Faculty of Education, University of Calgary

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Power and criticism: Poststructural investigations in education.
(Advances in Contemporary Educational Thought, Vol. 2) by C.H. Cherryholmes
Review by: Ursula A. Kelly
Source: The Journal of Educational Thought (JET) / Revue de la Pense ducative, Vol. 24,
No. 1 (April 1990), pp. 64-66
Published by: Faculty of Education, University of Calgary
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23768477
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64 The Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 24, No. 1, April 1990

Cherryholmes, C.H. (1988). Power and criticism: Poststructural

investigations in education. (Advances in Contemporary Educational

Thought, Vol. 2). New York: Teachers College Press, 223 pp.,
$22.95 (cloth).
This book is both exciting and infuriating: exciting as it offers a sustained
poststructuralist (largely Derridean) critique of dominant educational foundations
and infuriating as it does so in a stale, textbook-like style which silences many

consistently marginalized educational discourses. As well, while appearing to be

theoretically comprehensive, Cherryholmes' argument is actually theoretically
incomplete. Cherryholmes' project is "to show that one attempt after another to
provide foundational accounts for educational thought and practice cannot sustain
a close reading. The results point to a critical pragmatism" (p. 13). Attached to
this work is a vision of, and hope for, positive social change in which human

dignity is enhanced and social inequalities diminished. These, Cherryholmes

argues, are "an important characteristic and outcome of contemporary educational

systems" (p. 164).

In arguing the discursive, material basis of traditional educational foundations,
Cherryholmes provides a valuable service to those of us who work from the

margins surrounded by more dominant voices espousing construct validity,

empiricism, the binary opposition of theory and practice, and the structuralism of

Bloom, Tyler, and Schwab. Cherryholmes rigorously critiques the "standard

fare" of educational discourse, at once capturing the complexity of the project of
critical pragmatism, while simultaneously critiquing its foundations as well.
My major reservations with Cherryholmes' arguments lie more in what is
missing than in what is included. Cherryholmes names the cultural and historical
specificity of the relations of power which traditional educational discourses
represent, but she fails to call into the present, through extended example, some
of those voices silenced, oppressed, and even effaced through the constitution of

these discourses. Acts of "giving voice" to these constituencies would entail

much more than Cherryholmes' few passing references. Rather, Cherryholmes'
project could have been strengthened had she chosen detailed educational examples,
of which there are many, from the voices marginalized by race, class, gender,
and sexuality.

Glaringly obvious is Cherryholmes' complete omission of feminist

poststructuralism which offers a sustained critique of educational foundations,
institutions, and practices and whose adherents have contributed much to the
ongoing dialogue around liberatory education and critical pedagogy. Chris Weedon's
Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory offers an excellent introduction to

this position. Cherryholmes argues that we "learn from excluded opportunities

as well as those overtly provided" (p. 133). What, then, is to be gleaned from
such exclusion about the status of feminist knowledge in academia? How is it
that even those theorists who operate from a frame of reference which attempts to

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The Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 24. No. 1. April 1990 65

address unjust differentials of power commit such errors of omission? Lacking,

too, are accounts of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of subjectivity and desire.
While Cherryholmes acknowledges that "to the extent that ideology and power
arrangements infiltrate our thinking and actions, they shape our subjectivities,
that is, how and what we think about ourselves and so act" (p. 6), she does not
provide a fundamental account of the making of the subject, the work of education
and schooling. Cherryholmes does not articulate the importance of desire beyond
recognition that "power helps shape subjective feelings and beliefs, our subjectives.
Often power is most effective and efficient when it operates as desire, because
desire often makes the effects of power invisible" (p. 35). I would argue that
until we understand more fully the workings of desire, we are immobilized in
effecting significant subject transformation, the necessary precursor to positive

social change. These gaps in Cherryholmes' arguments are areas into which
feminist poststructuralism provides important insights.
The notions of contradiction and resistance are also conceptually underdeveloped.

While Cherryholmes notes that critical pragmatism is based on the necessity that

"discourse in the field [of curriculum] is accepted as fragmented, pushed and

pulled, contradictory and incomplete" (p. 143), she does not explore in any
depth the significance of contradiction. Nor does she provide readers with an
explicit account of resistance, the possibilities of reading against, necessary to a

well-grounded understanding of how change is possible in a world in which

subjectivity is produced in and through language.
Among the concepts developed by this book, I deeply appreciate and support
the notion of textual power which incorporates "an asymmetrical relationship
between readers and texts wherein readers, in experiencing texts, produce multiple
readings, interpretations, and criticism," a relationship "weighted on the side of

the reader" (p. 154). Yet I find the term textual power itself is ambiguous.
Clearly meant to attest to the power of readers to produce texts, it too easily
suggests the power often given the text as the source of meaning. Catherine
Belsey's feminist poststructuralist notion of reader power locates agency more
precisely.
Cherryholmes argues that "teaching is a reading of the textbook, school, and
society" (p. 73). But, like all reading, it is deeply imbricated with relations of

power which encompass, at least, issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and
many others. While Cherryholmes provides the reader with important readings of

traditional educational foundations, she fails to present a sufficiently strong

theoretical framework which might enable readers to know differently the extent

and possible limits of their power in subverting the dominant texts of our social
world.

It seems fair to expect, when a writer argues for a political project such as
critical pragmatism, that she also provide those who might take up this project

with the necessary insights which might allow them "to exert control over
practice and simply react to it" (p. 6). Cherryholmes spends far too much time
deconstructing arguments to the detriment of constructing the grounds (always

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66 The Journal of Educational Thought. Vol. 24, No. I, April 1990

open to deconstruction) for a critical pragmatism. As well, while I appreciate the

inter-textuality of Cherry holmes' work, I felt inundated by lengthy references to
other texts. Just as Cherryholmes' extensive critique of dominant educational
foundations diffuses, somewhat, a stronger articulation of the vision of critical
pragmatism, so, too, does the constant citing of others obscure the voice of this
writer.

Despite these criticisms, I believe this is an important book. There is here a

wonderful blend of the familiar and the strange for anyone wishing to be initiated

into a particular form of poststructuralism in education. Although Cherryholmes

sometimes falls into the same traps as those which she critiques for example,
her use of the binary opposites of vulgar and critical pragmatism she is well
able to sustain and turn on herself even the dialectic of critical pragmatism, the
"continual movement between the constitution of a methodology designed to
reveal distortive influences of interests, ideology, and power and subsequent
criticism of that approach" (p. 97). This text almost begs adoption in any course
in which a poststructuralist critique of educational foundations is the focus. I
might even slip it into the mailboxes of some of my colleagues.

Ursula A. Kelly
Saint Mary's University

Timmons, G. (1988). Education, industrialization, and selection.

London: Routledge, 242 pp., $51.00 (hardcover).
As we approach the turn of the century, issues of social justice are once more
moving to the forefront of our collective consciousness. One such issue concerns
the ubiquitous, albeit highly controversial, practice of streaming students. As of

late, debate concerning streaming has grown more vociferous as attempts are
made either to dismantle or, alternatively, secure and expand the practice within

school systems. But while streaming and the concerns of racial, class, and
gender equality inextricably tied to it have received greater attention, the relation

between education and selection on a more general basis has yet to be clarified.
In his book Education, Industrialization, and Selection, George Timmons suggests,

"there is much confusion in our thinking about the ways in which secondary
education contributes to the process of selection in industrialized societies" (p.
1). For some, according to Timmons, the relationship "can be seen as tenuous or
diffuse, suggesting that something like market forces are in operation. On the
other hand, looked at from a different political angle, the relationship could be
described as . . . part of a conspiracy hatched up by an elite to keep the lower

orders in subjection" (p. 1).

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