ABSTRACT
Schooling creates a singular type of moment for self-presentation. This moment gets universally re-enacted, constituting the presentation of self – and the experience of the knowing subject – in much the same way no matter the cultural surround. Take the case of Emily, on the Micronesian island of Kosrae. The first thing that Emily’s family members said to me was that she would have nothing to teach me. After all, I was obviously well educated and this 57-year-old woman had only stayed in school until the fourth grade. It was mostly her nephews who said this, government employees who had air-conditioned offices and had traveled off island for work. They used words like stupid (puhlakfohn) and bumpkin (toming) to describe her, and always laughed affectionately as they teased her. She laughed, too, and swiped her hand past her mouth as if to punish it as she confessed to her “broken English.”
