Abstract
In this paper, I explore conversations with teachers and parents at one Melbourne secondary school, as the modern definition of identity,defined at the end of the 1980s, took on thefluidity of post-modern definition a decadelater. Even as identification seemed contingent and negotiated, and difference seemed to disappear, teachers and parents continued tounderstand their identity in relation to the ambivalent definition of others. This became increasingly frightening as notions ofotherness, and therefore of self, becameincreasingly fluid and unclear. That which seemed other and outside, now appears aspart-of-us and inside-us-all. Even asdescriptions of difference, and thereforeidentity, become more fluid, conceptions of otherness – and therefore – self, do not disappear. Prescient manifestations of exclusion and racism are contiguous with, yet in juxtaposition to, older forms.
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Arber, R.E. The Presence of An-Other: The Prescience of Racism in Post-Modern Times. Journal of Educational Change 4, 249–268 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JEDU.0000006163.10946.13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JEDU.0000006163.10946.13