Talking Truth Confronting Power (Discourse, Power, and Resistance)

This sixth volume in Trentham’s Discourse, Power, Resistance series brings together an international team of writers to get to grips with the issues of marginalized knowledges and silenced voices, and the ways and means of speaking out.

Part 1, Uncovering Truth, opens with analyses of neoliberal notions of what counts as knowledge. Both criticize the cramped research methodologies that produce it and expose the ruthlessness of the cultural politics at work in the preservation of epistemological orthodoxy. This is illustrated by examples from Canada, Central America and the UK. The arguments of Part 1 are then brought together with a powerful restatement of Edward Said’s critique of cultural imperialism.

Part 2, Talking Truth, challenges the silencing of resistant voices and insists that uncomfortable, disquieting truths must be told. Topics include how education is heading the wrong way, including a model that constructs learners as essentially clients in need of emotional care, thus frustrating their proper aspirations; how marginalized and silenced cultural groups are finding their voices and speaking out; and how unsayable things about race are being said. The book ends with a passionate advocacy of speaking from lived experience as a basis of sound knowledge.

The contributors include: Norman Denzin (USA), Susan Heald (Canada), Ken Montgomery (Canada), Fazal Rizvi (USA), and James Rolling (USA).

Jerome Satterthwaite teaches in the Faculty of Education at the University of Plymouth. He is the organizer of the annual Plymouth conferences on Discourse, Power, Resistance.

Heather Piper