Download PDFTactically Transgressive Classrooms
In our view, the traditional transactional model of education merely invites students to attend to social justice, providing space to avoid resolving the ways injustice is attendant to our classrooms and places of work. By contrast, a tactically transgressive approach disquiets hierarchies and dominant narratives within the classroom, creating bridges between student and teacher in order to agitate towards social justice together.
Tactical transgression, especially for (multiply) marginalized instructors, calls for caution as well as risk-taking and invitation: we must care for ourselves and ask students to be transgressive with us. Being tactically transgressive distributes power across the coalition, throughout the classroom. Decentralizing the responsibility and acting tactically within and against the frameworks of an institution is crucial, as to act tactically requires moments of discomfort and subverting the narratives of the academy that would appropriate and sanitize social justice towards neoliberal ends. As we explore in our narratives, building coalition is not about prioritizing the comfort of a majority or those who are comfortable in an oppressive status quo but rather developing a classroom that can become a coalitional space.
Thus, we see graduate student-instructors' unique positionality as an opportunity to act for ends beyond the classroom or institution–the “greater good.” Ultimately, our goal is to invite those of us still “in process” (Restaino, 2012) and navigate many in-betweens to strive toward a tactically transgressive classroom. Before we might facilitate a classroom that embodies tactical transgression, though, we hope that other graduate student-instructors begin with tactical moments to foster equity in small but meaningful ways.