Encounter: The Cultural Progressivism of James Earl Davis

Encounter The Cultural Progressivism ofJames Earl Davis An Interview by Leonard J. Waks One of the most exciting progressive intellectuals to address issues of culture and education in the last decade is James Earl Davis. Davis's work has focused on male identity forma�ion in its cultural and educational contexts, with special emphasis on Black boys and young men. Two words frequently found in Davis's writings are «hegemony" and «complexity." The cultural resources available to young men as they come of age include hegemonic cultural definitions, those exerting a prepon­ derant influence over their understanding of people, events and situations. Davis has been especially concerned about conceptions of "manhood,>' or "mallllness') that shape subse­ quent masculine behavioral patterns when they are internalized by young Black men as they work out their own individual identities. Davis has been interested in how these pre­ ponderant or hegemonic definitions are con­ structed in everyday social life. He has been even more interested in how they obscure or constrain the complex variety of ways of understanding oneself and responding to life situations. For Davis, there is simply more social and cultural complexity than any hegemonic definitions, or any set of definitions, can ever encompass. Davis admits that hegemonic definitions of manhood or manliness may be useful to young men in some ways, during their period of individuation. These definitions, however, can also be very dangerous if they promote negative behav­ ior patterns or obscure alternative understandings that might engender more positive, life-affirming patterns of living. 78 • E&CJEducation and Culture 20(2} (2004): 78-90 Encounter: The Cultural Progressivism of James Earl Davis • 79 Therefore much of Davis's work consists in "deconstructing" hegemonic definitions, uncovering alternative definitions, which, though obscured, are at work in the culture, and, finally, putting these alternatives into play in learning experiences of young men from their middle school years until young adult­ hood, in order to facilitate their growth. Like Richard Rorty, Davis believes that young men should have a variety of models of manhood and of male heroes to choose from, and should choose several, answering to different aspects of their natures to respond to challenges in different cultural circumstances. Davis has used many tactics in uncovering these alternative definitions, in­ cluding interview studies designed to tease out the diverse understandings of manhood, institutional studies of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to find alternative visions of Black males, and collective narrative pro­ jects in which Black scholars tell the stories of their mothers' influence