Prefatory Essay: Unfinished Conversations With Jean Anyon

Abstract

In this essay, Eve Tuck and Sefanit Habtom consider three contemporary conversations in the field of urban education: Urban education takes place on Indigenous land; diversity is not it, and social movements do more than we can know at a given time. Tuck imagines these may have been conversations that her mentor, Jean Anyon, would be writing, mentoring, or thinking about. Drawing from Anyon and Tuck’s conversations from nearly 20 years ago, the coauthors of this essay are connected within another mentoring relationship. This time, Tuck is the professor and Habtom is a doctoral student. Tuck and Habtom continue the tradition of unfinished conversations that might extend beyond the time frames of a lived life, of a mentoring relationship, and historical moment.

In a tribute to Jean Anyon published in Theory, Research, and Action in Urban Education, Eve Tuck (the first author of this essay) wrote:

Jean Anyon was a mentor to me in a very full sense—I learned from her words and actions, from watching her and from her advice to me. She really knew herself, and thus really was herself as our teacher. (She never was just my teacher, always our teacher, because she helped us to see how the small group of us that studied with her around the same time were connected to each other, and would be throughout our careers.) Her way of synthesizing theories, arguments, data, and the impacts of policies into stories that were meaningful to everyday lives dazzled and inspired me. Her understanding of what her work was and wasn’t, who her work was for and for whom it wasn’t, was a contagious sort of ethic—she knew what could be leveraged on behalf of communities from within the academy, and did so without apology.

Writing this essay to be published in a special issue dedicated to revisiting and extending Jean’s work hasn’t been an easy task. There is grief here. There is an ongoing sense of care and deep sympathy for Jean’s family, for everyone who loved and loves her.

But there is hesitation for other reasons—the seeming precociousness of a student commenting on a mentor’s work; the uncertainty of trying to continue unfinished conversations. Indeed, some of the ideas that appear in this essay are ideas that Jean and Eve began to talk about nearly 20 years ago, in the early 2000s. It is difficult to finish unfinished conversations, especially when they are unfinished because of a mentor’s death.

So, this essay will be purposefully unfinished. It is intentionally brief. It only tries to hold space, so that some day in the future we might be less likely to forget. Or perhaps in that future time we might realize that the conversations have already found another path home. We write as coauthors connected within another mentoring relationship, in which this time Eve is the professor and Sefanit is a doctoral student.

We have organized this essay into three unfinished conversations. We think that these would be contemporary conversations in the field of urban education that Jean perhaps would have engaged in her teaching, writing, and mentoring. Jean was a scholar who knew her own mind. Working and intervening into the theory and practice of political economy was a significant imperative of her scholarship. But she read widely, and read alongside students. Eve remembers a moment in class when Jean expressed interest in a particular theory, a literature that Eve was also reading deeply at the time. Eve brought a stack of books to Jean, and Jean also identified other books to read on the topic. Jean read over several weeks, until she was done. In the years after, Eve would read Jean’s writings to see where Jean might discuss the theory she had read so deeply to understand. Perhaps there was a sentence or two in Theory and Educational Research, but overall, the particular theory did not become a new way that Jean positioned her “expertise.” To Eve, this felt like an important modeling of what being a scholar can mean: reading a stack of books just to write one sentence with confidence; reading a stack of books to be in relation with a student, to respond meaningfully to the student’s work; reading a stack of books because everyone else is reading that stack of books, to participate in the conversations in our field—even if we are not at the forefront of those conversations; reading a stack of books because we are readers.

Thus, when we offer these unfinished conversations, we do so not to claim to “know” Jean in a predictive way. These are things she might have liked to think about, stacks of books she might have welcomed to her desk. But, of course, she may not have. To offer something unfinished is to refrain from being sure about what would now excite her curiosities and critiques within the field of urban education. It is to say we would have liked to talk to her about these ideas and projects.

Attending to three Unfinished Conversations

Urban Education Takes Place on Indigenous Land

In recent decades, the field of education, like other social science fields, has been winnowed by an array of “turns,” including turns toward new materialisms, spatial theory, and decolonial theories (see also Tuck et al., 2014; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015). Educational researchers are reading and writing into discussions of Black suffering (Dumas, 2014), curacion and PAR EntreMundos (Ayala et al., 2018; Mayorga, 2018), raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015), abolition (Love, 2019; Meiners, 2016), and Indigenous resistance (Sabzalian, 2018). Writing alongside coauthors like K. Wayne Yang, Marcia McKenzie, and Kate McCoy, Eve has worked to articulate the significance of place in social science more broadly, and in education research specifically. Indeed, the new materialist turn and the turn toward spatial theory might lead one to assume that place is being engaged more meaningfully in social science and educational research; yet this is often not the case.

University of Tasmania geographer Kate Isabel Booth (2015), reading Anderson et al. (2010), observes,

Despite the growing prominence of place in the social sciences the “difference that place makes to methodology has not been fully integrated into traditional research practice” (Anderson et al., 2010, p. 592). “[There is] a need to systematically and reflexively account for place and places in research, alongside the social position of the researcher and methods, and call for methodologies to be operationalized “as if place mattered” (Anderson et al., 2010, p. 600). (p. 1)

In earlier writings, Eve and her coauthors (Tuck et al., 2014; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) have attributed the erasure of the significance of place in social science to the ways that the academy and academic research are entwined with the project of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is an ongoing structure and social arrangement that actively denies its occupation of Indigenous land, and the complex, thriving social formations of Indigenous people who have been in relation with the same land and waters since time immemorial. Settler colonialism involves both the theft of Indigenous land and the continued disavowal of that theft. It thus easily follows that academic disciplines—some invented for the purposes of carrying out or justifying settlement, others that simply ignore the violence of settlement—are for the most part silent about why place might be important. There are clear exceptions to this in every discipline, perhaps most notably in geography, which has a defined tradition of scholars who attend meaningfully to place.

Urban education is a field that has been largely inattentive to place, especially land and water as theorized and described by Indigenous people. Decoteau J. Irby (2015) attends to the ways that understandings of “urban” in the field of urban education don’t have much depth. Irby rightfully contends that although the word “urban” is used frequently in education and educational research, it is not used with descriptive specificity in terms of place and space. Irby writes, however, that this is not for “lack of critical and nuanced education scholarship,” but instead, “limited exposure to geography and urban studies scholarship” (p. 8). Irby characterizes the underutilization of theories of space and place to conceptualize “urban” as a missed opportunity (and perhaps, responsibility) for urban education scholars to consider “how space, place, and the urban intersect with schooling and educational processes” (p. 8).

Irby is diagnosing the field of urban education as under-engaged with theories of space and place. Irby attributes this to lack of exposure to other fields in which place is taken more seriously. This assessment resonates with Eve’s experience of working in the field of urban education. She had access to critical geography courses as electives while in graduate school, but these were not considered central to the field. An internet search of PhD programs in urban education in the United States and Canada indicates something similar: Geography and discussions of place don’t appear on lists of core courses, and are not articulated as core concerns in these programs.

When Eve was a graduate student in Jean’s courses, Michael J. Dumas (a coeditor of this special issue) was also a student. Dumas often made the critical point that “urban” was regularly used by white people and by universities as a euphemism for Black and Brown people. Paraphrasing the conceptual shift Dumas was encouraging in making in those points, if “urban” is the polite word for white people to use when they can’t bear to say Black and Brown, then what is an urban education program? Dumas was insisting that in attempting to avoid naming race, particularly Blackness, educators and universities were allowing the erasure of the racism that Black and Brown students experience in schools.

The use of “urban” as a euphemism for Black communities and communities of color, and the use of “urban” without considering place are indelibly linked (see Tuck & Habtom, 2019, for a much longer discussion on this point). They are linked, of course, through tandem systems of transatlantic slavery and settler colonialism, but they are also linked through discursive moves that keep the agency of white people, including well-meaning educators, at the center. By this claim we mean that insofar as “urban” serves as a cover that allows the ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands and Indigenous relations to those lands, it also blankets the experiences of anti-Blackness and racism endured by Black children and children of color. It does this to keep whiteness comfortable, and not alienate those who are complicit beneficiaries of white supremacy.

Anyon wrote about zoning and transportation distances, but not necessarily land. Her focus on metro-wide organizing didn’t necessarily attend to ways in which place—land and water themselves—might influence the forms of organizing and routes to justice that might be engaged in a particular city. Anyon was a Marxist, but importantly, it is hard to imagine her falling into the same pitfalls that Marxists who dismiss Indigenous discussions about land often stumble into. Perhaps because of her care for ideas, her care for students’ ideas, her care for reading deeply, it is hard to imagine her brushing away the insistence that land and place are meaningful to the study of urban education. It is hard to say for sure, but Anyon would likely have been very excited to read recent scholarship by Indigenous scholars who engage Marx to imagine worlds beyond both capitalism and settler colonialism. Such scholars, notably Kul Wicasa scholar Nick Estes, do the work to ascertain how “sustaining settler colonial property regimes is . . . contingent upon the continued dispossession of Native territory and title as a self-perpetuating system of capital accumulation that required and still requires dispossession and active elimination” (Estes, 2013, p. 196). Such scholars are arguing that indigeneity, as theorized by Indigenous peoples, is a crucial analytic for discussions of capitalism, accumulation, and U.S. imperialism (Estes, 2013, p. 201).

Diversity is Not it

Anyon wrote the first edition of Radical Possibilities just as the No Child Left Behind act was signed into law, just as the so-called “War on Terror” was gratuitously funded and launched by the United States, and as communities were grappling with the chilling effects of racial profiling and the U.S. PATRIOT Act on freedoms to contest and protest state violence. Radical Possibilities (2014) emphasized the potential for policy to shape the lives of everyday people, especially those living in cities. Anyon believed that struggles for economic justice would involve both urban people of color and white working-class people; as authors and editors in this special issue address, Anyon’s attention was often on coalitions created along lines of class and proximity, meaning people sharing space in cities. Anyon paid particular attention to social movements led by Black people and Latinx communities, and the policies that resulted from these movements (p. 6).

In the time since Anyon published Radical Possibilities, the neoliberal university has continued shifting appearances in terms of relations to communities of color, often by including the word “diversity” into vision statements, creating and hiring people into (often underfunded) diversity “officer” administrative positions, and devising deliberate recruitment and retention strategies for students and faculty of color. Anyon might have had something to say about the superficial ways that universities are responding to public pressures to diversify.

Scholars in Black studies and Indigenous studies have long been warning about the limits of diversity frameworks. In “Against Social Justice and the Limits of Diversity,” Rinaldo Walcott (2018) critiques the reemergence of the language of diversity as a measure of inclusion and accountability in Canada. Walcott argues that Black Canada communities in the late 1980s and early 1990s were well aware of the non-performativity of diversity, and dismissed its language and logic as a failed model for inclusion (p. 86). Diversity frameworks stemmed from multicultural policies that favored liberal notions of inclusion, individualism, and integration. Canada’s Multiculturalism Act of 1985 explains multiculturalism as a way to “foster the recognition and appreciation of the diverse cultures of Canadian society” (Ash, 2004, p. 400). This is indicative of the prevailing idea that affirming cultural difference is synonymous with gaining equality and justice, a false and dangerous conflation. For Black and Indigenous communities, the language of diversity embedded in multiculturalism offers little more than a liberal performance of progress. “Diversity” remains a hollowed term, along with the accompanying language of anti-racism, equity, and social justice, which becomes a way the neoliberal university brushes over difference without mentioning Blackness. This language becomes formalized into programs, trainings, policies, and offices that “lack specificity and therefore cannot continue to do the necessary work of destroying antiblackness” (Walcott, 2018, p. 86). Not only are diversity frameworks insufficient for addressing the root violence of anti-Blackness, but they also deem Black communities as blameworthy for not embracing state or institutional (non)attempts to eradicate injustice (Dumas & Ross, 2016). Walcott (2018) urges us to abandon these so-called gifts of belonging, knowing they are insufficient for Black communities.

Sandy Grande (2018) offers a politic of refusal to caution Indigenous and Black communities away from the trappings of recognition. In her essay, “Refusing the University,” Grande critiques liberal theories of justice that underlie the politics of recognition, drawing close attention to the university as an arm of settler society. Grande (2018) turns to long-standing critiques from critical Indigenous studies scholars who understand recognition “as an equal right, a fiduciary obligation, a form of acknowledgement [that] functions as a technology of the state by which it maintains its power (as sole arbiter of recognition) and, thus, settler colonial relations” (pp. 49–50). Said another way, policies and mandates based on recognition are empty for Indigenous and Black peoples because they do not disrupt settler colonialism or white supremacy. For Indigenous communities, these recognition-based policies have looked like truth and reconciliation commissions, formal state apologies, and land acknowledgements. We are not saying that these are unnecessary projects in entirety, but that they become a way for the settler state to say they’ve done more than they have—or worse, that they’ve done enough (Coulthard, 2014).

Recognition-based policies and practices allow the state, and institutions, to eschew the material responsibilities that come with decolonization, that is, giving up land. Ultimately, recognition-based politics keep the settler state and its abiding institutions safe (Coulthard, 2014). They mask inaction, they extend the right to claim, and they potentially distract from other means of making the state accountable.

Eve grieves for the missed conversations with Jean about Black and Indigenous social movements like The Movement for Black Lives, the #NODAPL Movement at Standing Rock, Idle No More, #LandBack, and other social movements that call the legitimacy of the state into question. These conversations would likely have examined how conceptualizations of diversity are insufficient to carry the rhetorical and analytical weight of the demands placed on universities.

Social Movements Do More Than We Can Know at a Given Time

In Radical Possibilities, Anyon discusses challenges in urban schools that persist despite intervening policies. Education policies are limited reformist strategies if they do not account for how metropoles are constructed based upon foundational relationships of inequity. Rather than more educational policy, Anyon calls for a new social movement that engages with poverty, housing policy, transit services, unemployment, and other economic disparities that impact educational experiences in urban areas. She writes,

We have been attempting educational reform in U.S. cities for over three decades—and there is little significant districtwide improvement that we can point to. As a nation, we have been counting on education to solve the problems of unemployment, joblessness, and poverty for many years. But education did not cause these problems, and education cannot solve them. (Anyon, 2014, p. 3)

Anyon moves away from a far-too-narrow understanding of educational improvement fixated on the education system alone. Instead, she is more convinced by social movements as “catalysts for the enactment of social justice legislation, progressive court decisions, and other equity policies” (Anyon, 2014, p. 127). For her, social movements have made (perhaps the most significant) societal changes, including in urban education. Anyon spends the final section of her book detailing social movement theories, strategies for building social movements, and the importance of centering education in social movement efforts. In other words, Anyon really believed in social movements.

In our research project Making Sense of Movements (2018–2020), Eve and Sefanit worked with a group of graduate students and Black and Indigenous youth co-researchers in Toronto to look closely at the work of Black and Indigenous social movements of our time. Idle No More was founded in 2012, and has focused on Indigenous sovereignty, protecting the environment from government and industry degradation, and bringing attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people. The Movement for Black Lives was founded in 2013 and has focused on demilitarizing and dismantling the police state, as well as improving Black life through enhanced educational and employment opportunities. We focused on these two social movements in part because they were and are happening simultaneously, but also because they are led by Indigenous and Black peoples who are trying to address systems of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness. It was also important for us to think about Idle No More and The Movement for Black Lives with young people because youth are at the forefront of these movements (Tuck & Yang, 2014).

Our project invited Black and Indigenous young people between 14 and 18 years of age to think about how these social movements were interacting with their decisions for the future, that is, postsecondary decisions and/or what they believed was possible. Much of the work in Making Sense of Movements was centered on imagining better futures. Like Anyon, the young people took seriously the role that social movements have in creating such futures. We foregrounded the importance of Tkaronto/Toronto as a place that young people were gathering so that together we could consider how these movements inform not only their sense of selves and futures, but also their relationship(s) to this urban place. In other words, what does it mean to be coming of age in this particular movement moment in Toronto?

To guide our inquiry, we crafted a variation of photovoice as a method where young people could learn how to take pictures that record and reflect issues of importance to them, and use those pictures as the basis for group discussion through specific prompts and questions. As a methodology, photovoice is action-oriented (Wang & Burris, 1997); it sparks critical reflection and provides an opportunity for participants to engage in analyses of social issues.

One of the things that was important for us to do in Making Sense of Movements was to imagine futures in which the Movement for Black Lives and Indigenous sovereignty, land back, and environmental movements are successful. We did this imagining in conversations, mappings, photographs, and workshops with artists. Youth told us that they saw organizers of these movements connecting with young people to bring about change. They told us that they couldn’t wait for a world in which they don’t have to be afraid to go into certain places, in which they are fully supported as queer and two-spirit youth, and in which they can trust that they will be treated fairly by the institutions and systems they move in and out of. While reading and discussing the platform on the Movement for Black Lives, one youth co-researcher told us that the fulfillment of the platform:

would change my life . . . it would make me feel like I am in a more secure and fair place. . . . I would be more open to have faith in [the government] and everything, instead of questioning what they are doing and if what they are doing is right. . . . Overall I would feel more secure and happy about the place that I live, and less worried about how the future will turn out and if everything will be alright. [I won’t have to worry] that we have to fight for things that we shouldn’t have to fight for. I wouldn’t have to question if [other people believe] that we deserve justice or anything like that.

(Interview excerpt, March 2018)

Youth in Making Sense of Movements had a sense of the long-term impact of social movements while understanding that social movements do more than we can know at any given time. Youth talked to us about what these movements would mean for them, but they talked more fully about what these movements might mean for their children, and their children’s children. Understanding that these movements are for them, for their futures, and for the futures they are helping to bring about now was an important aspect of their theorizing about these movements.

Mentoring the Next Generation of Scholars

We have only gestured toward three of the many unfinished conversations between Jean and her students, and their students. In the years since Jean passed away, her students have gathered online and in person to speak to one another about her generosity, her humor, her fierce intellect, and genuine approaches to support. Eve remembers that when she was starting out in doing participatory research with youth, Jean stepped in to support her in ways that have had inestimable effects. Eve was working with youth co-researchers aged 14–20 on a project about school pushout and the GED, and at the time, they didn’t have space to meet. They would gather in various rooms in the university building, and sometimes there were complaints from other graduate students and professors that teenagers shouldn’t be in those spaces—because they should be spaces dedicated to work and study. Jean created space for this work with youth by offering Eve a key to her faculty office, and even a really big drawer in one of her file cabinets. In a university in which space was so tight that the offering of a drawer could make or break a project, this form of support seems simple at its surface; however, the act of making space for youth to work and study in university spaces—especially Black and Indigenous youth, youth of color, queer and trans youth, and disabled youth—has become a throughline in Eve’s work.

From Sefanit’s perspective, coauthoring an essay with her mentor about her mentor has been an insightful process. While writing, we sometimes took long breaks in which Eve would share stories and fond memories of working with Jean. Through these memories, Sefanit understood how Jean’s mentorship has stayed with Eve—not only in her scholarly work, but in the way she mentors a next generation of scholars. The stories Eve shared about her relationship with Jean, some of which are in this essay, reveal the parts of Jean’s mentorship that have been deeply influential. The focus on listening, the belief in students’ work and projects, the acts of generosity, and the intentions toward creating lasting relationships are aspects of Jean’s support that Sefanit now experiences through Eve’s mentorship.

Threaded throughout this essay is the grief of unfinished conversations, the missing of a mentor, the appreciation for what her take on the world, on the work, might be. What remains possible, though, is for us to continue to have these conversations with one another. To create conversations that extend beyond the time frames of a lived life, a mentoring relationship, a historical moment, a place. Perhaps this is what a meaningful and mutual mentoring relationship can give way to: unfinished conversations to be had with other scholars, other generations of scholars, youth co-researchers, and our communities.