Discursive Materials of Racism and the Arts in Education: Narratives, Performances, and Material Culture

This section explores white property in relation to visual, performance, and textual artifacts about the arts and arts education conceptualized as discursive materials. The chapters in this section trace specters of whiteness revealed through encounters with discursive materials as curricula for K-16 arts learning, teacher preparation, and professional development. This section also turns to popular productions of whiteness and its values, embedded within the rhetoric of the arts and found within traditional arts environments and practices such as exhibitions, critical essays, public spaces, and communities. In this introduction, we frame what we mean by discursive materials through two examples from popular visual culture and visual art that were noteworthy at the time we wrote this chapter. Our discussion of these two examples reveals themes of curriculum and pedagogy, countervisuality, and embodied orientations that resonate with the chapters in this section. Our introduction concludes with an invitation to consider these chapters as inspiration for educational practice dedicated to critical reflection and as informed resistance of the arts as white property.