"The Politics of Location": Text As Opposition

Abstract

Foregrounding issues of race, ethnicity, and education, this article ties together two important issues in teaching (so-called) basic writing: how social and pedagogical issues in higher education shape possibilities for bicultural students' writings and how these students can use their developing sense of literacy and their texts to explore identity. C ritiquing "general bourgeois education:' an education that socializes people to follow the rules of society, NgNug~i wa Thiong'o describes a system that mystifies "knowledge and hence reality:"