story is celebrated as much as it is A Little Less Conversation embodies the satirized—what Peter Jackson refers to as “international, anti-foundational” char- “hybridizations in which local agency is acteristics enumerated by Raja above, yet as important as subordination to foreign my students were determined to separate influences” (387). The only student in the out the different traits of the characters class who did not see the story as attack- and the Tehran of the narrative along ing Westernization argued that the story national and hemispheric lines. One stu- showed how Iranians have seen the ben- dent constructed the characters’ activi- efits of Westernization: “It is evident . . . ties of “relaxing, drinking, and reading that a large portion of Middle Easterners poetry” as Western. What then would be do in fact desire to partake in the success “authentically Iranian”? And even though of found in the economy the story blatantly satirizes quests for of the .” Here the West “roots,” many students ignored this aspect is imagined as further along a develop- of the text because they so desperately mental trajectory than Iran; the West wanted it to be about the celebration of is a space that people in other countries roots. One wrote of the Tehran of the aspire to. In addition, the West/non-West story, “It has been assimilated into the binary is again enforced: the West must western collective, if you will, laying down be either good or bad, and Iran must its identity to pick up corporate sponsor- either hate or become/emulate the West. ship. Thus what is left is the empty shell No allowance is made for more complex of a unique city that was once rich with and conflicted relationships, and for the culture. It is as if the Arab [sic] culture is multi-layered identifications that mark dead, having been murdered by the influx the story’s characters (and that mark many of a western consumer based culture.” of my students!). Another argued that Zolghadr “points This policing of authenticity is politi- out that many of the people of Iran are, cally fraught because students’ ideas of in fact, ignorantly blind to the negative other (and their own) cultures’ “authen- effects of westernization on their country” ticity” often reveal more about their own and that the story’s protagonist “wants projections/fantasies than about the cul- to be in a Tehran that is truly Iranian.” tures they are studying. This irony was Even students in the class whose cultur- famously elaborated in Edward Said’s ally hybrid histories and experiences were Orientalism, and is pointedly and poi- similar to those of the story’s characters gnantly illustrated in multiple ways in read the excerpt in this problematic way, David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly, categorizing attitudes and experiences in where a French diplomat’s downfall turns the text along national lines, criticizing on a Chinese man’s abilities to predict “Westernized” Iranian characters, polic- and perform the diplomat’s Orientalist ing cultural “authenticity,” and expecting and sexist constructions of East Asian the characters to be culturally unitary and women. The desire for “authenticity” in consistent. All the students in the class the Other is a way for students to stabilize

48 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 their difference from the Other, but also nostalgic and/or ideologically charged to control the Other by making the Other representations of their “homelands.” knowable, manageable, and quantifiable. While it is true that any encounter with This policing of identity ensures the polic- difference (e.g., U.S. students studying ers that they derive all the expected ) could produce similar touristic benefits from their encounter results to those I have described, the his- with the exotic: to get the “benefits” torical and material contexts of colonial- of tourism—to feel that one has gotten ism and imperialism, including the U.S.’s one’s money’s worth—one must feel that current “war against terror,” exacerbate one has seen something different from the ramifications of these encounters in “home.” Hybridity dilutes that different- the case of representations of and respons- ness. In addition, differentness must be es to non-Western cultures and cultur- sufficiently contained and distanced so as al productions. As Said has powerfully not to draw attention to the tourist’s own argued, Western cultural productions are relationship of power vis-à-vis that dif- not benign or trivial, but can be primary ference. As Terri Hasseler notes, tourism forces in shaping hegemonic values and “is a transitory moment, and the vacation in normalizing imperialism (Culture). A must not radically alter one’s life, only to parallel case could be made for the pro- the extent that it offers the rest, relaxation, cesses of “interpreting” the non-West: and exotic experiences so often desired” “readings” of the non-West may partici- (19). 3 Kandaswamy explicitly makes the pate in the circulation of understandings, connection to students’ relationship to attitudes, and desires that are consciously difference: and unconsciously used to justify and/ students often express a deep desire or continue the violences, inequalities, to learn about people who they see as and economic dependencies that structure different from themselves . . . white global power relations between the West students frequently say that they see and non-West. the course as an opportunity to enrich A few students in my class were able to themselves by learning about different successfully navigate the inter-dependent cultures, as a vehicle toward their own hazards of erasing and exoticizing dif- personal growth. Statements like these ference by carefully exploring the literary indicate that white students often view texts in both national and international classes about the experience of people contexts, feeling confident enough to cri- of color as a kind of tourist experience tique oppression in both domains, albeit rather than as a place for serious critical with qualifications. One student’s exem- inquiry. (7) plary reading of “No Sweetness Here,” for instance, began by asking readers, I would add that the problems multiply “Imagine a life in which you must care in the context of studying non-Western for your children without the help of literature in the United States, since their your own family. Unfortunately, this is U.S. allegiances often incline U.S. stu- a reality for many all around the world, dents of color to participate in this meta- in different cultures, in different societ- phorical tourism, too, and even interna- ies.” The student author immediately dis- tional students collude as they construct abused her readers of the stereotype that

NUMBER 87 • RADICAL TEACHER 49 the problems discussed are a peculiarly The above student essay could provide a African phenomenon, thus cautioning model for future students of how to think them against the inclination to imag- about non-Western literature in more ine African societies as “more backward” complex ways. Given the difficulty of than any others. However, she quickly presenting the issues around representa- qualified this universalism by hinting at tions of non-Western literature abstractly cultural specificity, arguing that Aidoo’s to students, and students’ potential dif- story demonstrates that the “carelessness” ficulty in translating such abstractions that characterizes the treatment of the into concrete terms to address in their protagonist “is not only a cultural reality own writing projects about non-Western but an injustice against women.” Here the literature, I plan to discuss these mat- student does not shy away from mounting ters in the contexts of specific examples a feminist critique of the social relations from student writing next time I teach presented in the story (such a shying away this course. I hope that by frontloading could itself represent a kind of paternal- the course with sample student writing ism), articulating this critique in both from previous courses, I can illustrate its culturally specific and cross-cultural some of the challenges of working with contexts. Later in the paper, discussing non-Western literature, as well as show the short story collection as a whole of how more accomplished student writers which “No Sweetness Here” is a part, go about discussing these texts. This strat- the student writer suggests, “It is a pos- egy will provide students with relevant, sibility that Aidoo writes the short stories accessible, and engaging models of what in an effort to voice her public opinion to avoid and emulate in their own writ- about the oppression of women in African ing. However, the problem with sharing a countries, and even countries around the model paper with students is that it might world.” But she goes on to argue that lead them to think that there is one “cor- while the author “clearly expresses bitter- rect” reading of the text under discussion ness at women’s marginalization in post- or that their papers should closely imitate independence Ghana, Aidoo also argues the model paper. Ideally, then, I would that this is connected to larger problems find multiple models to show students, that affect Ghanaian society, such as colo- preferably models that make conflicting nialism and .” Here the student arguments amongst themselves about a recognizes the global power relations that particular literary text. formatively impact the gender inequities I am not naïve enough to expect that represented in the story, thereby further one course alone can change values and qualifying her essay’s opening universal- assumptions whose resilience is often tes- ism. She blames neither the West alone tament to a lifetime of exposure to the nor Ghanaian society alone for the effects cultural, political, educational, and social of that sexism. Neither is romanticized, discourses in which they are embed- Africa is not demonized, and the West ded. I also recognize that learning and and non-West are situated in dynamic writing is recursive, that sometimes the interchange with one another in the con- lag time between understanding con- text of the multi-national that cepts and internalizing and applying that enable neo- in the first place. understanding exceeds the span of one

50 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 particular teacher or course, and that articulate a reading of a literary text, but developmental progressions from ego- also more easily enabled the student writ- centrism to engagement with the world ers to slip back into old habits of mind. and from simple to complex thinking Given the above qualifications, I am take on diverse trajectories in individual not under the illusion that exposing the students. Significantly, students seemed pitfalls of writing about non-Western lit- to make more nuanced comments about erature before students write about these the characters in our class discussions of texts will magically transform their work, the readings than they did subsequently but I am curious to see how such a shift in their written responses. This disjunc- might or might not exacerbate the fissures tion between communal oral discourse in their writing, inform our class discus- and individual writing suggests the devel- sions about their writing, and jump start opmental and recursive nature of the at least some of their thinking and writ- learning situation, not only in terms of ing to a new level of sophistication. And students’ understandings of the literature I will need to rethink my pedagogy in but also in terms of their learning and other ways, too. To what extent were my unlearning of certain dispositions, politi- students’ problematic responses to the lit- cal positions, and habits of mind. It may erary texts enabled by the ways in which I take a while for their writing to catch up presented the texts and facilitated the dis- to their thinking/speaking. While the cussions about them? Should my students collaborative nature of the class discus- and I spend even more time researching sions allowed the students to build on and and discussing the cultural and histori- complicate each others’ ideas (and perhaps cal contexts of the literary texts? Would silenced some voices, too), the relatively students work better with a series of texts solitary writing processes that followed by one author or from one geographic not only forced each individual student to region rather than with a hodge-podge of texts that have little in common other than being marked as “non-Western”? Should fewer texts be discussed in greater detail rather than more texts discussed more superficially? How should I participate in and intervene into the discussions, especially when I feel that students are reading the texts in politically problematic ways? And what strategies beyond my usual use of peer response groups and emphasis on the writing process could I use to enable the kinds of collaborations that characterized the class discussions to permeate the writing assignments? The problems I saw in my students’ responses to the non-Western literary

weston teruya texts we studied also have larger insti-

NUMBER 87 • RADICAL TEACHER 51 So my students’ responses tutional and polit- to the literature also but the institu- ical ramifications tion itself remains evidences the inscription 4 beyond the stu- of the U.S. academy in unchanged. The dents’ control and hegemonic U.S. values, liberal appro- outside the scope and the difficulty of priation of non- of my own peda- changing the one without Western literary gogical resources/ changing the other. texts thus attests resourcefulness. to the failure of For instance, it would be easier to excuse genuine multiculturalism in U.S. educa- or explain my students’ problematic read- tional institutions. Most of my students’ ings of these texts if this were a first year responses to non-Western literature seem college class, with the expectation that to emanate from a desire not to offend, the students would develop more sophis- from an intent to honor other cultures, ticated reading and analytic skills over the from a genuine desire to learn about oth- course of their careers as English majors. ers. These impetuses have largely been But these were graduating seniors, and born and shaped in the crucible of the the course is intended as a culminating fairly recent emergence of multicultural- experience that allows students to hone ism as a philosophy and practice in K-16 and showcase their understandings and educational institutions and in U.S. soci- practices as experienced English majors. ety, and in the context of critiques of and This alarming reality points to the institu- the opening up of the canon of Western tional culpability of English Departments literature in school curricula across all and English curricula such as those at my grade levels. My students told me that they school that offer little or no instruction were eager to study literature from other in non-Western literature. Little wonder, countries, recognizing that their educa- then, that the token inclusion of such tion as English majors was impoverished texts in one or two courses finds students by its focus on U.S. and British , unprepared and unaccustomed to the dif- and no doubt also influenced by my own ficult and complex work of thoughtful status as a “foreign”-born faculty mem- engagement with them. ber with expertise in African literatures. The response patterns I have analyzed However, apolitical and essentialist read- illustrate the ways in which the Other is ings of non-Western cultures and artistic commodified and contained in neo-liberal production, and of global power relations, states like the United States (which is make a mockery of multiculturalism’s not to say that careful teaching of non- commitment to exposing and redressing Western literature cannot be one power- social inequities. They show, instead, how ful means to begin to undo the mind- multiculturalism has been co-opted by sets that promote such commodification liberal politicians and educators who want and containment). Kandaswamy notes to represent themselves as doing the right that the liberal desire for multicultural thing, who want to feel good about them- capital fails to understand and challenge selves while business proceeds as usual. the institutional manifestations of power So my students’ responses to the literature and privilege. Multiculturalism becomes also evidences the inscription of the U.S. a commodity used to sell the institution, academy in hegemonic U.S. values, and

52 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 the difficulty of changing the one without Aubry, Timothy. “Afghanistan Meets changing the other. the Amazon: Reading The Kite Runner In A Little Less Conversation, Zolghadr’s in America.” PMLA 124.1 (Jan. 2009): narrator makes fun of the ignorance that 25-43. Print. passes for multicultural tolerance when Buras, Kristen L. Rightist Multicultural- his narrator notes how one of the char- ism: Core Lessons on Neoconservative School acters in the narrative was able to fool a Reform. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print. British policeman: “When a bobby polite- ly demanded his license, Yashar showed Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of his Iranian birth certificate, apologizing Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, for everything being written in Farsi. In 2004. the symmetric center of the document, there is now a stamp saying, ‘This driver’s Chen Jo-Hsi. “’Chairman Mao is a Rot- license is hereby endorsed for six months’” ten Egg.’” The Execution of Mayor Yin and Other Stories from the Great Proletarian (42). In his polite respect for difference, Cultural Revolution. Trans. Nancy Ing and the British policeman neither advances Howard Goldblatt. Bloomington: Indiana understanding nor challenges institution- UP, 1978. 37-66. Print. al power inequities, but uses his power to remain ignorant and keep Otherness Damrosch, David. What is ? alien. Is it an improvement over the Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. Print. literal violence of colonial relations or a more effective and amenable mechanism Dev, Elango. “Cultural Diversity and the of exercising control? Learning requires Politics of Assimilation.” New Indicator 28 Nov. 1990-1 Jan. 1991: 1, 7. Print. more work and more self-reflection than the bobby’s “politeness” entails, and a Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How complex recognition of interdependency Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: and inter-relationship between people and Columbia UP, 1983. Print. between nations5 that does not reduce multiple identifications to either irreduc- Gómez-Peña, Guillermo. ”The Multicul- ible difference or universal commonality.6 tural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National Arts Community.” High Perfor- Works Cited mance Fall 1989: 18-27. Print. Aidoo, Ama Ata. “No Sweetness Here.” Hasseler, Terri A. “The Promise of Tour- No Sweetness Here. New York: Doubleday, ism: Colonial Imagery in Advertising.” 1971. 65-86. Print. Radical Teacher 82 (2008): 19-24. Print.

Alexander, Jacqui M. Pedagogies of Crossing: Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, York: Plume-Penguin, 1989. Print. Memory, and the Sacred. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. Print. Jackson, Peter A. “Capitalism and Global Queering: National Markets, Parallels Aneja, Anu. “Of Masks and Masquerades: Among Sexual Cultures, and Multiple Performing the Collegial Dance.” symplokē Queer Modernities.” GLQ 15.3 (2009): 13.1-2 (2005): 144-51. Print. 357-95. Print.

NUMBER 87 • RADICAL TEACHER 53 Kandaswamy, Priya. “Beyond Colorblind- 2 For other articulations of the problems ness and Multiculturalism.” Radical Teacher with these kinds of polarized responses to 80 (2007): 6-11. Print. “foreign” texts, see Aubry and Damrosch.

Lee, James Kyung-Jin. “The Transitivity of 3 For further discussion of the politics Race and the Challenge of the Imagina- and aesthetics of tourism, see Alexander. tion.” PMLA 123.5 (2008): 1550-56. Print. 4 For more detailed discussions of the Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under West- ways in which the academy co-opts the ern Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colo- Other, and of the ways in which fad- nial Discourses.” boundary 2 12.3 (1984): dish multicultural imperatives depoliticize 333-58. JSTOR. Web. 14 March 2007. power relations, see Aneja, Buras, Dev, Gómez-Peña, Lee, Nguyen. Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “At Home with Race.” PMLA 123.5 (2008): 1557-64. 5 For further elaborations of these con- Print. nections, see Butler and Said (Culture).

Raja, Masood Ashraf. “The Postcolonial 6 I thank Robin Lilly, Nancy McMillan, Student: Learning the Ethics of Global Aneil Rallin, Chae Yu, Linda Dittmar, Solidarity in an English Classroom.” Radi- Frinde Maher, and the anonymous Radical cal Teacher 82 (2008): 32-37. Print. Teacher reviewers for their important and generous feedback on earlier incarnations Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. of this article. Knopf: New York, 1993. Print.

---. Orientalism. New York: Vintage-Ran- dom, 1979. Print.

Zolghadr, Tirdad. “From A Little Less Con- versation.” Literature From the Axis of Evil: Writing From Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations. A World Without Borders Anthology. New York: The New Press, 2006. 39-48. Print. Notes 1 I intend the quotation marks around the term “non-Western” to be understood as operating throughout this essay, qualify- ing the convenience of the easy descriptor “non-Western” with a perpetual reminder of the increasingly unstable nature of this category in a global cultural economy of human and ideological migration, and of the problematic Western centrality sug- gested by the term. The quotation marks the limits of best intentions, also serve as a caution against geographic weston teruya and aesthetic homogenizations.

54 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 87 Copyright of Radical Teacher is the property of Radical Teacher and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.