Literacy Performance/Power

Exploring Literacy Performance and Power at the Loft. Blackburn (2003)

The author did research at a youth run center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth( LGBTQ). She examined the literacy performances of the youth and the power dynamics at the center.
Blackburn focused on the Speakers Bureau, a group of loft members hired to educate others on issues that are related to LGBTQ youth. These members are trained on issues relevant to LGBTQ youth and receive support in preparing for their outreach programs.
Blackburn collected data for the study for 3 years. In year one she volunteered at the center one night a week for 2-3 hours, and in years 2-3 she was hired as a staff member and spent 20 hours a week at the center.
She audiotaped meetings of the Speaker Bureau, collected documents and took field notes. At first she focused on critical literacies, and later her focus shifted to power dynamics. Her data analysis also shifted over time to focus on power dynamics.

Results:
The researcher found that the members of the Speakers Bureau did disrupt "inequitable power dynamics" outside the Loft but it also replicated these dynamics within the Loft.
Their "reading and writing of words and worlds" helped support themselves and others who had ordinarily lacked power outside the loft. But those same practices, marked them as the ones with power within the loft. They were paid, had privileges that others did not, and sometimes used their power to reinforce inequitable power without even realizing it. They eventually did realize this, and made efforts to diminish the inequitable power in the Loft as well.

My Thoughts:
What a great center that supported LGTBY that may or may not have another place to feel welcome. The center also provided the opportunity to advocate for themselves and others as well through literacy performances. I admire the youth for not only running this facility but for taking the time to give back to the community and advocate for what they know is right.
I like the quote "We must continue to interrogate relationships between literacy performances and power dynamics in which we engage--not with the belief that we will ever achieve a perfectly just community or society, but with the understanding that the justice lies in the perpetual interrogation." That is very well said. I admit I was a bit discouraged, that even without intending to, these youth that so knew what it felt like to be marginalized, that were doing such great things, were reinforcing inequitable power. But the quote at the end of the article reminds me that even though things won't ever be completely just, we need to continue questioning how just things are in order to make it as just as possible.