Accessing Imagined Communities and Reinscribing Regimes of Truth

In this article, we explore the complex and nebulous terrain between two theoretical concepts, imagined communities (Norton, 2000 Norton, B. 2000. Identity and language learning: Gender ethnicity and educational change, Harlow, , England: Pearson Education. Google Scholar, 2001 Norton, B. 2001. “Non-participation, imagined communities and the language classroom”. In Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research, Edited by: Breen, M. 159–171. Harlow, , England: Pearson Education. Google Scholar), that is, individuals' imagined affiliations with certain groups, and regimes of truth (Foucault, 1980 Foucault, M. 1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977, Edited by: Gordon, C. London: Harvester. Google Scholar), dominant images inscribed and reinscribed into individual consciousness until they become normative. Using the context of two research studies, one a critical narrative study of life-story narratives of L2 users and the other a critical feminist ethnography of beginning ESOL teachers, the researchers examine the ways in which social structures and contexts can behave simultaneously as tyrannizing regimes of truth and as liberating imagined communities. This inherent contradiction illuminates the ways in which the two theoretical constructs taken together can lead to a more complex and nuanced understanding of identity construction.