CHAPTER 19: Elizabeth Ellsworth

In the quote above, James Baldwin (1969) articulates a concern at the heart of the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth. More specifically, Baldwin (1969) is addressing what it means to be himself in the context of a society that created an image and idea of who he was supposed be as a Black male. Baldwin (1969) not only rejects the control exerted by dominant groups in trying to decide and frame who he was, but simultaneously questions the larger social construct of knowledge by questioning who the knowers are, or ultimately who they think they are. Such concerns vis-à-vis what constitutes knowledge, an active questioning of the notion that knowledge is already made, and what the role of representation (i.e., how identity is represented, how society is represented, etc.) is relative to the school curriculum, media, and pedagogy are at the heart of Elizabeth Ellsworth’s work as a social scientist, scholar, and activist.