Changing Selves: Multicultural Education and the Challenge of New Identity
by Nadine Dolby
The concept of identity provides a key framework for multicultural education. Dependent
on the idea of the Enlightenment subject, the practices of multicultural education
presume a unitary, naturalized self with a stable core. This article questions this
formulation of identity and argues that the field must embrace a more dynamic and
nuanced notion of self. Using data collected during a one-year ethnographic study of
a multiracial high school in Durban, South Africa, I demonstrate how students
actively produce self and other relationally. Identity and difference are constituted not
through naturalized categories, but instead through practices that have the potential
for constant reformation. In conclusion, I examine the implications of these students’
practices for multicultural education, arguing that “difference” must be engaged as
a changing, not reified, formation. Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 102 Number 5, 2000, p. 898-912
http://www.tcrecord.org/library ID Number: 10620, Date Accessed: 9/2/2010 10:08:47 PM
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