Pedagogy of Absence: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Exploration of my Shifting Positionality and Subjectivity During Doctoral Studies in a Justice-Oriented Art Education Program

Abstract

Art education in the United States stands at a critical crossroads. Amid escalating political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; the defunding of public education; and ideological censorship of research and scholarship, the field faces a renewed assault on its capacity to imagine and enact just, emancipatory futures (Ellsworth et al., 2022). More than 35 U.S. states have introduced or passed legislation aimed at defunding DEI programming and restricting how race and history are taught in public education (Flaherty, 2023; Mitchell, 2023). These attacks are not isolated events; they are part of a broader historical continuum of systemic oppression that seeks to reassert Eurocentric, White-dominant ideologies at the expense of historically minoritized and socially marginalized voices (Kraehe, 2015; Lawton, 2018). Within this volatile sociopolitical climate, racially minoritized students and scholars face intensified marginalization as critical pedagogies, decolonial methodologies, and research practices are delegitimized and defunded altogether. The dismantling of DEI efforts and the weaponization of educational funding cuts not only suppress emancipatory conversations about race, identity, and power but also threaten the very survival of educational spaces where critical inquiry and cultural self-determination can flourish (Bell, 1980; Santos, 2001). This coordinated rollback of rights and resources demands urgent scholarly intervention on the teaching practices of those educators who not only operate under the panopticon of dominant power but also continue to confront them with critical art pedagogical methodologies that help students attain critical consciousness of their relationship to the education system and equip them with tools to engage with difficult discussions on oppressive social categorization of race, gender, sexuality, age, caste, class, and ability (Wilson 2018, Kraehe 2015, Kraehe et al. 2015). Using arts-based autoethnography as both method and site of inquiry, this doctoral research investigates how critical art pedagogy can elicit consciousness of the complexities of subjectivity and positionality for a racially minoritized student in a graduate program in art education. Drawing from Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of Nepantla (2009), this study engages with the in-betweenness of being both researcher and researched to interrogate the lived experiences of a South Asian doctoral student navigating a justice-oriented art education program in the United States. The study is guided by two key research questions: (1) What insights, generated through arts-based autoethnography, can be gleaned by reflecting on the critical pedagogical practices of art educators in a justice-oriented program? (2) How do these reflections lead to the emergence and shift in critical consciousness of a graduate student in such a program? Grounded in phenomenological hermeneutics (Gadamer, 1975; Visse et al., 2019), critical race theory (Bell, 1980), and Paulo Freire’s concept of critical consciousness (1993), this research uses poetic reflections and visual journaling to uncover the generative potential of critical art pedagogy. These aesthetic encounters function not only as modes of expression but also as tools for unpacking the way sociocultural influences shaped my identity and subjectivity within my doctoral studies in art education. By linking personal narrative along with visual journal and poetic reflection with broader institutional and political critique, the study reveals how critical art pedagogy helps examine the dominant frameworks, such as the monoculture of knowledge and productivity that has historically foreclosed emancipatory educational possibilities (Santos, 2001). This dissertation positions critical art pedagogy as a counter-hegemonic epistemology (Matthews, 2018; Pratt, 2004) capable of transforming curriculum and consciousness. It contributes to art education scholarship by centering the voices and experiences of racially minoritized faculty and students, voices that remain largely marginalized and absent in dominant art education narratives. In doing so, it asserts that education, especially art education, must remain a space of critical inquiry, personal liberation, and collective transformation. The emerging discoveries of this study generated the theoretical framework of the "Pedagogy of Absence," which articulates how silence, erasure, and marginalization function in educational spaces and how critical art pedagogy can be a mode of refusal and resistance to those conditions. It proposes absence as an archive of embodied knowledge that often remains unspoken and silenced in dominant Western art education practice, especially for teachers and students from historically minoritized groups. By positing pedagogical tension as a possible site of knowledge production rather than an obstacle, this autoethnographic research expands methodological frontiers in art education by integrating visual and poetic data as legitimate epistemic contributions to theory-building, offering transformative implications for curriculum development, teacher education, and the future of justice-centered pedagogies.