Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture This book is a major contribution to the radical literature on culture, identity, and the politics of schooling, especially as it addresses the challenge and the promise of school and social reform through what the author calls a “critical multiculturalism.” Peter McLaren’s approach to “predatory culture” and his exploration of recent debates over the role of public institutions, the state, and social agents offers the discerning reader a unique combination of neo- Marxist and post-structuralist theory —referred to as “resistance postmodernist critique.” Readers are invited to construct a politics of resistance at the level of everyday institutional life and within other public spheres. Such a politics of resistance is discussed in detail as a form of critical pedagogy which the author develops from the work of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, and from a range of theorists and practitioners on the educational left including Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard. Critical pedagogy is seen as a means of investing desire in a project of the possible. Written by one of the pioneers of critical pedagogy in North America, this book presents a unique and far-reaching challenge for educators, cultural workers, researchers and social theorists. Peter McLaren is Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces visages.” Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob), 1930 Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture Oppositional politics in a postmodern era Peter McLaren London and New York First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1995 Peter McLaren All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-415-06424-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-11756-9 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-20319-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20322-4 (Glassbook Format) For Jenny McLaren, the love of my life Contents Preface by Paulo Freire ix Acknowledgements xii Introduction: education as a political issue 1 Part I Pedagogy, culture, and the body 1 Radical pedagogy as cultural politics: beyond the discourse of critique and anti-utopianism With Henry A.Giroux 29 2 Schooling the postmodern body: critical pedagogy and the politics of enfleshment 58 Part II Critical agency, border narratives and resistance multiculturalism 3 Border disputes: multicultural narrative, Rasquachismo, and critical pedagogy in postmodern America 87 4 White terror and oppositional agency: towards a critical multiculturalism 117 5 Pedagogies of dissent and transformation: a dialogue with Kris Gutierrez 145 Part III Postcolonial pedagogies and the politics of difference 6 Postmodernism, postcolonialism, and pedagogy 171 7 Multiculturalism and the postmodern critique: towards a pedagogy of resistance and transformation 201 8 Critical pedagogy and the pragmatics of justice 229 Notes 260 References 268 Index 286 Preface Paulo Freire For quite some time, on account of my own personal experiences, I have convinced myself of the existence of what I have become accustomed to calling “intellectual kinship” among people who otherwise would be strangers in that they have no blood relationship. “Intellectual kinship” — involving similarity in the manner in which facts are assessed, compre- hended and valued—is also comprised of dissimilarities and incongru- encies. I am referring to this mysterious sensation which begins to “reside” within us, when, immediately upon meeting someone, it seems as though we have somehow always been tied to them by an enduring friendship. It is as though the very concrete fact of having met him or her is felt by both parties as a sort of déjà-vu. It is as if encountering this person for the first time were in reality a long awaited re-encounter. Sometimes this “kinship” is of little importance, even less significant than it appeared in the beginning; sometimes, however, an even stronger similarity may fan the spark to a flame. The state of “intellectual kinship” provokes in its subjects the feeling of finding oneself immersed in a pleasant ambiance in which intercom- munication takes place easily, with a minimum of disturbances; an ambiance in which the themes discussed have been learned by both individuals through similar experiences or epistemological approximation to them. It is one in which a mutual affection, “softening” the “rough edges” of the subjects involved, helps them in building their relationship as opposed to hindering them. It is interesting to observe how at times this same phenomenon occurs between us and different parts of the world that we visit. When for the first time I set foot on African land, the sensation that overtook me was one of returning and not one of having just arrived. Perhaps it can be said that the Africanism which I as a Brazilian of the Northeast carry within me makes it natural that arriving in Africa I would feel as though I was returning to her. But on the other hand, something very similar occurred within me at Cambridge, particularly in Harvard Square: that is, the x Critical pedagogy and predatory culture sensation of an old, very old camaraderie. The same can be said for San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Lisbon… Along the journey of my long life I have had, on different occasions, the enjoyable experience of “intellectual kinship.” I once met a woman in Greece, for example, with whom I lived out this experience. After a long conversation, in which I almost always knew what she was going to say next, I visited her library and found in it old and new companions of reading and study. It is of no importance whether the subjects who live out this experience belong to the same generation or even the same culture. Sometimes we may suspect that this kinship exists merely through the reading of an individual’s work, but it is in the personal encounter that such discourse finds its completion and that the ‘intellectual kinship” is confirmed. And it is at this moment that great friendships take root and prosper across the years, almost always resisting the inevitable changes in the particular way subjects comprehend the world at the time that they initially recognized themselves as “intellectual relatives.” If someone should ask if intellectual kinship is a sine qua non to our ability to influence or to be influenced, to work together, to exchange points of view, build each other’s knowledge, I say no. When such a kinship develops we need to cultivate within ourselves the virtue of tolerance, which “teaches” us to live with that which is different; it is imperative that we learn from and that we teach our “intellectual relative,” so that in the end we can unite in our fight against antagonistic forces. Unfortunately, as a group, we academics and politicians alike expend much of our energy on unjustifiable “fights” among ourselves, provoked by adjectival or, even worse, by purely adverbial differences. While we wear ourselves thin in petty “harangues,” in which personal vanities are displayed and egos are scratched and bruised, we weaken ourselves for the real battle: the struggle against our antagonists. Peter McLaren is one among the many outstanding “intellectual relatives” I “discovered” and by whom I in turn was “discovered.” In reality, such an “intellectual kinship” is mutually discovered and, moreover, reaches its fulfillment or its consummation through the mutual effort of its subjects. No one can become a relative of the other if the other does not also recognize that they belong to the same “intellectual family.” Based on certain similarities and affinities, the kinship is “invented” and reinvented and is never considered completed. I read McLaren long before I ever came to know him personally. In both encounters (of coming to know his work and meeting him in person) our “intellectual kinship” occurred because another very close and dear “relative” of ours, Henry Giroux, mediated the mutual discovery. Once I finished reading the first texts by McLaren that were made available to me, I was almost certain that we belonged to an identical “intellectual family.” It is of no importance that we may have assumed, Preface xi then or now, different positions when faced with the same problem. To belong to the same “intellectual family” does not signify the reduction of one into the other, for it is the very autonomy of each which constitutes the stone upon which an authentic kinship is founded. A love for autonomy, the struggle to sustain it, the search for creativity, the defense of the idea that friendship is to be cherished; the maintenance of intellectual responsibility and rigorousness in discussing any subject; the search for clarity; the courage to expose oneself; the relishing of risk- taking; a kind of purity without puritanism; a humility without servitude: these are all aspirations in pursuit of concretization, and that, through the life and work of McLaren, challenge me and make me his “cousin” to the extent that I am constantly seeking to allow myself to be touched by these qualities. Paulo Freire Sao Paulo, February 1994 (Translated by Maria del Pilar O’Cadiz, Marcia Moraes and Cesar Rossatto) Acknowledgements I wish to thank the following publishers for permission to reprint materials previously published (sometimes in different form).