The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference

by Roderick A. Ferguson

In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asia American, American Indian, women, and queer activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transform both the university and the wider society beyond the campus. In The Reorder of Things , however, Roderick A. Ferguson traces and assesses the ways in which the rise of interdisciplines—departments of race, gender, and ethnicity; fields such as queer studies—were not simply a challenge to contemporary power as manifest in academia, the state, and global capitalism but were, rather, constitutive of it. Ferguson delineates precisely how minority culture and difference as affirmed by legacies of the student movements were appropriated and institutionalized by established networks of power. Critically examining liberationist social movements and the cultural products that have been informed by them, including works by Adrian Piper, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Zadie Smith, The Reorder of Things argues for the need to recognize the vulnerabilities of cultural studies to co-option by state power and to develop modes of debate and analysis that may be in the institution but are, unequivocally, not of it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academia, Education, Theory, Cultural Studies, Politics, Race

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Elizabeth Higginbotham · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Reorder of Things: The University and its Pedagogies of Minority Difference by Roderick Ferguson is a sweeping book that looks at the changes in academy brought about by student protests from formerly marginalized groups and also the introduction of more international students, with both decolonialism and changes in US immigration law. The book speaks personally to me and perhaps other academics of color in the Ivory Tower. In many ways, people cannot see the forest for the trees, especially during challenging times. I was active in the 1969 strike at City College in New York, well semi-active because I devoted most of my time to paid employment. I participated when I could and kept up with the dialogue. I the media Ferguson talks about the way that issues were viewed through specific lens of difference. Yet, on the ground racism, anti-war, sexism and sexuality were all intertwined, often in the same people. As a college student I was eagerly filling distribution requirements for a degree and consequently unaware of the specific themes and presentations in the expanding scholarship. Professor Ferguson focuses on the meaning of these confrontations for the university and wider community, both the new vision of the academy and the responsibilities attached to entrance for marginalized students and the communities from which they come.

The Reorder of Things is well written and unwinds a complex history using threads that tell small but significant stories to reveal the layers of meaning for new populations in the academy. His words highlight both the history that has been erased and the context of the academy debates about excellence. As I moved through graduate school and into the academy on the other side of the desk, I was caught in those very debates. My presence was always challenged as I posed new questions that originated in a different vision of my role. Now that I have retired I no longer let such matters bother me, but I do see them as a new form of gatekeeping. Vague criteria about excellence can push talented people to the side, again marginalizing them to their colleagues and unfortunately many students. Thus, Professor Ferguson’s perspective is appreciated as he can see the forest many of us are negotiating.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an powerful and very useful account of the university’s absorption and affirmation of what Ferguson calls “minority difference,” and it’s a sharply argued and at times beautifully written text. I find the conclusion, in which Ferguson suggests, in short, that developing a “critically agnostic” relationship to “minority difference and culture” as anti-absorptive practice can be accomplished through “A syllabus, a job ad, a recruitment strategy, a memo, a book, an artwork, a report, an organizational plan, a protest,” as if these were not the mechanisms of affirmation. Which is to say I guess that I’m interested in taking the terms of this analysis beyond where Ferguson wants to leave it.

[Ethan]

Interesting analysis of the institutionalization of issues raised against the very same institution, namely in education.

[Boka]

Civilization and its Malcontaineds

[Karra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps because I've spent the last decade in the South, but I take issue with some of the argument presented here. The implication that because Toni Morrison is taught everywhere, and therefore there isn't necessarily a need for black studies; and that if you're arguing over gay marriage, you've arrived past minority difference, I think is flawed.
And it's flawed because we're not in a post-racial/post-prejudicial world. No matter how good it sounds to be able to say that.
While I do acknowledge that the academy has changed since the initial movements that created these departments, I think movement is the right word- it moved a distance and then stopped. I would have been more interested in suggestions on where we go from here.

[Amanda Chiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very very interesting and invaluable to discourse surrounding the institutionalization of marginalizing structures of oppression and epistemic violence. Does a great job at probing the very specific relationship between educational institutions and minority subjects. I actually very much enjoyed this work despite its academic syntax.