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For decades, postcolonial studies have provided us critical tools with which to dissect the
concept of modernity, processes of (de)colonization, and our globalizing social worlds.
Postcolonial studies began to gain traction with the publication of Edward Saids Orientalism in
1978. Said and others such as Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, and Homi Bhabha inspired a
growing number of scholars to build upon their foundations and carry out similar exercises in
various contexts. Further lines of inquiry that sought to understand the formulation of the
colonized Other and the relationship of power between colonizer-colonized were opened up.
Yet as these studies became more multi-faceted in a complex era of global political
decolonization and neoliberalism, a tendency to question the idea of the postcolonial itself grew.
Some scholars Anibal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Gurminder Bhambra, and Ramn
Grosfuguel among them began to take issue with the notion of the postcolonial as a temporal
and finite period. In short, they suggest that cultures that have been subjected to colonization can
not simply exist in a post colonization period. Decolonizing relations allow the forces of
colonialism and colonization to operate in a variety of newer and more ambiguous forms.
Sometimes these are deliberate or opportunistic actions taken by powerful governments, such as
military interventions and/or occupation of sovereign states. Other times, they may also be
embedded in government or non-profit structures administering development and aid to
materially poor, disadvantaged communities around the world. Scholars like those listed above
call for decolonial thinking to disentangle relations of power in contexts such as these.
First, after his initial discussion on where the book fits, Kupferman addresses where he
as a researcher fits. As a self-identified white, Jewish, middle-class male from an upper-
middle class neighborhood north of Chicago" (16), it seems as though Kupferman fully expects
criticism for having no right to research an indigenous setting (possibly due to prior critical
experiences, or because he is an adept reflexive researcher, or perhaps both). Amidst debate on
who has the right to conduct research within particular decolonizing contexts, Kupferman begins
his study by arguing for a repositioning of the binaries of positionality. His argument reveals
that the binaries of insider/outsider, colonized/colonizer, and indigenous/non-indigenous have
failed to be productive, and he thus problematizes the binary logics essentialization of nativeness and non-native-ness.
While Kupferman agrees with Mignolo that communities should write their own histories
and agendas and have the ability to practice political and social sovereignty, he questions what
this means for those who share these goals but do not fit neatly into the binary categories.
Kupferman describes how he comes from particular privileged locations, including the fact that
his introduction to Micronesia was through a volunteer teaching experience. But he also
maintains meaningful interactions with the region of Micronesia outside of his own experience
as a teacher, including his marriage to a native Kosraean and the fact that his children are
enrolled in the Micronesian schooling system. Positionality can reveal to us the issues involved
in approaching research with the insider/outsider lens, yet Kupferman argues that the binary
loses its productivity by not allowing for recognition of the complexities of any persons position
and identity. As a result, Kupferman calls for reflexive positionality to be used in Pacific studies
as a descriptive, rather than evaluative, term, suggesting that how and when one approaches
something is a more important question than who is making the argument. As he admits, he has
never experienced colonization as a Pacific Islander, but the postcolonial time from which he
writes allows him to see how power continues to work through the unfinished business of
colonization" (16).
That Kupferman takes this up towards the beginning of the book is refreshing. Too often
white Western scholars embark on similar research without practicing reflexivity and, in turn,
produce tone-deaf representations of the people or contexts they study. That said, to this reader
Kupfermans offense at times comes across as more of a defense. While this may have been
difficult not to do, it might have been beneficial for Kupferman to go deeper than illustrating the
disempowerment rationale posed by the binaries of positionality. In heading straight towards
criticism against what he views as the reductionist nature of the binaries, he seems to, perhaps
unintentionally, too easily dismiss the value and justification for these criticisms which are also
being spoken from certain decolonizing places, temporalities, and particular discursively formed
identities.
After addressing the problem of binaries and positionality, Kupferman directly takes up
how school and processes of schooling show the productive mechanizations of how colonial
power is embedded in Micronesian societies. His goal is not necessarily to encourage
indigenizing of school curricula or rethinking how to operate schools in Micronesia. Rather,
his point is to unravel how the construction of the school has become an uncontested, essential,
and normal regime of truth that reproduces colonial administrations in Micronesia. Kupferman
invokes Foucaults idea of genealogy to show how these processes emerged through discursive
historical processes, and are simply not natural. In this sense, he shows how development
discourses reinforce Western notions of neoliberal economic development that damage the very
communities that the discourses claim to recognize and help.
The processes which have normalized school and schooling, Kupferman contends, are
not interested in educating Micronesians in the service of political and ethical selfdetermination, but rather they are concerned with the production and legitimation of particular
knowledges and the construction of subjectivities in order to remove those knowledges and
subjectivities from the realm of contestation and contingency" (39). These processes are
maintained through what Foucault termed governmentality, which is a form of power that
amasses governmental apparatuses in order to exercise strategies of power over populations. In
Micronesia, public school and the process of schooling has become one of the most prominent
governmental apparatuses that governs the lived-experience of Micronesian students. According
to Kupferman, this exercise of power limits the conditions of possibility and being for
Micronesian students.
Kupferman first encountered Micronesia having recently graduated from college at age
22, teaching high school algebra and geometry in Saipan. As he points out, the subjects he taught
alone are puzzling because his bachelors degree is in history, politics, and government.
(Similarly, I taught high school English literature although my degree is in sociology and
sustainable community development.) Kupferman iterates the fact that it would be immensely
difficult, and near impossible, for a 22-year-old native of a Micronesian island group, with less
than a year of work experience out of college, to land a high school teaching job in any American
school district.
Many volunteer groups and organizations work in the islands, but for the purposes of his
study, Kupferman focuses on those that have a primary emphasis on teaching. One organization
that Kupferman discusses is WorldTeach. Through WorldTeach, one qualifies as a teacher if
s/he is a college graduate, a native English speaker, and has completed 25 hours of ESL teaching
experience as either a volunteer or professional instructor. Whats more, WorldTeach connects
with the national ministries of education in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the
Federated States of Micronesia, which permits WorldTeach to move administrative costs onto the
host country and make volunteering affordable for the volunteer. Kupferman questions this
arrangement because it produces teachers through a discourse that allows young, unqualified
college graduates (in the sense that training as a teacher in cross-cultural contexts is not required)
from any academic field to teach as long as they speak English. But what is more concerning is
how the construction of volunteer programs circulates through development discourses and
normalizes the young, Western, English-speaker as what a teacher should and can be.
education and its cultural and racial effects to onlookers who then turn to simulate what the
statue represents. As it is, the statue of Lee Boo is white and in the dress of an ideal
Enlightenment era male.
Kupferman makes a good argument for how theory is one of the greatest tools we have to
analyze the very real effects of development discourses on peoples lives. He also makes good
use of theory itself, and his own theorizing adds much to debates on decoloniality and
decolonization. However, it would have been beneficial to see Kupferman make use of some
theory outside the Western canon. I realize that this point may fall into the binaries of
positionality which he critiques, but there is much to be missed by not digging deeper into
indigenous theoretical critiques as well. Kupfermans methodological approach is often based
around methods such as literary and cultural criticism, staples of postcolonial studies. Data from
interviews or participant observations in schools might tell us even more about the nature of
education and decolonization in Micronesia. It would also allow a discursive space from which
participants could become co-authors in research with Kupferman. This would have multiple
benefits, such as being more inclusive of indigenous representation, as well as possibly allowing
his self-reflexivity to come across as less defensive.