“Drag Me to the Asylum”: Disguising and Asserting Identities in an Urban School.

Autor/in	McCormick, Jennifer
Titel	“Drag Me to the Asylum”: Disguising and Asserting Identities in an Urban School.
Quelle	In: The urban review, (2003) 2, S.111-128 PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0042-0972
DOI	10.1023/A:1023709628784
Abstract	Abstract In many inner-city high schools, students face violence on a regular basis. Authorities contain and curtail the use of weapons and other acts that threaten the individual and the functioning of the institution. These attempts to create a safe environment separate students, who are largely black working class and poor, into criminal and noncriminal categories, creating a labeling system that denies complex individuality. In this article, I demonstrate how teens reaffirmed and subverted harmless/dangerous labels by disguising themselves and creating personas through the use of clothing, graffiti, and poetry. These forms of communication allowed them to achieve anonymity, assert violent identities, and resist dehumanization. Ultimately, I analyze how poetry became a means to explore individual interests, fears, and fantasies. Through personification and metaphor, students articulated and elided psychological and physical constraints despite the monolithic labels of school. Their work often conveyed a subtlety that subverted institutional categories that otherwise reduced them to a single identity. “Drag Me to the Asylum” emerged from research conducted in and outside a large urban high school. From 1992 until 1997, I collected student poetry, listened to the stories of students and school staff, and taped over 100 hours of unstructured interviews with students and teachers.
Erfasst von	OLC
Update	2023/2/05