Pedagogy and the "problem" of difference: On reading community in The Darker Side of Black

This paper examines the responses of two groups of high school students to Isaac Julien's film The Darker Side of Black and theorizes what these responses might suggest for how students imagine and argue for community. It explores the tension that is produced as students argue for community as continuous and stable in the face of discontinuity and difference in the diaspora. The paper raises the possibilities for how pedagogy may occupy the space of tension that emerges from competing notions of community. It calls attention to the pedagogic constraints that come from the practice of privileging difference between communities, which might well compromise engagement with difference within. The trope of culture as the attribute of social groups that has come to structure debates on multicultural and antiracist education is critiqued.