The Constitution of Bilingual/ESL Education as a Disciplinary Practice: Genealogical Explorations

This article provides a cultural and political critique of the constitution of bilingual/English-as-a-second-language (ESL) education as a disciplinary practice in the case of New Mexico. Using genealogy and postcolonial, post-structural, and critical frameworks, this article claims that the directions advanced by the Chicano/Chicana movement were lost. Instead, what emerged was a field that nurtured a mix of symbolic colonization and docilization through the construction of a settlement that controls thought and behavior, perpetuating misrecognition in a Bourdieuian sense. Illusion, collusion, and delusion have enabled the dominance of psycholinguistic approaches. Problematizing the constitution of bilingual/ESL education within a cultural and political sphere could foster an emancipatory education for marginalized students.