Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education ed. by Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre (review)

ative force, poetry's power to shape our thinking, to help us see clearly. But Scigaj excludes essential subjects for poetry and thus essential means for exploring human experience. For to exclude language as a proper subject for poetry, or to exclude what Faulkner called "the human heart in conflict with itself," is simply wrong, thus diminishing the moral authority ofecopoetry. Scigaj might respond by arguing that "human experience" is itselftoo limited in its scope, that we must shift our focus from the anthropocentric to the biocentric. Indeed, as a societywe must do nothing less than that, but an understanding ofthe biocentric can come only through human experience. Nonetheless, Scigaj's anger and arguments must not be taken lightly or dismissed , for his criticism should matter to anyone who cares about how language acts in the world. For unlike many ofthosewho chant the race-class-gender mantra , proving to their great satisfaction that marginalized voices are indeed .marginalized, Scigaj is driven by the moral imperative to restore thenatural world's subjectivestatus, declaring that the natural world exists not to serve us, but to fulfill itselfas an inherent good. Moral passion is refreshing in contemporary criticism, but still, must poetry make us ecologically aware? Must it make us activists? Must it make things happen ? Ifwe think it must, perhaps at that moment it ceases to be poetry. Charles Altieri, one ofthis book's villains, once declared in a graduate seminar that "poetry expands ourvocabulary ofmoral possibility." Altieri is right in this claim, and that is a primary reason why Professor Scigaj's book is ofsuch fundamental value. His treatments ofBerry, Amnions, Merwin, and Snyder serve as superb introductions to these poets, gracefully demonstrating acts of Réfiérance in each poet, therebydisclosing the wealth ofexperiential and moral possibility available to the mind attuned to the natural world. Sustainable Poetry is lucid, learned, and invigorating ; it deserves to be read and responded to. ^ Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre, eds. Dangerous Territories: Strugglesfor Difference andEquality in Education. NY: Routledge, 1997. 285p. Maureen Shannon Salzer Eastern New Mexico University This is a book by and about progressive educators working "in the margins'.' of the traditionally-defined academic structure, in feminism/feminist theory, peopleof -color theory, queer theory, cultural critique, class analysis, or other oppositional frameworks. It is a book which everyone, regardless oftheir politics, should read as they attempt to make connections between the classroom to the world at large. SPRING 2000 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW ·!· 14 1 Engaging directly with Right-wing political attempts to silence voices that speak about difference, this collection ofessays analyzes and critiques the social forces and institutional structures that create a differential distribution ofpower in the classroom, in the academy, and in the systems that govern our educational workplace . A stunning and unsettling book, it asks that we continuously analyze the systems ofpower which surround us as educators, arguing that seemingly effective political solutions to social injustice may well be implicated in the perpetuation ofpatterns ofinequality. While the essays themselves comprise an eclectic group, the collection's theoretically -informed analysis is committed to what Roman and Eyre term "antioppression pedagogies." The collection's range is broad, including sections dealingwith questions ofauthority at the national level, at the institutional level, and at the interpersonal level. Its focus on the socially constructed concepts ofgender, race, nation, and class provide connections among the essays, as does its emphasis on forms ofliberatory education and radical pedagogies. This is not an introductory text. It assumes a reader's familiarity with feminist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, and it applies those to particular instances of resistance. Among those frequently cited are Judith Butler, Shoshana Felman, Eve Sedgwick, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, bell hooks, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan,Teresa DeLauretis, and Donna Haraway. In the essays, theoretical insights are applied to current debates about issues such as political correctness and backlash, and the limitations ofthe latter concepts are demonstrated. The collection pays particularattention to the ways in which Right-wing strategies ofcontainment have stalled and, in some cases, co-opted the energy ofradical critique. Forinstance, Cecelia Haig-Brown's essay "Gender Equity, Policy, and Praxis" discusses ways in which "a particular government policyof'gender equity...