The partitioning of public education

Public schools are one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—and are also some of our most unequal institutions. In Unsettling Choice, Ujju Aggarwal explores how the expansion of choice-based programs led to greater inequality and segregation in a gentrifying New York City neighborhood during the years following the Great Recession, mobilizing mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side while solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private. Here, Aggarwal is joined in conversation with Sabina Vaught.

Ujju Aggarwal is assistant professor of anthropology and experiential learning at The New School. She is author of Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education and coeditor of What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality.

Sabina Vaught is professor at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Kinloch Commons for Critical Pedagogy and Leadership. Vaught is coauthor of The School-Prison Trust and author of Compulsory: Education and the Dispossession of Youth in a Prison School.  

Episode references:

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Christina Heatherton

Cindy Katz

Selma James

João Costa Vargas

Morgan Talty / Fire Exit

Praise for the book:

“A must-read to understand the racialized violence inherent within one of the most fundamental aspects of education in the United States: the logic of choice.”
—Damien Sojoyner

“Read this book, and be moved and transformed.”
—Sabina Vaught

Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education by Ujju Aggarwal is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Episode Transcript

Ujju Aggarwal (00:04):
Choice came to be understood as not only just the
way things are, but the waythings would always be to some
degree. That it reallyconstrained how we imagined not
just history, but then potentialfutures.

Sabina Vaught (00:20):
I think my job is to ask sort of ever more
complicated questions, but notto arrive at succinct or
comfortable answers. Andmethodologically, that's really
hard.

Ujju Aggarwal (00:38):
Hi. My name is Uju Agarwal, and I'm author of
Race, Rights, and thePartitioning of Public
Education.

Sabina Vaught (00:47):
And I am Sabina Vaught, and I am here to be in
conversation with Uju aboutthis, wonderful book published
by the University of MinnesotaPress, and I'll also share that
I, have a coauthored book withthe press, The School Prison
Trust, with Brian Brayboy andJeremiah Chin. So I'm so excited

(01:09):
to be in this conversation withyou, Uju.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:13):
Yeah. So am I. Thank you so much, Sabina, for
being part of this conversationwith me and for the many ways
you've been part of the journeyof this book.

Sabina Vaught (01:24):
Absolutely. It's been a gift to be part of this.
We're thinking both about peoplewho've read the book, but also
maybe listeners who haven't yet.And so I wanna start by getting
into some of the core ideas, thesort of core concepts of the
book. And very early on, pagenine, you conceptualize this

(01:48):
framework of partitionedpublics, and you write,
partitioned publics are, quote,the embeddedness of a market
based infrastructure within therealm of the public that
requires competition andcultivates a myopia of consumer
citizenship, ensuring thatconditional inclusion

(02:09):
anticipates and is predicated onexclusion and inequality
resulting in the continuedproduction of hierarchical and
racialized groupdifferentiation.
That's such a beautiful andclear and sophisticated
conceptualization, and I imaginethat people would be excited to

(02:30):
hear about the multiple globalforces that came into shaping
that and the theoreticaltraditions in which you're
deeply engaged that shape that.So I'm wondering if you would
just talk a little bit aboutpartition publics.

Ujju Aggarwal (02:47):
Sure. Thank you for that question. Maybe what
I'll begin with is backing up alittle bit to how I got to some
of the questions at the heart ofthis book and with what I'm
trying to unsettle aboutthinking about choice and how I
arrive at partition publics. Asyou know, I came to many of the
questions through a lot of yearsof work as a community

(03:10):
organizer, with others workingto build a community,
organization called the Centerfor Immigrant Families, a
collectively run community basedpopular education center of poor
and working class immigrantwomen of color and community
members in Manhattan Valley, inNew York City. And as our
organizing grew, we wereincreasingly focused on the

(03:33):
intersection betweengentrification, intensified
public school segregation, andschool choice.
One of the things that, wasimportant for us was that we
understood our work to really beabout fighting for schools that
would reflect, serve, andrespect the communities that
they were part of. And so inthat way, we understood our work
to be fighting for somethingthat didn't exist yet, kind of

(03:56):
like all community organizingdoes, right, for a vision that
was really about enacting thetype of social transformation
that we worked for. And alsotrying to creatively engage a
contradiction of what it meantthat some of these very same
institutions that had beenplaces of harm for many and
neglect were places that we wereworking to transform. At the

(04:17):
same time, in the context ofgentrification, aggressive
gentrification hitting thecommunity, we understood the
fight for public schools toreally be tied to the fight for
over place and community. So myown research really tried to
follow some of thecontradictions, that, we
encountered in the course ofthis work, where the dominant

(04:37):
kind of narrative was telling usthat the problem we needed to
fight was privatization.
And that wasn't untrue, but italso didn't always fit people's
experiences. And so then therewas a question of, well, how do
we figure out how to actuallytake what we're learning from
the ground, from people'sexperiences, from our own
encounters, and make a theorythat fits that? A lot of these

(05:01):
contradictions grew even morepronounced in the wake of the
great recession when in responseto the violence of austerity
that was being pushed forward,particular across in lots of
school districts across thecountry, in New York City,
particularly, this meant sweepsof school closings in black and
brown communities, but alsomeant a concerted effort by

(05:26):
district officials and others toexpand choice based policies, in
the public schools, particularlythe public elementary schools.
Choice at the time meant magnetschools, gifted and talented
programs, dual languageprograms, charter programs,
general education programs, thelist goes on. Right?
And the expansion of thesechoice policies was often done

(05:49):
with the mindset of kind ofcourting families with economic
capital on their side, who wereconsidering at that moment,
thinking about making theirswitch. Right? Everybody was
kind of in a more in anincreasingly precarious
financial situation, and thatwas relative depending on where
you were located, of course.But, there was this new quote,

(06:12):
unquote market that people werelooking to maybe capitalize on.
Right?
Under the guise of saving publiceducation, was how it was
narrated, was to say, okay. Thisis gonna save our public
schools. And while a greaterinvestment of more and more
people in public education maysound like a good thing, it
really ended up meaningincreased, exclusion for poor

(06:35):
and working class families inthe district, in which I worked,
and later came to research wherepublic schools had been kind of,
again, a place of neglect andoften harm, right, state neglect
and otherwise harm. So there wasthis strange moment in which, on
one hand, these places, thesespaces, these state

(06:59):
infrastructures that no but veryfew people seem to care about,
except those who did try andmake a place out of them. All of
a sudden came to be aboutencroachment, or some people
described it maybe hedging yourbets.
Right? Getting in on the ground,investing before this valuation
of the school went up before itbecame super competitive to get

(07:22):
into. So that was, I think,countered again by this
understanding as one kind ofparticipant, longtime tenant
organizer in New York Citypublic housing put it that
public schools represented kindof, quote, unquote, the last of
it, the last of it in a placethat was already, as somebody

(07:42):
else kind of put it, Christinain the book kind of, narrates a
place that was already notimportant. So one of the things
I tried to kind of followthrough this framework of
partitioned publics was thedifferential rights claims that
people made as they worked tonavigate, access to public

(08:03):
schools and the differentmeanings of the public that came
out of that space. Through theframework then of pub
partitioned publics, one of thethings I try to center or
destabilize is how partition,which represents kind of an
ongoing, and relationalcontingent separation.

(08:24):
Right? One that is ideologicaland material on one hand that is
also kind of ongoing and so notyet complete that works through
scales of political and legalrights, but also through a
cultural logic makes us pushback on this idea that it is
only privatization of anotherwise, quote, unquote,

(08:47):
public good that we need to pushback against. I'm trying to also
work at this boundary, orsupposed binary between the
public and private, between themarket and the states, between
the consumer and the citizen, toreally think about how does that
expand, how we seeneoliberalism, how we map it,

(09:08):
how the state is not simply anadministrator of an expanding
private realm, but instead, howneoliberalism, or logic of
neoliberalism was really tied tothe structuring of rights as
individual private choices inthe post Brown period. The

(09:29):
entrenched market within thepublic that engenders a consumer
citizenship within each of usthat really curtails how we
imagine ourselves in relation toeach other, the type of public
we can even imagine. It works atmultiple scales from the scale
of legal and political rights,from the scale of social

(09:51):
relations, the kind of culturallogic that engenders, but really
kind of it lives within us aswell at the level of our
political imaginations or whatwe imagine might be possible.

Sabina Vaught (10:04):
One of the things that strikes me about partition
as a, as you said, incompletekind of ongoing scalar process
is that while you're describinga very particular place and a
time, It also has global reach.And I wonder if you wanna talk

(10:26):
about you know, we often in, Ithink, in so called US based
educational studies, get rightlyaccused of being insular,
exceptionalizing the The US,whether it's in the critique or
in the praise or, you know, inthe observation of the problems.
I think one of the possibilitieshere is to observe the ways in

(10:49):
which this is so focused in onelocation and yet so drawn from
global practices so that it'snot derivative and exceptional,
but in fact, tapping into theselarger histories of partition.
And I I wonder if you wanna talkabout that.

Ujju Aggarwal (11:08):
Yeah. No. Thank you for that question. I mean, I
really agree with, kind of thecritique that you're raising
around, US Education Studies. Ithink one you know, I mean, my
reference to partition comesfrom two places.
One is Lenin, and then the otheris kind of, right, my own
family's experience with theframework and term, which was

(11:32):
something I grew up with kind ofhearing about and was, I think,
always I understood, I didn'tunderstand why other people
didn't understand it. And sobecause it was such a kind of
active and ongoing separation ofpeople that had to be justified

(11:54):
through violence, throughideology, through border making,
through all of these structuresin an ongoing way that was never
very stable, that push backagainst, that people's own
experiences didn't necessarilyalways fit within. It was a
helpful term to me in terms of,on one hand, think about what we
were struggling for and againstwas connected to, as you're

(12:18):
saying, other global struggles.Right? And kind of the work on
the ground.
What was the work on the groundthat people were really trying
to do in place, even in distinctplaces? How is that connected?
Right? And on the other hand,push back against this very kind
of normative way thatsegregation choice came to be

(12:41):
understood as not only just theway things are, but the way
things would always be to somedegree. Right?
That it really constrained howwe imagined not just history,
but then potential futures.

Sabina Vaught (12:58):
So I think your description of encountering
people's unfamiliarity orconfusion around the idea of
partition is such a beautifulsegue to the next question,
which is around this frameworkof forgotten places. Around page
45, you really animate thisframework of forgotten places.

(13:22):
And I'm I'm wondering if youwanna go there or you wanna just
talk broadly about why thatframework is important to why
it's connected to partition, whyit's important to think about
this set of interrelatedquestions that you're addressing

(13:42):
across scale as people sort ofrelationally make place.

Ujju Aggarwal (13:47):
Yeah. Thank you, Sabina. The idea of forgotten
places comes from Ruth WilsonGilmore's framing of it, really
connected to this idea of thetwinned forces of organized
violence and organizedabandonment. Right? So it's
never kind of accidental.

(14:07):
It's not just forgotten, but itis born out of that and out of
the dialectical process of alsothen capitalist development,
right, that capitalistdevelopment and racial
capitalism necessitates. And soI think there was this question
of what did it mean on one handthat people were working to make

(14:29):
collective life in a anotherwise forgotten place,
again, marked by organ the kindof twin forces of organized
violence, organized abandonment,and hanging on the balance, a
very delicate balance betweenstate infrastructures of schools
and housing that allowed forthis kind of provisional
collective life that people wereforging in this place. And then

(14:52):
one of those things kind offalls out of balance, comes to
be a space of quote, unquoteinvestment and literally
investment, encroachment inother words. Right? And and so
there's this idea again, of whatdoes that mean, is is, again,
Christina put it that somethingthat was already not important

(15:15):
just got killed.
Right? And so so thinking aboutthen, what does that tell us?
And again, going back to whatyou were saying earlier about
shifting away from the dominantdiscourse or kind of
exceptionalism or maybenarrowness of some of the ways
education studies has been,practiced to really think about,

(15:36):
well, what does that tell usabout what people are fighting
for when they are fighting toprotect their public schools?
They're not fighting for like,people are not duped. I think
there is a way that sometimespeople would certain political
organizers might say, well,that's, you know, not the right
fight, but I don't know who's todetermine that.

(15:59):
And I think part of the questionfor all of us then is to
consider again this, well, howdo we understand more broadly
about what people are fightingfor versus what it appears to
kind of be the demand?

Sabina Vaught (16:13):
Right. So what they're fighting for. And and in
that, you really talk about andlisten to the how. So the the
what they're fighting for, as Iread, is anchored in how they're
fighting and how they'refighting together. And I think
that takes us to this frameworkof care.

(16:34):
So you talked about, and justnow, sort of provisional
collective life. And, you know,you talk about care throughout,
but on page one zero three, youreally start talking about
mapping care or kind of assertthat framework for mapping care.
And so I'm curious if you wouldthink about you know, you've

(16:55):
talked about partitions andborders and the place making,
what's what's the sort ofimportance of the geography of
this provisional collectivelife, the geography of care,
particularly in that twinnedorganized abandonment, violence,

(17:16):
neglect, etcetera, that makes aplace called a forgotten place
or experienced as a forgottenplace or as as a a place where
things are killed, as you quotedChristina saying. So that's a
long winding way of saying, I'mexcited to hear you talk about
the sort of geography of care inrelation to these other,

(17:41):
observations and questions thatyou've shared.

Ujju Aggarwal (17:45):
Yeah. No. Thank you. I learned so much about how
to think about care and dialoguewith you. So thank you for
helping me.
It was kind of a few things. Onewas that so the women I
accompanied in my research at aHead Start center was a kind of

(18:06):
intergenerational community thatwas bounded by both geography
and income. And part of thesignificance of that was that
people had accompanied eachother, not just through their
children being in preschool,but, through life. Right? Many
of the women at the Head Startcenter were former parents
there.
They literally made lifetogether in many ways. And

(18:28):
again, that's not to say, I feellike people sometimes ask, well,
it was just a happy community.No, not at all. You know, but it
was a community where people didunderstand each other and of
life more generally beyond eachother as non disposable. One of
the things we kept coming upagainst in this space as we were
kind of navigating again theincreased exclusion that choice

(18:52):
was enacting, the expansion ofchoice policies was enacting
with people saying, well, it'sthat, you know, you have to do
the right thing.
You have to kind of like, theseparents who gain access, parents
with economic capital on theirside, you know, they really
care. And that hit up againstthe women at the Head Start
Center. In a particular way, ithit up against all of us because

(19:15):
how is unequal access andexclusion defined as care that
didn't really make sense? And itwas defined as such by parents,
by school officials,administrators, others. Right?
So it was kind of a lot ofpeople in the mix kind of using
this language. At the same time,care was mobilized. It felt like

(19:35):
two also then makes sense. AndCindy Katz brings this up,
right, in her work, this ideathat capitalism requires
increasing precarity always. Andso in the space of increasing
precarity, I found that in someplaces, particularly amongst
those with, economic capital ontheir side where they had forged

(19:56):
kind of schools that women atthe Head Start Center could
often not gain access to thatwere maybe grounded in
progressive pedagogy orotherwise defined, the space of
care became more and moreindividualized.
Right? It became more and moreabout how do you do this job
that is never complete, right,for you on one hand of caring

(20:21):
right, and yet the space of careshrank and shrank and shrank and
shrank. And so it becameincreasingly individualized. It
became increasingly narratedalso and understood outside of
the material conditions thatproduced it. Right?
So it was about care producingsecurity somehow as if it could

(20:42):
do so. Because if it could doso, then the world might look
different. But, but anyway, sothat was what I encountered in
one space. And then at the HeadStart Center, it was what
happens despite boundless careand precarity in so many kind of
dimensions. How do you measurethat?
You can't, and that's not reallythe goal, to create another

(21:04):
index. But what it did reallymake evident was that contrary
to these other spaces where careand the space of maybe care and
social relations was againshrinking and shrinking and
shrinking, In the space of thehead start center, it not only

(21:24):
was, practiced as more expansivebeyond an individual family or
any individual kind of case,there was also an understanding
where individualism wasunderstood to be something that
was a threat to safety. Not onlydid the women at the Head Start
Center often name choice asfalse, as a setup, as something

(21:48):
that was, like, not true. When,Trump was president and there
were a number of raids going onin schools, even though New York
City is supposed to be asanctuary city, this was still
going on. Right?
And we know kind of the limitsof sanctuary as well. But one of
the things that we were doingwas kind of making emergency
plans, one morning at the HeadStart Center. And as we started

(22:12):
making them, people were mappingthe relationalities of and
structures that really were partof daily life, part of social
reproduction as it happened. AndI think one of the things that
that showed was, well, in thatcase, it was also that legal
rights, political rights rarelydo protect us, but it was

(22:33):
another instantiation of peoplerecognizing and knowing that it
is through our relationalitiesthat we forge those communities
of safety and protection foreach other. So, yeah, that was
one of the things.
If I tried to map through thisidea of care, and it really I
think one of the things that Ifound really helpful to kind of
keep coming back to was thisquote by Selma James, where she

(22:56):
really pushes back on this ideathat it's a personal that's
political and tries to regroundus in this idea that it's really
the political that shapes ourpersonal lives, that gives shape
to our personal lives and how weimagine and enact our social
relations. So in doing that, Ithink it helps to also then
shift away from this idea of,well, everybody cares, the

(23:19):
problem, you know, how how do wefix the broken system and so
forth, to really thinking abouthow are our relations really
shaped by this system of choiceembedded in racial capitalism,
necessitating enclosure. Andalso then I think one of the
things, you know, that I findhopeful is that in a lot of

(23:41):
organizing spaces that I've beenin, there's this never ending
conversation between, do we workthrough the state or do we work
through prefigurative politics?Right? As if the two are in
contradiction.
They might be, but they're notnecessarily antagonistic. Right?
They might and they might beantagonistic at different times
and places, but they're notnecessarily so. And so I think

(24:04):
one of the things that I findhopeful again through, again,
this space, many other spaces,it's not an exceptional space,
but it and it is an everydayspace, is to think about where
the practices of anotherpolitics is already being done.
It's not something that we haveto invent or go kind of think

(24:26):
about how do we kind of do thisright or how do we get the right
group of people together.
To go back to your questionaround the significance of a
forgotten place, people areoften, again, not in perfect
ways, but we in ways that we canlearn from, practicing already,
systems and and creatingknowledge that can be really,

(24:50):
necessary, again, to a radicalkind of reimagining of rights,
of belonging, of of anything wemight envision.

Sabina Vaught (24:57):
Well, and I think to your point there, anytime
something is so vigorously coopted, it's a map that something
already exists that needs to beco opted for the power
structures not to be decimatedby it. I wonder if this sort of,
rabid co optation of care intoall these different you know,

(25:23):
into, market economies,ideology, the sort of
hyperindividualization of care,even into the scholarship as
sort of cookie making and, youknow, love and fun. I mean,
cookies are great, but that'snot that that's the cooptation.
Right? That it's the absorptionof something that actually has

(25:46):
radical transformative practice,as you said, currently.
And the there's a fear, sothere's a cooptation to, defang
it, take the teeth out, make itsoft, You know? Make cookies you
can eat without teeth, I guess.So so I think there's just such
a profound intervention thatyou're making here. And that

(26:10):
and, again, that interventionisn't to say people aren't
practicing it, practicing it,but it's an intervention into
the literature on schooling andinto, the relationship between
these economies and these forcesand schooling. So I hope people
listening will get very excitedabout the way you're engaging
care politically, materially,geographically, and we'll we'll

(26:34):
jump in to kind of, grapple withthat.
And to grapple with the way way,I think, until I read your work,
I was perhaps aggravated by thecoaptation of care, but not
particularly insightful aboutwhat the the actual, self

(26:57):
determined forms of its practiceare that were being co opted. So
I think your work is just, ajust a tremendous intervention
there.

Ujju Aggarwal (27:08):
Thank you, Sabina. I mean, that's ironic
because I feel like I learned alot from you around how to think
about care.

Sabina Vaught (27:15):
One of the things you always do so beautifully,
whether you're writing ortalking, is to engage the
thinking of other scholars. Butyou're never derivative. And by
that, I mean, you're not sort ofjust reproducing what they've
said,

Ujju Aggarwal (27:35):
but

Sabina Vaught (27:35):
really extending, reflecting on, deepening,
modifying, complicating. Sodoing what I think of as the
theoretical fun and mandate ofour work, which is to to be to
be in an in a real conversationconceptually. And I think this

(27:58):
is such an important model,particularly for doctoral
students. If you're listening,hey. This is a great, great
book.
Please read it. But, especiallydoctoral students in, you know,
what gets called the globalnorth, where there's a lot of
pressure to sort of live throughthe, lit review and the sort of

(28:18):
the analysis, it loses the theearly scholars' voice. So I'm
wondering if you can help peoplethink about what it means to be
in careful conversation andthrough that thinking anew about
what we actually observe andwhat we actually participate in.

Ujju Aggarwal (28:41):
Yeah. Thank you, Sabina. I mean, again, I learn I
think you really helped me alongthe way center what I was
thinking instead of beingderivative. So part of it is
being, I think, in conversationwith good people, which is
necessary, I think first andforemost. Apart from being in

(29:01):
conversation with you, withothers around, what is it?
Right? If we're not writing abook report of sorts, how do we
kind of think with I think partof it, I I think, is a
sensibility maybe that I gainthrough organizing as well

(29:22):
because you're always learningand in conversation with a
larger movement, but your workis very, very particular and
grounded. Right? So to imaginethat whether it's a historical
model or another contemporarymodel that is somewhere else,
you would move and transplantinto your own community makes no
sense at all, and it would be afailure. But, of course, then

(29:44):
what you're working on can't bein isolation from, right, needs
to be in dialogue with.
But it's kind of thinking aboutthe bigger questions of, well,
what is that work doing inplace? How is it doing it? What
is it kind of pushing backagainst? What is it making us

(30:05):
learn? Right?
Why is it using the method thatit's using? How is it thinking
about kind of time and place?Right? So I think what's really
odd to me sometimes is whenpeople will read something and
say, well, that's I don't relateto that. That's not my
experience.
You know? Well, that that's, Imean, that's fine. Our our

(30:29):
experiences are very particular,but it doesn't really help us
kind of think about, again, kindof what is being learned, that
and where that knowledge mightcirculate, how it might help
either other organizing or us tothink through other problems in

(30:50):
practice or praxis, how weactually think together and
alongside each other, but notimagining that we're replicating
or even trying to reproduceanything.

Sabina Vaught (31:03):
Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's so so helpful. I
say it a little more plainlywith students, but it's like if
you walked into a room full ofpeople who'd been, you know,
sitting around, maybe havingdrinks, talking about important
ideas for an hour, you wouldn'twalk into that room an hour late

(31:23):
and say, y'all are wrong. Youjust don't get it.
You also would not walk intothat room and just repeat back
to everyone exactly what theysaid to you. I mean, both
actions would be so odd. And soI think if we can just bring
those sensibilities you justdescribed, like, what are the
particularities that we'recollectively thinking through?

(31:46):
How do we listen to each other?How do we bring our own
experiences, how do we draw andgeneralize from larger
experiences.
You know, I think it's almostlike this sort of idea of
unlearning these sort ofstrange, almost like impulses to
replicate or to refute as firststeps. Right? So not my

(32:08):
experience or know you've got itwrong or, oh, let me just say
what you said and apply it to anew setting. And and those
impulses and thrusts are, youknow, powerful for doctoral
students to kind of contendwith.

Ujju Aggarwal (32:23):
Absolutely. Right. I think it's really about
how we are able to kind of see asituation in front of us
differently, in some ways, andwhat are we need a multiplicity
of perspectives to be able to dothat. Something that you do so
well in your work, which pushespast and unlearning, but also
towards a different way oflearning. You bring the reader

(32:46):
in really to dwell in the spaceof the intimate.
You bring us really close to thelives of the people you work
with, but never in an extractiveway. One that's relational,
engaging also your ownsubjectivity, and in many ways
also giving the reader apedagogical lesson on

(33:07):
reflexivity. One that I thinkfor a general reader can help us
consider our daily livesdifferently. And for those of us
doing ethnographic work alsomake us approach that work
differently. So it's reallysomething, to move from this
intimate space that you do, thatyou hold full of contradiction.

(33:30):
And out of there, build thesharpest theoretical insights
and observations. Again, that'snot extractive, but in relation.
And I remember, you know, oftenyou talking about the importance
of bringing people along withyou. Right? And this is so
something you do reallypowerfully in, your work.

(33:51):
And I wonder if you can talkabout your method here that
unsettles really what we'retrained to observe, how we're
supposed to know things, andmaybe what that up closeness you
think does.

Sabina Vaught (34:04):
This is a well, thank you first. And I think
this is such a big and importantquestion. I'm not sure there's
one way to answer that or a abest way to start. But one thing
I've been thinking aboutrecently is just this idea of
research design. And even thatframework presumes that we have,

(34:28):
like, an architectural knowledgeof other people's lives before
we relate to one another in reallife.
That presumption or that sort ofarrogance that we design
something that we then impose, Ithink, is a question I'm
grappling with. And and one ofthe things that helps me

(34:52):
methodologically is to live inthe questions and to not seek to
arrive at answers because, youknow, those of us who sort of
work in the dialectic, we're notsupposed to reconcile
contradictions. So, I think myjob is to ask sort of ever more

(35:12):
complicated questions, but notto arrive at succinct or
comfortable answers. Andmethodologically, that's really
hard because we're talking aboutthe practice of relating with
people for many purposes. Forme, I think this gets back to
what you're saying for a primarypurpose of telling multiple

(35:38):
stories.
I think design, moves us awayfrom inquiry and starts with
sort of resolution or conclusionthat we don't have. And that
said, that's challenging becauseif we project design, we have to
then figure out, I think, stilla relational practice and

(36:00):
process, not just sort of be afree for all because that is
itself a design that, has toomuch space for sort of, as you
pointed out, extraction. Sothat's one way I've been
thinking, and I don't know ifthat gets at part of your
question.

Ujju Aggarwal (36:17):
Yeah. It does so much. Thank you. I really I I'm
so excited to hear kind of whatyou're talking about because,
yeah, what you're sayingresonates so much, and it feels
very rooted pedagogically, whatyou're saying in terms of your
approach. It feels very orientedfor me and what I would refer to
as a popular education approachto research.

(36:39):
Right? How do we create a spacefor dialogue and new questions
and problem posing rather thanthis kind of direct move that is
very much rooted in finding asolution without kind of, or
coming to an answer, as yousaid. Right? Without necessarily

(37:00):
engaging, like you said, livingin the dialectic. That's really
helpful to me and I think is soimportant because it's counter
to, I think, how most of uslearn research methods, but it's
definitely within a lot ofeducation studies.
It's very different from howsocial science education

(37:20):
studies, right, is oriented morebroadly.

Sabina Vaught (37:24):
Yes. I think so. And I think, you know, one of
the beautiful things aboutanthropology or ethnographic
work through the discipline isthat there's a foot in the
humanities as much as or thereshould be a foot in the
humanities as much as a foot inthe social sciences. And so that

(37:46):
when we think of design, couldwe think not just of narrative
inquiry, but really honestly ofwhat would ethnographic method
drawn from the practice and formof the novel look like? What
would that mean to think about?
You know, you talked about theintimacies. Well, I think about

(38:08):
in this, most recent book that Iwrote with Brian and Jeremiah.
Jakes is the sort of protagonistof this book, and he's someone
that I met while he wasincarcerated in a prison for,
state identified boys. There's apassage in there toward the very
end where he notices a crack inmy tooth. I had this dentist who

(38:34):
repaired it cosmetically, so youcould see it's not there, which
is, you know you know, a littlesad because it's in the book,
but not on my face.
But he notices this this, chipor crack in my tooth, and it
matches his. And there's no sortof research design that could

(38:57):
tell me to sort of look forthese types of interactions or
then to, make sense of them inparticular ways, but it's rather
the sort of building of arelationship with him in which I
appreciate him as, unknowablyfull character. So person, if we

(39:20):
think of sort of characters innovels. Right? Character in the
story, that we're all sort ofdifferently living and all sort
of differently trying to telltoward, as you said, an
absolutely, transformed worldthat we're living in these

(39:43):
small, mundane, microinteractions that are really as
big as any any sort of newuniverse that we can imagine.

Ujju Aggarwal (39:53):
Yeah. And you do it so, so beautifully. There's
such a profoundintersubjectivity, and it makes
sense that need to at least havea foot in the humanities or
think about narrative inquiry. Ithink it's one of the many
things I learned so much fromyour work. Because I think a lot
of people will say it is fromparticipants that you build

(40:14):
theory, etcetera, etcetera, butthen you really do do that work
of doing it together.
Thank you for what you teach usthrough that.

Sabina Vaught (40:23):
Oh my goodness. Thank you for that. I think part
of what we do is just try to be,you know, media for for for
other people's stories. Youknow, it's a balance between the
sort of very careful, thoroughattention to every element of
what we're doing and the lettinggo and just channeling the

(40:44):
people we encounter. And myhope, I guess, particularly in
education is we can move towardplaces where we, as the writer,
we're not trying to arrive atneat findings, but we are trying
to actually have people leave abook with more questions.

(41:05):
Okay. So we've been talkingaround ethnographic methods, and
I'm wondering what you had tounlearn or are unlearning or how
that happens in the process ofdoing ethnographic work from
soup to nuts, from, you know,the very beginning to writing
that final sentence.

Ujju Aggarwal (41:26):
I don't know if I can do that, but in hindsight,
one of the things I thought Iknew was I didn't believe in
kind of ethnographic distance. Ididn't believe in objectivity. I
thought that those things werereally messed up and violent,
and so I thought it was reallygood that I was embedded in and
close to my, quote, unquote,subject matter. And one of the

(41:48):
things I remember Leith Mullingsaying to me early on was, you
need ethnographic distance. AndI was like, oh, no.
But then I was, I quicklylearned. I did need to figure
out some distance. I had beenoperating as an organizer with
others in a space where we wereclearly trained to do certain

(42:11):
things, move certain things. Weunderstood who we were. We
understood who other quote,unquote others were.
Right? And then we understoodwho our allies were, and things
were often in that formation.And so one of the things that I
had to figure out how to do thatwas really difficult for me was

(42:32):
learning to listen to thestories of those who a few years
before, just in other instances,we had organized against or
petitioned for something. Right?And so I had to kind of develop
a curiosity instead of, I don'twanna say assuming to know
because we did know things, asas we were organizing, but I had

(42:56):
to move into asking differenttypes of questions and wanting
to know different things andcoming from a different
subjective, intersubjectivestance.
And that was hard. And I don'tknow if this was so much of an
unlearning, but it was a kind offiguring out how to learn road
was I remember feeling rightaround that time having, like, a

(43:21):
little bit of an existential,wait a minute. What am I do you
know? Who am I? What am I doing?
Who am I like, what where am I?You know? I remember in that
moment reading, Joel CostaVargas' chapter in engaging
contradictions and his flip ofthe kind of traditional because

(43:42):
that was what I was I was like,how do I just observe things in
a context that I'm embedded in?You know? And he presents this
very brilliant flip.
You know, if we are doingparticipant observation in a
place, then we're already tiedto kind of this assumption of
neutrality and it's and theconnection of neutrality to

(44:04):
dominant power. But but if wethink about flipping that,
right, to, from participantobservation to observant
participation, we can then,like, have our allegiance,
clearly defined to the movementswe are part of, and then observe
from that place. It also opensup the space of who might be

(44:26):
doing the observing, for me. Andso broadens that space from the
individual to the collective tocollective inquiry potentially.
But I think for me, it reallyhelped me kind of think about
and map not only how to createthis distance, but also how to
be engaged in the work in a in away that felt principled.

Sabina Vaught (44:48):
I'm so glad you brought up that chapter because
he, you know, he talks aboutrealizing he was being
scrutinized. And I think aboutthat you know, you talked about
self reflexivity. I think thatreflexivity around, recognizing
being observed, recognizingbeing scrutinized is so central

(45:13):
to doing the kind ofethnographic work we're talking
about. He also talks aboutasserting his political
alignments, talking about sortof being politically black. What
did that mean?
What did it mean to clarify thatin that set of relations? And it
strikes me there and given whatyou've said and given your book.

(45:38):
Also, the the kind ofmethodological flip highlights
the fact that we're alwayschanged. So we if we're not
objective, you know, which wecan't be objective, you know, we
we are being changed by thoserelations. And in some ways,

(46:02):
what I hear you saying is thatdistance allows for greater
change.
Like, it allows us to haveperception across multiple
dimensions of people, place,organization, temporality, and
ourselves so that we can,experience that that change

(46:23):
because we're not static for anyI mean, I've been changed by
this conversation. So so one ofthe things I love about that
scrutiny, realizing we're beingscrutinized, is sort of how that
also, shines a a spotlight onhow, all those sort of across

(46:47):
scale, our interactions changeus and that that's
ethnographically, not only sortof important, but central to the
stories we're telling. But Ithink also when we can't flip
it. So I think about doingethnographic work in in schools
and in prisons and in similarinstitutions. And, having

(47:13):
frequently this experience oftelling people who are, you
know, aligned with or work for arepresentative of that
institution or that apparatus orthe state telling them with in
no uncertain terms where mypolitical alignments lie.

(47:36):
They don't care. They'reactually not scrutinizing me.
They're just go ahead with thesame thing they were saying
anyway. So there's sort of alack of disruption on how that
maps power and how distinct thatis from, say, Jake's and the way
in which he's scrutinizing me tothe level of my tooth. So across

(48:01):
all possible ways to scrutinizeand how important that is for
observing how people are asyou're describing, making place
and making possibility andpractice in the moment.
And so I'm so glad you broughtup that chapter.

Ujju Aggarwal (48:19):
Yeah. No. Thank you for also just what you just
said. I mean, the transformationis so key. Right?
It always strikes me when Iencounter this iteration of
meeting people where they're at,but I was recently at something
just, last week where it wasagain. We have to meet people
where they're at so we can tellthem how to understand the

(48:42):
world. And it's like and thenthey can come to where I'm at.
And I'm like, no. No.
Makes me a little crazy. But itis, like, then where where are
we transformed in the process?Right? Like, it needs to be a
collective process. I'm so gladyou brought up this idea of
scrutiny because you reallybring that in so beautifully in

(49:03):
school prison trust, that kindof back and forth kind of, you
know, kind of scrutiny thatJake's is kind of pushing back
against you and with you andkind of alongside you.
It's not you know, it's kind of,it's it's, again, in relation.
But you bring that in, it seemslike very purposefully and, very

(49:26):
skillfully, and I think it's,again, a profound learning
process for the reader.

Sabina Vaught (49:31):
I yes. I think this gets back to this sort of
question of unlearning and keepsme on my toes in ways I so
appreciate. But I think there'salso sort of the humbling moment
of the collision of things weknow and don't know in the
microinteractions of a of a day.So, you know, I remember in

(49:52):
compulsory, a different bookwith the University of Minnesota
Press, you know, writing aboutbeing grumpy in and it being
snowy, and I was tired of mycar, and it was junky and all
the potholes. And, you know, andthen I come in and I'm sitting
in the waiting area of thisstate prison for state
identified boys and young men,and I'm irritated with my snow

(50:15):
boots.
The snow is melting, and I havea leak in the boot, and I don't
make enough money to buy a newpair, and I'm just grumpy. And
then this kid, Ace's mom, comesin, and she's trying to bring
him socks and other sort ofgarments, sort of basic
garments. And there's a wholeinteraction that illustrates the

(50:40):
terror inflicted on peoplethrough incarceration of young
people in families' communities.I could have written just this
story of Ace's mom coming in andnot being allowed to leave basic
garments that a mom wants togive her son. And the story on

(51:03):
its own is what's important.
But the contrast with my sort ofyou know, I'm people listening
who don't know me, I think I'mreally grumpy because I keep
telling these grumpy stories.But, you know, the contrast with
my self absorbed irritations ofthe day, that contrast isn't

(51:29):
about me saying what's importantand what's not and, how to
understand a system this way andnot that way, but to understand
that these collisions of massiveglobal systems of repression and
power through the smallinteractions of our daily lives

(51:55):
occurring in parallel, justoccurring in the same room,
little room at the entrance ofthe prison, reveal something
about how power and freedom andall all of our, other conditions
of life work. And I and I thinkthat, again, probably comes from

(52:17):
being a kid who read every novelI could get my hands on and
understanding that we tellstories in simultaneity is
important for the richness ofrevealing power and possibility
through just the very smallmovements of a a daily life. I

(52:39):
read a book recently, Fire Exitby Morgan Talty, and I was just,
like, it took me out at theknees because it was a story
where there was really verylittle spectacular, and yet the
it's just very quotidian, verymundane, and every sentence was

(53:06):
just profound in moving my senseof life and the world and
relations.
And so it is that model of sortof being able to juxtapose lived
life in ways that that surface,would surface, you know, all the

(53:27):
forces around us.

Ujju Aggarwal (53:29):
Yeah. Thank you. Well, I definitely wanna read
that book now, Fire Exit. Sothank you, Sabina. I mean, one
thing I think kind of buildingoff of what you just shared, I'd
love to hear from you about howyou see your work in dialogue
with education studies.
One of the things your work hasdone along with that of Damien

(53:50):
Sejoyner, Erica Meiners, andothers is create a different
space for thinking abouteducation. And so I wonder if
you could speak a little bitabout how you understand, again,
your work and dialogue witheducation studies more
generally, what you're seekingto push back on, disrupt,
expand, and also maybe whatyou're relating to.

Sabina Vaught (54:12):
First of all, wow. You put me in some pretty
good company there, so thankyou. You know, I I think
educational studies, I havethis, such a contentious
relationship with it in my mindbecause I think education means
something that well preceded anynotion of colonial schooling.

(54:36):
Right? The kind of imperialcolonial model that we all have
sort of inflicted upon us rightnow in various ways.
And I think we have yet, meincluded, to really excavate
that framework of education forits it's a capacious word, and

(55:00):
we limit it. I think we narrowit to either be kinda
coterminous with schooling or toat least be referential to
schooling. And I feel my ownlimitations in that regard and

(55:20):
the way I've sort of engagededucation that way. And I think,
therefore, Ben, even when I ampushing against reformist
tendencies and activities in avast field, Being
unintentionally reformistmyself. So, you know, what are

(55:42):
the questions that I ask?
Where do I ask them? And how didthose actually sometimes often
maybe, though I don't wannaadmit it, reinscribe schooling
as a fact or even as a good? Andwhy I'm not, you know, I'm not

(56:04):
afraid of the the critiques.Well, you can't, you know, you
can't destroy schooling and thisand that. Yeah.
That's not really what worriesme. I think what worries me is
this sort of liberal tendencyeven in people who understand
themselves as far beyond, youknow, far left of liberal and,
you know, I think liberalism is,like, a great danger to us. And

(56:27):
then I do these things that Ithink many of us well, I'll just
talk about myself. But I thinkthat this is maybe the the place
where ed studies or educationalstudies needs to, yeah, be
scrutinized and upended is inthat, where it's accidentally

(56:52):
reformist. Because we can allpoint out where people are
intentionally reformist, butwhen we're unintentionally
reformist by reifying or reenshrining certain truths that
aren't true, that actuallyaren't observing.
This is why I love partitionbecause I love the drawing from

(57:16):
diverse global histories. It'slike a social studies textbook.
But to actually think, toactually think about what we're
seeing instead of to think aboutsome things within a structure
we don't scrutinize to thefullest capacity of scrutiny.

Ujju Aggarwal (57:39):
That's so right. That's so helpful to think about
how we've limited ourselves. AndI wonder in dialogue with that,
again, I do find that your workhas opened up this other space,
and I also hear you that, like,we're also entrapped. Right? How
do we kind of make sure we don'tget comfortable in this

(58:00):
entrapment in a way, that isabout, like, asking in a certain
set of questions that doesn'treally push, us further?
When I was in graduate school, Iwas very uncomfortable with the
idea of studying. I was bothkind of engaged by anthropology.
I was uncomfortable with it, soI would get up every day when I
was doing my field work, and Iwas just like, do not become
that like, don't be thatethnographer. And I think kind

(58:23):
of what you're saying is, like,don't become entrapped and
comfortable in this entrapped,you know, kind of, space of ask,
how do we kind of pushourselves, and have that kind of
self reflexivity as well ascollective accountability, and,
push ourselves. And I wonder insome ways how the current
geopolitical moment of genocidethat we're seeing in Palestine

(58:47):
and elsewhere, schools andhospitals are the two main
targets, right?
What does that mean? How does itpush us to think? It's pushed me
to consider, how do we thinkabout this in this moment? How
do we consider not just howwe're embedded in the imperial
core in relation to genocide andthe destruction of schools and

(59:08):
hospitals and scholasticide, butalso then how does it kind of
shift or lift a particularliberal veil of what we imagine
schooling or education or lifeto be, right? Or again, the
limits of restorative justice,right, as a project of the
state, as another kind ofpolitical trap.

(59:29):
But here in New York, it wasenacted as a form of retaliation
against teachers who did speakout against genocide in their
schools. They had to, as a formof showing that they were sorry
in some ways, participate in arestorative justice circle at
their school. One thing thatwe've talked about, but also I

(59:50):
think is possible in this momentis, you know, we might be
shifting out of those, thoseentrapments in a way or have a
possibility to shift out of themthat we might not have had in
another moment.

Sabina Vaught (01:00:01):
Well, in in alignment with your work that
it's being mapped. Right? Ithink these complex
relationships across scale areall of a sudden being mapped,
and they're they're like three dmaps. Right? You're all of a
sudden, able to understand theterritory in new ways so that

(01:00:21):
genocide and I think peoplemaking connections across
genocides and across time too isremapping then the honesty of
schooling's project.
So, you know, schools, k throughhigher ed, are becoming very
honest about their aims andpurposes. I'm not saying they're

(01:00:45):
saying it honestly. They'reacting more honestly about their
aims and projects. They'reacting honestly about their
alliances and their investments,and not just monetarily, but
their investments in war andtheir relationship to nation
state war machines and what thatmeans for staying in our lanes.

(01:01:08):
Like, what what is yourexpertise?
Oh, well, why would you talkabout Palestine? You're a
scholar of x. And so the way inwhich even being a scholar or
engaging an inquiry is beingmore honestly policed. Right?
It's scary.
Honesty is not a good thinghere. I'll just be clear. It's
just that we're encounteringmore authentic behavior from the

(01:01:33):
university. And that's scary,and it's connected to sort of
all the forces of terror, butit's also giving us a very clear
map to study, to understand howwe might move and how we want to
move, I think, collectively toyour point. You know, what is it

(01:01:53):
that we do want to protect andnot protect and create and
recreate and and all of thosenew questions that we have to
ask in the face of terror.
And the questions people areasking that are, you know,
connecting state execution withthe war machine, with multiple

(01:02:17):
genocides now and historically,and being able to build sort of
that constellation. So the starshave been kinda all over the
map, and now people are creatingthat constellation to
understand. And it's not thatthat some people haven't had
deep understanding. Of course, II certainly don't wanna suggest
that. I think there's a moremore momentum for a larger group

(01:02:41):
of people to be able to observeand understand the
interrelatedness of and tobelieve people who have been
sort of offering analysis andthe insight all along.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:02:55):
No. I think that's right. And I I know
you're saying, how do we makesure we're not falling into this
reformist path when we firststarted talking about thinking
about education studies, yourwork in relation, kind of what
you're pushing back against thespace you've created for others.
And I think one of the things,again, that you and others did
create a space for other many ofus to kind of enter into was a

(01:03:20):
space of thinking criticallyabout a broader set of
questions, politics, life, andrelation. So that we were never
ever just talking about schools,but actually calling into
question, what is the politicalproject of schooling?
How do we disrupt this idea of apipeline? How do we think about
different forms of entanglementsand the limits or the

(01:03:42):
embeddedness of politicalprojects within one another,
right, and their connection andrelation? And I think connected
to what you're saying then, thismoment also asks us to think
about a different set ofrelations, right, and
embeddedness, and connection,and then expand from there. So I
think it it is a moment thatfeels very deeply connected to,

(01:04:03):
again, some of the space thatyou've created with others in
education studies, pushing backagainst it, working alongside it
within it, expanding its kind ofspace, the space and mode there
through which we might evenconceive of or talk about
education as a political projectwith a lot of different, again,
kind of tentacles that areembedded and sometimes, again,

(01:04:26):
contradictory. And as you said,kind of living in the dialectic,
how do we hold that space?
And then I think it's thisquestion about, yeah, how do we
hold that space across time,across genocides in place here
and think about, like, clearlyright now, I think, as you said,
some things that are being madeclear is that liberalism not

(01:04:50):
only does not protect you, itwants to kill you. Right? Or you
didn't say that, but I thinkit's one of the thing. Like
Yeah.

Sabina Vaught (01:04:58):
I agree. Yes.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:05:00):
And so, yeah, how does this moment kind of create
an offering for what we mightexpand ever expand, and create
more space for collectiveinquiry around and collective
work, not just inquiry, but kindof political work and praxis
about what it is, like the lifemaking parts of education and
where that might live.

Sabina Vaught (01:05:21):
And I'm curious, where are your questions right
now? So you have thisextraordinary book. Talk about
making space in educationalstudies. I mean, it just pushes
every boundary and assumption.And I know that when you move
away from a project and and thenhere it is in print, then you

(01:05:43):
have these questions drawndirectly from it that finishing
somehow, I think, makes usdeepen those questions.
And I wonder what the questionsare you're sort of sitting in
and the tensions that you'reliving in.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:05:56):
Yeah. One of the things that I've been interested
in thinking about is what theepistemology is that is born
from the space of enclosure andwhat we have to learn from that,
both about how it's enactedrelationally, but also how it
recognizes enclosure and how itimagines life beyond it and how

(01:06:19):
that vision is kind of centralto what we might fight for. And
I think I'm also interested inpushing back against what I
think is a useful politicalconcept or framework on the
ground, but has become a littleformulaic for how we see the
world. And that is the frameworkof reformist versus non

(01:06:40):
reformist reform. So I'minterested again thinking about
if we center the epistemologyand the space of what is
imagined there.
How does that direct us to maybea different set of questions
than, again, answers? Because Ithink one of the things that I
feel a little worried aboutsometimes is how I see people,

(01:07:02):
not always, again, it's a veryuseful political framework for
political struggle. Sometimes Iworry about what gets dismissed
and who gets dismissed by howthis framework then gets enacted
as a formula to create furthercategories very quickly.

Sabina Vaught (01:07:19):
So that there's almost a rubric for what is
legitimate knowledge, what's inlegitimate organizing, and it
becomes a new regime.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:07:31):
Yeah.

Sabina Vaught (01:07:31):
Right? A new policing regime. Exactly. Yeah.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:07:35):
Exactly. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And it is it's very rigid, and Ithink it's kind of politically
dangerous. You know? Even thoughit's coming from, like, a so
called non liberal orientation,it is enacting, like you're
saying, that's really helpful tothink about it like that.

Sabina Vaught (01:07:53):
Well and I think that stance loses sight of our
number one thing we have to doin any kind of political work,
and that is identify commoncause. And if we privilege a
rubric of legitimate radicalaction over an alliance through

(01:08:18):
common cause, we can't learnfrom each other. Right? We can't
arrive at change because thenwe've drawn battle lines through
common cause. It's not possibleto to get there.
So I I do think you're pointingto this, which I mean, this is

(01:08:39):
throughout the book. Right? Thatcommon cause is this relational
glue. It's the relationaljuncture. It's the thing that
moves us through all sorts ofother fissures and fractures.
So it's striking to me, and I II'm excited to hear where you go
with that set of questions.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:09:00):
Thank you, Sabina, and thank you so much
for this conversation. I'mexcited to continue to be in
conversation with you.

Sabina Vaught (01:09:08):
As am I. And thank you so much. I I enjoyed
this very much.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:09:13):
Yeah. Me too. I feel like I learned a lot. Thank
you.

Sabina Vaught (01:09:16):
Me too. Thanks.

Ujju Aggarwal (01:09:19):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book Race,Rights, and the Partitioning of
Public Education by Odu OduAjarwal is available from
University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.