Critically Conscious Research 11/12

As I started the reading, I found myself linking topics between classes. The first chapter, which discusses Critical Methodologies and Methods, focuses on exactly that, and delves into how those specific methodologies affect our research. As the chapter began defining and widening the scope of what critically conscious research is, I recalled a similar subject from my Theory class. Defining rhetoric is not an easy task, and many people seem to have what they perceive to be "the right answer", whether it be grounded historically or maybe it just sounds right; I would say the same is true of "critically conscious research" or "critical methodologies". Assigning one definition to each topic is difficult, so we should consider what the subjects can do, as opposed to defining them singularly. I think the first chapter did a good job of not focusing on the narrow, but rather expanding the topics in a way that make them accessible to all people in academia that are conducting research in a way that challenges the norm.

In the next chapter, we are faced again with power struggles and how they continue to affect education. Education is affected by funding that is supported by political interests...no, who would have thought? This predicament not only makes it difficult for the students that don't fit into the "cookie-cutter", one-size fits all system of learning, but also for researchers trying to overcome a terrain that has been customized to fit prevailing assumptions. I again, like always, began thinking about white privilege and how students of color are left unengaged. It's a crisis that has come to the forefront of research...but is really still overcome by politics.

Instead of focusing on white privilege, like I'm always inclined to do since it's literally everywhere around us, I'll try to center my response to the last chapter on any other topic that always intrigues me: gender and sexual orientation. Gender can almost always be connected to sexual orientation. We're always faced with these binaries, right? (white/nonwhite, male/female, gay/straight, etc). I think it's interesting how much power literature has in reinforcing or destabilizing these binaries and norms. These power dynamics are reinforced in the lives of LGBTQ people, and affect the way they carry themselves, whether it be when modifying how they identify with different groups, or whether the media is constructing the way a gay person "should" act. It's very similar to sexism and discourses that preach to women about how we should carry ourselves. And presently, it seems as though sexual orientation, like race, and sex, become the forefront of what a person is. We need to know this in order to overcome "whiteness" and other defined norms, but like most everything else, these orientations just align themselves to correlate more with whiteness, and understanding groups that a different than the WASP group.