A critique of transnational research on subjectivation from the perspective of postcolonial epistemology

The article shows how modern subject constitutions and postcolonial relations of white dominance are systematically reproduced in school contexts. Postcolonial critique is thus revealed as an analytical strategy to focus on processes of transnationalization in schools (through internationalization and immigration). The empirical foundation of this article is formed by two qualitative research projects that show different variants of interactive and performative entanglement of school actors in colonial knowledge orders and their subjectivizing logics of production in relations of power and recognition. Two case analyses illuminate different dimensions of how racialized subjects are produced and of postcolonial orders. These different projects illustrate the multi-perspectival complexity of how structures of differences are reproduced. The article also underlines the importance of an educational perspective on the dynamics of power, recognition, and subjectification in school orders. It concludes by briefly touching on possibilities for future reflection on perspectives of knowledge within orders characterized by the dominance of one culture and their relationality.


Introduction and presentation of the research question 1
Two gaps become apparent when taking a closer look at current research on subjectivation in schools and classrooms, especially in German-speaking countries: First, the fact that there is only little research that considers transnational conditions of schooling (Adick 2005;Hummrich 2018); second, the fact that there is still little discussion of postcolonial critique, e.g.critique of Eurocentric constitution of the subject in post-digital teaching-learning cultures (Engel 2022;Hummrich 2022;Castro Varela 2016).Addressing those gaps means engaging with cultural studies that focus on practices of representation, resignification, and silencing (Hall 2004) and ask how those who are usually merely kept in the margins (Bhabha 2004)-for instance in the classroom-can be taken into account and how pedagogic organizations and social actions interrelate.Against this background, the article brings together results from two qualitative research projects, through whose thematic and methodological overlaps innovative insights into the (re)production of postcolonial orders and subjectivation in the field of power, knowledge orders, and recognition occur.We begin by discussing the theoretical framework of our research interest based on the current status of research, based on which guiding questions on transnationalization, digitalization, and epistemic violence will be formulated (Sect.2).We then present empirical studies from two empirical research projects (Sect.3).In conclu-sion, the results will be discussed with regard to methodologies of subjectivation theory (Sect.4).

Theoretical framework, research status, and development of questions on postcolonial critique, subjectivation, and transnationalization of school
The postcolonial work of scholars such as Stuart Hall (2017) and Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak (1994) is closely linked to a critique of the hegemonic orders of the Enlightenment.Hall and Spivak focus on how Western theory's hegemonic orders subjectivize cognition and how the individual is constituted in its normative relations as a sovereign subject.Divergences from the normative framing of the subject are met by practices of othering, i.e. the constitution of a societal opponent, if one does not fit into the Eurocentric image of the sovereign (white) subject.Hall (2006) speaks of an opposite symbolic universe in the discourse of Black and white, which distinguishes "them and us, primitive and civilized, light and dark" (Hall 2006, p. 7).Within these symbolic universes, the hegemonic order of white supremacy emerges, denigrating anything other than whiteness.In this context, the entanglement of modern society is undeniable A postcolonial perspective would analyze these entanglements within the network of power, desire, and interest (Spivak 1994, p. 66), and show how the discourses about societal Others are reproduced also in epistemology and in practice, in order to create the sovereign subject as a successful counter-image.
To better understand the critique of the discourse of the sovereign subject (Engel 2022) we can turn to the perspective of Judith Butler (1997).According to Butler, the sovereign subject is constituted within orders of power and recognition, i.e. it is subjectivized under these orders.This is not a passive act.The subject actively has to acknowledge these orders to be recognized (Butler 1997, p. 8).Hence, subject formation is not only a process of individual transformation of the relation between the self and the word (Oevermann 2016;Koller 2011) but a constitution within the submission to norms that can be socially recognized (Balzer 2007).
These understandings of postcolonial entanglements in racist orders and the distinction between "the West and the Rest" (Hall 2004) play a significant role in transnationalization processes, as they allow for an understanding of how symbolic orders are produced and challenged.Today, transnationalization (in the sense of crossing borders) manifests in many different ways, e.g.migration processes, processes of internationalization, globalization, and digitalization (Hummrich et al. 2024).We can only guess how rapidly those processes will change in the context of new technologies, digitalization, and climate change, and how they will galvanize questions of subject positioning (Gabrys 2019;Wark 2019).Therefore even questions of sovereignty, as we elaborate them today primarily with reference to concrete situations of action, will come into much sharper focus.Thus, this article also contributes to future-oriented research that can prototypically give visibility to the symbolic struggles that take place in social orders.
If we want to grasp this meaning of transnationalization in postcolonial orders within their subjectivizing structures of power and recognition from the view of education theory, we have to take a closer look at education as a global task.Studies on the globalization of schooling reveal, for example, how different school systems align and how we are moving towards a schooled society conceived in global terms (Baker 2014), a development that is in part driven by supranational actors (Parreira do Amaral 2010).More and more, studies focusing on transnational capital-echoing Bourdieu's (1998) cultural capital-and internationalization are found in the realm of elite education (Hayden 2011;Hornberg 2010).This perspective on transnationalization focuses on plurilocality and transdisciplinary intertwining of practices, institutions, and state contexts (Pries 2010), highlighting elite educational processes shaped by modernity's myth of rationality (Meyer and Rowan 1977) that stress performance, progress, and excellence.These, as (Hummrich 2021) reveals in her research, produce pressure to adapt while students are subjectivized by the normative expectation of the transnational focus on exclusivity.
When it comes to migration, research tends to focus on differentiated analyses of the link between schools and social inequality (Stanat and Edele 2011), described by the notion of globalization from below (cf.Randeria 2003).Here, transnationalization is understood as a problem of arrival, language and cultural mediation, and integration (Diehm et al. 2013;Karakaşoglu 2018), revealing the processes of othering and subjectivizing migrants at play in a national school system and its structures of institutional discrimination (Gillborn 2002;Gomolla and Radtke 2009;Hummrich 2020).These studies show that in school practice, immigration is seen less in terms of opportunity-based comparative relations that stem from crossing national borders (cf.Pries 2002) or of attendant plurilocal relations (Pries 2002), but in terms of establishing postcolonial knowledge regimes and the subjects they produce (Hummrich et al. 2024), by foregrounding official and national languages, identification with cultural bodies of knowledge, and national belonging (Bénéï 2007).In short, the effects of colonial school policies can be identified when it comes to immigration (Diallo et al. 2021).
A postcolonial perspective on relations of power can also be taken when comparing the different reference points of transnationalization (internationalization and migration): Interpretations of transnational biographies in the context of migration and also in the context of refugee experiences articulate a subjectivation of the primary ascription as migrant other (Castro Varela and Mecheril 2016;Hummrich 2020;Mecheril 2004) in which the structural logic of ethnic differentiation is reproduced in each case (Hall 2000), constituting "the colonial subject as Other" (Spivak 1994, p. 76).On the other hand, the fading out of globalization from below in perspectives of international globalization on transnationalization can be understood as marginalizing the other in terms of their participation in globalized structures of privilege (cf.Hall 2017;Mecheril 2004).At the same time, constructions of othering are implied in the interest in knowledge production about the processes of differentiation that accompany transnationalization. Thus, processes of knowledge production relating to exclusive educational careers construct an other that remains excluded; processes of knowledge production relating to deprivileged educational processes construct an other to demonstrate how othering affects them.All the while, in principle, the researchers' positionalities and privileges subjectivize the people the research focuses on, are being ignored (Spivak 1994).
Following the traces above-i.e.analyzing subjectivation in postcolonial orders with regard to the structures of power and recognition through the example of schooling-allows us to challenge the fantasy of human omnipotence and feasibility by relativizing the subject itself and pointing to the entanglements of action and performance with societal and global conditions.In order to focus on the different dynamics of subjectivation in postcolonial orders within transnational contexts, the approaches presented here also provide an analytical perspective for educational contexts that can be used to understand variations of subjectivation.
Both the theory of subjectification and the postcolonial critique reveal understandings of the subject that are connected to the Enlightenment's notion of the self (here using the example of internationalization and immigration).They also allow for understandings of the subject that are located beyond the individualistic Eurocentric subject by attending to historicized (postcolonial) relations within which subjects first emerge.In terms of research methodology, these two approaches make it possible to address the conditions based on which subject positioning is formed.As we will now see in more detail in the empirical studies described in the following, these research approaches require fine-tuned attention to the (resistant) negotiability of (in)visible, social, and national orders as well as to the norms that accompany them.

Empirical studies from two research projects (methods and results)
The following presents variations of how subjects are conceived and their potential for addressing epistemic violence, based on analyses from two studies: First, multilevel analyses from the Robert-Bosch funded study "GLOBIS.Globale Verantwortung.Internationalisierung und Interkulturalität in der Schule".This data includes homepage analyses, principal interviews, and group discussions with 10thgrade students.Second, in the videographical DFG research project "Glokalisierte Lebenswelten: Rekonstruktion von Modi des ethischen Urteilens im Geographieunterricht", over a period of two weeks, two 10th-grade classes in each of the four schools were videographed by four cameras during geography lessons on the topic of globalization.The data were evaluated based on the documentary method, which, in distinguishing between explicit and implicit knowledge, allows for video-based insight into the everyday and interactive production of the logic of racializing practice (Bohnsack 2017).This entails two stages of data interpretation: the process of formulating interpretation reconstructs what is being said or done, i.e. what is happening in a given situation; while the process of reflecting interpretation considers the genesis of the interactions and analyzes how the actors relate to each other, to the objects present, and to the space they are in; hence, the focus lies on the reconstruction of implicit logics of practice in the context of the actors' habitual orientations.The presentation of the results is attuned to the latter of the abovementioned stages of interpretation.Within the two projects, the data were analyzed using the documentary method.Sociogenetic types could be determined by con-sidering additional information (such as questionnaire surveys in project GLOBIS and surveys of the contexts of the schools in project "Glokalisierte Lebenswelten").Against this background, racialized processes of subjectivation in schools can be abstracted by comparing and contrasting the projects.By interweaving the different empirical results (videography, analyses of homepages, group discussions, and questionnaire surveys) we get a broad and at the same time deeper insight into different dimensions of subjectivation in racialized contexts.
Group discussions and video analysis bring together different dimensions of racialized subjectivation in postcolonial orders, doing so in an innovative manner.Given the different kinds of data, which-as will be shown in the following-reveal similar structural patterns and orders of knowledge, the analysis of this material reveals the ubiquity of racialized subjectification practices in schools (study 1) and classrooms (study 2).
Both studies share the same relational methodology: reconstructive triangulation revealing the implicit logic of practice (Hummrich 2018).To this end, we first present the results of a documentary analysis of the school study and then the video-based results of the classroom study.Both are then explored in a comparative analysis.

Transnationalization between subject formation and subjectivation
A relational perspective on processes of situatedness in the cultural context of schools is fundamental when it comes to the relational methodology of processes of subject formation in the context of transnationalization.This perspective is grounded in the assumption of the ubiquity of internationalization and migration, as negotiated in theories of transnationalization (cf.Faist et al. 2014;Gogolin and Pries 2004).Thus, self-positioning in the context of school culture such as those examined in project GLOBIS points to the fact that in (post-)migrant societies, schools articulate their position in relation to the conditions of migration and internationalization and that their school profiles are developed accordingly.Hence, an analysis of this positioning in relation to the relational multi-level analytical model of sociological transnationalization research (Pries 2010) and school culture analysis (Helsper 2008) suggests itself as a promising approach.In this context, we distinguish between different analytical levels (cf.Fig. 1).On the one hand, these describe the imaginary narratives of school culture within which schools position themselves in relation to social conditions, legal regulations, and the German school system based on their own pedagogical ideals.On the other hand, they also record internal negotiation processes between school management, teachers, and students, revealing convergences, divergences, and frictions regarding the stated self-understanding of a given school culture.
The first stage consisted in determining different school positions throughout Germany in a quantitative preliminary study (n = 300) following a mixed-methods design (Fig. 1).Then, the hypothesis was tested as to whether schools that state that they value internationalization usually favor exclusive educational careers while schools that state that they value interculturality are more focused on local conditions.Indeed, the schools' course offerings confirmed this hypothesis: Schools that situated themselves on the internationalization spectrum more frequently referred to course offerings that tie in with an exclusive habitus, are attractive to milieus rich in cultural and economic capital, and promise certifications and experiences that are strategically career-relevant (Hummrich et al. 2024).Schools with an intercultural profile on the other hand focus their course offerings on language support, remedial teaching, and cooperation with self-organized migrant NGOs while rarely referring to possible training that points beyond the school itself (Hummrich et al. 2024).It thus follows that international schools refer to practices of distinction (cf.Bourdieu 1979): in emphasizing themes such as internationalization, participation in international programs and offerings, exclusive educational opportunities, and the promise of cosmopolitanism, they tie in with modernity's myths of rationality (Meyer and Rowan 1977), efficiency, progress, and global societal solidarity.Schools that locate themselves in the context of interculturality and with regard to ethnic diversity, on the other hand, focus more clearly on linguistic compensation, orientation toward social participation, and global societal solidarity-in this respect, they are much more clearly oriented towards a habitus of necessary local conditions (Hummrich et al. 2024).
This background allowed for four ideal types of schools to be identified.They were the subject of the qualitative main study (cf.Fig. 1): The exclusive Gymnasium Ost, which is geared towards internationalization; the Reformschule Süd (Reform School South), which is strongly geared towards internationalization but only weakly towards interculturality; the Gesamtschule West (Comprehensive School West), which is geared towards interculturality and ethnic diversity and centers its students' perspectives; and the marginalized Sekundarschule Nord (Secondary School North), where ethnic diversity tends to be seen as a problem.For these schools, the data collected (cf.Fig. 1) was reconstructed using the documentary method (Bohnsack 2017;Nohl 2016).
In the following, we focus on a group discussion that took place at the Sekundarschule Nord (Secondary School North) and present the reflective interpretation.The school is located in a large city in a district characterized by ethnic diversity.Between 2015 and 2018, about one-fifth of the classes were transition classes for students who had recently migrated to Germany.While the school's stated self-understanding serves the narrative of diversity, it also betrays the headmistress' issues with the diversity that characterizes her school.This attitude is displayed, for example, in the school's statement about wanting to establish music classes so that other people other than the usual students come to us' 2 Here, aesthetic cultural practice is addressed less in terms of an educational opportunity for the school's students and more as a counter-design to a school's real and local conditions, betraying how focused it on aligning with the dominant culture (cf.Rommelspacher 1992) that subjectivizes the students to the ideals of milieus rich in cultural capital.The eighthgrade students in our study also noticed this tendency, as illustrated by their group discussion: Kadem: ah and .the school has a bad reputation (...) so when you tell people who are from around (...) they tell you straight up, that school is bad.um maybe that's cause a lot has happened at our school, fights with the police, ambulances and stuff.they came twice-more often than that, but since i've been there, pepper spray twice (...) in the media it was quite a big headline like uh pepper spray attack at secondary school north, with a picture showing nine ambulances in our schoolyard (...), also someone got stabbed at the school (I1: mhm) by someone from Syria, i think, also here in the schoolyard and yeah, that's maybe also why the school has-some people are afraid, the parents, that kids go to school here because that could happen to them too.But no matter from which nation or at which school it can happen everywhere cause if one person does it, it doesn't mean that everyone does it.So that's my opinion about it and that's why i think that before you say something you should rather first check out the school is and stuff, and not give it a bad rep straight up (2) Merve: Well since i've been here at this school i've gotten a lot better and I think a lot of the other kids feel the same way no matter what nationality they are and the people who come from syria for example, like our friend sabire, she can speak german really well now and uh she's also really good in class like all the others (I1: mhm).
Kadem: well i think she's talking about the integration of those who come from different nationalities who are new to germany or have been here for a couple years, but integration is good cause well we mostly communicate in german, like for example if they come from syria like sabire, then at first her german may not be 2 The quotations from the transcripts are marked by single quotation marks.
that good but if we always talk to her and stuff, then she gets better and better at it, like she can't speak it but now she can speak german well.and yes cause like, we don't speak syrian, if there's such a thing, yes there is, #there is, right# (asking Sabire) Sabire: #mm# (negating) Arabic

Reflective interpretation
a) On the students' experiences of the school's reputation Kadem talks about the school's bad reputation and the conflict among the student body, which in the past required calling the police and ambulances.In his opinion, however, the media reactions to the knife attacks and the use of pepper spray are disproportionate ('although most of it is not true at all') and where the boy who started a knife fight is from is not that relevant, since someone who initiates violent escalations can be from any country and this can happen at any school.Kadem's statements show that he is well aware of how violence tends to be framed in negative attributions tied to specific cultures, which he rejects by putting into perspective the location and the initiator of the fight.Merve also confirms the counterreading of the school's reputation as being plagued by problems and violence by relating her experience of performing better at the Secondary School North.She tries to strengthen the legitimacy of her experience by expanding the scope of her thesis ('I believe that many other children feel that way, regardless of their citizenship').Kadem picks up on this and points out that speaking German as a common language allows students to participate in lessons and everyday school life.In their shared perspective, the students emphasize the integrative social role of school, i.e. they recognize it as a space of education in which conditions for participation are created.At the same time, they attribute the cause of problems to external factors (the media is to blame).b) On the conflict between the life worlds of students with the school's expectations Later in the discussion, the group talks about the fields of conflict that the students are exposed to: Kadem acknowledges that it is important to 'not get mad' at school, but that one must always be ready to defend oneself: 'if someone wants to attack you, you have to hit them back because at school you are quickly put down as a pathetic loser'.The students make a point of disconnecting this feistiness from the school's dominant culture: Students physically assault each other and the teachers become potential victims ('sometimes [they] also get hit by the students, by accident, and now the teachers are also afraid to intervene').The students seem to refer to areas of knowledge that pinpoint mechanisms of how social inequality is reproduced: milieu-specific differences are not attended to by the school and may rather be heightened (cf.Bourdieu 1998).

Conclusion of the interpretations
While the students have faith in the school's promise of integration, teachers and school administrators display a negative attitude toward the milieu that the students represent.The paradox here is that the students who exist in reality as part of the school are turned into the Other of the ideal design of school culture: The school's middle-class normativity (Bourdieu 1998) subjectivizes these students and disregards the postcolonial conditions underlying their disprivileged status.Hence, the school's students are also contrasted with the blonde blue-eyed child as a counterimage, a type of student not represented at this school.In this way, the school itself becomes a postcolonial agent that silences the students and their needs (Spivak 1994).The relationality between school cultural imagination and the positioning of students can be theorized in terms of two-way addresses in the course of which subjectivation occurs (cf.Rose and Ricken 2017), as a discriminatory structure of dominant power that Otherizes students and hence fails to recognize the students' potential for participation (Hummrich et al. 2024).At the same time, it becomes clear that in this regime of power, the school itself is subjectivized, being a school that due to local conditions is given very few opportunities to contribute to empowering educational processes.Hence it too plays a role in subalternizing those who are positioned as migrants and an enabling structure for social participation as it is itself implicated in the symbolic struggle of subjectivation.

Glocalization between subject formation and subjectivation
To pursue the question of how processes of globalized subjectivation can be investigated, the DFG project "Glokalisierte Lebenswelten" proposed three levels of analysis: the performative, socio-material, and spatial dimensions of subject positioning (Engel 2023).Based on the documentary method's methodology, which, through its genetic analytical approach from what to how, as described above, offers insight into the implicit logic of praxis, the video gives us information not only as to what the students and teachers are saying and doing in class but also as to how they relate to each other, to the objects that are present, and to the space they are in by way of their facial expressions, gestures, and the performativity of socio-material orders of interaction.In this way, we gain an understanding of the logic of-in this case-racializing practice.It allows us to trace how practices of minoritization and marginalization operate on all three levels in this case study.This case is a good example that reflects other cases we observed in many classroom situations at all schools that took part in the study.Hence it can be evaluated as a typical case and the findings point beyond the specifics of that individual case.Therefore, the educational science sub-project of the DFG project on "Glokalisierte Lebenswelten" focused on how students (10th grade, ca.15-16 years old) in southern Germany experience processes of globalization and what becomes important to them in their everyday experiences at the intersections of the global and the local, i.e. how they situate themselves glocally and thereby make ethical judgments.The framework of the interdisciplinary DFG project "Glokalisierte Lebenswelten", which was carried out by [names of collaborators] from 2015-2019, made it possible to show in empirical studies how to examine practices of (dis)placement and positioning in the classroom as acts of symbolic articulations of power.
A comparison of 27 pre-group discussions and 27 post-group discussions (before and after implementing the treatment), as well as the triangulated video-based analy- ses of the performative level (Engel 2015) of judgment logics (Engel 2020), made it possible to critically discuss the changes of positioning of self and other in the context of the students' processes of global networking (Engel 2020). 3The typification developed in this process, shows how implicit attitudes regarding social values relate to the students' corresponding experiential spaces (Engel et al. 2020).This showed, for example, how the students' feelings of powerlessness, resignation, or anger are rooted in concrete everyday experiences and can lead to a dichotomizing logic of judgment, also in the classroom.On this basis we can put into perspective the ethical positioning of representatives of the adolescent generation, resonating with current positions that emphasize that the formable (and already existing, finished) subject can no longer form the starting point for educational theories (cf.Jörissen 2015; Nohl 2016).Rather, this raises the question of how (postcolonial) subjectivization, i.e., specific practices of signifying, placing, and entangling-how people continually become who and what they are-emerge or take place, especially relating to insights produced by the material, practical, and performative turns (Engel 2020).The perspectivization through these different methodological approaches has shown how the unsayable is articulated relationally, negotiating the ambivalence between subverting and recognizing globalizing norms of self and other as, for example, relations of domination, as powerful, productive, and subordinate subject positionings (Fig. 2).
Our triangulation method research design included group discussions (Przyborski 2018), questionnaire surveys as a basis for sociogenetic typing (Nohl 2016), and 3 Our research project also showed how closely questions of globalization are connected with competitive and performance-oriented forms of subjectivation of students and teachers (Engel and Karpowitz 2021).
image and video analyses of lesson sequences (Bohnsack 2017).The empirical data was collected during several weeks of research visits at four grammar schools each in the southern German cultural area.The schools differ in their profiles, in their emphasis on international, natural science, aesthetic-musical, or Christian social science.An urban-rural comparison was also taken into account.
The following classroom scene is from a tenth-grade class of an internationallyminded grammar school in a small town in southern Germany.The video scene shows a sequence from a lesson unit (double period) in which the students learn about globalized image logics and independently research images of globalization on the internet.
Two levels of racializing processes of subjectification were revealed when engaging with images of globalization: First, the images that the students then brought to school were suggested to them by the Google search algorithm; second, in the classroom the chosen images led to a spectacle of the Other (Hall 2017) in connection with individual students being exoticized, i.e., presented, labeled, or marked as Other (Hall 2017;p. 9), as can be exemplified in the following scene in the case of Isabella.
Therefore we want to use a video-based focus on classroom events to analyze the performative, spatial, and socio-material levels as an embodied or interactive negotiation of social norms that produce processes of racializing subjectivation in everyday life.To this end, we refer back to the evaluation steps of the documentary method and first describe what happens (formulating interpretation), in order to reconstruct in a second step how Isabella is addressed as a subject and how she reads this invocation (Butler 1997;Hall 2006) (Figs. 3 and 4).
Video-based reconstruction:  presentation, the class seems tense and annoyed.There are chuckles, some students groan audibly or make a show of leaning back into their chairs.While before, when other students were presenting, the teacher would sometimes correct the students and go to the board to assign a given picture to one of the categories of globalization written on the board, her behavior is different now.During Isabella's presentation, she remains seated, static, holding her breath.When Isabella stumbles over her words or uses a wrong word, the teacher laughs along with the other students, dangling her legs.Isabella turns to the board and says, "OK, I'll put this under 'media image Fig. 5 "A man with a full beard and a coat" corresponding to the image shown by Isabella, ©Project 2 stream'.I hope everyone understands that."Some students laugh and one boy says, "Uh, no.Can you explain that again?"Everyone laughs again."Oh Markus," they say, underlining how funny they thought his question was.But Isabella heads over to him and shows him the picture, as if his question has been meant seriously and as if she were now in the role of teacher or at least outside of the peer group.Unphased by this misunderstanding, Isabella begins presenting another picture, a painting of politicians holding hands and encircling the globe.A classmate interrupts Isabella's presentation to ask Isabella: "Isabella, what was the name of that movie again?"At this, he leans back into his chair, wiggling around on it while tugging at his T-shirt.Everyone in the room seems to allow this question to be raised.Isabella says something unintelligible-either she does not know the movie's title (The Revenant) or does not speak English.Scratching the underside of his arm, the classmate corrects her, emphasizing the words "The Revenant" and the English pronunciation, Isabella responds aloud, "Oh, yeah.OK, my pronunciation was off."The classmate shrugs it off, smiles, and says "It's not that bad."There is a loud commotion in the class about whether the movie is good, or too gory, or not well-known enough.Everyone talks at the same time while Isabella silently hangs the second picture on the board.

Reflective interpretation a) On the performativity of processes of subjectivation (interactive, socio-material, and pictorial dimensions)
In the following, we trace Isabella's subjectivation process on the performative (relationship to classmates) and socio-material levels in order to then also analyze the figurative level of processes of addressing and readdressing.While Isabella's performance (in the literal sense) shows uncertainty (in how she steps on the floor, bumps against the teacher's desk, in her voice and her speak-K ing), it can also be observed how she plays to the gallery, does not withdraw into herself, does not remain silent.She reacts to her classmates' sometimes subtle and continuous criticism of her performances, as seen in the very fact that she goes to the front of the class.Her performances are unlike typical student presentations as they usually unfold; rather, they are fragmented, contrary to the usual way people move through space and interact with things.In this way, she blocks the lesson's fast pace and draws attention to something else, namely the insecurity that is also manifested-in a similarly strong way-on the part of the class; for example, when they comment on Isabella's presentation, when they laugh and groan, and in the negative judgment thus expressed.Or when, at the end, the classmate intervenes (in front of the research team and their camera) to correct the pronunciation of the film's title.Insecurity can also be felt in the teacher, when, barely moving, remaining passive, she lets the presentation wash over her, falling out of her role as teacher, behaving more like a student without a teacher's pedagogical responsibilities.The performative insecurity on both "sides" generates a minorizing subjectivation in the interaction-all while global justice is discussed on the official level of teaching.How is this interplay maintained and not disrupted?b) On Isabella's (in)visible vulnerability in the social and material class structure, system.So, while here on an implicit level it is very clear who possesses what knowledge, who can present it and how, on the explicit level there is (not only here) a misunderstanding between the class and Isabella.By stating that her pronunciation of the film's title was incorrect, Isabella sidesteps being exposed.Her reactions to her classmates' questions are often almost naive, answering them as if they were factual messages with explicit content-almost teacher-like, at least in performative difference to the communication dynamics in the peer group.
In addition to the embodied level, on which Isabella's insecurity is seen, unable to find a safe place in the classroom, the linguistic-interactive, discursive level shows how Isabella and the class (have to) fail to communicate clearly: If the practices of how Isabella is marginalized in the classroom were to be explicated, Isabella's vulnerability and visibility thereof would undermine these practices of exclusion.According to Luhmann, structural invisibilization serves the purpose of keeping these mechanisms implicit, unaddressed, and unspoken, thereby perpetuating them.This scene serves as a prime example in that it reflects similar dynamics in other classes and at other schools: Subaltern speech is not heard but is laughed at; this mockery is reproduced through structural invisibilization (Luhmann) of the genesis (and thus possible transformations) of processes of exclusion, thus creating minority positions in the classroom.c) On the figurative level of subjectivation Isabella strongly emphasizes the film's success and worldwide distribution, which she links to the Oscars award ceremony, i.e. in the context of public recognition.This can be interpreted as a focalization metaphor.It is worth noting that in the scenic choreography of Isabella's image of globalization, one of the central figures is human and not, as in her classmates' other images of globalization, technological, for example (Engel 2022).She conducted a Google search for globalized images at home and brought this image to the classroom.But does it show?The Oscar trophy also embodies a human image ('some guy', in Isabella's words).Two male images are seen in this image.Isabella's description of the image centers on the middle-aged man, 'a man with a full beard wearing a coat' with injuries on his face, standing in the middle of a wintry landscape, as the focal element of the picture, while the Oscar trophy is only an element on the side.His head is raised and his gaze is fixed on a point above the camera.He is walking towards the camera with his mouth slightly open, his chest puffed out.He seems powerful yet isolated amid nature, far from civilization.His wet and unkempt hair and beard are caked in blood and snow.In his right hand, he is holding a branch, which he leans on as he walks.Does he represent the human or the non-human?The image's perspective emphasizes the man's upper body, which appears powerfully built, large and broad.This strength is contrasted by the injuries on his face, a visual signifier of vulnerability.In the image, the colors of the foreground and background harmonize so that the planes merge in terms of color.Man and nature are not represented on distinct planes.The elements that convey the cold-snow and ice, as well as the natural, cool brown tones of the coat, the wooden fence, and the trees-connect both levels.The Oscar trophy stands out in color and forms a stark contrast to the rest of the picture.The planimetric wholeness structure elevates the post-digital logic of globalization to the first level through the image processing that has been carried out, pushing other elements of the image, the representation of the humannature connection in its vulnerability, to the background.The Oscar trophy's colors and the contrast it creates monopolize the viewer's attention and elevate it to the central-yet disconnected-element of the image.On an iconological, implicit level, Isabella uses the image to establish a connection between someone who does not fit the idea of success, as symbolized by the trophy, disconnected and therefore impossible: recognition by the Western world.

Conclusion of the interpretations
In comparative case studies (Nohl 2016) of image presentations in this sample (of video scenes along with the questionnaires from four schools), the question of new (non-)belonging and thus the negotiation of identity-political norms can be identified as a central experience of minoritized students in the context of digitalized globalization.In this perspective, the subject positions brought forth in the context of the institution of school shed light on the level of the individual and their (non-)belonging while also embedding levels of (post-digital) interaction and thus of social discourses about foreignness and boundary-setting in the context of the local and the global, within which the students situate themselves, with and through images as media.The images and implicit knowledge that is articulated in them become tangible artifacts of teaching practice that allow for analyses based on subjectivation and materiality theory.
Hence, here we can understand, based on triangulated evaluations of the videographies and questionnaires, that Isabella's non-belonging to the class (as a sub-organization or interaction space) is also related to her collective affiliations to a certain K milieu, which cannot be neatly classified into the categories of social differentiation that not only the students but also of the teacher are used to-Isabella does not self-evidently fit in.She cannot be clearly assigned to constructions of difference coded along ethnic and gendered lines, as the questionnaires show.Our video-based evaluations of different cases allowed us to identify how certain students are socially excluded and pushed to minoritized and marginalized positions in the classroom.
If, following relationality theory, Isabella's subject positioning is understood as a discursive event that is produced through performance, space, and materiality (Engel 2020), the elements that constitute this subject positioning do not already engage as ready-made people and things, rather it is through the transactional space that they become what they know and identify.Only insofar as we are integrated into specific transaction spaces-such as the classroom-do we become what we are: teachers and students, for example, but also desks, projectors, and blackboards (Nohl 2016).They can be understood as nested transactional spaces through which the elements that are involved in these spaces become what they are in the first place (Nohl 2016).Hence, in the first part, the paper discussed how students connect to global structures through media, by using their smartphones and social networks.
In the course of our research, it became more and more clear that glocalizing relations are currently often generated through visual communication, e.g.pictures, or more precisely, selfies, and in the process, on the level of implicit knowledge, students relate their implicit knowledge to that which is other to them; the local connects through social global-technologized networks and platforms such as Tik-Tok and Instagram, generating subjectivizing moments as modes of relation (Engel 2019).

Postcolonial orders in transition (discussion)
The article presents findings that take the conditions of a transnational society into account with regard to theories of subjectivation in schools and classrooms while emphasizing the importance of working with different perspectives in educational science that attend to the dynamics of recognition, power, and inequality in schools.
Everyday practices of racialized subjectivation and postcolonial orders were revealed in both projects, located on different dimensions.In the first project, they were located on the level of linguistic discourses; in the second project, on the level of spatial, sociomaterial, and pictorial logics of representation.An educational reflection of postcolonial orders distinguishes them in terms of social theory and analyzes school and classroom practices accordingly in terms of a critique of power and domination.In this way, it becomes clear how norms of homogenization and diversification manifest as a sociopolitical issue in schooling and teaching.To be able to recognize postcolonial orders, it has proven helpful to engage in analytical approaches focusing on subjectivation that reveal which orders and relations of domination schools and teaching are entangled in.
Moreover, it presents epistemological foundations for an analysis of subjectivation in terms of globalization theory.In this way, the article contributes not only to the content but also to a methodological development that systematically integrates postcolonial perspectives on subjectivation theory.Hence both empirical cases illustrate the ambivalence inherent in entering spaces of visibility and sayability, as in both examples the (non-)negotiability of racialized subjectivation is not made explicit but manifests as an ambivalent desire for belonging and thus as a reproduction of norms of oppression.
Based on the comparative analyses of empirical results from two different research projects, it can be stated that racialized forms of vulnerability manifest in the context of postcolonial analyses of present-day learning cultures, that dynamize on the condition of postdigital every day experiences, e.g. in social media.The first project illustrates social structures of subjectification in processes of transnationalization related to migration, using the example of racializing comments, silencing, and othering.The second example shows how the vulnerability of marginalized and minoritized subject positionings can be articulated in schools and in the racialized classroom using images of globalization as an example.Thus we can formulate the following three hypotheses: 1.Both examples are characterized by the friction between forms of subjectivation and modernity's myths of rationality (efficiency, progress, global societal communitization) in the context of post-colonial turns and developments.Both studies revealed not only processes of othering and practices of silencing but also resistant practices of shifting positioning, which has the effect of maintaining the dynamism of the relationship between self-determination and heteronomy.2. In cases of othering, schools also represent a space of possibility that promises social participation, even though, as both projects show, schools can be a source of harm and alienation from the lifeworld.Here it becomes apparent that students from disadvantaged milieus are particularly dependent on school (Bourdieu 1998), even more so than students from privileged milieus.In the cases presented here, this is expressed on the one hand in the students' distinct reflexivity, and on the other hand in the resistance with which a student claims space in the classroom in order to be heard.3.Both studies allow for processes of epistemic violence in research contexts to be reflected on.However, while they show that illustrating silencing and othering makes it possible to focus on processes of power in school practice, it does not lead to reflecting on one's own ideological entanglement in epistemic contexts (Gabrys 2019).The latter becomes apparent when examining processes of transnationalization and digitalization, as these involve dimensions of action that require new epistemological perspectives, i.e. they require action to be understood as plurilocal and decentred.This insight can be connected to perspectives on science as a practice that also attends to the processes of production of scientificity and their attendant power dynamics.
What this article has not yet been able to look at in a more differentiated way is that new forms of racialized vulnerability are emerging under the conditions of postdigitality (mutual interweaving of analog and virtual worlds).On the one hand, this can be seen in the social media, and in the second example, traces have K already been laid that make the vulnerability of subject positioning on a medially representative level comprehensible.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Conflict of interest J. Engel and M. Hummrich declare that they have no competing interests.
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