ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I turn again to ritual and performance theory to help me understand what it means to enact a classroom culture in the face of that which is most in doubt, the precarious sense of community to which Bell referred in the epigraph that begins this chapter. Here, my central focus is the peer-led practice in Julia’s classroom, the time when students discussed literature in small groups without Julia’s physical participation. As the literature events depicted throughout this chapter underscore, much negotiation of social roles and identities took place in peer-led groups, but these negotiations both sustained and contested normative and hierarchical elements of the local culture of classroom and community. As Bell pointed out, ritualization exposes “hegemonic order,” and my examination of peerled discussion groups bears this out. Although, as she suggested, this form of empowerment is limited, it led to important interruptions of power that allowed for at least temporary transformations in participant status.
