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Critical Pedagogy in dark times

Henry Giroux*

Resumen Critical Pedagogy in dark times

En todo el mundo, las fuerzas del neoli- Abstract beralismo, o lo que podría denominarse Across the globe, the forces of neoliber- la última fase del capitalismo depreda- alism, or what might be called the latest dor, van por el camino de desmantelar stage of predatory capitalism, are on the los beneficios sociales garantizados histó- march dismantling the historically guar- ricamente y otorgados por el estado be- anteed social provisions provided by the nefactor. Esta es una razón de peso para welfare state. This is all the more reason que los educadores y otros aborden cues- for educators and others to address im- tiones sociales importantes y defiendan portant social issues and to defend public la educación pública y superior como and higher education as democratic pub- esferas públicas democráticas; necesitan lic spheres; educators need a new political un nuevo lenguaje político y pedagógico and pedagogical language for addressing para abordar los cambiantes contextos y the changing contexts and issues develop- cuestiones y desarrollar formas de peda- ing forms of critical pedagogy capable of gogía crítica capaces de desafiar al neo- challenging neoliberalism and other anti- liberalismo y a otras tradiciones antide- democratic traditions. This paper presents mocráticas. Se abordan en este artículo la the notion of teachers as public intellec- noción de los docentes como intelectua- tuals, pedagogy and the project of insur- les públicos, la pedagogía y el proyecto rectional democracy, pedagogy and the Detalle obra sin título de democracia en rebelión, la pedagogía politics of responsibility, and finally, ped- Dini Calderón y la política de la responsabilidad, y final- agogy as a form of resistance and educated mente la pedagogía como una forma de hope. Educated hope provides the basis resistencia y esperanza educada. La espe- for dignifying our labor as intellectuals; ranza educada es la base para dignificar it offers up critical knowledge linked to nuestra labor como intelectuales; ofrece democratic social change, it is rooted in el conocimiento crítico ligado a un cam- shared responsibilities, and allows teach- bio social democrático, está arraigada en ers and students to recognize ambivalence responsabilidades compartidas y permi- and uncertainty as fundamental dimen- te a docentes y estudiantes reconocer la sions of learning. Such hope offers the ambivalencia y la incertidumbre como possibility of thinking beyond the giv- dimensiones fundamentales del aprendi- en—and lays open a pedagogical terrain zaje. Esta esperanza ofrece la posibilidad in which teachers and students can en- de pensar más allá de lo dado – y deja gage in critique, dialogue, and a struggle abierto un terreno pedagógico en el cual for social justice. docentes y estudiantes pueden compro- meterse en la crítica, el diálogo y una lu- cha por la justicia social.

Palabras clave: pedagogía crítica, democra- Key words: critical pedagogy, democracy, cia, responsabilidad, esperanza educada. responsibility, educated hope.

Introduction (*) Global Television Network Chair. Eng- lish and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Chester New Hall, cross the globe, the forces of neoliberalism, or what might Room 229, 1280 Main Street be called the latest stage of predatory capitalism, are on the West Hamilton, Ontario, Canada A L8S 4L9 march dismantling the historically guaranteed social provisions

Columnist for Truthout.org provided by the welfare state, defining profit making as the essence Phone: 905 525 9140, Ext. 26551 of democracy, increasing the role of corporate money in politics, Fax: 905-777-8316 Web site: http://henryagiroux.com/ waging an assault on unions, expanding the military-security state, Regular contributor: www.truthout.org [email protected] promoting widening inequalities in wealth and income, fostering the erosion of civil liberties, and undercutting public faith in the

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas http://www.fchst.unlpam.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/praxis/Vol. XVII, Nº 2 27 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam Vol. XVII, Nº 2, pp. 27-3822-28 Henry Giroux defining institutions of democracy1. As market nizing principle for developing society and the mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on economy6. all aspects of society, democratic institutions and Given this current crisis, educators need a public spheres are being downsized, if not alto- new political and pedagogical language for ad- gether disappearing. As these institutions vanish dressing the changing contexts and issues fac- –from public schools to health care centers– there ing a world in which capital draws upon an un- is also a serious erosion of the discourses of com- precedented convergence of resources–financial, munity, justice, equality, public values, and the cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, common good. and technological–to exercise powerful and di- We increasingly live in societies based on the verse forms of control. If educators and others are vocabulary of ‘choice’ and a denial of reality – a to counter global capitalism’s increased ability to denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the separate the traditional sphere of politics from irresponsible concentration of power in relative- the now transnational reach of power, it is cru- ly few hands, and a growing machinery of social cial to develop educational approaches that reject death and culture of cruelty2. As power becomes a collapse of the distinction between market lib- global and is removed from local and nation- erties and civil liberties, a market economy and based politics, more and more individuals and a market society. This suggests developing forms groups are being defined by a free floating class of critical pedagogy capable of challenging neo- of ultra-rich and corporate power brokers as dis- liberalism and other anti-democratic traditions posable, redundant, and irrelevant. Consequent- including the increasing criminalization of so- ly, there is a growing number of people, especially cial problems such as homelessness, while resur- young people, who increasingly inhabit zones of recting a radical democratic project that provides hardship, suffering, and terminal exclusion. the basis for imagining a life beyond the “dream world” of capitalism. Under such circumstances, This is all the more reason for educators and education becomes more than high stakes test- others to address important social issues and to ing, an obsession with accountability schemes, an defend public and higher education as democrat- audit culture, zero tolerance policies, and a site ic public spheres. We live in a world in which for simply training students for the workforce. everything is now privatized, transformed into At stake here is recognizing the power of educa- “spectacular spaces of consumption,” and subject tion in creating the formative culture necessary to the vicissitudes of the military-security state3. to both challenge the various threats being mobi- One consequence is the emergence of what the lized against the very idea of justice and democ- late Tony Judt called an “eviscerated society”— racy while also fighting for those public spheres, “one that is stripped of the thick mesh of mutual ideals, values, and policies that offer alternative obligations and social responsibilities to be found modes of identity, social relations, and politics. 4 in” any viable democracy . This grim reality has In both conservative and progressive dis- been called a “failed sociality”-- a failure in the courses pedagogy is often treated simply as a set power of the civic imagination, political will, and of strategies and skills to use in order to teach 5 open democracy . It is also part of a politics that prespecified subject matter. In this context, ped- strips the social of any democratic ideals. agogy becomes synonymous with teaching as The ideological script is now familiar: there is a technique or the practice of a craft-like skill. no such thing as the common good; market val- Any viable notion of critical pedagogy must re- ues become the template for shaping all aspects ject this definition and its endless slavish imi- of society; the free possessive individual has no tations even when they are claimed as part of a obligations to anything beyond his or her self- radical discourse or project. In opposition to the interest; market fundamentalism trumps demo- instrumental reduction of pedagogy to a meth- cratic values; the government, and particularly od—which has no language for relating the self the welfare state, are the arch enemies of freedom; to public life, social responsibility or the demands private interests negate public values; consumer- of citizenship--critical pedagogy illuminates the ism becomes the only obligation of citizenship; relationships among knowledge, authority, and law and order is the new language for mobiliz- power7. For instance, it raises questions regard- ing shared fears rather than shared responsibil- ing who has control over the conditions for the ities and war becomes the all-embracing orga- production of knowledge. Is the production of

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 28 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013) Critical Pedagogy in dark times knowledge and curricula in the hands of teach- Cornelius Castoriadis points out, “has to do with ers, textbook companies, corporate interests, or political judgements and value choices”9, indicat- other forces? Central to any viable notion that ing that questions of civic education and criti- what makes a pedagogy critical is, in part, the cal pedagogy (learning how to become a skilled recognition that pedagogy is always a deliber- citizen) are central to the struggle over political ate attempt on the part of educators to influence agency and democracy. In this instance, critical how and what knowledges and subjectivities are pedagogy emphasizes critical reflection, bridging produced within particular sets of social rela- the gap between learning and everyday life, un- tions. In this case, it draws attention to the ways derstanding the connection between power and in which knowledge, power, desire, and experi- difficult knowledge, and extending democratic ence are produced under specific basic conditions rights and identities by using the resources of his- of learning and in doing so rejects the notion that tory. However, among many educators and social teaching is just a method or is removed from mat- theorists, there is a widespread refusal to recog- ters of values, norms, and power. nize that this form of education not only takes This approach to critical pedagogy does not place in schools, but is also part of what can be reduce educational practice to the mastery of called the educative nature of the culture. That is, methodologies, it stresses, instead, the impor- there are a range of cultural institutions extend- tance of understanding what actually happens ing from the mainstream media to new digital in classrooms and other educational settings by screen cultures that engage in what I have called raising questions regarding: what the relation- forms of public pedagogy, which are central for ship is between learning and social change, what either expanding and enabling political and civic knowledge is of most worth, what it means to agency or shutting them down. know something, and in what direction should Expanding critical pedagogy as a mode of one desire. Of course, the language of critical public pedagogy suggests producing modes of pedagogy does something more. Pedagogy is si- knowledge and social practices in a variety of multaneously about the knowledge and practices sites that not only affirm oppositional thinking, teachers and students might engage in together dissent, and cultural work but also offer opportu- and the values, social relations, and visions such nities to mobilize instances of collective outrage practices legitimate. and collective action. Such mobilisation opposes Pedagogy is a moral and political practice that glaring material inequities and the growing cyni- is always implicated in power relations because it cal belief that today’s culture of investment and offers particular versions and visions of civic life, finance makes itimpossible to address many of the community, the future, and how we might con- major social problems facing the USA, Canada, struct representations of ourselves, others, and Latin America, and the larger world. Most im- our physical and social environment. As my late portantly, such work points to the link between colleague Roger Simon observed, pedagogy is “an civic education, critical pedagogy, and modes introduction to, preparation for, and legitimation of oppositional political agency that are pivotal of particular forms of social life and always pre- to creating a politics that promotes democratic supposes a vision of the future. But it does more, values, relations, autonomy and social change. it also “represents a version of our own dreams Hints of such a politics is already evident in the for ourselves, our children, and our communi- various approaches developed by the Occupy ties. But such dreams are never neutral; they are Movement in the U.S., the student movement always someone’s dreams and to the degree that in Chile, along with pedagogical strategies de- they are implicated in organizing the future for veloped by the Quebec protesters. Borrowing a others they always have a moral and political di- line from Rachel Donadio, these young protes- mension.” It is in this respect that any discussion tors are raising questions about “what happens of pedagogy must begin with a discussion of ed- to democracy when banks become more pow- ucational practice as a particular way in which a erful than political institutions?”10 What kind of sense of identity, place, worth, and above all value society allows economic injustice and massive is informed by practices which organize knowl- inequality to run wild in a society allowing dras- edge and meaning8. tic cuts in education and public services? What Central to my argument is the assumption does it mean when students face not just tuition that politics is not only about power, but also, as hikes but a lifetime of financial debt while gov-

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas Vol. XVII, Nº 2 29 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam pp. 27-38 Henry Giroux

Sin título, grabado Dini Calderón ernments in Canada, Chile, and the U.S. spend tered consumerism, and a massive flight from trillions on weapons of death and needless wars? moral responsibility, it has become more and What kind of education does it take both in and more difficult to acknowledge that educators out of schools to recognize the emergence of vari- and other cultural workers bear an enormous ous economic, political, cultural, and social forces responsibility in opposing the current threat to that point to the dissolution of democracy and the planet and everyday life by bringing demo- the possible emergence of a new kind of authori- cratic political culture back to life. Lacking a self- tarian state? consciously democratic political focus or project, Rather than viewing teaching as technical teachers are often reduced either to the role of a practice, pedagogy in the broadest critical sense is technician or functionary engaged in formalistic premised on the assumption that learning is not rituals, unconcerned with the disturbing and ur- about processing received knowledge but actually gent problems that confront the larger society or transforming it as part of a more expansive strug- the consequences of one’s pedagogical practices gle for individual rights and social justice. The and research undertakings. In opposition to this fundamental challenge facing educators within model, with its claims to and conceit of politi- the current age of neoliberalism, militarism, and cal neutrality, I argue that teachers and academ- religious fundamentalism is to provide the con- ics should combine the mutually interdependent ditions for students to address how knowledge is roles of critical educator and active citizen. This related to the power of both self-definition and requires finding ways to connect the practice of social agency. In part, this suggests providing stu- classroom teaching with the operations of power dents with the skills, ideas, values, and author- in the larger society and to provide the conditions ity necessary for them to nourish a substantive for students to view themselves as critical agents democracy, recognize anti-democratic forms of capable of making those who exercise author- power, and to fight deeply rooted injustices in ity and power answerable for their actions. The a society and world founded on systemic eco- role of a critical education is not to train students nomic, racial, and gendered inequalities. I want solely for jobs, but also to educate them to ques- to take up these issues by addressing a number tion critically the institutions, policies, and values of related pedagogical concerns, including the that shape their lives, relationships to others, and notion of teachers as public intellectuals, peda- myriad connections to the larger world. gogy and the project of insurrectional democ- I think Stuart Hall is on target here when he racy, pedagogy and the politics of responsibility, insists that educators also have a responsibility to and finally, pedagogy as a form of resistance and provide students with “critical knowledge that has educated hope. to be ahead of traditional knowledge: it has to be better than anything that traditional knowledge The Responsibility of Teachers as Public can produce, because only serious ideas are go- Intellectuals ing to stand up”11. At the same time, he insists on the need for educators to “actually engage, In the age of irresponsible privatization, un- contest, and learn from the best that is locked up checked individualism, celebrity culture, unfet- in other traditions,” especially those attached to

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 30 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013) Critical Pedagogy in dark times traditional academic paradigms12. It is also im- education. The concept of the project in this sense portant to remember that education as a form speaks to the recognition that any pedagogical of educated hope is not simply about fostering practice presupposes some notion of the future, critical consciousness but also about teaching prioritises some forms of identification over oth- students as Zygmunt Bauman has put it, to take ers, upholds selective modes of social relations, responsibility for one’s responsibilities, be they and values some modes of knowing over others personal, political, or global. Students should be (think about how business schools are held in made aware of the ideological and structural forc- high esteem while schools of education are dis- es that promote needless human suffering while dained and even the object in some cases of con- also recognizing that it takes more than aware- tempt). At the same time, such a pedagogy does ness to resolve them. not offer guarantees as much as it recognizes that This is a pedagogy in which educators are its own position is grounded in modes of author- neither afraid of controversy nor the willingness ity, values, and ethical considerations that must to make connections that are otherwise hidden, be constantly debated for the ways in which they nor are they afraid of making clear the connec- both open up and close down democratic rela- tion between private troubles and broader so- tions, values, and identities. cial problems. One of the most important tasks Such a project should be relational and con- for educators engaged in critical pedagogy is to textual, as well as self-reflective and theoretically teach students how to translate private issues into rigorous. By relational, I mean that the current public considerations. One measure of the de- crisis of schooling must be understood in relation mise of vibrant democracy and the correspond- to the broader assault that is being waged against ing impoverishment of political life can be found all aspects of democratic public life. At the same in the increasing inability of a society to make time, any critical comprehension of those wid- private issues public, to translate private prob- er forces that shape public and higher education lems into social issues. As the public collapses must also be supplemented by attentiveness to into the personal, the personal becomes “the only the historical and conditional nature of pedagogy politics there is, the only politics with a tangi- itself. This suggests that pedagogy can never be ble referent or emotional valence”13. Under such treated as a fixed set of principles and practices circumstances, the language of the social is ei- that can be applied indiscriminately across a va- ther devalued or ignored, as public life is often riety of pedagogical sites. Pedagogy is not some reduced to a form of pathology or deficit (as in recipe that can be imposed on all classrooms. On public schools, public transportation, public wel- the contrary, it must always be contextually de- fare) and all dreams of the future are modeled fined, allowing it to respond specifically to the increasingly around the narcissistic, privatized, conditions, formations, and problems that arise and self-indulgent needs of consumer culture in various sites in which education takes place. and the dictates of the alleged free market. Simi- Such a project suggests recasting pedagogy as a larly, all problems regardless of whether they are project that is indeterminate, open to constant structural or caused by larger social forces are revision, and constantly in dialogue with its own now attributed to individual failings, matters of assumptions. character, or individual ignorance. In this case, Ethically, educators need to cast a critical eye poverty becomes a matter of laziness, choice, and on those classroom knowledges and social rela- flawed character. tions that define themselves through a conceptual purity and political innocence that clouds the fact Critical Pedagogy as a Project of that the alleged neutrality on which they stand Insurrectional Democracy is already grounded in ethico-political choices. Neutral, objective education is an oxymoron. It In opposition to the increasingly dominant does not exist outside of relations of power, val- views of education and pedagogy, I want to argue ues, and politics. Ethics on the pedagogical front for a transformative pedagogy–rooted in what demands an openness to the other, a willingness might be called a project of resurgent and insur- to engage a “politics of possibility” through a rectional democracy– one that relentlessly ques- continual critical engagement with texts, imag- tions the kinds of labor, practices, and forms of es, events, and other registers of meaning as they production that are enacted in public and higher are transformed into pedagogical practices both

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas Vol. XVII, Nº 2 31 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam pp. 27-38 Henry Giroux within and outside of the classroom14. Pedagogy ing visible a “democracy” which is to come as is never innocent and if it is to be understood opposed to that which presents itself in its name and problematized as a form of academic labor, provides a referent for both criticizing every- educators have the opportunity not only to criti- where what parades as democracy--“the current cally question and register their own subjective state of all so-called democracy”–and for criti- involvement in how and what they teach, but also cally assessing the conditions and possibilities for resist all calls to depoliticize pedagogy through democratic transformation15. In this instance, a appeals to either scientific objectivity or ideologi- transformative pedagogy, articulated through the cal dogmatism. This suggests the need for educa- project of radical democracy, resists the increas- tors to rethink the cultural and political baggage ing depoliticization of the citizenry, provides a they bring to each educational encounter; it also language to challenge the politics of accommo- highlights the necessity of making educators eth- dation, and rejects defining education through ically and politically accountable for the stories the logic of privatization, commodification, reli- they produce, the claims they make upon public gious dogma, and instrumental rationality. Such a memory, and the images of the future they deem pedagogy refuses to define citizens as simply con- legitimate. Hence, crucial to any viable notion of suming subjects, and actively opposes the view critical pedagogy is the necessity for critical edu- of teaching as market-driven practice and learn- cators to be attentive to the ethical dimensions of ing as a form of training. Understood as a form their own practice. of educated hope, pedagogy in this sense is not an antidote to politics, a nostalgic yearning for Critical Pedagogy and the Promise of a a better time, or for some “inconceivably alter- Democracy to Come native future.” Instead, it is an “attempt to find a bridge between the present and future in those As an act of intervention, critical pedagogy forces within the present which are potentially needs to be grounded in a project that not only able to transform it”16. problematizes its own location, mechanisms of In opposition to dominant forms of education transmission, and effects, but also functions as and pedagogy that simply reinvent the future in part of a wider project to help students think the interest of a present in which ethical princi- critically about how existing social, political, and ples are scorned and the essence of democracy economic arrangements might be better suited to is reduced to the imperatives of the bottom line, address the promise of a radical democracy as an critical pedagogy attempts to provoke students to anticipatory rather than messianic goal. The late deliberate, be thoughtful, engage in critical dia- Jacques Derrida suggested that the social func- logue, address important social issues and cul- tion of intellectuals as well as any viable notion of tivate a range of capacities that enable them to education should be grounded in a vibrant poli- move beyond the world they already know with- tics which makes the promise of democracy a out insisting on world trapped in circles of cer- matter of concrete urgency. For Derrida, mak- tainty, rigidity, and orthodoxy.

Sin título, grabado Dini Calderón

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 32 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013) Critical Pedagogy in dark times

What educators should challenge in the cur- and politics suggests that educators critically in- rent historical conjuncture is the attempt on the terrogate the fundamental link between what we part of neoliberals to either define democracy ex- know and how we act, the connection between, clusively as a liability or to enervate its substan- pedagogical practices and social consequences, tive ideals by reducing it to the imperatives and and the complex relationship between authority freedoms of the marketplace. This requires that and civic responsibility. It also means eliminat- educators consider the political and pedagogical ing those modes of corporate governance in the importance of struggling over the meaning and public schools and higher education that reduce definition of democracy and situate such a de- teachers to the status of clerks, technicians, and bate within an expansive notion of human rights, with respect to higher education a subaltern class social provisions, civil liberties, equity, and eco- of part-time workers, with little power, few ben- nomic justice. What must be challenged at all efits, and excessive teaching loads. costs is the increasingly dominant view propa- What has become clear in this current climate gated by neoliberal gurus such as Ayn Rand and of casino capitalism is that the corporatization of Milton Friedman that unbridled individualism, education functions so as to cancel out the teach- self-interest, and selfishness are the supreme val- ing of democratic values, impulses, and practices ues in shaping human agency, profit making is the of a civil society by either devaluing or absorb- most important practice in a democracy, and that ing them within the logic of the market. Edu- accumulating material goods the essence of the cators need a critical language to address these good life. Such a pedagogy has enormous power challenges to public and higher education. But in teaching students how to influence those who they also need to join with other groups outside already have power and to inspire and mobilize of the spheres of public and higher education in those who don’t. Most importantly, critical peda- order to create broad national and international gogy should provide the conditions for students social movements that share a willingness to de- come to grips with their own power, master the fend education as a civic value and public good best histories and legacies of education available, and to engage in a broader struggle to deepen the learn to think critically and be willing to hold au- imperatives of democratic public life. The qual- thority accountable. But, once again, changing ity of educational reform can, in part, be gauged attitudes is not enough. Students should also be by the caliber of public discourse concerning the pressed to exercise a fearsome form of social re- role that education plays in furthering, not the sponsibility as engaged citizens willing to struggle market driven agenda of corporate interests, but for social, economic, and political justice. the imperatives of critical agency, social justice, Defending public and higher education as vi- and an operational democracy. tal democratic spheres is necessary to develop Educators can highlight the performative and nourish the proper balance between public character of education as an act of intervention in values and commercial power, between identities the world, one that moves beyond simple matters founded on democratic principles and identities of critique and understanding. Pedagogy is not steeped in forms of competitive, self-interested simply about competency or teaching young peo- individualism that celebrate selfishness, profit ple knowledge, skills, and values, it is also about making, and greed. Educators also must recon- the possibility of interpretation as an act of in- sider the critical roles they might take up with- tervention in the world. Within this perspective, in public and higher education to oppose those critical pedagogy foregrounds the diverse con- approaches to schooling that corporatize, priva- ditions under which authority, knowledge, val- tize, and bureaucratize the teaching process. A ues, and subject positions are produced and in- critical pedagogy should, in part, be premised on teract within unequal relations of power [some the assumption that educators vigorously resist kids have Olympic swimming pools while oth- any attempt to deskill them, weaken their role in ers endure holes in their classroom ceilings]; it shaping governing structures, and define them as also problematizes the ideologically laden and of- simply entrepreneurs. Instead, educators might ten contradictory roles and social functions that redefine their roles as engaged public intellectuals educators assume within the classroom [such as capable of teaching students the language of cri- cop, educators, salesperson, etc.] Pedagogy in this tique and possibility as a precondition for social view also stresses the labor conditions necessary agency. Such a redefinition of purpose, meaning, for teacher autonomy, cooperation, decent work-

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas Vol. XVII, Nº 2 33 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam pp. 27-38 Henry Giroux ing conditions, and the relations of power nec- ing vital social institutions as a public good. At essary to give teachers and students the capacity issue here is a pedagogical practice that should to restage power in productive ways–ways that provide the conditions for students to learn and point to self-development, self-determination, narrate themselves and for teachers to be learners and social agency. attentive to the histories, knowledge, and expe- riences that students bring to the classroom and Critical Pedagogy and the Issue of any other sphere of learning. While pedagogy can be understood perfor- Authority matively as an event where many things can hap- In opposition to some misrepresentations of pen in the service of learning, it is crucial to ad- Paulo Freire’s work –whom I worked with for dress the importance of democratic classroom over 17 years– critical pedagogy is more than a relations that encourage dialogue, deliberation, conversation between students and teachers and and the power of students to raise questions. should not suggest that educators renounce their Moreover, such relations suggest using authority authority. On the contrary, it is precisely by rec- reflexively to provide the conditions for students ognizing that teaching is always directive-- that to exercise intellectual rigor, theoretical compe- is, an act of intervention inextricably mediated tence, and informed judgments. Thus students through particular forms of authority that teach- can think critically about the knowledge they ers can offer students –for whatever use they wish gain and what it means to act on such knowl- to make of them– a variety of analytic tools, di- edge in order to expand their sense of agency verse historical traditions, and a wide range as part of a broader project of increasing both of knowledge. This is a form of authority that “the scope of their freedoms” and “the operations 18 opens up the possibility for dialogue, exchange, of democracy” . What students learn and how and thoughtfulness while refusing to collapse they learn should amplify what it means to ex- into a pedagogy of opinions, uncritical articula- perience democracy from a position of possibil- tions of experience, or other uncritical modes of ity, affirmation, and critical engagement. In part, exchange. This is a far cry from suggesting that this suggests that educators develop pedagogical critical pedagogy define itself either within the practices that open up the terrain of the politi- grip of a self-righteous mode of authority or be cal while simultaneously encouraging students completely removed from any sense of commit- to “think better about how arrangements might ment whatsoever [Florida banned interpretation be otherwise”19. of history—just present the facts] At its best, critical pedagogy should be in- Educators must deliberate, make decisions, terdisciplinary, contextual, engage the complex take positions, and in doing so recognize that relationships between power and knowledge, authority “is the very condition for intellectual critically address the institutional and broader work” and pedagogical interventions17. Author- constraints under which teaching takes place, ity in this perspective in not simply on the side and focus on how students can engage the im- of oppression, but is used to intervene and shape peratives of critical citizenship and civic respon- the space of teaching and learning to provide stu- sibilty. Critical pedagogy must be self-reflexive dents with a range of possibilities for challenging about its aims and practices, conscious of its on- a society’s commonsense assumptions, and for going project of democratic transformation, but analyzing the interface between their own every- openly committed to a politics that does not of- day lives and those broader social formations that fer any guarantees. But refusing dogmatism does bear down on them. Authority, at best, becomes not suggest that educators descend into a laissez- both a referent for legitimating a commitment faire pluralism or an appeal to methodologies de- to a particular vision of pedagogy and a critical signed to “teach the conflicts.” On the contrary, referent for a kind of auto-critique. It demands it suggests that educators afford students diverse consideration of how authority functions with- opportunities to understand and experience how in specific relations of power regarding its own politics, power, commitment, and responsibility promise to provide students with a public space work on and through them both within and out- where they can learn, debate, and engage criti- side of schools. In this instance, critical pedagogy cal traditions in order to imagine otherwise and should enable students to learn how to govern develop discourses that are crucial for defend- rather than be governed.

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 34 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013) Critical Pedagogy in dark times

Sin título, grabado Dini Calderón

Making Pedagogy Meaningful in order refusal “to acknowledge one's own implication” to make it Critical and Transformative with such attachments21. If students are to move beyond the issue of understanding to an engage- Any analysis of critical pedagogy must ad- ment with the deeper affective investments that dress the importance that affect and emotion play make them complicitous with oppressive ideol- in the formation of individual identity and social ogies, they must be positioned to address and agency. Any viable approach to critical pedagogy formulate strategies of transformation through suggests taking seriously those maps of mean- which their individualized beliefs and affective ing, affective investments, and sedimented de- investments can be articulated with broader pub- sires that enable students to connect their own lic discourses that extend the imperatives of dem- lives and everyday experiences to what they learn. ocratic public life. An unsettling pedagogy in this Pedagogy in this sense becomes more than a mere instance would engage student identities, identifi- transfer of received knowledge, an inscription of cations, and resistances from unexpected vantage a unified and static identity, or a rigid methodol- points and articulate how they connect to existing ogy; it presupposes that students are moved by material relations of power [Difficulty of talking their passions and motivated, in part, by the affec- about Disney critically with students]. At stake tive investments they bring to the learning pro- here is not only a pedagogical practice that recalls cess. It is important to note here that any viable how knowledge, identifications, and subject posi- notion of critical pedagogy must make knowl- tions are produced, unfolded, and remembered edge meaningful in order to make it critical and but also how such knowledge can be unlearned, transformative. This suggests connecting what is particularly as it functions to become complici- taught to the range of experiences and identifica- tous with existing relations of power. tions that students bring to a classroom. Once students see a connection between Conclusion what is being taught and the everyday experi- ences they inhabit, it becomes possible to move At the dawn of the 21st century, the notion beyond the taken-for granted experiences that of the social and the public are not being erased inform daily life and delve more deeply and crit- as much as they are being reconstructed under ically into a “critical comprehension of the val- circumstances in which public forums for seri- ue of sentiments, emotions, and desire as part of ous debate, including public education, are be- the learning process”20. Ideologies are not just a ing eroded. The public is now viewed as a pa- constellation of ideas, stereotypes, and modes of thology just as shared responsibilities are being commonsense; they also represent specific forms replaced by shared fears. Within the ongoing of knowledge and beliefs rooted in strong emo- logic of neoliberalism, teaching and learning are tional investments. Such attachments need to be removed from the discourse of democracy and understood, analyzed, and deconstructed, often civic culture--defined as a purely private right not simply as a form of uncomprehending knowl- rather than a public good. Divorced from the edge but as an active refusal to know and the imperatives of a democratic society, pedagogy is

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas Vol. XVII, Nº 2 35 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam pp. 27-38 Henry Giroux reduced to a matter of taste, testing, individual democratic public life. Critical pedagogy is dan- choice, home schooling, and job training. Peda- gerous to many educators and others because it gogy as a mode of witnessing, a public engage- provides the intellectual capacities and ethical ment in which students learn to be attentive and norms for students to hold power accountable, responsible to the memories, suffering, and nar- fight against poverty, ecological destruction, the ratives of others disappears within this market- misrepresentation of history, and the dismantling driven notion of learning. Corporate pedagogy of the social state, but also because it contains both numbs the mind and the soul, emphasizing the potential for instilling in students a profound repressive modes of learning that promote win- desire for learning about marginalized histories, ning at all costs, learning how not to question au- struggles, modes of knowledge and a “real de- thority, and disdaining the hard work of learning mocracy based on relationships of equality and how to be thoughtful, critical, and attentive to freedom”22. How else to explain the banning of the power relations that shape everyday life and ethnic studies from classes in the public schools the larger world. As learning is privatized, depo- in Tucson, Arizona? liticized, and reduced to teaching students how What role might public school teachers play as to be good consumers, any viable notions of the public intellectuals in light of poisonous assaults social, public values, citizenship, and democracy waged on public schools by the forces of neolib- wither and die. eralism? In the most immediate sense, they can The greatest threat to young people does raise their collective voices against the influence not come from lowered standards, the absence of corporations that are flooding societies with of privatized choice schemes, or the lack of rig- a culture of war, consumerism, commercialism, id testing measures. On the contrary, it comes and privatization. They can show how this culture from societies that refuse to view children as a of commodified cruelty and violence is only one social investment, consigns millions of children part of a broader and all-embracing militarized to poverty, reduces critical learning to massive culture of war, arms industry, and a Darwinian mind-deadening testing programs, promotes survival-of the-fittest ethic that increasingly dis- policies that eliminate most crucial health and connects schools from public values, the com- public services, and defines masculinity through mon good, and democracy itself. They can bring the degrading celebration of a gun culture, ex- all of their intellectual and collective resources treme sports and the spectacles of violence that together to critique and dismantle the imposi- permeate corporate controlled media industries. tion of high-stakes testing and other commer- Students are not at risk because of the absence cially driven modes of accountability on schools. of market incentives in the schools, they are at They can mobilize young people and others to risk because schooling is being stripped of public defend education as a public good by advocating funding, handed over to corporate interests, and for policies that invest in schools rather than in devalued as a public good. Children and young the military-industrial complex and its massive adults are under siege in both public and higher and expensive weapons of death [Canada wants education because far too many of these institu- to buy a number of F35 jets from the US which tions have become breeding grounds for com- cost $6.39 billion each]. They can educate young mercialism, racism, social intolerance, sexism, people and a larger public to fight against putting homophobia, and consumerism, spurred on by police in schools, modeling schools after prisons, the right-wing discourse of conservative pundits, and implementing zero tolerance policies which politicians, educators, and a supine mainstream largely punish poor minority children. media. Instead of investing in schools, children, As a central element of a broad based cultural health care, jobs for young people, and much politics, critical pedagogy, in its various forms, needed infrastructures, neoliberal societies cel- when linked to the ongoing project of democ- ebrate militarism, hyper-masculinity, extreme ratization can provide opportunities for educa- competition, and a survival of the fittest ethic tors and other cultural workers to redefine and while exhibiting disdain for any form of shared transform the connections among language, de- bonds, dependency, and compassion for others, sire, meaning, everyday life, and material rela- advocates of neoliberalism have eliminated so- tions of power as part of a broader social move- cial provisions, destroyed pension plans, elimi- ment to reclaim the promise and possibilities of a nated health care benefits, allowed inequality to

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 36 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013) Critical Pedagogy in dark times

Sin título, grabado Dini Calderón run wild, and have done so in order to safeguard conditions that allow them to speak out against and expand the assets of the rich and powerful. economic, political, and social injustices both As social bonds and the institutions that support within and outside of schools. At the same time, them disappear from such societies so do the for- they should attempt to create the conditions that mative cultures that make civic education, criti- give students the opportunity to become criti- cal literacy, and cultures of questioning possible. cal and engaged citizens who have the knowl- Too many school systems operate within disci- edge and courage to struggle in order to make plinary apparatuses that turn education into ei- desolation and cynicism unconvincing and hope ther an extension of the prison-industrial com- practical. Hope in this instance is educational, re- plex or the culture of the mall. When not being moved from the fantasy of idealism unaware of arrested for trivial rule violations, students are the constraints facing the dream of a democratic subjected to walls, buses, and bathrooms that be- society. Educated hope is not a call to overlook come giant advertisements for consumer prod- the difficult conditions that shape both schools ucts. Increasingly, even curricula are organized and the larger social order. On the contrary, it is to reflect the sound of the cash register, hawking the precondition for providing those languages products for students to buy and promoting the and values that point the way to a more demo- interests of corporations who celebrate fossil fu- cratic and just world. As Judith Butler has ar- els, sugar filled drinks, and a Disney-like view of gued, there is more hope in the world when we the world. University student centers are being can question common sense assumptions and modeled after department stores, complete with believe that what we know is directly related to an endless array of vendors trying to sell credit our ability to help change the world around us, cards to a generation already swimming in debt. though it is far from the only condition necessary Atomization, fragmentation, bullying, and iso- for such change23. lation are the collateral damage inflicted on too Educated hope provides the basis for dignify- many young people in our schools by neoliberal ing our labor as intellectuals; it offers up critical educational reforms. knowledge linked to democratic social change, One of the most serious challenges facing it is rooted in shared responsibilities, and allows teachers, artists, journalists, writers, and other teachers and students to recognize ambivalence cultural workers is the challenge of developing and uncertainty as fundamental dimensions a discourse of both critique and possibility. This of learning. Such hope offers the possibility of means developing discourses and pedagogical thinking beyond the given—and lays open a ped- practices that connect reading the word with agogical terrain in which teachers and students reading the world, and doing so in ways that en- can engage in critique, dialogue, and an open- hance the capacities of young people as critical ended struggle for justice. As difficult as this task agents and engaged citizens. In taking up this may seem to educators, if not to a larger public, project, educators and others need to work under it is a struggle worth waging.

ISSN 2313-934X Facultad de Ciencias Humanas Vol. XVII, Nº 2 37 (julio - diciembre 2013) UNLPam pp. 27-38 Henry Giroux

I want to end by insisting that democracy be- 705-728; see also David Harvey, A Brief History of Ne- gins to fail and political life becomes impover- oliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Henry A. Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism ished in the absence of those vital public spheres (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008). such as public and higher education in which civ- 7 For examples of this tradition, see Maria Nikolakaki, ed. ic values, public scholarship, and social engage- Critical Pedagogy in the Dark Ages: Challenges and Possi- ment allow for a more imaginative grasp of a fu- bilities, (New York: Peter Lang, 2012); Henry A. Giroux, ture that takes seriously the demands of justice, On Critical Pedagogy (New York: Continuum, 2011). equity, and civic courage. Democracy should be a 8 Roger Simon, “Empowerment as a Pedagogy of Possibil- way of thinking about education, one that thrives ity,” Language Arts 64:4 (April 1987), p. 372. on connecting equity to excellence, learning to 9 Cornelius Castoriadis, “Institutions and Autonomy.” In ethics, and agency to the imperatives of social re- Peter Osborne(Ed). A Critical Sense (New York: Rout- sponsibility and the public good24. We may live ledge, 1996), p. 8. in dark times, but the future is still open. The 10 Rachel Donadio, “The Failing State of Greece,”New York Times (February 26, 2012), p. 8. time has come to develop a political language in which civic values, social responsibility, and the 11 Greig de Peuter, Universities, Intellectuals and Mul- titudes: An Interview with Stuart Hall,” in Mark Cote, institutions that support them become central Richard J. F. Day, and Greig de Peuter, eds. Utopian Ped- to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic agogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Global- imagination, a renewed sense of social agency, ization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. and an impassioned political will. 113-114. 12 De Peuter, Ibid. P. 117. 13 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Millennial Capi- talism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,”Public Cul- ture 12, no. 2 (Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 305- 306. Notes 14 For a brilliant discussion of the ethics and politics of de- construction, see Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibil- ity: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics 1 See, for example, David Harvey, The New Imperial- (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 2. ism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); David 15 Jacques Derrida, “Intellectual Courage: An Interview,” Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Ox- Trans. Peter Krapp, Culture Machine Vol. 2 (2000), p. 9. ford University Press, 2005); Wendy Brown, Edgework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Henry 16 Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Malden, MA: Basil A. Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism (Boulder: Blackwell, 2000), p.22. Paradigm Publishers, 2008); Manfred B. Steger and Ravi 17 This expression comes from John Michael, Anxious In- K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction, (Ox- tellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and ford University Press, 2010), Enlightenment Values (Durham: Duke University Press, 2 See, for instance, on the rise of the racist punishing state, 2000), p. 2. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcera- 18 Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,” tion in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New in Russell Fergusen, Martha Geever, Trinh T Minh- Press, 2010); on the severe costs of massive inequality, ha, and Cornel West, eds. Out There (Cambridge: MIT Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today Di- Press, 1991), p. 35. vided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: Norton, 2012); on the turning of public schools into prisons, see 19 Jodi Dean, “the interface of Political Theory and Cultur- Annette Fuentes, Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse al Studies,” in Jodi Dean, ed. Cultural Studies and Politi- Becomes a Jailhouse (New York: Verso, 2011). cal Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 3. 3 Quoted in Michael L. Silk and David L. Andrews. “(Re) 20 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom (Lanham: Rowman Presenting Baltimore: Place, Policy, Politics, and Cultur- and Littlefield, 1999), p. 48. al Pedagogy.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cul- 21 Shoshana Felman, Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of tural Studies 33 (2011), p. 436. Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (Cam- 4 Terry Eagleton, “Reappraisals: What is the worth bridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 79. of social democracy?” Harper’s Magazine, (Octo- 22 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and ber 2010), p. 78.online at: http://www.harpers.org/ar- Democracy in the Age of Empire, (New York, NY: The chive/2010/10/0083150 Penguin Press, 2004), p. 67 5 Alex Honneth, Pathologies of Reason (New York: Co- 23 Cited in Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham, “Changing the lumbia University Press, 2009), p. 188. Subject: Judith Butler’s Politics of Radical Resignifica- 6 For an excellent analysis of contemporary forms of neo- tion,” JAC 20:4 (200), p. 765. liberalism, Stuart Hall, “The Neo-Liberal Revolution,” 24 Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Cultural Studies, Vol. 25, No. 6, (November 2011, pp. Be (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

Vol. XVII, Nº 2 Facultad de Ciencias Humanas ISSN 2313-934X 38 pp. 27-38 UNLPam (julio - diciembre 2013)