Art Education and Whiteness as Style

Abstract

Art education needs to draw upon critical whiteness studies to further its social justice agenda while at the same time recognizing the resources that art education brings to questions of whiteness. In particular, whiteness should be conceptualized as a pre-conscious style. This style is composed of lines (that maximally extend white bodies in space) and angles of vision (that create hierarchically rigidified systems of difference). Certain forms of aesthetic experience can interrupt and suspend this geometry of lines and angles. The chapter concludes with a description of how the work of Kara Walker forces the white, male body of the author to stumble over itself and to perceptually hesitate, thus opening up the possibility for another way of living whiteness that troubles discrimination and privilege.