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(De)Constructing Classroom Instruction: Theoretical and Methodological Contributions of the Postmodern Sciences for Crimino-Legal Education

NCJ Number
157336
Journal
Social Pathology Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1995) Pages: 115-148
Author(s)
B A Arrigo
Date Published
1995
Length
34 pages
Annotation
This paper examines discourse, subjectivity, and knowledge as central themes in the process of determining what happens in a classroom featuring justice-related education.
Abstract
The analysis used theoretical and methodological concepts from psychoanalytic semiotics, constitutive criminology, and postmodern feminist ideology. The discussion analyzes language, thought, power, and desire in the context of discourse analysis. It applies these phenomena to criminological and legal instruction, traces them to the phallic economy of sameness (the logic of identity), and then deconstructs them. The essay concludes by exploring the contents of a linguistic coordinates replacement discourse. It considers how the imagination and its elements of metaphor, symbol, and myth appear to offer some hope for developing a sign system more inclusive of and receptive to difference, multiplicity, ambiguity, and unpredictability. It indicates how these coordinates represent the disempowered students' epistemology and thus form the basis of an alternative instructional paradigm for education in criminal justice and legal studies. Notes and approximately 175 references (Author summary modified)

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